Realistic Starting Nations

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Paul Saunders
I'm not happy with any civ starting in America. However realistic it might be in real life, it isn't in the game, they just don't develop realistically. In game terms the civs in America were little more than barbarians by the time the Europeans got there, and they walked right over them. Including any Americans in the game causes too much development of the continent. The only way to get a reasonably realistic late game "colonisation of the New World" is to leave it empty IMO.

Actually, the Aztec empire is considered by many to be culturally centuries ahead of the Spanish when the two made contact.

[Willem]

Re: Realistic Starting Nations

Originally posted by Paul Saunders
Although the Vikings are known to have reached America quite early on in history, they didn't settle there so it probably wasn't practical to do so given the technology of the time.
Paul

On the contrary, they've uncovered a Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada that seemed to have done fairly well for awhile. Speculation is that they were destroyed by a native attack, and no other ships were sent to repopulate the settlement.

[BenRDeemed]

What would also make the game more interesting is in the racail attributes would change over time.

The Romans, for instance, could start as military and expansionist reflecting the Roman empire. They could then in the middle ages change to more of a religious/commercial or religios/scientific to reflect the Italian base of the Catholic church and the Renissance (sp?). Today they would be... maybe still religious and commercial.

The German concept could start out militaristic and expansionist, reflecting the tendancies of the so called Barbarians. Become more scientifc later (reflecting the great German science) and then in modern ages becoming militaristic/industrial reflecting the 20th century.

It would make an interesting game one of the two racial charactoristics changed every age. Maybe even an option for that change to be random, just to add spice to the game.

[Locutus]

Damn, I told myself not to visit these Civ3 forums again but I was looking potentially useful info for my own (CtP2) mod when I found this thread. I simply couldn't resist replying... I admit I didn't read the whole thread but I did read the part of it discussing Africa and I have a few comments on it:

I fail to see how virtually everyone (both on these forums and esp. IRL) always seems to come to the conclusion that Africa had no history before the Europeans came along or never had any great empires (except Egypt) just because they don't know about anything about it. Granted, many of it's empires weren't quite as great as the Romans or Chinese but some aren't *that* far behind on these truly great civs and many others are at least worth mentioning.

One big mistake people make when it comes to African history is to assume that this continent is inhospitable and therefore is unsuitable to allow great civilizations to prosper. However, this inhospitality is really only a fairly recent situation: Africa used to be much more fertile in the past, it only gradually grew warmer and less hospitable over the centuries (think about this: if Africa is too inhospitable to support any great civilizations, how can it be that the (today) equally inhabitable Middle East had so many?). The regions around the southern Nile, the Niger and the Zambezi all used to be far more fertile than they are today and provided a very rich food base for the people living there (food is by far the most important ingredient for building a great civilization). In many cases, it was erosion and overusing the land - in other words, the very fact that there were civilizations - which eventually caused desertification and with that the collapse of any civilizations present.

Also, thanks to the Live Aid concerts in the eighties, everyone knows Ethiopia is today mostly a barren land and millions of people there are suffering from starvation (among other things). But think about it: how is it possible that millions of people live there if there's no food? The answer is that the coastal regions of Ethiopia were actually quite fertile just 100 years ago and were even amongst the most fertile in the world in the time of the Romans. It is mainly warfare and poor politics which has destroyed all the good farmland over the last century.

South West Africa on the other hand, has always been dominated by jungle rather than rich farmland. But while for Western people jungle means a high humidity, dangerous wildlife and exotic and deadly diseases (did the plague stop Europe from dominating the world?), for Africans it means very diverse and fertile land, filled with large quantities of food, minerals, medicine and other resources (among which not in the last place the very wildlife Western people see as dangerous). Still, even though conditions in Africa aren't/weren't nearly as harsh as many people tend to think, many parts of this continent still lack some important commodities. This doesn't mean however that great civilizations can't arise, it just means trade is the magic word...

Africa had many great civilizations. Maybe not as many as Europe or the Middle East and maybe many (but not all) of them were less important than the most important European and Asian civilizations, but simply dismissing Africa as a continent for empire building is merely a display of ignorance. I won't blame anyone for such ignorance though: the reason for this ignorance is a flawed education system rather than a lack of interest or arrogance. To fight this ignorance, I've compiled a short list of the most important African civilizations and a brief description of each of them on my website (skip the introduction, I already posted it here). These descriptions by no means do justice to the greatness of these civilizations so if you want more info, there's an awful lot to find about them on the Internet (if necessary, I can provide some good links on most of these civs, feel free to contact me). If you ask me, any decent Civ game (with 16 civs) should have at least 2, preferably 3 African civs to accurately reflect real history (and no, the Zulus should not be one of them). My personal preference would go to Egypt, Ethiopia and Mali but Zimbabwe would be a very good choice too, especially for filling south Africa.

One last comment: Ozymandias, you place the Bantu in Kenya. I'm very pleased to see you've at least heard of the Bantu but, leaving aside the fact that they hardly qualify as a civ but are really just a language group (I can see at least some sense in that and even advocated including the Bantu in Civ3 myself a couple of months ago), their native territory was in Cameroon/Nigeria, not Kenya. From there they spread south and west. Placing them in Kenya makes about as much sense as placing the Romans in England. Also, they are generally assumed to have originated somewhere between 500 BC and 200 AD, long after 4000 BC.

List of most important African civs (see website for more civs and descriptions):

1. Egypt
2. Aksum/Ethiopia
3. Sahelian Kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, Songhai)
4. Zimbabwe
5. Swahili Kingdoms
6. Benin
7. Nubia (Kingdom of Kush)
8. (Carthage - could be seen as Asian as well)

[Willem]

Plus we mustn't forget that if it weren't for humans migrating OUT of Africa, there wouldn't have been ANY civilizations of any sort, anywhere in the world.

[Quasar1011]

>>> Another way to help would be to create a "slowdown" effect... for example, start the aztec and co all jumbled together around alaska, and force them to make their way down to hospitable lands, either through breaking through the rocky mountains (through having their workers clear the way, which, early on, as well know, is LONG), or walking all the way down to central mexico on the coast.

I actually created a Civ2 scenario like this, although it would be more accurate to compare it to Noah's ark. I built 3 large, lush continents. In the middle, I connected them with a group of mountains. I placed each starting location/settler for the 7 civs in the mountains. They all had to search for suitable city sites outside of the mountain area. Maybe I will make such a map for Civ3, could still be interesting!
-Daryl