The 18 Civilizations.

[Dinner]

Art for Liz from the Civ5 site.

[Boris Godunov]

Greece is confirmed in the Gamespot preview.

[Will9]

I'm not convinced yet that the Songhai and the Mongols not simply will be city states that are misunderstood by to be real civs by us.

The ign preview says Songhai is conquering a city-state. That would seem to indicate that it is a civ.

The one we saw playing out had the Songhai starting out very close to the city-state of Rio de Janeiro. Askia, leader of the Songhai, is very conquest-oriented, so it's no surprise that he tends towards military action. His civilization immediately went into warrior-rush mode and he soon had six warriors heading off to capture Rio.

[Dinner]

Greece is confirmed in the Gamespot preview.

Then that gives us 17 of the 18 civs. What do you think the 18th will be? Persia? Spain? Vikings?

[Dinner]

Another of Bismark.

[OzzyKP]

Nope, no inside info from me.
Maybe they were large, but what's their impact except being large? A civilization needs to accomplish more to be among the big ones, imho. I never liked their presence in civ. Same with the Vikings. Good warmongers, but culturally not that interesting.

Warmonging has a pretty big effect on the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#Legacy

[Iván de Aluche]

I hope Spain, mainly because I am Spanish.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Vikings

I want to go viking again

[Theben]

Vikings and Mongols both had long reaching effects on civilizations, and not just the "we killed people" kind of effect. Vikings started plenty of trading towns, and the Mongols became rulers of several lands after the Horde went home.

[Dinner]

The Vikings were great on sea maps. The early amphib attacks could really take people by surprise.

[Ming]

The Vikings were great on sea maps. The early amphib attacks could really take people by surprise.

Yeah... they can be really fun in our MP games. Most people don't expect a sea based attack. They rarely defend their "back" cities, usually keeping their armies near the front. While the AI usually defends their back cities a little better, a surprise sea launched attack can be fun. Nothing better than taking their capital before they even know what hit them.

[wodan11]

Most people don't expect a sea based attack.

You know who else they don't expect?

[Ming]

Now THAT I should have expected

[Wernazuma III]

Dude, it's Civilization. You're creating your own history. Simply for balance on an Earth map, you need a diverse geographic sampling of civs, not only the most important civs.

In the long run, the Dutch have been overshadowed by other European civs, even though they might be one of the 18 greatest civs in world history.

We could repeat the 2007 civilizations hurt or heal, with,say, 100 civs, 20 points each, two points hurt, one heal.

[Provost Harrison]

So will we get the Jamaicans in this time?