Which civs should be "optional"?

I've played many a game where China is empty, while Japan and Khmer are booming. This is just not imaginable in real life (SE Asian and Japanese cultures owe plenty to China, would not be possible). Same thing with France/Spain existing but no Rome. May I suggest the following civs be "non-negotiable" no matter what the size of the map is:

China
India (for correct founding of religions in Asia)
Rome
Either France or Spain (one or the other should be there)
Germany (as a counterweight to Latin culture)
Russia (representing Slavic culture)
England
Arabia (without which Turkey is not feasible)
Either Turkey or Mongolia (as a counterweight to China)
Either Mali or Ethiopia (I've seen many games where Africa is empty after Carthage collapses)

 

I don't think Russia or Rome is absolutely necessary. Turkey and Arabia seem to already be mandatory. I agree about China. Games without India are more interesting, I think, for having the different religions.

 

I'm assuming this would be a custom game option becasue otherwise some randomness is lost, which we don't want.

 

I'm just talking about high likeness. Anything less than that you can have Inca on the moon for all I care.

 

there's a whole file, called Pots.py, dedicated to civ selection in lower sized worlds.

Spoiler :

tProb = (
1, #Egypt
1, #India
1, #China
0, #Babylonia
1, #Greece
0, #Persia
0, #Carthage
1, #Rome
1, #Japan
1, #Ethiopia
0, #Maya
0, #Vikings
1, #Arabia
0, #Khmer
1, #Spain
1, #France
1, #England
1, #Germany
1, #Russia
0, #Holland
0, #Mali
0, #Portugal
1, #Inca
1, #Mongolia
0, #Aztecs
0, #Turkey
1 #America
)

#scrambled pools
tPots = ((iEgypt, iIndia, iChina, iBabylonia), #1
(iGreece, iPersia, iCarthage, iRome), #2
(iJapan, iKhmer, iMongolia), #3
(iEthiopia, iMali), #4
(iArabia, iTurkey), #5
(iVikings, iSpain, iFrance, iEngland, iGermany, iRussia, iNetherlands, iPortugal), #6
(iMaya, iInca, iAztecs, iAmerica)) #7

#27 is huge
tNumCivsMedium = (3,3,2,1,2,6,3) #20 (+1 randomly picked)
tNumCivsSmall = (3,2,1,1,1,4,2) #14 (+1 randomly picked)

civs are divided in pots, and then a number of them are randomly chosen. Randomness is influenced by modifiers for the more important civs (with 1 in tProb).

 

I disagree about England being mandatory, since its existance or nonexistance won't significantly influence the USA either. Anyways as a general rule there shouldn't be too many missing civs in a row (if looking at them in a spawn date order).

 

Well, I doubt it's just the USA that would be unimaginable without England. Australia, Canada, South Africa, all these big stretches of land...
For gameplay, in a very high likeness world, if England was missing, the British Isles would go to waste.

 

I imagine they would be occupied by England's colonial rivals: After all the Dutch founded New York, the French were all over North America,The Vikings were the first to settle/explore North America, Spain claimed much of Western NA.... I don't think the lands would go to waste just be occupied by a different power. A different culture would surely have emerged but I have to agree I don't think England is "mandatory" simply because it is too easy to see how rival civs would have gladly eaten up any big stretch of colonial land available.

I like your general idea however; there are some civs that are 100% necessary like China and Rome. I would also consider Persia as a non-Arab/classical era representative for the Middle East culture.

Russia has to be mandatory simple because of the vast lands they are supposed to occupy.

I can't say I would miss India; in RAND it's basically non-existent anyway. 2-3 crummy cities next to endless jungle... if I don't play India I sometimes forget they're even in the game.

 

But the culture of the Americans (as an RFC civ) would be unimaginable without the political traditions of the English. I seem to remember from way back in college something about political instability being inherently in the southern Latin cultures (Italy, Spain, Portugal) as opposed to the northern ones (France, England) but I can't put my finger on why, something to do with authoritarianism. I cannot imagine a stable American revolution that would end up in democracy rather than a monarchy if, say, Spain was the master of the 13 colonies, if there were 13 colonies to begin with if all Catholic Spain had no Protestants to send away to. A democracy with French domination, maybe, but remember the American Revolution sparked the French one, not the other way round.

 

i think the biggest problem is that theres a limit on civ number. i want to play with EVERY civ on a small world map having three-four cities and unimaginably tense borders. what it sounds like you want is a fully(mostly) scripted road to war kind of deal encompassing all of civilized history. which to me sounds badass

 

Welcome to CFC brettonknight!
I think he's trying to suggest that civs shouldn't be left out in high-likeliness. I think that it shouldn't matter. I've been Spain before in High Likeliness, starting about 4 tiles south of England, on the same island. The civs should be random, as the mod is called RFC RAND. But maybe if you want to do something, you could change it.

To brettonknight: What you suggested could be done, but I don't know how to do it. You would probably have to change more than one file.

 

The political culture of America is much closer to the Roman Empire than England IMO.

 

Nothing should be necessary. That would ruin my Standard-sized High Likeness games.

 

I would argue that the American civilisation is the most "optional". If it's going to be in-game, it ought to represent any revolutionary movement: why not have America founded as a revolt to Khmer-dominated Australia? Or as Brazil, fighting Portugal? Of course, this can happen in RAND, I assume. Can someone clarify this? I was England, and the Dutch and French settles NA, so I took SA. America was founded as a mixture of French and Dutch NA colonies...but could it have revolted in English Brazil, had my stability been low enough?

 

No. The USA spawns (at high or very high likeness, what I suppose you talk about) at North America. However, it would be interesting, indeed, if it spawned at the colonies of any stability-low European civilization...

 

I would love to see this implementation, it would fit RAND a lot more than the current one.

 

Lately I have been playing on the standard size map, but with High Likeness I want the full experience of having all the civs spawn, so I decided to mod Pots.py. I changed the following line:

Code:

if (CyMap().getWorldSize() == 2): #huge

into

Code:

if (CyMap().getWorldSize() == 2 or CyMap().getSeaLevel() == 0): #huge or high likeness

The result is a very crowded map and some weird spawn locations for late civs, but I like it anyway.

 

Do you really need Arabia to get Turkey?

That part of the world was Helleninc in ancient times (e.g. Troy), then Roman, then the seat of the Byzantine Empire, before being conquered by the Seljuk Turks, who were Central Asians.

AFAIK, there was no Arab conquest or settlement of the area, and the most significant role of the Arabs was to produce and spread the reigion that was adopted by the Turks, and you wouldn't need (in-game) a playable Arab civ to found and spread Islam.