frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
But the game isn't about nations, its about civilizations. HRE defined medieval civilization in middle Europe for the entire medieval period and lasted about a thousand years ... and it absolutely did evolve as a civilization, just not so much in the "political" category.
There's a grounds for exclusion, perhaps, on the basis of redundancy because of Germany, but I find the other arguments tend to fall flat - I really don't see excluding a large, and often influential, culture (or grouping of cultures, if you wish) just because their political organization was rather loose. On that basis, half the civs in the game can be excluded and we'll be left with a game primarily full of 17th/18th century nations starting out in 4000 BC. You won't be able to make Viking raids on Lindisfarne, dedicate a Sumerian ziggurat to the gods, or build Mayan temples in the jungle, for instance, because none of these groups were ever identifiable as a nation either - in fact, none of them were even united by treaty or any sort of political cohesion at all - and to me these are the kind of groups that come to mind even before national states when I hear of a game called "civilization".
I don't know about NAFTA or the Kyoto accords, but what's wrong with including the Soviet Empire or (under some name) Western Civilization? Both of these groups are clearly civilizations, despite the fact they span several nationalities, as civilizations often do.
. America's power rating is off the charts [F9]. Denying this juggernaut world power a spot in civ would be uncivilized.
