Would you like to see more 20th century leaders and civs in Civ7?

[Evie]

I would agree. To me Meiji Japan evoke not (just) the era of a specific emperor in the Japanese regnal name system, but the entire political system born out of the Meiji restoration and enshrined in the Meiji constitution which remained in force until the occupation.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I think that comes down to the original Civilization being based on Sid's personal recollections of history class and pop history without even the benefit of Wikipedia to look things up. "I need an African civ. I don't know much about Africa. Wasn't there that movie about the Zulu? Let's include them! Now, who to lead China? I remember Mao Zedong in history class. That'll do!"

It wasn't just his personal recollections, though. He absolutely nailed the civs and leaders who his buying audience would recognize.

"Movie about the Zulus" also really downplays how Shaka and Zulus had become well known and respected in popular North American culture as an independent and successful black African empire. There may have been other such empires, but there weren't any that his buying audience would have recognized. Same thing with choosing Gandhi to lead India. No historical Indian leader would have resonated with his target market, Gandhi did.

 

[gdr_willter]

It wasn't just his personal recollections, though. He absolutely nailed the civs and leaders who his buying audience would recognize.

"Movie about the Zulus" also really downplays how Shaka and Zulus had become well known and respected in popular North American culture as an independent and successful black African empire. There may have been other such empires, but there weren't any that his buying audience would have recognized. Same thing with choosing Gandhi to lead India. No historical Indian leader would have resonated with his target market, Gandhi did.

And honestly, the Civ franchise he started had become the one of the major reasons that the gamers in the market is way more awared about the historical things around the world than before. I also am the one of them.

 

[Zaarin]

It wasn't just his personal recollections, though. He absolutely nailed the civs and leaders who his buying audience would recognize.

"Movie about the Zulus" also really downplays how Shaka and Zulus had become well known and respected in popular North American culture as an independent and successful black African empire. There may have been other such empires, but there weren't any that his buying audience would have recognized. Same thing with choosing Gandhi to lead India. No historical Indian leader would have resonated with his target market, Gandhi did.

Point being that for the first 4 iterations, Civ as a franchise approached its historical trappings very casually, which I don't think is particularly disputable, whether it resonated or not.

 

[cuc]

The only effect Hus had was ironically orthography

For a "random event" with scarce records, the Hussite diaspora sure left some indelible marks on European languages. Marks like pistol, howitzer/obusier, and trabant/drabant/dorabanti.

The words alone give off the vibe that some military innovations happened, and were carried by the dispersing ex-Hussite mercenaries.

 

[Isengardtom]

I voted less interesting.

I’ve always been mostly interested in the old Mediterranean / Middle Eastern civs such as Egypt, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Elam, Persia, Sumeria, Greece, Rome, Byzantium but also many of the South American cultures of Inca, Maya, Aztec.

Middle Ages are still very interesting with every period after that less interesting to me.

 

[notNamed]

For a "random event" with scarce records, the Hussite diaspora sure left some indelible marks on European languages. Marks like pistol, howitzer/obusier, and trabant/drabant/dorabanti.

The words alone give off the vibe that some military innovations happened, and were carried by the dispersing ex-Hussite mercenaries.

I have yet to see a single one with a clearly indisputable etymology. Once again harkening to the unfortunate situation of lack of contemporary material to work with and plenty of wild claims having been made in the past which are hard to prove but also disprove and likewise there's just no resources for it. The local linguistic departments deal with completely different topics than random foreign term etymologies and Slavistics in general are overwhelmingly dealing with the big Slavic languages (Russian and OCS) which means there are rarely any projects that tackle the issue of comparing Middle High German-Hussite Czech loanwords and deciding if they contain identifiable correspondence patterns or if they're just random "they look similar enough to me" guesses.

In these examples the pistol is disputed with Italian. Trabant is likewise contested with Italian and Persian words, apparently. Czech etymological dictionaries run the full gamut of stating it's a loanword from Italian/German to claiming Slavic origin through drab (slave) to saying it comes from Latin trabea.
Haufnitz is the one with the strongest case of the three, but it only makes sense if you compare it with later Czech, rather than Hussite Czech (húfnicě, with the Middle High German loanword featuring 1:1 to its original meaning and pronunciation). It could very well be a Czech borrowing but not from the age of the Hussite Wars.
Tábor is a common word for a camp in languages east of Bohemia and one of the theories puts it as the Hussite invention (Taborites) but at the same time we have a Hungarian dictionary which contains it and might or might not predate the Hussite Wars. And as expected, the true dating of the articles in that dictionary is lost to the ages. So we can't decisively tell for this word, either.


Yeah I'm almost definitely overpushing the opposite extreme but it's because all my own research in this area turned out that source criticism and verification of old claims (made some 200-80 years ago) is sadly still in diapers in both Czech and Slovak history/linguistics departments (and far from the hot topics that people and research money flocks to). And the English internet, the meme machine that it is, largely just quotes all of these ancient claims we'd make fun of as copypasted high school essays and cz/sk wikipedia factoids verbatim.

 

[Phrozen]

Only 20th century US president should be Coolidge. Since we already getting Franklin, a great choice, I doubt we will see another US leader.