What Civ Would you Cut?

One civ I'd like to temporarily retire from civ7 is Mali/Songhai/Ghana trilemma - not because I have anything against it, as Islamic Sahelian civilizations are very cool in general, but they have become a recurrence in strategy games so they are in a safe spot anyway (see AoE4), meanwhile I'd like to see some other West African civilizations if we are going to keep getting one civ per West Africa. Especially from indigenous religions forest zones (Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Fon, Ewe, Mossi etc). And even within Islamic West African civs you could play with Jolof, Hausa or Kanuri for example.

That's also partially my beef with Zulu (besides their design always being copy paste boring as hell, unlike far wider range of possibilites with Sahelians) - their eternal recurrence snuffs out Zimbabwe, Xhosa, Tswana, Malagasy etc.

I wouldn't even complain about Ethiopia being absent, provided we got Somali in its place - very old civilization, undeserving of the terrible fate that has befallen it.

Kongo is IMO almost certainly going to be replaced by some other Central/Easterm civ anyway, whether it is Nzinga of Ndongo (entirely separate kingdom) or my dream of Kenya - Tanzania - Uganda area finally getting somebody.

Nubia can remain for my taste, since it's strange such prominent civ got there only once, although I'd be tempted for it to come in Christian edition of Makuria or Alodia, due to sheer exotic appeal of this utterly lost civilization.
 
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One civ I'd like to temporarily retire from civ7 is Mali/Songhai/Ghana trilemma - not because I have anything against it, as Islamic Sahelian civilizations are very cool in general, but they have become a recurrence in strategy games so they are in a safe spot anyway (see AoE4), meanwhile I'd like to see some other West African civilizations if we are going to keep getting one civ per West Africa. Especially from indigenous religions forest zones (Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Fon, Ewe, Mossi etc). And even within Islamic West African civs you could play with Jolof, Hausa or Kanuri for example.
Kanem-Bornu solves a lot of problems in this respect. It's an Islamic Sahelian trade empire, but it's far enough away from the coast that it doesn't overlap with any West African group for space. It's 1000 year long existence also makes Mali and Songhai look like a flash in the pan compared to it.

IMO the Hausa are preferable as a small collection of city-states, since they didn't coalesce into a singular powerful entity until very late with the Sokoto Caliphate. To my mind they are a little like the Greek cities; better served mechanically as CS
Nubia can remain for my taste, since it's strange such prominent civ got there only once, although I'd be tempted for it to come in Christian edition of Makuria or Alodia, due to sheer exotic appeal of this utterly lost civilization.
I don't think having both Makuria and Ethiopia would be very good. Very close together and somewhat similar flavour as a South-East African Christian exclave, but one survived Muslim invasion and one didn't. Maybe they could trade off for a game, but I would be sad to lose Ethiopia, which has a much longer and more storied history relative to Makuria. It would be like axing France in favor of Belgium for a game.
 
Besides Egypt, I believe that Ethiopia is the one other African civ who should at least stay in every iteration, and not be rotated.
There is an argument for the Axum Empire however, but that can easily just be incorporated into the design of Ethiopia.
 
As usual, I disagree with Krajzen - Mali should if anything take Zulu's spot as a series staples or close to.

I see a five-civ Africa (excluding Egypt) as Mali (occasionally replaced by Songhai), Ethiopia (occasionally Axum), one Sahara/Sahel civ other than Mali/Songhai (Currently Nubia, but could be Hausa, Tuareg, Kanem, etc), one west coast-ish civ (currently Kongo, but could be Ashante, Benin, etc) and one East or South coast Bantu civ (currently Zulu, but Swahili and the various Zimbabwes are alternative).

And of course you try for balance so when you have a western Sahel civ along Mali (say Hausa) then you go more for Kongo than Dahomey, and when you have an East Sahel civ you go more Mutapa or Zulu than Swahili.

Egypt is of course a North of Sahara staple.
 
One civ I'd like to temporarily retire from civ7 is Mali/Songhai/Ghana trilemma - not because I have anything against it, as Islamic Sahelian civilizations are very cool in general, but they have become a recurrence in strategy games so they are in a safe spot anyway (see AoE4), meanwhile I'd like to see some other West African civilizations if we are going to keep getting one civ per West Africa. Especially from indigenous religions forest zones (Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Fon, Ewe, Mossi etc). And even within Islamic West African civs you could play with Jolof, Hausa or Kanuri for example.

That's also partially my beef with Zulu (besides their design always being copy paste boring as hell, unlike far wider range of possibilites with Sahelians) - their eternal recurrence snuffs out Zimbabwe, Xhosa, Tswana, Malagasy etc.

I wouldn't even complain about Ethiopia being absent, provided we got Somali in its place - very old civilization, undeserving of the terrible fate that has befallen it.

Kongo is IMO almost certainly going to be replaced by some other Central/Easterm civ anyway, whether it is Nzinga of Ndongo (entirely separate kingdom) or my dream of Kenya - Tanzania - Uganda area finally getting somebody.

Nubia can remain for my taste, since it's strange such prominent civ got there only once, although I'd be tempted for it to come in Christian edition of Makuria or Alodia, due to sheer exotic appeal of this utterly lost civilization.
I would like to see the Buganda Kingdom. The African Great Lakes region is usually an empty spot.
 
To my mind they are a little like the Greek cities; better served mechanically as CS
The Greeks being done as merely city-states is not going to fly in a Civ iteration. You seem to have a noted desire to clip the influence of Greek-speaking leaders, and perhaps they are a bit overrepresented in Civ6 (Egypt should NOT have Cleopatra, I agree), but Greek civilization is such a massive cornerstone of many of fundamental aspects of civilization, not just in Europe and the Mediterranean, but in big chunks of Asia and Africa (the great rediscoveries in the Library of Toledo that sparked the Renaissance was based on Greek, among Latin and Middle East - but in large part Greek - science and math, with notable innovations by Muslim scholars, but very significantly Greek, regurgitated back at Europeans, and many ideas in India, China, and the Horn of Africa were credited to Ancient Greek travelers and traders), and these things spread, along with much else, via Colonial channels. Democracy and the Republic were concepts invented by Ancient Greeks, and another Ancient Greek philosopher is credited by some as the first Libertarian. Whatever distaste you may have for Greek civilization, or whatever reason why - I won't hazard a guess - they are FAR too fundamental and central to the concept of a game called, "Civilization," to be relegated to mere city-states, or to only be represented by a brutish conqueror from a peripheral Hellenized culture of herders and hunters who spread the sphere of influence of Greek culture, but did little to contribute to it or epitomize it.
 
I'm still firmly against the idea that "civilization" should be equated to political state unification. Whether for the Greeks, the Mayans or the Hausa.

It's a reductive (and very centered on European models) notion.

For the same reason, I am still vehemently opposed to the notion that leaders must be political rulers.
 
I'm still firmly against the idea that "civilization" should be equated to political state unification. Whether for the Greeks, the Mayans or the Hausa.

It's a reductive (and very centered on European models) notion.

For the same reason, I am still vehemently opposed to the notion that leaders must be political rulers.
I agree. But I think a civ built around Athens would better represent the Greek, "ideal," than Alexander of Macedon, or reducing the Ancient Greek civ to nothing but City-States.

And, it's not a purely European ideal, either. The Chinese, Inca, Ethiopians, Iranians, and others have long held similar views to a, "civiilization," being, in theory, a unified entity.

Leaders who are not political leaders being attributed to the sort of decisions that Civ leaders have mandate and power over, in game, is a very dubious concept.
 
If Nubia gets cycled out I would like to see Ezana leading Axumite Ethiopia even more. A Sub-Saharan leader from the classical era is a niche that should be filled.

IMO the Hausa are preferable as a small collection of city-states, since they didn't coalesce into a singular powerful entity until very late with the Sokoto Caliphate

The Sokoto Caliphate was created by the Fulani people, not the Hausa.
 
In what universe is centralization being a prerequisite to civilization “a western notion”? We’re talking about this in the context of The Greeks of all people. No one disputes the existence of “Mayan civilization” either, for that matter.

Centralization is prerequisite for the game’s conception of how civilizations work, not “the west’s”. City-states are a square peg in the round hole of how the game makes you play as multi-city empires. But it’s okay because it has a separate mechanic for city-states: the city state mechanic. So they aren’t going away, they should go to the civ mechanic specifically designed to portray them.
 
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In what universe is centralization being a prerequisite to civilization “a western notion”? We’re talking about this in the context of The Greeks of all people. No one disputes the existence of “Mayan civilization” either, for that matter.

Centralization is prerequisite for the game’s conception of how civilizations work, not “the west’s”. City-states are a square peg in the round hole of how the game functions. But it’s okay because it has a separate mechanic for city-states: the city state mechanic. So they aren’t going away, they should go to the civ mechanic specifically designed to portray them.
But the Greeks, of all civi's being reduced to City-States is beyond ridiculous for a game called, "Civilization." Those actors on the world stage who end up being City-States are almost always more minor or passive factors whose contributions are very specific and often small or limited scale. One could not REMOTELY define the Greeks' role in history this way.
 
In what universe is centralization being a prerequisite to civilization “a western notion”? We’re talking about this in the context of The Greeks of all people. No one disputes the existence of “Mayan civilization” either, for that matter.

Centralization is prerequisite for the game’s conception of how civilizations work, not “the west’s”. City-states are a square peg in the round hole of how the game makes you play as multi-city empires. But it’s okay because it has a separate mechanic for city-states: the city state mechanic. So they aren’t going away, they should go to the civ mechanic specifically designed to portray them.
Are you proposing some city-state mechanic for a Greek civ? If so, I can get behind that.
What I can't get behind is omitting Greece entirely from being a playable civilization. If unification is what you are looking for just have Alexander back as he ended up unifying the city-states. :p
Even Athens in their golden age had an "empire" of unified city-states.
 
Are you proposing some city-state mechanic for a Greek civ? If so, I can get behind that.
What I can't get behind is omitting Greece entirely from being a playable civilization. If unification is what you are looking for just have Alexander back as he ended up unifying the city-states. :p
Even Athens in their golden age had an "empire" of unified city-states.

Greece - okay hear me out, Greece as a civ has always been an odd fit as a collection of chronically infighting polities that only ever coalesced under extreme duress from foreign powers. Greece has the potential to become multiple really great city-states in-game. Sure, you wouldn’t get to play as them, but you would get to interact with them a lot more in-game, and there is a ton of material to work with to make Greek city-states really special. I think Macedon could continue as a mainline civ, so you could keep Alexander, but Athens, Sparta, etc. would be best served by being what they were: city-states.
Just my opinion. If I were calling the shots, I would like civ to be more of a shake of the etch-a-sketch, with fewer civs that draw direct descent or claim lineage to other civs in the mix. It’s a series that lets you act out alternative histories, and that is undercut if half of its roster is a western civilizations’ greatest hits collection.

Keep in mind much of the tech tree, most of the policies, many of the quotes and base units draw direct descent from Greek or western ideas, and how Western societies see how they progressed through the tech tree. China had metal casting and crossbows centuries before westerners, but lagged behind in ship design, engineering, and mathematics. The Andean societies developed complex centralized states without inventing writing. But there has to be a single tech tree, so we use the western one.

so the game is already drowning in Greek, or more accurately it's drowning in assumptions based on an experience of history as having started in the fertile crescent and moved northwest into northern Europe.
 
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Just my opinion. If I were calling the shots, I would like civ to be more of a shake of the etch-a-sketch, with fewer civs that draw direct descent or claim lineage to other civs in the mix. It’s a series that lets you act out alternative histories, and that is undercut if half of its roster is a western civilizations’ greatest hits collection.

Keep in mind much of the tech tree, most of the policies, many of the quotes and base units draw direct descent from Greek or western ideas, so the game is already drowning in Greek, even if the Greeks never made an appearance.
Not being able to play a Greek civ would almost certainly sink a Civ iteration, and come across as an inexplicable and unjustifiable decision by developers that would have howling outrage. Do you realize this?
 
The idea that unification is required by the game mechanisms relies on the assumption that you play as the political leader of the civilization. Which, considering you're some sort of immortal god-emperor who rule for six thousand years, is, uh, a little out there.

Besides which, as you point out yourself, the game is all about althistory, so why couldn't Greece be unified in it? Is there something fundamental and unalterable about the Greeks that require them to remain city states and be unable to unify? Some fundamental reason why players shouldn't be able to play the Greek civs as united? Or are we just looking for (poor) excuses to exclude one of the most influential civilization in history?

If you want to exclude western civilizations, cut the Every-European-kingdom-get-a-nation spam (Byzantium, Portugal, Netherlands, Scotland), cut Macedon (Which was an offshot of Greek civilization to begin), not the ancient civilizations that are at the root of the west.
 
What's the point of limiting roster of future civs by figuring out all those strict perfect geography perfect representation criteria, constantly expanding list of obligatory staples etc. It's a video game, not an academic work or political statement, it's always going to go with more flexible and ever changing roster of 'characters' rather than for any perfect calculations how to divide the world into a grid and then fulfill assigned quotas. After Civ6 has wounded my personal bias of Islamic civilizations and included grand total of three out of fifty, while not giving any Islamic civ from Maghreb or Central Asia, and nobody seemed to care, I have realized that perfectionism in this regard doesn't leave these forums.

I'm also against expanding the list of obligatory eternal occurence staple civs more than it is absolutely necessary (for me its like mere 14 factions in total: the original cast of civ1 minus Bab, Zulu exchanged for Arabia and Persia), because it limits the array of surprising possibilities and space to do something new and crazy by the devs. They'll choose what's shiny, cool and inspiring unique gameplay, while only very broadly filling gaps in the map.

There is very wide array of potential Subsaharan civs we can choose from (especially as we go to the level of individual ethnic groups, there is more than 100 nations in Africa with population over 1 million), and the total amount of Subsaharan factions in game is always going to be very small for various various reasons, there is no reason why we should make this window even narrower due to various "slots" being taken by "staple" civs.

For me the only civs I consider "staple" is because they are a) It is genuinely very hard to imagine world history without them due to their enormous influence and b) They are so unique and distinctive than you can't "cover their area/niche with somebody else". So it'd be India, China, Arabia, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, recurring few obvious major European powers which reshaped the entire world over past few centuries, America and Japan though they only reshaped the globe across past 150 years, probably also Mongols (even if they have short time to shine holy **** how spectacular it was, also they embody the role of Eurasian steppe in history). Mesopotamia as a whole is a staple to me as well, but it can appear as one of several rotating civs. Maybe I'd add Ottomans to the obligatory list too, maybe some other civ I forgot right now. Most other civs could come and rotate interchangeably for me and I wouldn't weep, provided overall roster was cool and diverse enough and all major regions of the world got major display. Throw at me few Precolombian peoples, few Subsaharan, few rotating European, few Islamic, few Asian, some from peripheral regions such as Oceania, the less staples the more flexible and surprising ride it can be.
 
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What's the point of limiting roster of future civs by figuring out all those strict perfect geography perfect representation criteria, constantly expanding list of obligatory staples etc. It's a video game, not an academic work or political statement, it's always going to go with more flexible and ever changing roster of 'characters' rather than for any perfect calculations how to divide the world into a grid and then fulfill assigned quotas. After Civ6 has wounded my personal bias of Islamic civilizations and included grand total of three out of fifty, while not giving any Islamic civ from Maghreb or Central Asia, and nobody seemed to care, I have realized that perfectionism in this regard doesn't leave these forums.

I'm also against expanding the list of obligatory eternal occurence staple civs more than it is absolutely necessary (for me its like mere 14 factions in total: the original cast of civ1 minus Bab, Zulu exchanged for Arabia and Persia), because it limits the array of surprising possibilities and space to do something new and crazy by the devs. They'll choose what's shiny, cool and inspiring unique gameplay, while only very broadly filling gaps in the map.

There is very wide array of potential Subsaharan civs we can choose from (especially as we go to the level of individual ethnic groups, there is more than 100 nations in Africa with population over 1 million), and the total amount of Subsaharan factions in game is always going to be very small for various various reasons, there is no reason why we should make this window even narrower due to various "slots" being taken by "staple" civs.

For me the only civs I consider "staple" is because they are a) It is genuinely very hard to imagine world history without them due to their enormous influence and b) They are so unique and distinctive than you can't "cover their area/niche with somebody else". So it'd be India, China, Arabia, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, recurring few obvious major European powers which reshaped the entire world over past few centuries, America and Japan though they only reshaped the globe across past 150 years, probably also Mongols (even if they have short time to shine holy **** how spectacular it was, also they embody the role of Eurasian steppe in history). Mesopotamia as a whole is a staple to me as well, but it can appear as one of several rotating civs. Maybe I'd add Ottomans to the mix too, maybe some other civ I forgot right now. Most other civs could come and rotate interchangeably for me and I wouldn't weep, provided overall roster was cool and diverse enough and all major regions of the world got major display.
While these things are all true, and I, too, have called for certain sacred cattle to be slaughtered in, say, removing the eternal fixture, and continuously embarrassing Gandhi (pun with sacred cow intended :cool: ) and some new and more representative ideas be embraced, the fact is, becoming TOO experimental or, "bauhaus," with the roster, or using it to obviously stick it to certain nations, parts of the world, or powerful influences on history by their glaring and conspicuous absence WOULD definitely perplex and anger the majority of the fanbase and probably sink a whole iteration of Civ, and maybe the whole franchise. Is this more understandable to why many of your, @pineappledan, @BuchiTaton, @Henri Christophe, and a few others' more outre ideas get such flak from me?
 
What's the point of limiting roster of future civs by figuring out all those strict perfect geography perfect representation criteria, constantly expanding list of obligatory staples etc. It's a video game, not an academic work or political statement, it's always going to go with more flexible and ever changing roster of 'characters' rather than for any perfect calculations how to divide the world into a grid and then fulfill assigned quotas. After Civ6 has wounded my personal bias of Islamic civilizations and included grand total of three out of fifty, while not giving any Islamic civ from Maghreb or Central Asia, and nobody seemed to care, I have realized that perfectionism in this regard doesn't leave these forums.
There are some popular muslim options, both here and likely for most players to add:
- Berber, Almohad and Almoravid dynasties could cover the Magreb without have a second Arabic leader.
- Afghan, Durrani give us a second iranian nation without take away the pre-islamic history of the region, plus the Zamburak as UU.
- Somali, Shaka like Gandhi are part of the cursed civ´s tradition, so at least lets be less redundant and instead of a second Bantu civ we can have Somali for the Adal+Ottoman vs Ethiopia+Portugal scenario.
- Malay, the muslim history of SEA is a huge oversight that could provide some interesting tall design.
- Gurkani, covering both Timurids and Mughals for many design options.

Personally if the slot are limited I prefer the pre-islamic Hephthalites in Central Asia, and leaders like Dihya for Berbers, anyway some of these would be fine additions to the game.
 
Zulu would be the second civilization I would replace. Among all African civilizations in Civ6, Zulu has the weakest justification for being in the game. They're only there because they were historical rivals to the Brits and because they've become traditional in the franchise. There are many other more interesting African civilizations that could take their place.

The third would be something between Australia and Canada. I can understand the complaints about the game having too many former British colonies. While Canada sounds more unique, Cree already kind of represented it. On the other hand, Australia occupies the continental mass of Oceania and was very well designed in Civ.
 
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