What Video Games Have You Been Playing VI: Because There Are No Elections In Video Games

[Omega124]

AFAIK, Torchlight is supposed to the easier, less serious form of Diablo. If you want difficulty, that may be a better choice?

Well, tbf, Torchlight II is pretty much his favorite game of all time. If I had a choice in diablo-knock offs, we'd be playing Running With Rifles.

 

[gay_Aleks]

AFAIK, Torchlight is supposed to the easier, less serious form of Diablo. If you want difficulty, that may be a better choice?

To be honest, we (because I'm the person Megan's talking about ) would be playing Diablo II but there's just a ton of ease-of-life improvements in Torchlight II which just blow Diablo II out of the water

 

[Synobun]

Fair enough! I too vastly prefer Torchlight 2 over the original and the other knock-offs. I've put at least 60-80 hours into it.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I've finished two games of Civilization VI.

So far, it just seems like an updated form of Civilization V. At first, I thought it was harder, until I discovered that the AI in this game just likes to declare war on you whenever it can. It won't even try to attack you, it just declares war. Another thing I've found is that if you try to defend yourself against barbarians, the AI will call you a warmonger.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Civ VI: Worst civ I ever played. And I thought the barbarians in V were obnoxious. I got carpet seiged by barbarians by turn 40. Twice. On Prince.

Never touching it again.

Also it's still Eurocentric and racist sorry lief.

Why not try playing on a map with high water level, on a higher difficulty so the AI deals with barbs, or just as Sumeria and make a War Cart your first build? I've put something like 200 hours into the game, playing on Deity usually, and only once or twice (!) did I ever have trouble with barbarians. I see how the game is eurocentric, but racist I can't really see.

I've finished two games of Civilization VI.

So far, it just seems like an updated form of Civilization V. At first, I thought it was harder, until I discovered that the AI in this game just likes to declare war on you whenever it can. It won't even try to attack you, it just declares war. Another thing I've found is that if you try to defend yourself against barbarians, the AI will call you a warmonger.

I agree with your first point. Civ VI and Civ V are very much alike, maybe too much. Also definitely agree on it being easier than Civ V. As it stands, unless you die to an early rush, the game is still impossible to lose, even on the highest difficulty, sadly.

On the barbarian thing though.. That is impossible. You can check the code for this, the AI will never call you a warmonger for defending yourself against barbarians. Something else must have happened in your game.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

If I have one complaint, is that I think its too easy to get yourself into an unwinnable position, both in the missions itself, and in the campaign as a whole.

That's the joy of XCOM! Not that I've played this version, but still.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

On the barbarian thing though.. That is impossible. You can check the code for this, the AI will never call you a warmonger for defending yourself against barbarians. Something else must have happened in your game.

The barbarians did have a lot of builders for some reason, decided to keep sending them into my territory and I kept capturing them. There was no option to return the builders to their original civlisation that I could see.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The barbarians did have a lot of builders for some reason, decided to keep sending them into my territory and I kept capturing them. There was no option to return the builders to their original civlisation that I could see.

There is an option to return, but it is possible that you had not met the civilization that got its builders stolen. In that case you cannot return them. Same goes for City States.

 

[Omega124]

Why not try playing on a map with high water level, on a higher difficulty so the AI deals with barbs, or just as Sumeria and make a War Cart your first build? I've put something like 200 hours into the game, playing on Deity usually, and only once or twice (!) did I ever have trouble with barbarians. I see how the game is eurocentric, but racist I can't really see.

Because I'm not the greatest civ player in the world in re deity? Especially since I don't play civ as much as I used to, so I don't have the capability of practicing and honing my skills like I did when I played IV religiously in middle school. I'm afraid I'd just get BTFO if I loaded up deity by the AI. The water gimmick seems interesting enough, but wouldn't that just mean a lot of sea pirates?

As for the charges of racism, one of my good friends made a thread (which I participated heavily in actually) pre-release on how the implementation of Kongo showed an acute sense of racism on parts of the developers. Now, this was pre-release, so this was before we even saw Kongo's horrid civ spotlight and UA which is literally "Look at Alfonso he converted to christianity like a good uncle tom" and nothing else. It was, honestly, quite insulting that with all of how rich sub-Saharan African history is, they went with this portrayal of "It's only important because they Europeanized like daddy told them to".

Another example of racism, which requires a bit of civ v for context, is Sparta. Firstly.... the fact that Sparta even exists a sub-civ in the first place, when literally no other culture gets this kind of treatment, is pretty stupid. Yes, I understand Ancient Greece was rarely unified politically, but abstract game mechanics necessitate all cultures being a nation-state at all times, so the game makers should have just dealt with it. After all, I hope no one here is disputing that Spartans were culturally, ethnically, and religiously Greek, just a differing political entity compared to Athens/Macedonia which tends to represent the leader of the Greek civ. Compare this to, say, India, which takes numerous distinctly different ethnic and cultural groups, many of which formed empires on their own right, and just lump them all together in a pool of "eh, they're brown so they're all the same". India, at the bare minimum, should be broken into three civs: Mughals, Tamils, and Hindustan/India/Maurya/whatever you want to call it.

However, what crosses the line between "really problematic eurocentricism" to "oh my god Sparta became an outlet of racism" is the direct comparison Spartans get to the Aztecs of V. Firstly, I want to add, that the deception of Aztecs is so bad in V, that I literally used it (and the civlopedia article it has in V) as formal evidence in a paper about racist deceptions of native americans in pop culture. The main issue comes down to the UA, which was literally "war crimes lol". Look, I am not going to pretend human sacrifice wasn't a feature of mesoamerican religion, but this fetish pop culture has around it needs to stop. It turns a complex, advanced-for-its-geographical-situation society and basically demonizes them as a bunch of uncivilized, blood-thirsty savages which wanted to depopulate entire cities to appease their sun god. It otherises a real, still existing culture (Both pure native communities within Mexico, and due to demographics, really the vast majority of Mexicans* themselves) into freaking cartoon villians, something the Spanish intentionally did to justify their conquest post-Cortes. As I said in the paper, it would be the controversy of the millennium if Germany's UA was the Holocaust**, so the fact they thought this was OK is basically "they're red who cares"

So how does Sparta enter that equation? They have the same, problematic UA that the Aztecs got in V. They get Culture whenever they kill a unit. That's fair, I never expected them to try to expose the fact Greek society actually once participated in human sacrifice, in a form not that different from mesoamerican cultures. Except, no! Now, the culture-on-kill mechanic has nothing to do with gathering prisioners of war and commiting war crimes with them, but now about romanticizing an ultimately pointless battle against smelly brown people (yeah, Persians aren't a real civ! Brazil is! But not Persia!) because "muh 300" (because screw the thousands of non-Spartan Greeks that bled just as hard as the Spartans there did). And yes, I do understand the symbolic importance of Thermopylae in the ethos of Spartan society and their cultural legacy, but come the fork on, Spartan society was just as problematic as Aztec society by our 21st century values, but we're only ever going to call out one of them because they're not white. Instead, we're just going to unironically engage in their militaristic circlejerk for the other, thinking that they're so cool and badass and show real manliness unlike the effeminate not-Spartans.

Sorry for that example being really long but it wouldn't make sense without context.

*Mexica was even the name of the Aztecs gave themselves! Aztec really just means "from aztlan", which is a poetic name of their ancestral homeland that they were banished from in their religious texts. Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of Tenochtitlan, even forbade the usage of Aztec after the migration, dubbing them "Mexicans" instead. The fact we call them Aztecs after the fact is actually ironic.
**Not coincidentally, the Panzer's civlopedia page conveniently glosses over the Nazis as much as possible, whitewashing all of Germany's war crimes.

That's the joy of XCOM! Not that I've played this version, but still.

Not when you personally customized all your soldiers and have deep, personal attachments to all of them. You know how hard it was to just accept my waifu had to die?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I wasn't suggesting you play Deity at all. What I'm saying is this: The higher the difficulty, the more competent the AI gets at clearing barbarian camps (simply by them having more units). Therefore barbs are less of a problem on higher difficulties. The same goes for high sea levels: There is less landmass, meaning less area that is not visible to any given player. Barbs can only spawn in "dark" areas, so naturally they will spawn more towards the edges of the map as opposed to in the middle, or next to your city and so on. You should never worry about sea-pirates, because as soon as you get past the early game barbarians should be no issue for you to deal with. There is no excuse to not building units.

Personally I was really disappointed with Kongo at first, but now like them a lot. Funnily enough they turned out to be one of the stronger Civs in the game. Sure, the focus was on how he was a "good boy" who just accepted christendom. I think he was a poor choice aswell. Though I wouldn't equate that with racism.

The fact that no other "sub civ" exists is simple.. They're not released yet. That's it. The only reason why Sparta was released early is to get the fans excited. More sub civs will come in the future, I'm sure we will have ones for ethnically diverse empires such as India, China and (hopefully) Persia. I'm kinda ******* off that they didn't release Persia from the get go, but oh well.

About the Aztecs.. Well, they've always been portrayed in a horsehockey light, you're correct. I'm not sure if this is blatant racism or just complete ignorance on part of the designers. Look for example at the design for Monty in Civ V. It's cartoonish, just ridiculous. I hated it personally, but the fans loved it. Either we're seeing fanservice here, or just plain and simple ignorance and historical inaccuracy. I don't see their UA as nearly as problematic as you do. Look at the rest of their abilities, are they not about building impressive cities and managing growth/hygiene as good as "advanced western" Civs like Rome? I find this UA not nearly as worrying as their portrayal of Aztec kings, which is factually inaccurate, while the UA is.. Pretty accurate. Of course it is cherry picked, but still.

Plenty of Civs have really "barbaric" traits. Sparta gets culture for killing people, as you mentioned. I don't see where "brown people" comes into the equation.. You seem very much aware of Greek history, so you obviously know that Spartans didn't just kill Persians, but also Athenians.. Now what I don't get is why you think Sparta is put in a less "barbaric" light then the Aztecs are. If anything, I would say that the implication is that "Spartan culture is built on blood & murder", while the implication for the Aztecs is "They used captives to build stuff", because that is what the abilities do. Different viewpoints I guess.

I can see the accusation of eurocentrism, I can see that the African Civs are poor and that there's a lack of variety. Still however not convinced that there is any racism involved, I attribute this rather to the design team being.. Stupid. Many things god f'd up in Civ VI, just look at all the made up quotes for example.

Still, I hope for Mansa Musa, Shaka and Cyrus the Great as soon as possible, because the current roster is actually really boring to me. I am however super happy about Sumeria and their ridiculous looking leader, I was really missing some middle-east Civs and they delivered.. To some degree.

 

[Synobun]

Eurocentrism is what sells grand strategy games. This'll change in the next 10-20 years as China properly enters the video game industry, but for now it's the cost of entry. I'm not really inclined to call it racist as the population of people who treat these games as divine fact and the foundation for their perspective on other cultures has to be exceptionally low if not inconsequential. There's nothing blatantly incorrect or insulting, but what is shared is indeed spun (for everyone, not just nations outside Europe). I know for a fact that many people, even here on CFC, used their experiences in a game like Civ to move forward in life and become enthusiasts or experts in these cultures that you say are the victims of racism by the Civ developers.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not when you personally customized all your soldiers and have deep, personal attachments to all of them. You know how hard it was to just accept my waifu had to die?

I guess that's why The Sims exists Just remember that they all die heroes. Unless they were mind controlled and had to be put down of course. Or went berserk and killed other soldiers. Okay never mind.

 

[Omega124]

I wasn't suggesting you play Deity at all. What I'm saying is this: The higher the difficulty, the more competent the AI gets at clearing barbarian camps (simply by them having more units). Therefore barbs are less of a problem on higher difficulties. The same goes for high sea levels: There is less landmass, meaning less area that is not visible to any given player. Barbs can only spawn in "dark" areas, so naturally they will spawn more towards the edges of the map as opposed to in the middle, or next to your city and so on. You should never worry about sea-pirates, because as soon as you get past the early game barbarians should be no issue for you to deal with. There is no excuse to not building units.

I mean, fair enough, I was right near the north pole in my spawn location, so I was probably in an extreme barb scenerio, but goddamnit, if I get carpet seiged twice without really even able to react to it in a meaningful way, on Prince, I'm sorry, but that's just a bad first impression. And it makes me never want to touch the game again. At least not with barbs on.

Civ IV had the perfect barb system and really they should go back to it. Animals were perfect: they represented roadblocks for early expansion, but could not enter your own territory, which means you could actually get on your feet by the time human barbarians start spawning. Because, honestly, that's what barbarians should be at least a gameplay if not also historical level: background units meant to hamper early expansion. I could talk about how nomadic excursions into settled heartlands (keyword being heartlands here) were relatively much rarer than the inverse in history (which, surprise, is why we're all settled and not nomadic) and were generally the result of very specific circumstances, but really the gameplay mechanics of active barbs is just not fun. It's all RNG dependent and out of the control of the player, and if you get swarmed by enough barbs, you can't really do anything about it. I do think it makes historical as well as mechanical sense that you should have to wrest militaristic control of a region before you can settle it, which is why I don't want to turn barbs off completely, but goddamn two carpet seiges by turn 40 is not cool.

Personally I was really disappointed with Kongo at first, but now like them a lot. Funnily enough they turned out to be one of the stronger Civs in the game. Sure, the focus was on how he was a "good boy" who just accepted christendom. I think he was a poor choice aswell. Though I wouldn't equate that with racism.

If "removing an entire gameplay mechanic, along with its resulting victory condition, because one guy played uncle tom with europe" isn't racist, then honestly I will never convince you anything in civ vi is racist. There's just no excuse for crap like that. Plenty of other civs never founded their own organized religion, but only Kongo gets singled out for that..... for no real good reason. Spain and Poland, meanwhile, which also never founded its own organized religion but instead followed was what would gameplay wise be considered a Roman religion, meanwhile gets piety mechanics up the wazoo.

The fact that no other "sub civ" exists is simple.. They're not released yet. That's it. The only reason why Sparta was released early is to get the fans excited. More sub civs will come in the future, I'm sure we will have ones for ethnically diverse empires such as India, China and (hopefully) Persia. I'm kinda ******* off that they didn't release Persia from the get go, but oh well.

When Civ IV was first released, it too had multiple leaders. And they were evenly spread out. America, England, and France were examples of western civs with mutliple leaders, and Mongolia, China, and India were examples of non-western civs with multiple leaders. Now, imagine if in Civ IV, the only civ to have gotten a second leader was America. Every other civ was stuck with one leader. That would be super weird; a reason why I actually argued with people the Sparta rumor wasn't actually real. I was wrong, which further makes me question the judgment of the people who made Civ VI, but whatever.

As for Persia, I agree completely. Persia/Ottomans*/Mongolia are three civs that should have been in vanilla, given their undeniable importance to world history. How can you even have a game about world history and building empires without the world's largest land empire? Or the nation which was instrumental in dragging the world to the modern age by forever altering geopolitics with its almost-overnight rise? They along with Persia should be as guaranteed in base civ as England or France.

About the Aztecs.. Well, they've always been portrayed in a ****ty light, you're correct. I'm not sure if this is blatant racism or just complete ignorance on part of the designers. Look for example at the design for Monty in Civ V. It's cartoonish, just ridiculous. I hated it personally, but the fans loved it. Either we're seeing fanservice here, or just plain and simple ignorance and historical inaccuracy. I don't see their UA as nearly as problematic as you do. Look at the rest of their abilities, are they not about building impressive cities and managing growth/hygiene as good as "advanced western" Civs like Rome? I find this UA not nearly as worrying as their portrayal of Aztec kings, which is factually inaccurate, while the UA is.. Pretty accurate. Of course it is cherry picked, but still

You make it sound like it's an either or. They're racist because they're ignorant. They're eurocentric because they're racist because they're ignorant. Racism isn't malicious by nature; I'm not trying to insinuate firaxis wear white hoods and burn crosses. But by presenting a particular view of history, by focusing on the achievements of certain groups, they do paint as certain groups and their accomplishments as being both better and more important than others. Likewise, when they only look at the flaws of certain cultures, while whitewashing the same flaws performed by other cultures, it unfairly condemns that culture as being more barbaric than the other. By focusing almost exclusively on European perspectives in a game about world history, it makes the tact implication that European history is world history. And this set of value judgements, of juding European history to be more important than other histories, of making sure Europeans get lionized while non-Europeans get ignored or even villified, is racism. It is explicitly finding one race, Europeans, as being more important than others, an explicit values judgement.

That being said, I will admit I did like their floating gardens UB in V. It was a nice way to reference their architectural ingenuity, in which Tenochtitlan was once the single largest city in the world. However, that was only a small part of the Aztec civ; everything else was designed purely around their reputation as blood thirsty savages, from their UA, their UU (which also referenced war crimes too!), their leader art (good point! I never even really considered that!), the AI of the aztecs, etc. Rome, meanwhile, while equally as imperialistic, do not have it as much of their focus in civ v. Sure, they had two UUs, but one had a civilian purpose as one of its defining features, their UA could easily be used for peaceful purposes as long as you played wide, and Rome's AI is more about expansion than necessarily conquest as well. The end result is that Rome tends to be a much more nicely depicted imperialist compared to the the Aztecs in pretty much every way.

Plenty of Civs have really "barbaric" traits. Sparta gets culture for killing people, as you mentioned. I don't see where "brown people" comes into the equation.. You seem very much aware of Greek history, so you obviously know that Spartans didn't just kill Persians, but also Athenians.. Now what I don't get is why you think Sparta is put in a less "barbaric" light then the Aztecs are. If anything, I would say that the implication is that "Spartan culture is built on blood & murder", while the implication for the Aztecs is "They used captives to build stuff", because that is what the abilities do. Different viewpoints I guess.

You are really reaching here, tbh. The UA is literally called "Thermopylae". It's not called Aegospotami, it's not called Mantinea, it's not even called Pelopennsian Leauge to counteract Pericles's Delian Leauge. Hell, it's not even called something like "The Three Hundred" or "With It Or On It", which would at least kept the focus on the Spartans themselves. It's called "Thermopylae", a famous battle where 300 Spartans, along with thousands of non-Spartan Greeks which completely dwarfed the Spartan contingent, died trying to prevent the Persians from passing into the mountains. Which they totally ended up doing anyways, but I digress. The UA is explicitly about glorifying the fact Spartans killed a bunch of Persians for no actual strategic or tactical reason this one time, but we totally didn't surrender or retreat so it makes us manly men. Which, among many other military conflicts, eventually bred a militaristic cultural cult glorifying Spartan values even to 2017! We still use "spartan" and "laconic" as (usually) positive adjectives, unrelated pop cultural phenomenons such as Halo and MSU football mascots invoke their imagery, etc etc. This is besides the fact the Spartans practiced general infanticide, probably the most brutal example of pre-modern slavery, and yes, even human sacrifice! But nope, none of that gets a scant reference in the mechanics of civ vi; they fight clean, unlike those aztecs who by mechanical necessity commit warcrimes whenever they fight, and only them.

I can see the accusation of eurocentrism, I can see that the African Civs are poor and that there's a lack of variety. Still however not convinced that there is any racism involved, I attribute this rather to the design team being.. Stupid. Many things god f'd up in Civ VI, just look at all the made up quotes for example

See above.

Still, I hope for Mansa Musa, Shaka and Cyrus the Great as soon as possible, because the current roster is actually really boring to me. I am however super happy about Sumeria and their ridiculous looking leader, I was really missing some middle-east Civs and they delivered.. To some degree.

Fate Gilgamesh is still best Gilgamesh

*I do have yet another friend who is passionate about the idea that Ottomans should be replaced with a more general Turkish civ, which could also cover other Turkish empires like the Seljuks, along with maybe even Modern Turkey. Personally, I don't agree with her logic, namely because the Ottomans vastly dwarf the other Turkish empires in size, scope, and length of rule, plus a general turkish civ would lose a lot of focus in the meantime, but its not something I am opposed to if firaxis wanted to go that route.

Eurocentrism is what sells grand strategy games. This'll change in the next 10-20 years as China properly enters the video game industry, but for now it's the cost of entry. I'm not really inclined to call it racist as the population of people who treat these games as divine fact and the foundation for their perspective on other cultures has to be exceptionally low if not inconsequential. There's nothing blatantly incorrect or insulting, but what is shared is indeed spun (for everyone, not just nations outside Europe). I know for a fact that many people, even here on CFC, used their experiences in a game like Civ to move forward in life and become enthusiasts or experts in these cultures that you say are the victims of racism by the Civ developers.

Unfortunately, I think you are being optimistic here, on two counts.

Firstly, I'm actually already surprised Korea wasn't a base civ, for pretty much the reasons you were getting at right now. 2K has been pushing hard to get into the Asian market the past few years with civ, what with making both Civ Online and Civ Rev 2 mostly to appeal to the game playing tastes of the Asian market. The one, and I mean the one, additional civ 2 has compared to one is Korea (The Japanese version goes one step further and adds three different Japanese leaders, complete in overdone anime style, to Rev 2). Despite already making Korea part of PAC in the lore of Beyond Earth, firaxis decided to do a slight retcon and add a more explicitly Korean sponsor in the sole expansion pack after market complaints. Etc. Point is, I thought Korea was going to be a shoehorn bet as a way to drum up interest in the Korean market, as Koreans tend to be ultranationalists when it comes to video games. But nope, we got to add a bunch of European civs instead? If Korea is any indication, China won't be that different. They'll just, at best, make specific civ games meant more to cater to the Asian audience, while keeping the main series more palatable to European worldviews, hoping brand recognition pulls through in Asia. Which, I don't have enough information to say if its working, because its kind of scary if it does, because...

Secondly, you are absolutely wrong on the second point. Civilization is monumental in its ability to engage with people who otherwise wouldn't really give a crap about history. Most Civilization players are not us. We are a small select subgroup, of really passionate fans with a great grip of history, many of whom are in fact history majors (like me). However, the vast, vast, vaaaaaast majority of civilization players are casual civ fans, who never took a history class out of high school, who don't know much about history outside of a high school understanding of it. They just think civ is fun, for one reason or the other. But, while the game has their attention, they certainly learn about history, even subconsciously. Civilization is, essentially, a best-of collection of historical accomplishments, from technological breakthroughs, civilizations, wonders, etc. By playing Civilization, you get exposed to these concepts in a very non-invasive way, which is a great way to stimulate interest and curiosity into the realm of history, as you said. However, the flipside is, these can reinforce preexisting biases that players have. I'd make a guess and say most high schools give a very... European, conservative view of history, perhaps based on the traditional Great Man theory. Role of minorities, of women, and of other marginalized classes (including class itself) tend to be excluded in favor of the accomplishments of white christian men, colonialism was largely a good thing, and the current socio-economic model of society is the end of history.

The issue becomes, civilization has a great niche to be a non-invasive educational tool to teach history, as it has a great, wide market, and a great actual game hidden beyond the historical theming. However, if we make the underlying history eurocentric in civilization, then civilization serves as an reinforcing tool of the traditional high school model. The player won't even know anything is wrong, and will still have a very incomplete worldview of not just our past, but also our present. How can they even know to look up, say, the Trung Sisters, if they never even heard about them and their rebellion in Vietnam? It's simply impossible for them to discover the unknown unknowns if they don't ever become known unknowns. Compare to if we engage with the unsung, if we force out the more wonderful and obscure voices in history, and throw them into the spotlight. Then, they would get a far more massive audience, as people would be able to see the other side of the coin. For example, who the hell even knew what a "Khmer" was before Civ IV? I certainly did not. Nor did I know about Songhai before V. But by being in Civ, me, along with so many other people, finally learned about them and their historical acomplishments, their culture, their way of life. I became a more knowledgeable and worldly woman, and I felt like a better person realizing the accomplishments of world society.

Likewise with all the positive inclusion of women in especially VI. This is one thing I actually love about Civ VI; just how much girl power is in the choice of the leaders. It's showing the valuable contributions that 50% of the population has had on human events, but yet somehow constantly get ignored by mainstream education and pop culture. Yes, some people threw hissy fits and cried about for a while, but civ vi was still the fastest selling civ game of all time despite the fact that women actually became a significant part of the character roster for once.

 

[Yeekim]

There really shouldn't be different civilizations. I'm pretty sure the entire concept is fundamentally racist and only serves to strengthen fascist false prophecies of Samuel Huntington!


EDIT: I really shouldn't have to spell out what this makes of this site. We really are disgusting creatures here, all of us.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

>[On Barbs]

Put a few more hours into the game and you'll manage. I won't reply further on this issue because I don't want to sound condescending. To me, Civ VI is a game without any challenge really, neither AI nor Barbarians. But if you don't feel like playing that's okay, too, I'm not here to convince you that Civ VI is a great game

>If "removing an entire gameplay mechanic, along with its resulting victory condition, because one guy played uncle tom with europe" isn't racist, then honestly I will never convince you anything in civ vi is racist. There's just no excuse for crap like that. Plenty of other civs never founded their own organized religion, but only Kongo gets singled out for that..... for no real good reason. Spain and Poland, meanwhile, which also never founded its own organized religion but instead followed was what would gameplay wise be considered a Roman religion, meanwhile gets piety mechanics up the wazoo.

Have you ever considered that they did this solely because of balance reasons? If they left religion available for Congo not only would they have to redesign them completely, it'd also make Congo far too powerful. But I digress. They could have designed them differently from the get-go, sure. It is also true that Kongo gets singled out, even though most "civilizations", especially most European ones, did not actually found their own religion, or at least did not found Christianity.

But can you actually, concretely explain why that is racist? It seems to me that it is your preconceived notion that "not founding a religion" equals negative, uncivilized, any amount of related adjectives. It's not like they are forced to be Christian in game, which would imply that they have to somewhat be subordinate to Christians, they can end up as Muslim or Buddhist or Zoroastrian.

>When Civ IV was first released, it too had multiple leaders. And they were evenly spread out. America, England, and France were examples of western civs with mutliple leaders, and Mongolia, China, and India were examples of non-western civs with multiple leaders. Now, imagine if in Civ IV, the only civ to have gotten a second leader was America. Every other civ was stuck with one leader. That would be super weird; a reason why I actually argued with people the Sparta rumor wasn't actually real. I was wrong, which further makes me question the judgment of the people who made Civ VI, but whatever.

You can argue this point after the next view leaders are revealed. So far, for all we know, the next alternative leaders could be for Congo, China, India and Sumeria. Not that I believe that, but still.

>As for Persia, I agree completely. Persia/Ottomans*/Mongolia are three civs that should have been in vanilla, given their undeniable importance to world history. How can you even have a game about world history and building empires without the world's largest land empire? Or the nation which was instrumental in dragging the world to the modern age by forever altering geopolitics with its almost-overnight rise? They along with Persia should be as guaranteed in base civ as England or France.

I don't agree with your reasoning at all. I don't think "important" civilizations should be given any special treatment at all, maybe even the other way around. The reason I want Persia in the game is because I personally fawn over Cyrus and am hugely invested in Persian history, not because they shaped the middle east like no other civilization or invented the Satrap system. I honestly wouldn't give two shts if India or France or England or the Huns or the Mongols were missing from any Civ game from release, because they really don't turn me on all that much. I'd much rather have a less important, but much more intriguing Northern- or Southern Amerindian tribe/Civilization, an Inuit Civ, a Vietnamese Civ, another Steppe Civilization, anything in that vein.

>You make it sound like it's an either or. They're racist because they're ignorant. They're eurocentric because they're racist because they're ignorant. Racism isn't malicious by nature; I'm not trying to insinuate firaxis wear white hoods and burn crosses. But by presenting a particular view of history, by focusing on the achievements of certain groups, they do paint as certain groups and their accomplishments as being both better and more important than others. Likewise, when they only look at the flaws of certain cultures, while whitewashing the same flaws performed by other cultures, it unfairly condemns that culture as being more barbaric than the other. By focusing almost exclusively on European perspectives in a game about world history, it makes the tact implication that European history is world history. And this set of value judgements, of juding European history to be more important than other histories, of making sure Europeans get lionized while non-Europeans get ignored or even villified, is racism. It is explicitly finding one race, Europeans, as being more important than others, an explicit values judgement.

I concede that one can be racist without malicious intent, but still heavily disagree on the fact that Spartans are somehow presented in a better light than Aztecs are. I still think it is the other way around, simply because "Our culture is built on killing other people" (Sparta UA) is much less "barbaric" than "Our cities are built by captured enemies" (Aztec UA). This is a prime example of a European Civ being displayed as more barbaric than a non-western Civ. We could also turn this game around and try to find a single western Civ that is protrayed as more peaceful and civilized than boring ass Gandhi, I think you'd be hard pressed

>That being said, I will admit I did like their floating gardens UB in V. It was a nice way to reference their architectural ingenuity, in which Tenochtitlan was once the single largest city in the world. However, that was only a small part of the Aztec civ; everything else was designed purely around their reputation as blood thirsty savages, from their UA, their UU (which also referenced war crimes too!), their leader art (good point! I never even really considered that!), the AI of the aztecs, etc. Rome, meanwhile, while equally as imperialistic, do not have it as much of their focus in civ v. Sure, they had two UUs, but one had a civilian purpose as one of its defining features, their UA could easily be used for peaceful purposes as long as you played wide, and Rome's AI is more about expansion than necessarily conquest as well. The end result is that Rome tends to be a much more nicely depicted imperialist compared to the the Aztecs in pretty much every way.

Not "everything else", Aztecs also have a bonus towards districts (workers can improve building time). You are however right about Rome being depicated as "nicely imperialistic" even though that is hardly true. Almost all their war boni are also peaceful ones.

>You are really reaching here, tbh. The UA is literally called "Thermopylae". It's not called Aegospotami, it's not called Mantinea, it's not even called Pelopennsian Leauge to counteract Pericles's Delian Leauge. Hell, it's not even called something like "The Three Hundred" or "With It Or On It", which would at least kept the focus on the Spartans themselves. It's called "Thermopylae", a famous battle where 300 Spartans, along with thousands of non-Spartan Greeks which completely dwarfed the Spartan contingent, died trying to prevent the Persians from passing into the mountains. Which they totally ended up doing anyways, but I digress. The UA is explicitly about glorifying the fact Spartans killed a bunch of Persians for no actual strategic or tactical reason this one time, but we totally didn't surrender or retreat so it makes us manly men. Which, among many other military conflicts, eventually bred a militaristic cultural cult glorifying Spartan values even to 2017! We still use "spartan" and "laconic" as (usually) positive adjectives, unrelated pop cultural phenomenons such as Halo and MSU football mascots invoke their imagery, etc etc. This is besides the fact the Spartans practiced general infanticide, probably the most brutal example of pre-modern slavery, and yes, even human sacrifice! But nope, none of that gets a scant reference in the mechanics of civ vi; they fight clean, unlike those aztecs who by mechanical necessity commit warcrimes whenever they fight, and only them.

The name is just a reference, it has little to nothing to do with how the ability works. But I get it. You're saying that Spartans are being painted as defenders of their homeland, even though they supported revolutions inside the Persian empire and brought war home. You have a valid point. In one case the Aztecs are put in a bad light (sacrificial captives), in the other the Spartans in a good light (Thermopylae). However, if we look beyond these few exceptional cases, I think Civ VI is not doing too bad on the racism front. I still am hesitant to call this preferential treatment of Europeans racism and not eurocentrism, because clearly Europeans are not a race and neither are Aztecs, but I do get your point and it has validity.

Civ goes along with a centuries old tradition of portraying human sacrifice as something inherent and essential to the Aztec people, while for Europeans it is only a footnote in the history book. I doubt this will change in the future, since we've come to embrace this (just look at all the fans Monty had in Civ V who thought his sacrificial altar was awesome..) instead of questioning it. It's a sad state of affairs for sure and the people "fighting racism" online do nothing but reinforce stereotypes. I am of course not talking about you, but rather Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook users who falsely regurgitate Said/Foucault/Horkheimer/Adorno/Butler, distort their message and only worsen the problem by trying to divide society.


>*I do have yet another friend who is passionate about the idea that Ottomans should be replaced with a more general Turkish civ, which could also cover other Turkish empires like the Seljuks, along with maybe even Modern Turkey. Personally, I don't agree with her logic, namely because the Ottomans vastly dwarf the other Turkish empires in size, scope, and length of rule, plus a general turkish civ would lose a lot of focus in the meantime, but its not something I am opposed to if firaxis wanted to go that route.

How about an autocratic, nonsecular Turkish nation ruled by Erdogan?

>I think you are being optimistic here

Yeah, so do I

>Firstly, I'm actually already surprised Korea wasn't a base civ, for pretty much the reasons you were getting at right now. 2K has been pushing hard to get into the Asian market the past few years with civ, what with making both Civ Online and Civ Rev 2 mostly to appeal to the game playing tastes of the Asian market. The one, and I mean the one, additional civ 2 has compared to one is Korea (The Japanese version goes one step further and adds three different Japanese leaders, complete in overdone anime style, to Rev 2). Despite already making Korea part of PAC in the lore of Beyond Earth, firaxis decided to do a slight retcon and add a more explicitly Korean sponsor in the sole expansion pack after market complaints. Etc. Point is, I thought Korea was going to be a shoehorn bet as a way to drum up interest in the Korean market, as Koreans tend to be ultranationalists when it comes to video games. But nope, we got to add a bunch of European civs instead? If Korea is any indication, China won't be that different. They'll just, at best, make specific civ games meant more to cater to the Asian audience, while keeping the main series more palatable to European worldviews, hoping brand recognition pulls through in Asia. Which, I don't have enough information to say if its working, because its kind of scary if it does, because...

Well, as someone who lives in Korea for a few more hours I can tell you that people are obsessed with Overwatch and lots of games that aren't even available on the western market. They have individual game studios catering games perfectly to their taste. Of course there are different communities that don't overlap, but I doubt the market for games like Civ is too big in Korea. Civ V definitely took off after Sejong, but idk if it would still be the case now.

>[About the impact of Civ in terms of history education]

What makes you think I disagree? It's obvious that a lot of people take the things they see in Civ for granted and also don't have lots of other history education, I'd never dispute that

>I'd make a guess and say most high schools give a very... European, conservative view of history, perhaps based on the traditional Great Man theory. Role of minorities, of women, and of other marginalized classes (including class itself) tend to be excluded in favor of the accomplishments of white christian men, colonialism was largely a good thing, and the current socio-economic model of society is the end of history.

Great man history is still very much alive, though I can definitely assure you that in no German high school is colonialism ever put in a good light. Could be different for other countries, I really wouldn't know. As for minorities, I think in my case there was plenty of mention, but as far as women go you are right.

>The issue becomes, civilization has a great niche to be a non-invasive educational tool to teach history, as it has a great, wide market, and a great actual game hidden beyond the historical theming. However, if we make the underlying history eurocentric in civilization, then civilization serves as an reinforcing tool of the traditional high school model. The player won't even know anything is wrong, and will still have a very incomplete worldview of not just our past, but also our present. How can they even know to look up, say, the Trung Sisters, if they never even heard about them and their rebellion in Vietnam? It's simply impossible for them to discover the unknown unknowns if they don't ever become known unknowns. Compare to if we engage with the unsung, if we force out the more wonderful and obscure voices in history, and throw them into the spotlight. Then, they would get a far more massive audience, as people would be able to see the other side of the coin. For example, who the hell even knew what a "Khmer" was before Civ IV? I certainly did not. Nor did I know about Songhai before V. But by being in Civ, me, along with so many other people, finally learned about them and their historical acomplishments, their culture, their way of life. I became a more knowledgeable and worldly woman, and I felt like a better person realizing the accomplishments of world society.

It's not impossible for them to discover anything at all, but rather people become content with their view of the world, because everything fits the narrative they have been fed. I think your point about "obscure voices in history" directly contradicts your earlier point about how "more relevant" empires should always be included, but I agree 100%. I would love for Civ VII to go completely obscure, maybe even include the Indus Valley Civ, the "Sea People" Civ, the Minoan Civ, an SEAn Civ, the Hittites, a Semitic Civ and a Polynesian Civ.

>Likewise with all the positive inclusion of women in especially VI. This is one thing I actually love about Civ VI; just how much girl power is in the choice of the leaders. It's showing the valuable contributions that 50% of the population has had on human events, but yet somehow constantly get ignored by mainstream education and pop culture. Yes, some people threw hissy fits and cried about for a while, but civ vi was still the fastest selling civ game of all time despite the fact that women actually became a significant part of the character roster for once.

I personally don't care for Catherine, but Cleopatra, even though I would have rather seen a different leader, has the best character model in the game (design-wise), Jadwiga looks great and Tommyris is badass. Actually, I don't care for that posh British Victoria one bit either. Gorgo is pretty cool, though the UA is boring.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Not going too much into a Civ 6 discussion and the racism accusations (which are the reason that Trump won), but I find Barbarians in 6 a lot easier to deal with than in 5. There are more of them and they are more aggressive, but military units are also quite a bit cheaper to build and maintain. Empires and armies are just bigger in 6.

 

[gay_Aleks]

trump won due to insufficient ethics in gaming journalism

get it right ffs

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Not going too much into a Civ 6 discussion and the racism accusations (which are the reason that Trump won), but I find Barbarians in 6 a lot easier to deal with than in 5. There are more of them and they are more aggressive, but military units are also quite a bit cheaper to build and maintain. Empires and armies are just bigger in 6.

The only reason why Barbarians are harder to deal with in Civ VI compared to Civ V are horses. Nothing beats Horsemen, not even Spears ironically enough. They just ravage everything. Have the possibility to oneshot Slingers, too.. Aside form Horsemen, Barbarians are never a problem and I agree about early combat units being more viable and cheaper, it's a good thing. Then, when you get to the point where Horsemen aren't so relevant anymore you can ignore Barbarians entirely anyway.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Oh yes, when I see Barbarian Horsemen before turn 30 on my continent I sometimes just abandon the game and restart. They can be a terror in the early game, but they are -like everything- very vulnerable to Archers. Once I have Archery, Barbarians are merely an annoyance. Not even that annoying if you use maintenance free Scouts for fog busting.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Three 95%+ battles ending in defeat. Spearmen getting killed by the units they supposedly counter. You know what, screw you too Civ 4, we're done here.