Why is Cleopatra black?!

[Heraclitus]

It makes absolutely no sense.


First off the Egyptians did not look like sub-Saharan Africans, this is clear from their portrayal of Nubians and the descriptions of Egyptians by other peoples. They were in various sources compared to people like the North Africans, Mesopotamians and to Northern Indians. This means they most likely comparable both in complexion comparable and appearances to most Mediterranean peoples.


I think it would be most logical for them to at leas vaguely resemble modern Egyptians.


Check the Civ Rev leaders out on the game's new webiste


In any case that is not the real problem, even if the Egyptians were identical in apperances to subsharan peoples, that would not change something rather important. You see Cleopatra was of Greek descent.







This is just silly! I’m no realism/history buff, I never expected Cleopatra to be portrayed realistically. I mean it is well know that she was in fact rather plain, but I don’t expect firaxis to go against popular culture and make Cleopatra anything less than hot. But if they are going down this road, why not make make Alexander a blonde? Make Monty look like a north African? Or give old Shaka red hair? Have Tokugawa look European?

[dojoboy]

I see your point, but I don't agree. Cleopatra was Greek (Macedonian) and an Egyptian ruler. That shouldn't discount her. Catherine the Great of Russia was a German princess. Do you want her out off the other Civ renditions?

[Heraclitus]

Ehhh, I never said she should not be the Egyptian leader.

[UnOrthOdOx]

He probably misread the title as 'why is cleopatra BACK'.

I misread it at first, too, but quickly figured out what you were talking about by the OP.

As for the topic at hand, CivRev is hardly the first depiction of a black Cleopatra, plenty of hollywood portrayals already, and it falls into artistic liscense and a sense of trying to get some balance, I would assume.

And

why not make make Alexander a blonde?

I thought they did? Maybe I'm not recalling all the leaders right...

[Heraclitus]

But It makes no sense, and the majoirty of portrayals of Cleopatra were quite different. In fact I can't rember ever seeing a "black" Cleopatra.


Also, if they wanted balance they could have made another african civ.


And I've just checked they did make Alexander a blond. :/ But hair color is not that much a change than to make the avatar completley different from the historical leader it is supposed to represent.

[UnOrthOdOx]

"sense" doesn't count in artistic liscence.

Google image search on Cleopatra, page 1:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=e...-revision&cd=3

3 black Cleopatra's, and an egyptian papyrus you could argue either way. Civ Rev is hardly unique here.

[Locutus]

We don't have any reliable historic depictions of Cleopatra, we have zero hard evidence of what she *really* looked like. There are many theories, some better than others, but they're all merely theories in the end.

The depictions of her in Western culture that Firaxis frequently draws from for much of their artwork of ancient leaders have changed quite a lot over time. Until the 18th c. Cleopatra always looked distinctly Western European (not even Greek, more like English or French) as that was what people identified with, in the 18th and 19th c. she was usually portrayed as very dark-skinned (but not usually outright black) as that was exotic and that was all the rage back then, and in the 20th c. her depictions have been all over the map, from black to Middle Eastern/Mediterranean to white and just about everything in between -- and a lot of the time political motivations played into the decision making process there. If you've never seen any depictions of a dark/black Cleopatra then that frankly says far more about your own cultural background than about Cleopatra or Firaxis.

Firaxis tends not to just completely make sh*t up with their artwork, they need to use something as basis for their models. So they have to go with *something* and they happened to go with a depiction of Cleopatra in which she has a fairly dark skin (although not nearly as dark as in some depictions I've seen). Not sure that you can really fault them for that, or for anything else they could've chosen as their basis -- while some depictions are better than others, every single one of them is far more based on conjecture than on fact.

And on top of that, as always, gameplay trumps reality: Firaxis has to make sure she's recognisable to all players, so their depiction has to take into account what most people with little or no knowledge of history expect Cleopatra to look like, and not many of such people would expect her to look Greek.

[Heraclitus]

Well, to be completley honest I have seen a black Cleopatra but it was in the same book that claimed that white people werent really people, it was quite Afrocentric.

But even this book had the decency to at least explain away Cleopatras ancestry as a hoax. I must say Firaxis has done an aweful job, why didn't they simply make her dark skinned but with mediternaean/arab features like they did with Hachepsut? If all they really wanted was for the pic to be instantly recognisable?


@ UnOrthOdOx: A google search is not always a good parameter, but if you insist on making it. Then Cleopatra appearently looked European.

The only two pics showing a "black" Cleopatra are the ones where she is depicted by African-American actresses (one of those being Tinat Turner).

Now looking at they paypirus, that dosen't seem subsaharna african to me, it looks like people from north africa or India. Also it is a very generic representation, since the Egyptians were not concerned with realism.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus
And on top of that, as always, gameplay trumps reality: Firaxis has to make sure she's recognisable to all players, so their depiction has to take into account what most people with little or no knowledge of history expect Cleopatra to look like, and not many of such people would expect her to look Greek.

I'm sorry I don't see how the old gameplay vs. realism comes into play here Locutus. The appearances of a leader have nothing to do with gameplay. Sure people can enjoy the game if the leader pics are pretty but that is also not covered under "gameplay". I'm very dissapointed that you have brought something like that up, when it makes no sense.



I'm not arguning she should look Greek! I'm arguing she should look Egyptian (since a very tanned Greek might pass as an Egyptian). But if you think we should submit to stuff like that, why shouldn't we rewrite the civilopedia entry about oh, lets say a mongolian leader or about Islam according to what the average consol player expects to find there.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
@ UnOrthOdOx: A google search is not always a good parameter, but if you insist on making it. Then Cleopatra appearently looked European.

The only two pics showing a "black" Cleopatra are the ones where she is depicted by African-American actresses (one of those being Tinat Turner).

Now looking at they paypirus, that dosen't seem subsaharna african to me, it looks like people from north africa or India. Also it is a very generic representation, since the Egyptians were not concerned with realism.

I've never claimed to know what she looked like, or that anything was an accurate perception of what she looked like, or that she SHOULD be looking a particular way. I have only claimed that Civ Rev is far from the first to depict a black Cleopatra. It is fairly old-hat, frankly, and not really at all surprising. It is a bit surprising to me you have never really seen such references before, or that you consider it an issue.

And, frankly, google image IS the place to go looking for pop culture references, which is all I've ever claimed. Yes, the pictures are from African-American actresses. As I stated above in the first post, Hollywood had depicted a black Cleopatra, that would likely mean African American actresses.

[Heraclitus]

What are you on about? I'm trying to point out that pop-culture refernces are more in favor of a "white Cleopatra" which is just as silly as a "black Cleopatra". You are just trying to make it seem I am arguing something I am not.



Example of a "white Cleopatra"

[UnOrthOdOx]

Doesn't matter which is more or less. I'm only stating that it is far from unique, and it falls under artistic license. As all the game art does.

I find this as silly as someone complaining that the banana graphic was innacurate back when CIV first came out.

Why does it matter?

[edit] And I'm quite certain, the "black Cleopatra" pics are fairly more recent than the Elizabeth Taylor one you post there.

(though most certainly, the Elizabeth Taylor one is a better film)

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I'm sorry I don't see how the old gameplay vs. realism comes into play here Locutus. The appearances of a leader have nothing to do with gameplay. Sure people can enjoy the game if the leader pics are pretty but that is also not covered under "gameplay". I'm very dissapointed that you have brought something like that up, when it makes no sense.

You're taking gameplay very literally here. A game is a full experience, in which sound and graphics are VERY important elements. A key point for a game like Civ is that players can recognise history in it, which trumps making an actual accurate depiction of history, which would be completely impossible anyway: again, we have NO CLUE what Cleopatra really looked like.

If you insist that gameplay must be taken in the most literal sense, then we can simply replace my quote with 'graphics trumps realism'. And when it becomes relevant 'sound trumps realism', 'user-friendliness trumps realism', etc, etc. Historic realism is pretty close to the bottom of the list when it comes to game design (and this is coming from a guy who passionately cares about history and who came up with over 50% of the historic elements (UUs, Wonders, leaders, flags, great people, city names, etc) in Warlords and BtS, and a good number of the ones in vanilla Civ4 -- I love that stuff but in the scheme of things it's not what sells the game (in every possible meaning of the word)).

I'm not arguning she should look Greek! I'm arguing she should look Egyptian (since a very tanned Greek might pass as an Egyptian).

Based on the most sound and widely-accepted scientific theories she should definitely look Greek (or more accurate, Macedonian), there wasn't a drop of Egyptian blood in her heritage going by conventional history. Again, the fact that you seem to disagree says more about your own cultural background than about Firaxis. There is every bit as much historical base for depicting her as black or very dark-skinned as there is to depict her as 'Egyptian', both are more or less equally historically (in)plausible.

Depicting her as Greek would make the most sense if you go by historic accuracy alone, but I think for many people it would merely be confusing if Cleopatra looked like a Christina Onassis-lookalike -- she should actually probably look a lot more like the 'white' Cleopatras you condemn than like a traditional native 'Egyptian' as you seem to envision it (Egypt's always been a very heterogeneous society, it's on the crossroads between the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East and the native Egyptians can have the physical attributes common to all three of those regions, there isn't really a standard 'Egyptian' racial profile).

[Heraclitus]

I am not condeming "white Cleopatra" or "black Cleopatra" and you are again obscuring the point. Ancient Greeks were not western European in complexion they were a very mediteranean people, and it is likley that this would be reflected in the apperance of Cleopatra. Also as such she would have been more similar to the egyptians than to a blue-eyed germanian warrior or a subsaharan hunter. I'm trying to say that making her seem "Egyptian" would have been a reasonable compromise, since as you pointed out both the Greeks (and I do consider the Macedonians to be very closley related to Greeks) and Egyptians were diverese in apperances.

My point is that having a black phararo or two is not beyond the scope of possiblity (the Nubian ones were black), and having a Egyptian looking Cleopatra is not beyond the scope either. But having Cleopatra look black will just not cut it.



Also I would just like to know what is this you keep mentioning about my backround, and please explain why it matters?

@UnOrthOdOx: Why should the more recent depiction be the one to make it into civ? I can tell you right now that there are many people who will pick up civ who have not seen any of the recent stuff, in fact it is more likley for them to have seen old Elizabeth in the classic movie.

Also my point was that when they were casting Cleopatra they were looking for talent, somewhat widening the criteria of apperances. That is why we can have a blue-eyed man acting as Jesus in a movie or why a Itallian can play the role of King Arthur or why Ghandi could perhaps be portrayed by a Afro-American.

[Heraclitus]

BTW Am I the only one bothered by how the website of CivRev puts Saladin in Africa?

I can excuse them putting the Aztecs, Russians, Mongolians in the wrong place, but at least they aren't on the wrong continent!

/they may have fixed it by now since I have sent an email pointing out the eror/

[UnOrthOdOx]

I haven't really looked at the website since it first launched, let alone in detail to point out flaws. Didn't know they had a map, honestly.

As for why is the "black" Cleopatra in Civ Rev, I'm not saying it SHOULD be, but don't have a problem with it. They could put in blue skin and hot pink hair for all I care.

I'm guessing it's either purely artistic license, whoever made it favors that look, or for balance, as previously stated. No, adding another civ in really isn't an option, that's more work. Here they can get a black looking female leader in, and have plenty of precidence to site as sources of inspiration for that decision. Probably somewhere between those two.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I am not condeming "white Cleopatra" or "black Cleopatra" and you are again obscuring the point. Ancient Greeks were not western European in complexion they were a very mediteranean people, and it is likley that this would be reflected in the apperance of Cleopatra. Also as such she would have been more similar to the egyptians than to a blue-eyed germanian warrior or a subsaharan hunter. I'm trying to say that making her seem "Egyptian" would have been a reasonable compromise, since as you pointed out both the Greeks (and I do consider the Macedonians to be very closley related to Greeks) and Egyptians were diverese in apperances.

"likely", "similar", "diverse". You're already saying yourself you have no clue as to what she looked like, but Firaxis is supposed to magically have the answer?

What you consider to be the 'correct' look for Cleopatra is highly biased, entirely speculative and almost certainly very inaccurate, just like Firaxis's depiction of her. What's the difference? You're welcome to disagree with Firaxis but your reasoning is no more valuable or valid than theirs (whatever that is, we don't even know), you're making a big stink over nothing. It's not like Firaxis will have had hour-long meetings over this puny little issue, it was almost certainly at the discretion of the one artist who happened to be assigned this leaderhead (who undoubtedly did some research but (s)he didn't make it his/her master thesis, (s)he did probably have like 3 other leaderheads to make before the next deadline).

My point is that having a black phararo or two is not beyond the scope of possiblity (the Nubian ones were black), and having a Egyptian looking Cleopatra is not beyond the scope either. But having Cleopatra look black will just not cut it.

So first you say both are equally likely and then you say one just doesn't cut it while the other is the only correct view in your book? Sorry, you're not making any kind of sense here yourself, certainly no more than Firaxis.

Also I would just like to know what is this you keep mentioning about my backround, and please explain why it matters?

Your cultural background affects your world view. A black African is more likely to view Cleopatra as black, a white American will likely cosider her white, etc. We REALLY have NO CLUE as to what she looked like so how you (and I and everyone else) view her depends on what kind of books you've read, places you've been, movies you've seen, etc and all kinds of other life experiences. She looks different to different people depending on their cultural background because we can all only speculate about her appearance (and there has been plenty of speculation over the centuries).

[Heraclitus]

But why dosen't Abraham Lincoln look Native American? It would realy help blance out the 10 or so European looking leaders...


On the second point: In any case go to the CivRev site and go to the civ section, there you have an option to see them on the map.




Also why the hell should they care about a leaders race? It should not! The reason we wanted more african civs in previos civ versions was because they were interesting and because Africa was too empty on the Earth map, not because the civs had black leaders and we felt the need to make civ politicaly correct.


My point: Making Cleopatra look like a tanned Macedonian with pharoaonic symbols would not have hurt sales in any way.
It would ever so slightly improved the educational value of CivRev. Why not do it?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
BTW Am I the only one bothered by how the website of CivRev puts Saladin in Africa?

Looking at the map, they didn't just place him in Africa, but in Egypt specifically, which is actually the historically correct thing to do: in popular Western culture many people only know Saladin as the guy who fought in the Crusades in the war for the Holy Land, but in reality that was only a tiny insignicant chapter in Saladin's life. In reality he was Sultan of Egypt, his main power base was in Egypt and Cairo was his capital and the location of his main palaces. In fact, he effectively made Cairo the center of the Islamic world which it would remain for centuries (and basically still is today, although they're been periods Baghdad, Esfahan and especially Istanbul outclassed it).

Most of his military conquests were to expand his empire base in Egypt: he conquered much of North Africa, the area bordering on the Red Sea (esp Yemen) and late in his life Syria, where he encountered Richard the Lionhearted and other Crusaders which made him so famous in the West. But that was not in any way a major accomplishment for him, even if both us Westerners and modern Arabs (who see him as a hero in the struggle for Palestine) want to see it that way. You can still see Saladin's Egyptian roots today: Egypt's modern coat of arms is the Eagle of Saladin.

So here Firaxis (or more likely 2K, who maintain that site from what I can gather) actually did do their homework and did what's historically accurate and not what most people would expect, and yet you still fault them for it. They just can't win with you, can they?

[Heraclitus]

Locutus your explanation, while tehnically plausible, is a bit far fetched, since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from. Why else would they put Chatarine in the depts of Eurasia (beyond the Ural) and not closer to a center of her power or where she was born ( )?

You are forgetting that CivRev only has one leader per civ, the leader is the civ in some sense. My position on this is further supported by the fact that the part of the website we are looking at is labeled "Civilizations" not "Leaders". Also beneath the name of each ruler is the name of the country under Saladin it says Arabia. It also does not explain the odd placement of the Aztec, Zulu and Mongolian leaders.


On a final note Saladin seems to be placed very south in Egypt, I'm willing to bet well south of Cairo.


Damm, talking to you is like arguing with a church apologist.

[Heraclitus]

From the site.

Saladin (c.1137-1193 AD) was a Kurdish Muslim warrior and self-proclaimed Sultan of Arabia. During his life he was the Defender of Islam and great opponent to the Crusaders.

Of Kurdish descent, born in Mesopotamia, Saladin grew to become a religious warrior. During his youth he studied Sunni theology for ten years and then accompanied his uncle during his battles to conquer Arabia (ca. 1167). After his uncle died, Saladin succeeded him as vizier (minister of state) of Arabia, and he eventually proclaimed himself sultan (sovereign).

During his reign Saladin conquered portions of North Africa, Yemen, Syria and Palestine. He mustered a large force of Muslims to defeat the Christian occupiers and retake the city of Jerusalem. He fought off a spirited attempt to retake the city (the Third Crusade) in 1189; in 1192 Saladin signed a treaty with the Crusaders, leaving them just a small strip of land in Syria on the coast of the Mediterranean.

Saladin had a richly-deserved reputation for generosity and chivalry in battle. He treated his prisoners honorably, and was a man of his word. He was greatly admired by his European opponents, who barely acknowledged other Muslims as human.

It does mention "North Africa" ever so breifly, there is however no mention of Egypt or how it was his power base. Why not make a reference to it in the civilopedia if it was realy their intention to be historicaly correct about "leader" (and incorrect about civ) placement?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Locutus your explanation, while tehnically plausible, is a bit far fetched, since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from. Why else would they put Chatarine in the depts of Eurasia (beyond the Ural) and not closer to a center of her power or where she was born ( )?

They didn't put Saladin where he 'came from', as he was actually born in present-day Turkey somewhere I believe (he's a Kurd), they put him where his empire was: he ruled Egypt, Yemen and a small area of the Arabian peninsula, North Africa and parts of the Levant, with Egypt as his base.

It's the same reason Caesar is in Italy, as Italy was the centre of the Roman empire, much as it controlled the entire Mediterranean basin. The Arab civilization however was never a unified empire like the Roman one, it was very much splintered in different factions with different sultans ruling over different parts of what us ignorant Westerners consider to be the 'Arab Empire' and actually competed with each other and fought over territory, much like the European kings did in Europe -- if you really want to mimic history accurately, having one Arab civ really makes about as much sense as having one European civ. There were different factions, different dynasties and different states which constantly changed over time.

Saladin was the founder of one of these factions/dynasties (the Ayyubids) and his kingdom (the Ayyubid Empire) was based around Egypt -- he never ruled over most of the Middle East as we think of it when we think of the Arab 'empire' or 'civilization': he never ruled over present-day Iraq, Iran, Israel (+ Palestine), Turkey, most of Saudi Arabia and only had brief control over Jordan and Syria. He was really the Sultan of an Egyptian kingdom, not the leader of some grand Arab empire -- that never existed.

And yes, that map is off on a couple of points: all the leaders in the Med basin are a little off to the south which must be a bug of sorts (Caesar is in Southern Italy rather than Rome, Cleopatra is in the area around Luxor when she should be in Alexandria, Alexander is in Athens when he should be in Macedonia and of course Saladin looks like he's in present-day Sudan when he should be in Cairo or central Egypt) and some of the others like Montezuma are off by quite a large margin as you pointed out yourself. But you're really nitpicking over ridiculously obscure details here: this is a promotion website for a game, not some detailed scientific model that's the result of years and years of study, someone didn't earn their master's thesis in ancient history on this.

That text entry I have to say is exceptionally poorly written, but to be honest most of the Civilopedia in most Civ games are (in fact it wouldn't surprise me if it was copied directly from the Civ4 Civilopedia -- I would be surprised if it was made by the same person who made the map). These games and websites are not made by history majors (I came up with a lot of the historic stuff in Civ4 and my background is in Computer Science, just like most Firaxians), they provide you some historic flavour but if you really wanna learn about history there's no substitute from getting out and buying some real books.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus


They didn't put Saladin where he 'came from', as he was actually born in present-day Turkey somewhere I believe (he's a Kurd), they put him where his empire was: he ruled Egypt, Yemen and a small area of the Arabian peninsula, North Africa and parts of the Levant, with Egypt as his base.

I never said he came from the ther , please don't put words into my mouth. In fact in the up and coming polycast I explicitly mentioned he was of Kurdish descent.

Originally posted by Locutus

It's the same reason Caesar is in Italy, as Italy was the centre of the Roman empire, much as it controlled the entire Mediterranean basin. The Arab civilization however was never a unified empire like the Roman one, it was very much splintered in different factions with different sultans ruling over different parts of what us ignorant Westerners consider to be the 'Arab Empire' and actually competed with each other and fought over territory, much like the European kings did in Europe -- if you really want to mimic history accurately, having one Arab civ really makes about as much sense as having one European civ. There were different factions, different dynasties and different states which constantly changed over time.

Disagree, the differences betweeen lets say Russia and England are far bigger. Firstly the language barrier, secondly religus division, thirdly no common origin.

Now the Dutch and Germans or even the Portugese and Spanism may be more in line with your argument, but not the entire contient. Not by a long shot.

Originally posted by Locutus

Saladin was the founder of one of these factions/dynasties (the Ayyubids) and his kingdom (the Ayyubid Empire) was based around Egypt -- he never ruled over most of the Middle East as we think of it when we think of the Arab 'empire' or 'civilization': he never ruled over present-day Iraq, Iran, Israel (+ Palestine), Turkey, most of Saudi Arabia and only had brief control over Jordan and Syria. He was really the Sultan of an Egyptian kingdom, not the leader of some grand Arab empire -- that never existed.

Under Muhamed. Granted it was not quite "grand" but it was pretty unified and it represented the common origin.
In Europe we don't have that we have Romanic, Germanic, Slavic and Celtic peoples.

Originally posted by Locutus

And yes, that map is off on a couple of points: all the leaders in the Med basin are a little off to the south which must be a bug of sorts (Caesar is in Southern Italy rather than Rome, Cleopatra is in the area around Luxor when she should be in Alexandria, Alexander is in Athens when he should be in Macedonia and of course Saladin looks like he's in present-day Sudan when he should be in Cairo or central Egypt) and some of the others like Montezuma are off by quite a large margin as you pointed out yourself. But you're really nitpicking over ridiculously obscure details here: this is a promotion website for a game, not some detailed scientific model that's the result of years and years of study, someone didn't earn their master's thesis in ancient history on this.

If I rember you said Firaxis couldn't win with me, and now you recognise the innacuracies yourself. Also I can quite confidently say, there is no bug. They put Alexander in Athens and Egyptians in Cairo because that is what people percieve as the heart of those civs. You completley skipped my argument about how a single leader "is" a civ.

And there is no need for years of study, it is farcical to claim so! All I want is consistency, either go with the "heartland" of the Civs (as in the case of Greece and France and Egypt) or have realistic cores of power according to what they were in the time of the leaders rule. It is very easy a high school student with a B in history could all of those right in one try.

Originally posted by Locutus
That text entry I have to say is exceptionally poorly written, but to be honest most of the Civilopedia in most Civ games are (in fact it wouldn't surprise me if it was copied directly from the Civ4 Civilopedia -- I would be surprised if it was made by the same person who made the map). These games and websites are not made by history majors (I came up with a lot of the historic stuff in Civ4 and my background is in Computer Science, just like most Firaxians), they provide you some historic flavour but if you really wanna learn about history there's no substitute from getting out and buying some real books.

Yes they are a direct rip off of Civ4's civilopedia. And yes civ is not a source of info. But I do expect some minimal standard, something that a 9 year old kid could use without his teacher pointing out blatant inconstencies.



You are arguing quite strongly for a very weake cause. It would take like 15 min to move those little circles and fix the darn website!

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I never said he came from the ther , please don't put words into my mouth. In fact in the up and coming polycast I explicitly mentioned he was of Kurdish descent.

I'm merely quoting your own post: "since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from".

Disagree, the differences betweeen lets say Russia and England are far bigger. Firstly the language barrier, secondly religus division, thirdly no common origin.

The differences between Arab factions are the same, or very similar to, the differences between European nations. There is no common Arab language, it's really a family of strongly deviant dialects. If a Moroccan, an Egyptian and an Iraqi met and wanted to have a conversation they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to understand 90% of what the other guys were saying, much like if an Englishman, a Norwegian and a Bulgarian came together. The religious divisions are there as well: some dynasties were Sunni, some Shi'a, some Sufi, etc. These religious differences are actually considerably larger than the differences between Anglicans, Catholics and Othrodox Christians. And Moroccans, Egyptians and Persians have no more common origins than Germans, Romanians and Spanish. In fact, if anything there is more variety in the heritage of the different 'Arab' peoples than with Europeans: at least 90% of Europe was once part of the Roman empire, or fell closely within its sphere of influence, and that fact still forms the basis of modern European culture. There's no such common heritage in the Arab world.

Under Muhamed. Granted it was not quite "grand" but it was pretty unified and it represented the common origin.
In Europe we don't have that we have Romanic, Germanic, Slavic and Celtic peoples.

Under Muhammad the Arab 'empire' was a small desert kingdom, it didn't even encompass half of present-day Saudi Arabia, that's not an empire by any stretch of the definition. It didn't grow into an empire until after his death, but that's also immediately where the first rift between different factions was born.

Virtually all of the Romanic, Germanic, Celtic and a major portion of the Slavic world was either Roman or fell closely under the Roman sphere of influence (and in case of the Slavic world later was very closely tied to Byzantium, if you consider that to be separate), and present-day European culture from Iceland to Russia and from Finland to Spain is still very heavily informed by this heritage (by the fact that they're all Christian nations alone).

But no, neither the Arabs nor the Europeans were ever a unified empire, which is exactly what my point was (although on this point I wasn't talking about Europe at all).

If I rember you said Firaxis couldn't win with me, and now you recognise the innacuracies yourself.

Yes, both are true. There are minor inaccuracies in the map, but when they DO get things right, like by putting Saladin in Egypt rather than in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or whatever other unhistorical place you'd put him, you still fault them for it.

Also I can quite confidently say, there is no bug. They put Alexander in Athens and Egyptians in Cairo because that is what people percieve as the heart of those civs.

How can you say that confidently? Did they tell you that, did you invent a mind-reading device? You are merely speculating based on ill-informed arguments, which isn't much more than I'm doing but at least I don't pretend differently. The fact that ALL Mediterranean civs are off by the EXACT same amount of pixels in the EXACT same direction smells very strongly like a bug/design error, not a deliberate design decision. As a programmer and web designer I've made these kind of mistakes myself plenty of times, it's really not uncommon.

And there is no need for years of study, it is farcical to claim so! All I want is consistency,

Then don't play Civ. Ever read the Civilopedia? The number of times that thing contradicts itself is astounding, although I guess it's no more inconsistent than the Bible, Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia, so maybe that's just an inevitable result when many people are working together on a single project...

You completley skipped my argument about how a single leader "is" a civ.

I'd merely be repeating myself: this is a game, not a history research project; it's made by many people who are all only human; there's no such thing as an 'Arab civilization' and Saladin was never was the ruler of Arabia, etc. The Civ 'universe' that was created in the last 12 years has thousands of inconsistencies, this is far from the biggest one. And yet it's still one of the most historically rich and accurate games ever made...

Yes they are a direct rip off of Civ4's civilopedia. And yes civ is not a source of info. But I do expect some minimal standard, something that a 9 year old kid could use without his teacher pointing out blatant inconstencies.

Well, you can't get it right either: you're misinformed about Saladin and Cleopatra, and if we'd talk more I'm sure you have misconceptions about plenty of other civs as well. Nobody's perfect, not you, not me and not Firaxis either. Don't hold them to higher standards than to ones you can hold yourself.

You are arguing quite strongly for a very weake cause. It would take like 15 min to move those little circles and fix the darn website!

How ironic It's you who's arguing so strongly, I'm merely trying to calm you down a bit with sense and reason. If it's just a few dots being out of place and a skin colour being off by a few degrees, what's it to you? Does your life depend on this promotional website (made by presumably a community manager and an art intern, or something along those lines) being historically perfectly accurate? Firaxis has a game to finish and 2K has about 2 dozen other games to promote and publish, I don't think this issue is very high on their list of priorities...

[snoopy369]

Locutus, you should be well aware that you come across much stronger than you intend to It's that unflinching Dutch spirit...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus


I'm merely quoting your own post: "since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from".

Again, please stop misrepresenting the situation, I am really tired of you doing that. You perfectly understand what I mean, but have taken advantage of the unintentional ambiguity of the original comment.

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Locutus your explanation, while tehnically plausible, is a bit far fetched, since firaxis is probably just going by where the civs are not where the civ leaders come from. Why else would they put Chatarine in the depts of Eurasia (beyond the Ural) and not closer to a center of her power or where she was born ( )?

Take a look at this sentence, I used “where they come from” as “country of residence”, the place they are associated with. If someone was born in Paris and went to live in London at the age of 9, they he would later in life become the mayor of London, would you say when introducing him “This is Smith he comes from Paris.”?

I admit it is a poorly formed paragraph, I am not a native speaker, I’m Slovenian. But I suppose I have no excuse right? You are convinced that anyone who speaks Slovenian or Bulgarian can be understood 90% by an Englishman, right?

But if I get back to it, if I had meant “where they come from” as in “where they where born” or “where they spent their childhood” the second part of the paragraph would have made no sense. The one referring to Catherine’s place of birth with the smiley (since placing her there would just confuse the hell out of some people).

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus
at least 90% of Europe was once part of the Roman empire, or fell closely within its sphere of influence, and that fact still forms the basis of modern European culture. There's no such common heritage in the Arab world.

The Roman empire


Europe



That combined with the "sphere of influence" as you termed it is not even 50% let alone 90%.

Yes, Rome had a very important influence on European culture, but this is because of the success of the Christianity (it’s Catholic and to a lesser extent its Orthodox branch) which spread elements of Roman culture and the succes of nations, peoples and states such as the
Byzantium Empire, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, France....

Originally posted by Locutus

Virtually all of the Romanic, Germanic, Celtic and a major portion of the Slavic world was either Roman or fell closely under the Roman sphere of influence (and in case of the Slavic world later was very closely tied to Byzantium, if you consider that to be separate)

You know there is a reason why the Romaic group is called Romanic; because it has strong ties to Roma culture. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italia and Romanian all derive from Latin which fractured into many languages during the middle ages.

The Celtic world is mostly lost to us since it was gobbled up by the Germanic language group and the Romanic one. Its only remaining fragments are minorities in the British Isles and in France, Brittany (called that for a reason since the people there actually came from the British Isles, the Celts who lived there before the Romans came were completely assimilated). So considering this it is no wonder their culture is similar! They have lived under these two groups for millennia!

The Germanic group was never under predominantly Roman influence! Sure Holland and places like Western Germany, Switzerland and Austria were, but places like Scandinavia never hear of the Romans.

Slavs only ever had contact (which we know of since it is possible some ot the Eastern European people the Romans encountered were Slavs) with the Byzantium! A entitiy which is best described as Greek. That is why eastern Europe mostly uses a different alphabet (derived from Greek) than its western half (which uses a Alphabets derived from the Roman one).

Originally posted by Locutus

(by the fact that they're all Christian nations alone).

Indonesia has the largest muslim population on the planet, this does not mean it is part of the "Arab world". All of the converting of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe was done by later Christian states not Rome. In fact many lands that were once part of the Roman emprie had to be converted all over again after pagan peoples displaced and assimilated the Romanic population. Also the reason other parts of the empire retained Christianity was either because the barbarians that arrived (like some of the Gothic peoples) were already Chirstian (altough heretical Christians, by Roman standards) or because they were governed by the Byzantium Empire.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Again, please stop misrepresenting the situation, I am really tired of you doing that. You perfectly understand what I mean, but have taken advantage of the unintentional ambiguity of the original comment.

I'm not misrepresenting anything, I used the EXACT same LITERAL phrasing you used (I even used quotation marks to emphasize that), how could that be misrepresenting? And no, I actually didn't understood what you meant, or I wouldn't have addressed it.

I was merely trying to clear up a minor point you made with a minor counter-point, it wasn't even remotely a big deal in my mind (it was half a sentence in a 600-word post) -- that's what you're making of it now. If it was a misunderstanding we had then it's good to have it cleared up and nice to know we're on the same page, but there's no need to make a huge deal out of it. I'm really not out to get you or anything, just trying to offer some alternative perspective on this matter and give some thoughts on the potential how and why of Firaxis and 2K's decisions...

That is not even 50% let alone 90%.

Only the very sparsely-inhabited far-north and most of the Soviet Union territory were basically not under Roman influence, but most of the people living there today are immigrants from the Balkan region (Slavs) or from Central Europe (Germanics) where Rome's influence was quite significant. You'd have a very hard case to make if you say Roman culture is NOT a major influence in modern Scandinavian and Russian culture -- Moscow has always claimed to be the Third Rome, their leaders long called themselves Tzars and the Russian Coat of Arms is a carbon-copy of the Byzantine one, they inherited their Orthodox religion from the Eastern Roman empire, Latin has had a significant influence on the Russian language, Russian art, architecture, morality, etc all have strong Roman influences, etc. Scandinavia is probably the least 'Romanised' part of Europe but in terms of language, religion, culture, etc they still derived much from Germany and Central Europe and copied the Roman influences from there.

Yes, European culture has evolved a lot over the centuries and there are large differences between Icelandics, Russians and Greeks, but there are also a lot of similarities. But my whole point is that the SAME trends exist in the Arab world. The difference between an Englishman, a Spanish and a Czech is no smaller than the difference between a Moroccan, an Egyptian and a Persian. I've been to all of those countries (well, except Iran), met all of these people (including plenty of Iranians) and studied their histories, cultures and languages (except for Farsi and Czech): just because they all look brown and speak gibberish to us doesn't mean they're all the same.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus
Only the very sparsely-inhabited far-north and most of the Soviet Union territory were basically not under Roman influence, but most of the people living there today are immigrants from the Balkan region (Slavs) or from Central Europe (Germanics) where Rome's influence was quite significant.

Ok, I am sorry but this is blatantly wrong.


Eastern Europe 300 BC


Likley spread of Slavic languages in the 6th century AD



You are confusing cause and effect among other things. The peoples in those regions acquired elemnts of Roman culture from their brethren who had migrated to former Roman territories or by peoples of other barbarian groups who had accepted elements of Roman culture. It didn’t happen the other way around (Romanized barbarians migrating to those regions).

Originally posted by Locutus

You'd have a very hard case to make if you say Roman culture is NOT a major influence in modern Scandinavian and Russian culture --

Fortunately this is not the case I am trying to make. I would kindly ask you something but I have been doing so the entire thread and I see little purpose in repeating myself.

Originally posted by Locutus
Moscow has always claimed to be the Third Rome, their leaders long called themselves Tzars and the Russian Coat of Arms is a carbon-copy of the Byzantine one, they inherited their Orthodox religion from the Eastern Roman empire,

All this is true, but tell me which was "second Rome"? You are making a strong case, which I would fully support on the profound influence of the Byzantines on Russia. You have yet however to explain to me how they where in the sphere of influence of the Romans (you know the guys who speak that latin gibberish )

Originally posted by Locutus
Latin has had a significant influence on the Russian language

And on a million other languages, many outside of Europe. If not by any other means then by many international scientific terms. Were all these languages in the sphere of influence of the Roman Empire?

Also the influence of Latin on the Russian is not that strong.

Originally posted by Locutus
Russian art, architecture, morality, etc all have strong Roman influences, etc.

And Indonesian art, arhitecture and morallity all have such Arab influences.

You are arguing against grouping together “the Arabs”, and the arguments you try to use to prove this by comparing them to Europeans, indicate they are grouped together but not only amongst themselves but with Persians, Pakistanis and Indonesians.



But to be serious those are the influences of Islam, just as similarity in the Western world mostly stems from Christianity. BTW Christian values were quite different than the values of “proper” Romans.

Originally posted by Locutus
Scandinavia is probably the least 'Romanised' part of Europe but in terms of language, religion, culture, etc they still derived much from Germany and Central Europe and copied the Roman influences from there.

See my many above points.

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, European culture has evolved a lot over the centuries and there are large differences between Icelandics, Russians and Greeks, but there are also a lot of similarities. But my whole point is that the SAME trends exist in the Arab world. The difference between an Englishman, a Spanish and a Czech is no smaller than the difference between a Moroccan, an Egyptian and a Persian. I've been to all of those countries (well, except Iran), met all of these people (including plenty of Iranians) and studied their histories, cultures and languages (except for Farsi and Czech): just because they all look brown and speak gibberish to us doesn't mean they're all the same.

We are talking about Arabs as in Saudies, Palestians and Syrians. You are trying to win the argument by misrepresenting my position! You are simpley expanding the region I supposedly claim should be one civ!

I never grouped the Persians or Turks with the Arabs! And BTW they have their own civ.



Yes there is a major divide in the arab world, as shown here:







They are diferent to an extent just as Russians and Belorussians or Ukranians but we only have a Russian civ because they are too similar despite their relativley large size.

And on a last point. Egypt is already a civ, the civliopedia of Civ3 and 4 describet their history all the way to Naser. Despite a change in language and several changes in religion and a complete change of the society. Identify with Ancient Egyptians as strongly as Italians with the Romans. They aren’t Ancient Egyptians, but the Italians aren’t Romans either. And in civ we don’t have Italy since they are too similar and start in the same spot.


So the Arab Egyptians already have a seperate civ.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

Under Muhammad the Arab 'empire' was a small desert kingdom, it didn't even encompass half of present-day Saudi Arabia, that's not an empire by any stretch of the definition. It didn't grow into an empire until after his death, but that's also immediately where the first rift between different factions was born.

But no, neither the Arabs nor the Europeans were ever a unified empire, which is exactly what my point was (although on this point I wasn't talking about Europe at all).

The Arabs would disagree, not only where they unfiied but they conquered the Spanish and Persians as well.




The "Arab World", personaly I would not include some states in western North Afirca, nor most of the Sudan.

Originally posted by Locutus

Yes, both are true. There are minor inaccuracies in the map, but when they DO get things right, like by putting Saladin in Egypt rather than in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or whatever other unhistorical place you'd put him, you still fault them for it.

Not true. Sladin did not rule from the Sudan. If they had put him in Egypt I would have been the first to applaud them, if they had gotten other less obscure stuff right as well. I mean the Aztecs? Dosen't firaxis know where Mexico City is? If you know nothing else just aim for that when placing the Aztecs and I will swallow it.