This is a wierd one

[Punda The Panda]

Am I the only person who would like to see a small amount of well balanced civs, instead of piling them on haphazardly?

Of course I want to see Canada in the game. In fact, in order to accomplish the balancing act of game mechanics vs. the personal entertainment of including a whole whack of civs, they could have a group of civ archetypes (Asian, European, etc..), and each Civilization in the Archetype would play exactly the same.. but, have it's own flag, history, graphic and UU. (For example, Canada would play exactly the same as America, except Canada's UU would be named "The Mountie" and America's UU would the "Joe from Accounting")

The archetypes could be further separated from each other. They could have different shapes to their tech-trees, different units, and different buildings. This would be easier to implement and balance with a handful of basic archetypes.

For example, you could pick Asia as your archetype, and then pick from a long list of available countries that over history, would fit best into the Asian archetype, like Thailand, China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, etc..
The European archetype could include France, England, Italy, Rome, (Not the same), Greece, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia..
The playing would be historically inaccurate, but people could play THEIR country, however small it may be (or in the case of Canada, large but widely ignored) while still having a balanced game with a bunch of different playing styles (No more 1st-tier/2nd-tier/3rd-tier whatnots)

 

[Gainy]

You're right. Canada and the USA aren't vastly different. But on pretty much every other continent in the world, there are big differences between the peoples. Especially in regards to the ancient civilisations vs the newer ones.
What you suggest would work for N.America, but for virtually no-where else IMO.

 

[Punda The Panda]

Well, America and France are completely different, right?
India and Carthage are completely different, right?
In Civ 3, the only thing that differentiates them are a few traits (e.g. America is Industrious while France is commercial) and some UU's (F-15 vs. Musketeer).
This way, it would remove the traits, and they would play very similarly (which would be worse) in the same group... but then, the European group would play VERY differently from the Asian group.
I'm not saying it would be great from a historical standpoint.. in fact, it would be a terrible mess. I just think that the gameplay would be improved.

 

[ybbor]

RTS (read the sticky

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85183

 

[Gainy]

But pretty much everything in the game revolves around history, so removing any historical accuracy (however little there is) would just make the game worse.
Grouping the Greeks with the Vikings, think about it

Anyways, if you were to remove the traits, how would that make the civs any more different?

 

[Punda The Panda]

The game doesn't revolve around history much at all, though.

Really, in history, I don't remember India being alone on an island with the biggest army in the world, and waging a short war against nearby Greece..
Or the famous war where Russia, Britain, and France stomped all over Babylon, and then Persia jumped in at the last moment to take all of the cities that were still under Babylonian control.

I'm just saying that the game would be fun with only 5 Civilizations, and each civilization drastically different than the others. But only 5 Civilizations? Where's the fun in that? That's not enough civs. But any more would be a nightmare to balance, and therefore less unique.. and any less would be less unique because there just plain ol' aren't enough civs. The "Trait" system gets around this, but the trait system makes it so that all of the civs are hauntingly similar when it comes down to the mechanics of it. Maybe one civ gets a bonus to science or religion, but the sciences and religions are all the same. The civ gets a Unique Unit, but the units are all the same.

So 5 majorly different civs, with an 'amalgamated' style (European medieval units would be Knights and Bowmen) and a bunch of different civ names with *minor* tweaks and special units - "Norway" and "Scotland" would play almost the same, but Norway might get a tiny bonus on Tundra/Snow. "England" and "Canada" would play almost exactly the same, but "England" and "Japan" would be a different game altogether.

 

[Colonel]

THe point of the game is not to be historyically accurate but more or less give you each Civ with traits as it has in real world so if you group ancient greece and the vikings together as group there is no point to playing as it is just a more advanced version of Risk (the board game)

 

[Gainy]

The game doesn't revolve around history much at all, though

Yeah. It's not like you play as a Civ that had a fairly major impact on history, you go through the game in as long a timespan that we know of, research technologies in a linear fashion, along with the units/buildings of those stages, along with the specific building art for those stages, building the wonders that we know of from a bygone age, and pretty much just emulating things as much as one can in a game.

 

[Punda The Panda]

I'm just saying, less civs.

Less civs = more uniqueness.

And if there are less than 16 civs, how will you play a 16-person game?
Not to mention, how would you deal with all of the players clamouring for the inclusion of a Ugandi or a Norway or any of the hundreds of worthy civs that would be ignored?

Why, you would throw them in anyways! But they would just be a flag, a UU, and a couple of names different than one of the major civs.

But, now that I've thought about it a bit more, it sways Civ into a very different territory, more like a 'Starcraft' (all races are completely different, but there aren't many of them) when right now it's like an 'Age of Empires' (all races are very similar, but with different traits and special units) and I probably wouldn't want that to happen to my precious Civ.