Civs included. Just the facts madam 2.

[Mark_Lipovrovskiy]

I'm Jewish! I identify myself with Jews! lol.
Once civ3 comes out I'll have to make myself do that scenario I wanted... Something that has to do with either modern Israel or the ancient kingdoms...

[Colon™]

Yes, the Jews appear to be a special case...

[Locutus]

Mark,
Oops, I now see I made a total fool out of myself Apparently I didn't read your posts very carefully last night and missed a couple of smilies and some sentences that indicated that your insults to the Jewish people were just self-mockery, so I thought you were an Palistian with strong feelings against the Israelis I apologize if I insulted you in any way. Let's just say I was very tired last night... (In any case, you seem to severely underestimate the importance of your own nation: the Jews are one of the oldest and more important civs in history, they can't be dismissed offhand as a possibility for inclusion in a Civ game)
The main reason for trying to get the discussion away from the Arabs was the fear that some of our residental Jews would be insulted. It was still getting off-topic of course but I'll be the first to admit that I myself am guilty of taking the discussion off-topic at times as well. So on that ground alone I wouldn't have interfered, though I would still appreciate it if everyone at least tried not to wander too far from the original discussion...

LotM,
I can see your point and from a historian's point of view it's a very good one. The thing is though, Civilization is a game. If you'd really want to, you could name the civs A, B, C, D, etc. and the cities A1, A2, B3, D15, etc. but that way you would completely miss the point of 'rewriting history in your own way', as a Civ game is supposed to let you do. To allow people to do this you need civs with unique properties and behaviour that are similar to important real-life civs. If you make a game with a very large number of small, specific civs and model them after reality you would end up playing games with the Chavin, Picts, Songhai, Moghul and Khmer as opponents. I'm sure some of the history buffs among us would love it but the average Civ player probably never even heard of any of those civs so the atmosphere is gone (for many people this was already the case with CtP and CtP2).
OTOH, if you would play with very generic civs (like the Slavs, Mesoamericans, Germanics, Romanic), they would be so generic that they don't mean much to people anymore and you won't be able to add unique properties to these civs as the various subgroups in this group are so different. If you put the Dutch, English, German and various Scandinavian countries in 1 civ (the Germanics), should it focus on conquest (ala the Germans), trade (ala the Dutch) or colonization (English)? Should they be aggressive backstabbers (Germans) or trustworthy diplomats (Dutch)? Etc. Not to mention the problems you'd have picking leaders, unique units, flags, city names, etc. In any case, the average player won't be able to see the link between the game and real-life. In addition, I don't think it would be possible to come up with more than 4 or 5 civs per continent (except maybe Asia), so you could never have more than 25 odd civs, which makes it impossible to have 'generic civs and lots of them'.
So if you ask me, the solution should be somewhere in between, a compromise between the 2 approaches. So IMHO it should be possible to treat the Slavs, Bantu, Mongols and Chinese as a single civ while the English, French, German, Incans, Aztecs and Mayans can be split up - even though in reality the situation was more complex. Of course, as always when making compromises, everyone will have something to complain about...

Gramphos,
I think the rumor that there are only 16 civs is older than the oldest screenshot (though I'm not 100% certain of that). But even if it's not, I don't think it matters. Most (though not all) of the civs that occur in the earlier screenshots can also be seen in later screenshots but they still have the same color (though the colors themselves changes slightly: in the earliest screenshots they are very faded while they are much brighter in the newer screenshots). Also, not every civ has it's own unique color but there are 2 civs tied to 1 color, ala Civ1: I noticed that there are 8 different colors for the 16 civs. 5 colors are assigned to 2 civs, 3 only to 1 civ, while of the 3 other civs no color has been seen yet. If all this is just a coincidence I'll eat my hat...

BTW, Joseph, I guess this is off-topic but I don't know where else to post it. You mentioned a couple of times in this thread that 'noone really knows how long the Polynesians have been on the Pacific Islands'. I did some research on Polynesia (unrelated to this thread) and discovered that this is in fact incorrect, it is very well known: they started inhabiting the Pacific from 1500 BC onwards (from Asia) and had all islands colonized by 1000 AD. Two good sources are http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/polynesian2.html and http://www.iaora.com/NatHist/polynesian_history.htm.


So far, based on our evidence, we know that (no changes):

100% CONFIRMED. These civs ARE in CIV 3:

1. AMERICANS - Leader (Abraham Lincoln; 100% confirmed), city names (capital), Unique Unit (F15) -> Light blue
2. GERMANS - Unique Unit (Panzer), city names (capital), multiple text references, video reference -> Dark blue
3. CHINESE - Leader (Mao Zedong; 100% confirmed), city names -> Light blue
4. ROMANS - Leader (C. Julius Ceasar), city name (capital), Unique Unit (Legion), video reference -> Red
5. FRENCH - Leader (Joan of Arc(?); 100% confirmed), city names (capital), dialogue window of the French (Unique Unit: Musketeer?) -> Pink
6. RUSSIANS - Unique Unit (MiG), city names -> Grey
7. ZULUS - Unique Unit (Impi), city names -> Yellow
8. ENGLISH - Leader (Elisabeth I; 100% confirmed), (Unique Unit: Man-at-Arms?)
9. EGYPTIANS - Leader (100% pharaoh, does anyone know who this is?), definite text reference, city names (capital) -> Yellow
10. INDIANS - Leader (Mahatma Ghandi; 100% confirmed)
11. MONGOLS (50%) or JAPANESE (50%) - one of these two is certainly in but which one is still open for debate, evidence consists of a Leader (Genghis Kahn or not?) and a possible Japanese Unique Unit (Samurai(?))
12. IROQUOIS - Leader (Hiawatha; 100% confirmed), city names, text references, Unique Unit (75% Unique Unit - 25% Military Leader) -> Grey
13. GREEKS - Leader (Alexander the Great, city names (capital), possible Unique Unit (Hoplite), text reference, video reference -> Green


EVIDENCE ABOUT OTHER CIVS (which means they could be in or not):

14. PERSIANS - City names (capital) -> Brown?
15. BABYLONIANS - City name -> Red
16. AZTECS - City names -> Pink


SUGGESTIONS BASED ON CLUES (weak clues but we report them):

17. SPANISH - City name: Salamanca, but it was once a Roman city and there's also an Iroquois city with that name.
18. VIKINGS (?) Very weak clues. See above mention URL for the boat: Viking Longboat?
19. ISRAELIS. Apolytoner Eli has pointed out that according to a israeli site, Israel is in.
20. CANADIANS. City name (Montreal). The city name is NOT on the map, but on a civ 3 window.
21. CONFEDERATES. As refered to in a swedish article, a Great Military Leader in Civ 3 could be Stonewell Jackson. Apolytoner Arator argued that this leader is impossible to be in the same civ as Lincoln (=100% confirmed leader of the Americans). Many other Apolytoners disagree though, arguing that he's more likely to be an American, among other reasons because (as joseph1944 pointed out) he served for the American Army before joinging the Confederates.
22. PHOENICIANS. Based on a single text reference in a preview.


--------------------------------------------------------
The evidence is categorized as such:

Leader= We have a picture of the leader of the corresponting civ.
Unique Unit= We know that the particular unique unit belongs to the corresponding civ
Text reference= The civ has been mentioned by Firaxis in their web site or in interviews by their CEO
Video reference= The civ was seen in Firaxis demo movie from E3.
City names= The names of cities that clearly belong to the corresponding civ are included in scrrenshots of the game
All other clues= All other clues are reported next to the civ name.
-> Color Indicates in which color(s) the civ has been seen in in-game screenshots.

-------------------------CIV FACTS-----------------------

+ Firaxis said the made NO official announcement regarding the number of civs that may or may not be included in the game.
+ In a Gamespot article its says that civs will be 16.
+ An israeli site says that civs will be 16
+ In an IGN preview it says that there will be 16 civs.
+ By now, many other sources have also claimed that the total number of civs in Civ3 will be 16.

--------------------------POINTERS-------------------------

* The city names in the screen shots can be from an extra city names list or could have been arbitrarily written be members of Firaxis. So city names in screenshots doesn't guarantee that a civ will be in. Examples: Kerplakistan and Huntsville, possibly others.
* Another problem could be scenarios. Though city names alone are not enough evidence to include a civ on the 100% certain list and scenario-specific graphics are not likely to be made public until the game is in late beta (if they even exist at all), it's quite possible that some of the evidence we used in this list is based on scenario specific information and not be valid for the regular game.

[Locutus]

Mark, Colon,
The solution to having too many Western civs would IMHO not be to simply merge very different civs such as the French and English (or whatever) but to just add more civs (32 rather than 16 FE). With 16 more civs one could add maybe 3 or 4 more European nations (FE Dutch, Austrians, Polish, Celts, Spanish) and 12 or so other nations (FE Inca, Maya, Olmec, Israel, Arabia, Byzantine, Khmer, Birma, Japan/Mongolia, Korea, Polynesia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Bantu/Zimbabwe, Mali, etc).

[Provost Harrison]

On the Mongol/Japanese debate. Look at the backdrop. That is definitely not typical Mongol architecture seen around the time of Genghis Khan. The Mongols were primarily nomadic. The background is definitely Japanese.

[Colon™]

Provost, I had the same though and the guy's hat, or at least the bit we can view, also seemed Japanese to me. However, after having seen several pictures of Mongolian buildings and uniforms, I think it is possible guy really is a Mongolian, if a modern, non-nomadic one. (the video's could reflect the time period)

The least you can say is that it is incomprehensible that most people say it is Mongolian, since it’s simply too hard to tell.

[Colon™]

Locutus, no need to address that to me, I was just being pedantic and lecturing Mark about the French.
I’m fairly satisfied with the civs as stated above and beside the Japanese there isn't really one I'd miss.

[Gramphos]

Locutus,
The last time a preview said that there only would be 16 civs did they also say that all 16 would be playable at once. This might of course just be a combination of the rumor about total 16 civs and that Firaxis said to them that there would be 16 civs playable at the same time. Anyway, there "must" be 16 colors if 16 civs shall be able to play at the same time.

[Footie Mad]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Locutus,
Anyway, there "must" be 16 colors if 16 civs shall be able to play at the same time.

So what are the new colours? The only new one i've seen is the pink french.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Wille
So what are the new colours? The only new one i've seen is the pink french.

I've no idea, hope I'll find out later.

[Locutus]

PH,
I agree with Colon here. The Mongols conquered almost all of Asia, that background could be almost any Asian city that has such an architecture. Also recall how the houses behind the Iroquois leader weren't Iroquois houses. Firaxis went wrong in this area before, they could have done it again.
I also agree with Colon that it's simply too hard to tell who it is on basis of this leader pic alone, that's why I made the percentages 50/50 and moved the Japanese up in the first place.

Ok, sorry Colon.

Gramphos,
Ah, ok. Now I get it. You mean you still attach any importance to that preview? You silly Sweed In any case, you're right: if 16 civs are playable at the same time then each civ must have it's own color. However, in the latest PC Zone screenshots both the Americans and Chinese have the color light blue. Conclusion: no 16 civs are playable at the same time (8 seems to be the most likely number at this moment, but we don't know the role&color of the barbarians yet).
Wille, the pink of the French isn't even new: the Aztec had the same color in an early screenshot (though it was still faded pink back then).

[Gramphos]

Locutus,
Have you joined OfAPeCiClu?
You have to be more optimistic.

Regarding the Barbarians I think I've read somewhere in a preview that they will have encampments, (cities), and when you win over one of the cities they will just move out to the fog of war and create a new one. As that come they might be a Civ, with some specific rules. (Maybe the Mongols).
Can someone help me find that info (if it exists). When I'm back to work after the Summer I'll search myself, but as long as I use a modem I'll stay to what I remember, but as I've read many suggestions, I might mess things up. Hope I don't.

[Mark_Lipovrovskiy]

Originally posted by Locutus
Conclusion: no 16 civs are playable at the same time (8 seems to be the most likely number at this moment, but we don't know the role&color of the barbarians yet)

I think (wishful thinking perhaps) that the conclusion is that there are MORE than 16 civs - since somewhere somebody from Firaxis said that there would be more than 8 playable at once. And that means that either the different colors are just something they put there to confuse us or that there in fact are more than 16 different civs to choose from. I do think that it's possibe and even probable.

Also, Locutus: No offence taken.

[Warm Beer]

Originally posted by Gangerolf


It looks like a woman. My guess is Kleopatra. She's awfully dark-skinned for an Egyptian though.

Not to mention, Cleopatra was actually Greek... The Ptolmeiac ruler of the Egyptians.

[MarkG]

Ptolemaic


there is a city near my home town named Ptolemaida