The Ultimate Colonial Civs thread

[SammyKhalifa]

I think Cuba could be a very interesting and colorful entry. Got to be honest though, despite all of the recent discussion I'm still having a real hard time with Gran Columbia.

 

[Weraptor]

Gran Colombia would be much worthier of a civ than Canada.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Gran Colombia would be much worthier of a civ than Canada.

It lasted like 10 years.

The Republic of Texas would be a worthier civ than Gran Columbia.

 

[King William I]

Gran Columbia is one of the few civs that it actually makes sense to base on the leader.

But admittedly a Columbia civ with Bolivar as a leader and a Gran Columbian city list would be the better approach

 

[rattatatouille]

I don't have anything against colonial civs per se - I love playing as Australia.

My only gripe is how Anglocentric the colonials are in VI - you get three former British colonies and that's not even counting the mother country (yes, I know Laurier spoke French, but still).

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

A lot of these potential later game leaders and countries are what we call here colonial nations. And a lot of those have an interesting history to tell or to abuse. The problem is really their implementation. Civ VI‘s America is for me the best they ever did and it‘s still not among my favorites. Brazil is a country I like very much in RL and whose history and culture is very unique. Yet both civ Brazil incarnations aren‘t very fun to play. I sometimes wonder if it would be a better approach to come up with a nice set of uniques and then look which civ they could fit instead of the other way round.

Brazil's Civ 6 design suffers from the same problem as Canada's. Rather than looking for inspiration from an interesting aspect of Brazilian history to build a civ around, the dev team assigned an ability that could go to a bunch of civs (great people focus), slapped on some jungle bonuses, and called it a day.

Not every civ design is going to be a winner, and no doubt they need to spend less time on some civs in order to spend more time on other civs. Compared to the creativity shown with the Medieval Era and earlier civs, though, there's been a relative lack of creativity related to the more modern civs. Which doesn't have to be the case. But perhaps that's tied up with the relative lack of interesting stuff to do in the late game, as it's new late game mechanics, such as railroads, that offer the best opportunities to build interesting new game play options for modern civs.

 

[pgm123]

Just keep giving me civs till I'm broke.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

My only gripe is how Anglocentric the colonials are in VI - you get three former British colonies and that's not even counting the mother country (yes, I know Laurier spoke French, but still).

Yes, the Canadian civ could easily have been designed to focus on francophone aspects of Canadian history to provide greater diversity, but I suspect the dev team thinks more along geographical terms: Australia is a coastal civ, Canada is a tundra civ, etc.

 

[pgm123]

It lasted like 10 years.

The Republic of Texas would be a worthier civ than Gran Columbia.

Gran Colombia was never the name of a state. It was the República de Colombia with its capital Bogota. It was succeeded by the Republic of New Grenada, then the Grenadine Confederation, the United States of Colombia, and finally back to the República de Colombia, which has been its name ever sense. "Gran Colombia" is name we use to refer to the time it was a lot larger. That didn't last long. But the state was Colombia then and it's Colombia now. I think we should just have a civ called "Colombia" with perhaps Bolivar as its leader.

 

[Jcturmer]

I can understand the inclusion of Canada.
Second biggest country, economic and military power...
OK, so... There are 480 millions of people that speaks spanish, in Spain only 40 millions. That is 440 millions of Spanish that they are not Spaniards. I want hispanic colonial nations!!

"No Mexico, we have Aztecs. No Argentina, we have Mapuche" No Canada, we hace Cree

I really like to see Simon Bolívar leadering Colombia

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

I think Cuba could be a very interesting and colorful entry. Got to be honest though, despite all of the recent discussion I'm still having a real hard time with Gran Columbia.

Agree. Unique designed Cuba would be very interesting. I mean something on Maori level of uniqueness.
But Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia are way too much. Remember guys. There is one very important factor. We have a limited number of Civs. If you introduce Colombia and Argentina you do it at the expense of others. There is always the question: Do you prefer Colombia over Inca? i will always pick Inca. If we get for example Mexico Let it be at the expense of Australia. not Aztecs. That's the basis of postcolonial Civs issue.

 

[agonistes]

I would have a problem with not including any civ that played a major role in any of the world wars, 7 years war, or cold war. Imperialism or colonialism. Or was a superpower then or now.

So no US in a civ game? C'mon man...

I'd rather Canada and Australia than a civ that isn't around anymore.

 

[pgm123]

Agree. Unique designed Cuba would be very interesting. I mean something on Maori level of uniqueness.

You know they'd just be island Brazil somehow.

But I'm curious how you make a unique Cuba. The main difficulty with post-Colonial civs is that they are harder to make unique. Cuba's post-colonial history is dominated by two major trends: U.S. interference and Castro. The former isn't something you want to glorify and the latter needs to be done very carefully. Maybe you could go with someone like Machado or Cespedes. If you do something with Castro, you need to avoid some cartoonish version of socialism (say no unhappiness, but no happiness either). Cuba does have a pretty good health system (which pre-dates Castro, but it became more universal under Castro, though not actually universal). I still don't know how you'd make it unique, though.

 

[CivLuvah]

Philippines - I'd include them in Civ but only if they were mostly based around their pre-colonial history, which is very unique and interesting, while also being unknown to the general public which assumes Philippines were "savage until colonized". It'd be also really good if Philippines had alternative name which didn't sound so weird in Civ naming format and wasn't such blatant exonym ("islands of Spanish king Philip" - honestly I am quite surprised Filipino people themselves accept this name).
Besides, post colonial history of Philippines was not exactly impressive enough to warrant them being civ. Australia and Canada are very highly advanced, developed and influential and bled heavily in both world wars, while Philippines spent last two centuries mostly on foreign domination, violent insurgencies and Third World poverty. The country definitely has great perspectives in AD 2018 (much better than many other South Asian countries) but...

Thing is though there wasn't a single pre-colonial state that would be considered a predecessor state to the Philippines today. The Philippines was composed of a lot of kingdoms, sultanates and tributaries, each distinct from one another because of outside cultural influence or ethno-linguistic group.

The Philippines didn't become one entity until the arrival of the Spaniards. When we had our revolution against the Spaniards, it was sporadic and wasn't based on one ethnic group, contrary to what many history school books in the Philippines would tell you. It was only (ironically) when we were being colonized by the Americans that we actually considered ourselves as one entity (because we were given freedom of expression by the Americans while the Spanish obviously didn't).

Part of the reason why we kept the name "Philippines" I think is because the Spaniards created the Philippines as a singular entity. There were attempts in the 1970s to change the name to "Maharlika", which in Tagalog is the name of a pre-colonial warrior class. However, considering that there are 80 languages spoken in the country, each of which is in itself a distinct ethnic group, I think you would encounter a lot of problems when you use that name.

Besides, we Filipinos have a knack of accepting what's foreign and making it our own. Like... most post-colonial peoples?

 

[Prima Italia]

I do not like them but what irkes me the most is that they are in the game before civs that have been part of the series historically. The fact that Byzantium, Portugal, Maya, Babylon etc etc are still missing while the like of Australia, Canada or Brazil is in my opinion, an extremely poor decision.

 

[Xandinho]

For people who are saying that modern nations are replacing the old names. If the Mayans did not make their appearance in civ6, it is probably because the devs chose another pre-Columbian nation in place, perhaps Mapuche? If Ethiopia does not make its appearance, this may be due to Nubia. And some people have already said that the Byzantines may have been replaced by Georgia. The inclusion of Brazil in civ5 did not replace Portugal, so it does not make sense to say that Brazil is replacing Portugal. If this is true, even with the exclusion of Brazil/Canada/Australia would not mean that we would have Maia/Ethiopia/Byzantines/Portugal back.

You can at most say that Canada is replacing the addition of another native civilization of North America (which I do not know if it is necessarily true). This only leaves us Babylon, perhaps the most striking absence, there is no explanation for the absence of Babylon, at most you can say that Australia may be replacing Babylon (which, in my opinion, makes no sense at all, it is not as if the devs thought: "how about we exclude Babylon this time and add Australia instead?")

I want very much that in the future they will make some sort of DLC package that will add back the missing favorite civs.

 

[pgm123]

Thing is though there wasn't a single pre-colonial state that would be considered a predecessor state to the Philippines today. The Philippines was composed of a lot of kingdoms, sultanates and tributaries, each distinct from one another because of outside cultural influence or ethno-linguistic group.

View attachment 511759

The Philippines didn't become one entity until the arrival of the Spaniards. When we had our revolution against the Spaniards, it was sporadic and wasn't based on one ethnic group, contrary to what many history school books in the Philippines would tell you. It was only (ironically) when we were being colonized by the Americans that we actually considered ourselves as one entity (because we were given freedom of expression by the Americans while the Spanish obviously didn't).

Part of the reason why we kept the name "Philippines" I think is because the Spaniards created the Philippines as a singular entity. There were attempts in the 1970s to change the name to "Maharlika", which in Tagalog is the name of a pre-colonial warrior class. However, considering that there are 80 languages spoken in the country, each of which is in itself a distinct ethnic group, I think you would encounter a lot of problems when you use that name.

Besides, we Filipinos have a knack of accepting what's foreign and making it our own. Like... most post-colonial peoples?

IIRC, Malaya was also considered as a name before Malaysia came into existence.

I believe the Rhyes and Fall of Asia modmod used the Rajanate of Butuan for the Philippines. I forget what their uniques were, but it had something to do with gold.

 

[Uberfrog]

For people who are saying that modern nations are replacing the old names. If the Mayans did not make their appearance in civ6, it is probably because the devs chose another pre-Columbian nation in place, perhaps Mapuche? If Ethiopia does not make its appearance, this may be due to Nubia. And some people have already said that the Byzantines may have been replaced by Georgia. The inclusion of Brazil in civ5 did not replace Portugal, so it does not make sense to say that Brazil is replacing Portugal. If this is true, even with the exclusion of Brazil/Canada/Australia would not mean that we would have Maia/Ethiopia/Byzantines/Portugal back.

Nothing necessarily “replaces” anything, but we know there is a fixed number of civs per expansion. Firaxis can choose whoever they want, it’s not like there’s a regional quota. Lord knows if there was a quota for postcolonial civs that would be oversubscribed by now, and if there was one for ancient civs, it’d be sorely lacking indeed.

But every civ in the game is another one that didn’t make the cut, so it’s fair on some level to say that Canada and co are in at the expense of any of the classics that are not.

 

[Navelgazer]

For Cuba, I can picture the devs doing something with Luxuries as a nod to sugar and tobacco industries (and Cuba's coveted rum and cigars), something about coast and/or rainforest, and something to do with alliances. To have anyone other than Castro be the leader would be very eyebrow-raising and yeah, it would have to be done very very carefully. And even what I described is halfway to "Island Brazil," as pgm123 said.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

For Cuba, I can picture the devs doing something with Luxuries as a nod to sugar and tobacco industries (and Cuba's coveted rum and cigars), something about coast and/or rainforest, and something to do with alliances. To have anyone other than Castro be the leader would be very eyebrow-raising and yeah, it would have to be done very very carefully. And even what I described is halfway to "Island Brazil," as pgm123 said.

Yeah, using Castro would be very touchy considering the anti-Castro Cuban populations in parts of the US.