Why upset for European Civs?

[Pangur Bán]

You have missed my point entirely, which was that the political continuum between Athelstan and Elizabeth makes the comparison with Denmark and Sweden invalid. You may think of a title like "rex Anglorum" (vel sim.) a matter of insignificant semantics, but it is not - it is the difference between a society/civ/nation/etc. evolving, and one signalling a break from its predecessor. The title is every bit as important (and, in many cases, more so) than the territory being ruled. As for Scandinavia being a single cultural region, I and several others have made the argument already that the Denmark and Sweden civs clearly represent not only distinct political entities, but also different time periods and civilizations. The point is that both of these factors are very important.

Finally, you say that I am wrong on many points, but your post does not back this up - you say that political boundaries between Denmark and Sweden have been fluid for a long time, but I never claimed otherwise. Similarly, you bring up Athelstan's ruling of the English Saxon Kingdom and part of Northumbria, but entirely miss my point that the title of "rex Anglorum" that he took is one that was kept by future monarchs down to Elizabeth, indicating a political continuity that is very significant in distinguishing between evolving countries and new, distinct entities.

Rex Anglorum is one of many and by no means most significant of the titles used by Athelstan, others were "English Saxon king", "King of all Britian" and "Emperor of all Britain". His kingdom was not the English kingdom ruled by Elizabeth however, as Norhtumbria was not merged into the Wessex-Merica union until after Eadred's reign. Athelstan illustrates exactly why titles don't matter that much.

Your other point expresses a view antithetical to this game. The differences between GA's Scandinavia and those of HB are exactly those you'd expect between any nation over the same period. This is a game stretching 6000+ years, and civs would be supposed to change over the period. If you are selecting new civs from the same culture just because a particular polity flourishes a few centuries later, then you make a joke of the game (of course Byzantium and Rome already do this).

 

[Cía]

U cant compare Sweden and Denmark with England and the dark ages Britain. Formally Sweden, Denmark and Norway was a union for like 100 years, but in reality the uniom only lasted for about half the time. And still, Sweden was a country before the union. I would compare Sweden and Denmarks realtionship mort to that of France and Germany. France and Germany both come from the Empire of the Franks (splitted after year 800, long after a possible split between the scandinavian people). France and Germany also have had diffrent periods where they have had bigger impact on the european scen, just like in the case of Seden and Denmark.

(sry for all my missed letters and my generally bad spelling)

 

[mitsho]

I'd rather say Scandinavia/Vikings is Great Britain/United Kingdom, Denmark is England and Sweden Scotland or vice versa.

But it doesn't matter. There's no truth in discussions on "worth" for a computer game. It's not like we put together an absolute list (Is Sweden worthier than the Dutch? Can you put it into a full rank?). In the end, Sweden sounds fun.

If a United Kingdom civ with Churchill would find a way to be included in a creative and fun way, I'd be okay with it. It's a game after all.

Besides the already pointed out Byzantines and Rome (and Greeks for that matter), there's also the infamous example of the Holy Roman Empire in Civ4, which basically is a Germans in the Middle Ages.

 

[elprofesor]

How many exploring civs do you need? There are also only two religion civs. Plus, I think America is an exploring civ too with their extra sight for units.

We don't know yet how many religious civs there will be. We don't know all the details about the new civs (Ethiopia and Maya?), and we don't know how many UAs/UBs/etc will be reworked (mud pyramid mosque, sacrificial captives, etc), so we will probably end up with more than 2 religious civs.

I'm not saying that we need a new exploring civ, I'm saying that since we only have 2 whose primary focus is exploration, there's still a lot of room to find new gameplay options for Portugal (while it would be harder to find new gameplay options for a military civ, for example, as we see with the Huns).

 

[Pangur Bán]

U cant compare Sweden and Denmark with England and the dark ages Britain. Formally Sweden, Denmark and Norway was a union for like 100 years, but in reality the uniom only lasted for about half the time. And still, Sweden was a country before the union. I would compare Sweden and Denmarks realtionship mort to that of France and Germany. France and Germany both come from the Empire of the Franks (splitted after year 800, long after a possible split between the scandinavian people). France and Germany also have had diffrent periods where they have had bigger impact on the european scen, just like in the case of Seden and Denmark.

Kalmar Union was not the only time of Scandinavian political unity. It was pretty much one unit, or at worst confederation, in the 11th century; even the pagans Swedes were tributaries to the might of Cnut et al.

Repeating other posts I and others have made now, but politics is not at the heart of it. The periodic existence of political divisions with changing frontiers in Scandinavia is secondary to the area's historic and present cultural and linguistic unity. Again, please note that Swedes are historically the people around Uppsala (Sveas in map), not all Scandianvian speakers in the modern state of Sweden:

I'd rather say Scandinavia/Vikings is Great Britain/United Kingdom, Denmark is England and Sweden Scotland or vice versa.

I'd say it more similar to having Wessex and Northumbria; England wasn't very similar to its non-English British neighbours until the last 2 centuries or so. Having a Macedonian and a Spartan civ might be a better comparison. Yes, Spartans were different from Macedonians (in terms of language, culture, far more so than Swedes and Danes) ... totally ... yes they flourished in different times; no they are not, in the wider scheme of things, distinct civilizations.

Besides the already pointed out Byzantines and Rome (and Greeks for that matter), there's also the infamous example of the Holy Roman Empire in Civ4, which basically is a Germans in the Middle Ages.

By myself, as well as others. But two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[mitsho]

I do like that you're quoting me, but the first quote is not from one of my posts

The thing is cultural promity is really hard to measure and if so, even harder to compare. It's quite easy to say that Sparta and Macedonia are "near" or "quite similar" or so, but how "near" are they relative to Swedes and Danes? I'd love to hear some kind of reasoning that is not subjective. Because culture is not absolute, it's a lot of really small steps. Say, Austria and the Dutch. Dutch is actually just a dialect of German that evolved into a own language... I do think I could draw a lot more comparisons between the two. But it's futile since it's fun to play as an economic luxury ressource focussed civ and as a diplomatic beast.

PS: Wessex and Northumbria are just regions of England, right? Shouldn't you then refer to the regions in the map above and not the nation states? Because we then could go back and make a case for Burgundy or Bohemia as a civilization. After all, the regions were very close to become nation states in the Early Modern Age/Late Middle Ages. Of the three regions rebelling against the Holy Roman Empire, the Bohemians were just the unlucky ones, the other two are now nation states and one is a civilization (the other two are Netherlands and Switzerland).

 

[Pangur Bán]

The thing is cultural promity is really hard to measure and if so, even harder to compare. It's quite easy to say that Sparta and Macedonia are "near" or "quite similar" or so, but how "near" are they relative to Swedes and Danes? I'd love to hear some kind of reasoning that is not subjective. Because culture is not absolute, it's a lot of really small steps. Say, Austria and the Dutch. Dutch is actually just a dialect of German that evolved into a own language... I do think I could draw a lot more comparisons between the two. But it's futile since it's fun to play as an economic luxury ressource focussed civ and as a diplomatic beas

It's pretty easy to see that in relation to language, social structure, landscape use, and other specific cultural traits how close one group is to another. In these cases Denmark-proper and Sweden-proper at any point in time are closer to each other than Sparta and Macedonia in the classicsal era.

Civ makers always had it right before representing Scandinavia like the Greeks, though mostly politically fragmented treated as one civilization rather than having Athenian, Spartan, Macedonian civs and so on.

PS: Wessex and Northumbria are just regions of England, right? Shouldn't you then refer to the regions in the map above and not the nation states? Because we then could go back and make a case for Burgundy or Bohemia as a civilization. After all, the regions were very close to become nation states in the Early Modern Age/Late Middle Ages. Of the three regions rebelling against the Holy Roman Empire, the Bohemians were just the unlucky ones, the other two are now nation states and one is a civilization (the other two are Netherlands and Switzerland).

Scandinavia is a case of an embryonic nation-state that fragmented into regional kingdoms. Wessex and Northumbria are big kingdoms that merged to form England; both almost certainly had larger populations than Sweden. Whether or not Northumbria or Sweden are independent kingdoms depends on which period in time one cherry picks.

 

[Zipa_DH]

I do like that you're quoting me, but the first quote is not from one of my posts

The thing is cultural promity is really hard to measure and if so, even harder to compare. It's quite easy to say that Sparta and Macedonia are "near" or "quite similar" or so, but how "near" are they relative to Swedes and Danes? I'd love to hear some kind of reasoning that is not subjective. Because culture is not absolute, it's a lot of really small steps. Say, Austria and the Dutch. Dutch is actually just a dialect of German that evolved into a own language... I do think I could draw a lot more comparisons between the two. But it's futile since it's fun to play as an economic luxury ressource focussed civ and as a diplomatic beast.

PS: Wessex and Northumbria are just regions of England, right? Shouldn't you then refer to the regions in the map above and not the nation states? Because we then could go back and make a case for Burgundy or Bohemia as a civilization. After all, the regions were very close to become nation states in the Early Modern Age/Late Middle Ages. Of the three regions rebelling against the Holy Roman Empire, the Bohemians were just the unlucky ones, the other two are now nation states and one is a civilization (the other two are Netherlands and Switzerland).

this same applies for the non european civilizations, people doesn't really know the differece between koreans and chinese, or aztecs and incans, so the question is, if they include danes and swedish, why don't do the same with the aztecs and the tlaxcalans, or the incas and the moche, the iroquis and the huron, the chinese and the manchu, the songhai and the mali, the siamese and the khmer, the americans and the canadians, etc... however, this is very subjective, and dependes for our country and history

 

[Zipa_DH]

I guess it was only because Civ IV had the Vikings. Having both them and Sweden wouldn't be too wise, I agree with those who were against it
On the other hand, with Vikings changed to Denmark(-Norway) in Civ V, there was a clean road to Sweden
I was sure they will be inlcuded sooner or later, as soon as I saw the Denmark DLC



Absolutely agreed
Sweden is historically important enough to be included, it was a good choice
Civs like Gran Columbia or Australia has nothing to do in a game like this IMO

Although many people, many different opinions
Everyone is biased in a way of course - I for example can't really stand "modern" civs in Civ V, I guess I'm mostly biased against them.
They just don't suit the concept well enough for me. If it were up to me, there is a chance I would have left out the USA too

and what about diversity? that must be considered, if you say that another non european nations not must be included, is like you're saying that these nations aren't civilizations, and probably you say that because you don't know the importance of these civs in the history... again, eurocentristic history...

 

[Zipa_DH]

Why did they pick the Huns? To be funny. Likely its the same reason they chose Sweden - for a scenario. And the Celts are a very popular civ. People would be starting threads like "Why no Celts?" instead, I'd imagine, just like the "Why no Zulu?" thread.

Maybe the arguement should that be there are too many European civs; they should have kept to their own continent, then we'd have more civs from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Then one could say, "well, if they did that, we would have no game." In summary, there are not too many European civs, there are just not enough non-European civs.

agree with you, maybe there's enough european civs, but, it's really dissapointing that south america just have ONE civ!! that's ridiculous, we are always ignored in the games

 

[PhilBowles]

agree with you, maybe there's enough european civs, but, it's really dissapointing that south america just have ONE civ!! that's ridiculous, we are always ignored in the games

There aren't really many options - you can throw out a bunch of names like the Chachapoyas, but the reality is very little is known about pre-Colombian South America because none of the indigenous civilisations either had a written tradition or contact with groups that did keep written (or at least engraved) histories. What's more, none but the immediately pre-Colombian societies would have left any traceable mark in oral traditions. This is just compounded by the difficulty of locating or excavating ruins - the Inca and Chachapoyas left remains because they lived in mountains, but nothing is known of lowland societies. There's evidence of a large urban society in the Peruvian portion of the Amazon basin, and even conquistadors' tales of jungle cities (not all obviously as fanciful as El Dorado), but nothing at all is known about it, nor has it ever been excavated. For most people I suspect it's simply not interesting to play a civ they don't know and can't learn anything about. It makes sense for South America to have the fewest civs, purely as a reflection of the reality that it's by far the least well-known continent in terms of its history and archaeology.

Likewise, few people find modern civs interesting in a game like Civilization - while they might have some place in moderation, there really needs to be a better reason to include them than "they're from an underrepresented continent".

 

[Louis XXIV]

There actually was a pretty impressive civilization in the Amazon river (as would make sense with a major river), but the jungle reclaimed them (I believe there have been some excavations, though).

 

[athas65]

I don't see the problem with having both Sweden(/Finland) and Denmark(/Norway), It is two civilization with different culture and from different time periods who are in the same area. One represent the north Germanic cultures in the medieval viking age (8-11 centuries) (Denmark), and one the north Germans in the enlightenment age, where they were pretty different from their ancestors (Sweden).

 

[Pangur Bán]

this same applies for the non european civilizations, people doesn't really know the differece between koreans and chinese, or aztecs and incans, so the question is, if they include danes and swedish, why don't do the same with the aztecs and the tlaxcalans, or the incas and the moche, the iroquis and the huron, the chinese and the manchu, the songhai and the mali, the siamese and the khmer, the americans and the canadians, etc... however, this is very subjective, and dependes for our country and history

The funny thing is that most of cultures you use for comparison are not even nearly as close as Denmark and Sweden. Sweden and Denmark are more comparable than different regions of north-eastern China, far less north and south China, far less still Korea and China. Denmark and Sweden is Castile and Leon, France and Normandy, Tuscany and Lombardy at a stretch. China and Korea is France and Russia, Greece and the Arabs, etc.

We have to be clear, it takes an astronomical level of parochialism to see Sweden and Denmark, even in different eras, as different "civilizations" let alone sufficiently distinct to occupy two places among a few dozen selected civilizations drawn from all the civilizations ever in history from anywhere in the world.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well, better Sweden and Denmark then Germany and the HRE.

 

[Pangur Bán]

For sure.

 

[PhilBowles]

There actually was a pretty impressive civilization in the Amazon river (as would make sense with a major river), but the jungle reclaimed them (I believe there have been some excavations, though).

That was actually the one I was referring to when I mentioned large lowland urban centres that are currently covered by rainforest. Yet even if and when these are ever wholly excavated, it's unlikely any details about the names of their leaders or settlements will be found. We only know what we do of the Inca because the Spanish documented them; the Inca themselves appeared not to have the kind of tradition seen in the Maya world of carving scenes from their history or celebrating their conquests in stone. There are also modern Quechua and Maya whose link to these civilisations can be traced, allowing something of their beliefs to be recorded. It's not clear which of the local ethnic groups in lowland Amazonia would be associated with the Amazon city-builders, or how you'd establish any such link definitively.

 

[Cía]

The funny thing is that most of cultures you use for comparison are not even nearly as close as Denmark and Sweden. Sweden and Denmark are more comparable than different regions of north-eastern China, far less north and south China, far less still Korea and China. Denmark and Sweden is Castile and Leon, France and Normandy, Tuscany and Lombardy at a stretch. China and Korea is France and Russia, Greece and the Arabs, etc.

We have to be clear, it takes an astronomical level of parochialism to see Sweden and Denmark, even in different eras, as different "civilizations" let alone sufficiently distinct to occupy two places among a few dozen selected civilizations drawn from all the civilizations ever in history from anywhere in the world.

Seriously, no. I am a swede and I think I know the history of my country better than u, and what u are saying is simple not true. Sweden and Denmark has been different civilizations for so long that no one knows if their ever been the same. So its not a castille and leon situation, its (as I have stated earlier) more like france and germany (although the swedish and danish heritage are more diversed than that of france and germany).

 

[Pangur Bán]

At issue here is the differences between "Sweden" and "Denmark" in a world history context. But comparing Sweden and Denmark to France and Germany shows not only that you don't actually have much understanding of your own country's history, but that you do not understand France and Germany's either.

 

[Zipa_DH]

There aren't really many options - you can throw out a bunch of names like the Chachapoyas, but the reality is very little is known about pre-Colombian South America because none of the indigenous civilisations either had a written tradition or contact with groups that did keep written (or at least engraved) histories. What's more, none but the immediately pre-Colombian societies would have left any traceable mark in oral traditions. This is just compounded by the difficulty of locating or excavating ruins - the Inca and Chachapoyas left remains because they lived in mountains, but nothing is known of lowland societies. There's evidence of a large urban society in the Peruvian portion of the Amazon basin, and even conquistadors' tales of jungle cities (not all obviously as fanciful as El Dorado), but nothing at all is known about it, nor has it ever been excavated. For most people I suspect it's simply not interesting to play a civ they don't know and can't learn anything about. It makes sense for South America to have the fewest civs, purely as a reflection of the reality that it's by far the least well-known continent in terms of its history and archaeology.

Likewise, few people find modern civs interesting in a game like Civilization - while they might have some place in moderation, there really needs to be a better reason to include them than "they're from an underrepresented continent".

there's a lot of cultures outside the andes: the tupi, the carioca, the caribes, the araucans, the guarani, etc... and another pre-incan civilizations like the nazca, the moche and the muisca, the problem with all south american civilizations, is their oral tradition, pre columbian civilizations of all the continent (except fot the great empires) doesn't be interested in written or visual traditions, this is why people always think in aztec-mayan architecture and clothing when think in incas, caribes, muiscas or another south american civilizations, by other side, there's the latin american civs, that are cannot be taken like european or native american civs, because they aren't, in part, all americas have lots of civs that would be put in game, just the people doesn't know, they did it in civ colonization, they would do it again in future DLC or expansions