[R&F] Rise and Fall General Discussion Thread

I wasn't afraid; I laughed. Like, that's totally not how you use a rapier. :p Philip is such a disappointment; not only does he look nothing like the real Philip, but the real Philip was supposed to be cerebral, melancholy, and reserved. :( He's still a sort of entertaining figure, though, if you pretend he's not Philip II of Spain; maybe Antonio Banderas playing Don Juan impersonating Philip II of Spain or something. :p
Well, let's just say I was caught off guard when he denounced me, because I was waiting for the next turn and I was doing something else than paying attention to how AI is behind me :P
 
On the other hand, that's just the devs being lazy: the Iroquois were an urbanized culture with lots of city names to choose from; resorting to random towns in New York was utterly unnecessary. Also, while I think there are pros and cons to the Scythians (I think they're an interesting inclusion, and as far as figures of dubious historicity go at least Tomyris is interesting--I just think they also have problems, like a barely attested language forcing Tomyris to speak Ossetian instead [though considering she really does little more than harumph, that's not much of a problem :p ] and using archaeological sites as city-names [Scythian tribes would have been a better option] ), I'd say the Iroquois are probably the more worthy of the two: their government practices may have influenced the formation of America (there's still scholarly debate on this point, but it's worth discussing)

I've always understood something of the reverse - the indigenous tradition of confederations doesn't appear dramatically different from that documented in historical European tribal societies, with which scholars of governing systems would already have been familiar with, and the development of a more sophisticated Iroquois Confederacy slightly postdated European contact and so exposure to British ideas of parliamentary governance.

and they were a major part of the balance of power among the American and Dutch colonies, the British, and the French for three centuries.

Agreed, of all the North American tribal groups they're certainly the most deserving of inclusion - it still seems arguable that any of these groups was quite significant enough to warrant a place.

I wasn't afraid; I laughed. Like, that's totally not how you use a rapier. :p Philip is such a disappointment; not only does he look nothing like the real Philip, but the real Philip was supposed to be cerebral, melancholy, and reserved. :( He's still a sort of entertaining figure, though, if you pretend he's not Philip II of Spain; maybe Antonio Banderas playing Don Juan impersonating Philip II of Spain or something. :p

I found that absurd caricatured Erol Flynn stuff counterimmersive even by the standards of Civ VI leader animations. Gilgamesh is the only leader who comes across as actually threatening to my mind (and that includes when he's being friendly).
 
They always seem to book great names for expansion, so I think we'll see two or three of them in this expansion and a few more to the second expansion.
What I really want is for Civ6 to have more civilizations than Civ5.
If they want to hide some big Civs for people to buy next expansions, so be it. I don't mind. But I want the Ottoman Empire to appear as soon as possible :P
 
None of them did anything very relevant (Brazil conquered some territories in the Paraguayan war, nothing big). Canada and Australia appear to have minor holdings in World War II. Likewise, Kongo, Sioux, Zulus, and Shoshone have never had any major achievements. That is, they are all in the same boat, none of them are relevant. If we are opposing "irrelevant" civilizations, let us oppose all of them, not just the post-colonial ones.
it depends on what we think is relevant, if you consider the economy of a country or their military prowess the most important things to consider a civilization thats fine, but i believe theres more than just numbers and power that characterize any civilization. let's analyze every civ you've mentioned: kongo was one of the first native african countries to be converted to christianity and to have an archbishop that would take part in papal politics, which is a huge achievement, i mean can you immagine an african country having influence on the whole of the christian world? it is a huge political achievement that makes kongo stand off in the middle of africa. the sioux and the zulus both are famous for their fight against colonial invaders, which to be onest it isn't a bad thing, they represent how the west is sorry for their actions by glorifying peoples that stood up against them, it doesn't matter if they failed, they fought for their liberty. something i believe our society praize and for that should remember these peoples for their actions.
the shoshone i won't lie i really don't know what they are famous for and honestly i didn't know their existence before civilization so i can't find an argument in their favour
now let's see australia and canada, they didn't do anything significant worthy of notice, brazil developed a unique culture that resonate throughout the world, and america stands for the arsenal of democracy, and played a key role in the development of the modern world. what did australia and canada do? this is actually a legit question because i really can't find anything significant.
and with that let's conlude the argument unless we open another thread.
 
I've always understood something of the reverse - the indigenous tradition of confederations doesn't appear dramatically different from that documented in historical European tribal societies, with which scholars of governing systems would already have been familiar with, and the development of a more sophisticated Iroquois Confederacy slightly postdated European contact and so exposure to British ideas of parliamentary governance.

While no doubt the Iroquois picked up a few ideas off the Europeans, they had a constitutional government structure that predated the arrival of the colonies in Nth America.

the sioux and the zulus both are famous for their fight against colonial invaders, which to be onest it isn't a bad thing, they represent how the west is sorry for their actions by glorifying peoples that stood up against them, it doesn't matter if they failed, they fought for their liberty. something i believe our society praize and for that should remember these peoples for their actions.

As did most every culture/civ throughout history. They fought for their own right to be the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
 
But Genghis is BIG personality. Dunno bout those others so much...
So is Louis XIV.

I can‘t stand it when people lump Brazil, Australia and Canada together in their hate for post- colonial nations. Brazil is a very unique country and culture with an interesting history. Thanks!
Australia and Canada have unique cultures as well though. One has Kangaroos and vegemite while the other has ice hockey and maple syrup. :p

It's okay with Kongo, but Scythia does not even have its own list of cities (need to use Russian cities). There are a ton of better choices than Scythia, and this was only included because of Tomyris, they probably wanted an ancient female leader, and a Cyrus's counter.

Either way, you seem to underestimate Brazil, Australia and Canada for some reason. You can use any argument to oppose the inclusion of postcolonial nations, but the "limited historical importance" is not convincing, if we were to include only great empires that influenced the world of immense form, the list of civs will be restricted between 20/25 civilizations.
I like Scythia's inclusion although I might be biased as I ended up reading a novel trilogy that focused on the Peloponnesian War and one of the characters was a 14 year old Scythian boy. I grew to like his character especially. That was even before the game came out, and when I found out that Scythia was coming I was excited. They also represent a region of the world (Central Asian Steppes) that hadn't initially been included yet, since Mongolia was more Eastern. Also I don't know how many names are actually Russian since I believe many names come from old villages where remains of their civilization was found such as their capital Pokrovka, in present-day Kyrgyzstan I believe. Also Gelonius was the mythical capital written by Herodotus, and (Scythia) Neapolis was the only known city they had.
 
I've always understood something of the reverse - the indigenous tradition of confederations doesn't appear dramatically different from that documented in historical European tribal societies, with which scholars of governing systems would already have been familiar with, and the development of a more sophisticated Iroquois Confederacy slightly postdated European contact and so exposure to British ideas of parliamentary governance.
As nzcamel pointed out, representative confederate governments were nothing new in pre-Columbian North America; the League of Five Nations predated Columbus by several centuries. It's true that their regional prominence rose considerably after the Dutch armed them with guns and the British eliminated a few of their rivals, but their own experience with politicking is what allowed them to survive as a major regional power even in the midst of European colonies by playing the major powers off each other.

\I found that absurd caricatured Erol Flynn stuff counterimmersive even by the standards of Civ VI leader animations. Gilgamesh is the only leader who comes across as actually threatening to my mind (and that includes when he's being friendly).
I found CdM sort of threatening in an insidious sort of way. Gilgamesh just looks ridiculous.

So is Napoleon :p
Is he? It seems to me that he's more one of those figures who has been mythicized out of any semblance of personality, beyond perhaps the so-called "Napoleon complex" (which, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with Napoleon in the first place :p ).
 
I found CdM sort of threatening in an insidious sort of way. Gilgamesh just looks ridiculous.

Is he? It seems to me that he's more one of those figures who has been mythicized out of any semblance of personality, beyond perhaps the so-called "Napoleon complex" (which, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with Napoleon in the first place :p ).

CdM is one of my favourite depictions in VI. Her mannerisms are brilliant and nuanced :D Gilgy is ridiculous...but that's kinda the point I think.

I'm no fan of what Napoleon stood for, yet I cannot help but admire what he got up to. No doubt some of his reputation is exaggerated...but still - just reading about what he did that is completely uncontested is staggering. He should never have escaped off of that first island; the security should not have been so lax. Yet when he did, and landed, what followed could only have happened if half of what is said about him is true. You don't gain the loyalty of a heap of people with lives to live after losing most your army in Russia, and with every other European country standing against you....unless you're one hellava charismatic guy with steel behind the smile.
 
CdM is one of my favourite depictions in VI. Her mannerisms are brilliant and nuanced :D Gilgy is ridiculous...but that's kinda the point I think.

I'm no fan of what Napoleon stood for, yet I cannot help but admire what he got up to. No doubt some of his reputation is exaggerated...but still - just reading about what he did that is completely uncontested is staggering. He should never have escaped off of that first island; the security should not have been so lax. Yet when he did, and landed, what followed could only have happened if half of what is said about him is true. You don't gain the loyalty of a heap of people with lives to live after losing most your army in Russia, and with every other European country standing against you....unless you're one hellava charismatic guy with steel behind the smile.
I have nothing against Napoleon--I think he was quite interesting. I'm just a little bored of his being the eternal face of France; if (hopefully when) France gets an alternate leader, I'd like someone who better represents the Ancien Régime better than the Italian queen-mother or the Corsican world conqueror. :p (And yes, while I'm not a fan of CdM as a rather insignificant historical figure, I do like her in-game persona. "J'ai un grand désir de découvrir tous vos secrets." :lol:)
 
Charles Martel, Charlemagne or Clovis would be my 'out there' choices for an additional French leader, but that's probably for another expansion, I'm afraid. :cry:
 
Charles Martel, Charlemagne or Clovis would be my 'out there' choices for an additional French leader, but that's probably for another expansion, I'm afraid. :cry:
Hmm, maybe not that ancien. :p
 
Leaders from the Dark Ages (5th to 10th century A.D.) are fairly rare for Civ though. I can only remember a handful from the top of my head for this entire franchise (Justinian & Theodora, Ragnar, Abu Bakr, am I missing someone? Wu Zetian?). It would be nice to add a few more names to that list.

But a good Valois of Bourbon monarch will do just fine :)
 
On the other hand, that's just the devs being lazy: the Iroquois were an urbanized culture with lots of city names to choose from; resorting to random towns in New York was utterly unnecessary
I remember being very confused when I was playing the Iroquois in Civ 5 and Montreal showed up as a city name. Especially since there was a well-documented Iroquois village which had the name Hochelaga right where Montreal is currently.
 
Charles Martel, Charlemagne or Clovis would be my 'out there' choices for an additional French leader, but that's probably for another expansion, I'm afraid. :cry:

I very much doubt they'd use Charlemagne as he's also claimed by the Germans, besides which France has sufficient history over the last millennium that they wouldn't be best-represented by a leader who predates the country.
 
As nzcamel pointed out, representative confederate governments were nothing new in pre-Columbian North America; the League of Five Nations predated Columbus by several centuries. It's true that their regional prominence rose considerably after the Dutch armed them with guns and the British eliminated a few of their rivals, but their own experience with politicking is what allowed them to survive as a major regional power even in the midst of European colonies by playing the major powers off each other.

Representative government is common in small societies and tribes; the Anglophone parliamentary tradition has its ultimate roots in Germanic tribal councils of the sort that persist today in Iceland's Thing, and local councils are a common form of local-scale government even in monarchic societies. Societies tend not to develop autocratic centralised authority until they reach a certain level of complexity and urbanisation, and need a structured central government to oversee resource distribution.

That's not the same as what nzcamel describes as "constitutional government" and - at least as Britannica Online has it - the Iroquois Confederacy was a specific response to external pressures (principally European incursion): "Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of clan and village chiefs; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was required for decisions. The joint jurisdiction of 50 peace chiefs, known as sachems, embraced all civil affairs at the intertribal level."

The Iroquois system was more formalised than anything preceding European contact, and as the same source has it "more consciously defined". That's getting to a point where it can be described as something close to 'constitutional', but it's stretching the point to suggest it's likely to have had specific influence on the development of American government traditions which explicitly rejected representative parliamentary government in favour of a classically-derived republic.

They were indeed important brokers between European powers, but that's a role they owe largely to the conflict between those powers which prevented any one becoming dominant for two centuries and the fact that none of the European powers had purging the natives among their objectives; it wasn't as remarkable in their eyes as it is to ours in retrospect that significant native powers would remain on the continent in territory not then claimed by any of the European competitors. The large-scale displacement and elimination of native tribes came about only after the formation of the United States (stories about European colonists deliberately inflicting smallpox on the locals are anachronistic as they conflate different timescales and events: this was documented, mostly at localised scales, during mid- and late-18th Century wars onwards, both wars of eradication prosecuted by the US and as attempts in the French and Indian wars by European powers to kill or debilitate native auxiliaries. It isn't supported as far as 16th Century colonisation is concerned, nor is it very credible as the European settlers themselves were not immune to the disease at that point, and they were heavily reliant on local knowledge for their early survival).

None of this is to suggest they didn't have an important formative role, but that role is likely to have been overstated and insofar as that's their major claim to relevance it's not clearly enough to warrant a place in Civ. If the only major role in international history the Dutch had was their part in the founding of America, would they be considered worthy of including in Civ?

Leaders from the Dark Ages (5th to 10th century A.D.) are fairly rare for Civ though. I can only remember a handful from the top of my head for this entire franchise (Justinian & Theodora, Ragnar, Abu Bakr, am I missing someone? Wu Zetian?). It would be nice to add a few more names to that list.

Attila and Harald Bluetooth, at least, more or less bracketing that entire period. Given Dark Ages are a part of this expansion I think they'll have at least one nod to *The* Dark Ages, but I'm not sure what it would be. The Celts led by Brian Boru are a possibility; it's at the very tail end of the period, but the Dark Ages ended at different times in different territories.

I found CdM sort of threatening in an insidious sort of way. Gilgamesh just looks ridiculous.

I'm probably getting it largely from Gilgamesh's voice - one of the few leaders who actually sounds as though he's speaking to you rather than reading from a script (I can get used to the animation in Civ VI and quite like it in some respects even if I'll always prefer the Civ V style, but I'll never get on board with Civ VI's voice acting).

Catherine's mannerisms and her head and neck apparently taken from Cluedo are too absurd for me to find her in any way threatening, insidious or not.
 
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I remember being very confused when I was playing the Iroquois in Civ 5 and Montreal showed up as a city name. Especially since there was a well-documented Iroquois village which had the name Hochelaga right where Montreal is currently.
Don't forget such places as Grand River, Lake Simcoe, and Bay of Quinte.

There's a good list of Iroquois villages on the north shore of Lake Ontario; too bad Firaxis didn't use any of those for Civ V.

Oh, and Buffalo was on both the Iroquois list and the American list in Civ V. Toronto was not in any civ's list at all (until probably if Canada were to debut in R&F) and wasn't a city-state until Civ VI, aside from the CN Tower wonder from G&K.
 
The "feitoria or not" conundrum has me wondering about something. Remember when BNW was announced, there was a screenshot with an Assyrian Siege Tower? They didn't say anything about Assyrians at that point. How long did they wait to confirm that?

It might indicate that Portugal, or whatever owns that, is going to be close to the front of the queue for First Looks.

Don't shatter my hopes with alternative solutions. :crazyeye:

Of course if they start with a new civ then it's all bets off the table.

That'd be bold. As if the video they played was a clue for A civ, but not THE civ being revealed lol that'd be troll-of-the-year.

I have long suspected that someone had inside info on Venice and kept pushing it in the forums. It was such a long shot and dark horse option, but it was argued over since the day BNW was announced.

I pushed intensely for Venice. Which reminds me... dare I mention Venetian Glass as an item? (lol sorry, just reliving the experience)
This year I've been pushing for Lydia, so we'll see if I have some kind of voice or not... :lol:

To change the topic from Canada, I wonder if I will always be getting my Civ into a dark age every other era. :cry:

That'd be dreadful! To my knowledge, it is three levels, dark age, normal, golden age, so you at least have a 50/50 shot? :undecide:

On the other hand, that's just the devs being lazy: the Iroquois were an urbanized culture with lots of city names to choose from; resorting to random towns in New York was utterly unnecessary. I'd say the Iroquois are probably the more worthy of the two: their government practices may have influenced the formation of America (there's still scholarly debate on this point, but it's worth discussing), and they were a major part of the balance of power among the American and Dutch colonies, the British, and the French for three centuries.

Agreed. The Iroquois would be a fine choice, especially if Canada weren't a civ, the Iroquois could provide at least a little familiarity.

I will say I'm a bit biased, but add the Portuguese to the mix & the same could be said about the Taínos. :king: It was suggested potatoes as the new resource & I'm especially on board for tubers because of one of my favorite articles.. The sinister, secret history of a food that everybody loves.. essentially an article that clarifies what we consider to be truth, such that Taínos were responsible for the rise of the potato, & the Irish paid it forward by distilling our caña into rum. :king:
 
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