No Spanish Civ????

[Dr. Nick]

I had prepared a post answering each part of kitten's and Ribannah's posts. It was long. I could have posted it, but I decided not to degrade myself to this bickering. Kitten entered the argument like an idiot, uneducated, impolite, arrogant. Supremacist. The kind that left Britain and subjugated the Indians and various other African tribes, and wiped out a lot of people in the name of White Man's Burden.

The exclusion of any latin civ is not good. It takes away a lot of flavour to the game, as latin/hispanic is a completely different culture. My two cents.

[kittenOFchaos]

How can I politely tell you that you aren't in the game for a reason whilst the Zulus are??? I merely outlined some possible reasons why Firaxis chose that...

As for uneducated...want to list your credentials? I'll list mine dude...I maybe arrogant and indelicate but I CERTAINLY am not uneducated.



NOTE: the thread with confusion as to why the Spanish weren't in...I tried to give possible reasons...e.g lack of scientific accomplishment etc...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Spain did not even exist as a nation until 1469, and it took until 1492 to regain the entire territory from the Moors, with Granada the last region to fall.

Yes, and Britain didnt exist as a nation until the Act of Union in 1707(date?) yet few of us have any difficulty in identifying the continuity of Britain with England, and with Wessex going all the way back to the Anglo-Saxon invasions.

Similary it is easy to see the continuity of Spain with Castile and Aragon, and the Visigothic kingdoms going back to the fall of Rome.


LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Spain did not even exist as a nation until 1469, and it took until 1492 to regain the entire territory from the Moors, with Granada the last region to fall.
They got rid of all Muslims and Jews, and with the estabishment of the Inquisition everyone who was not Roman Catholic quickly followed. Thus the Spanish civilization took shape, it wasn't pretty.

As info rib, England expelled its Jews in the 1290's. They were finally re-admitted by Cromwell. They were not given full civl rights until the 1820's. Im quite sure Spain gave Jews full civil rights by the time of the Republic, at the latest.

So total period from expulsion to full civil rights - England 530years. Spain - 430 years.


LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ribannah


Yep, that wasn't pretty either. I just read about a single tribe: 500 treaties made, NONE of them honoured by the USA. In fact, almost half never got ratified - now where did we hear that last part before, recently? .
But, that was after the colony (colonies) became independent, and since Firaxis did include the USA as a separate civ we can't blame the English & friends .

Perhaps you've done some reading about the extermination of the Australian aborigines? that all took place where Britain was sovereign, so perhaps you will accept some blame there? nd you might read "the fatal shore" to get an idea of some things Britain did to British white people, as well. Not pretty, no, not pretty.

LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Stefan Härtel
Hey, people, why don't you stop this bashing?
It appears like noone has learnt anything.
I understand and agree with the viewpoint of the Spanish posters here, and I sympathize with their effort of defending themselves and their country and culture which they rightfully love and are proud of.
I also recognize that not everybody agrees with this. If there is anything stereotype here, it's the education of everybody to this old-new world dualism.
I am schocked however to see that the people here are actually flaming themselves.
I, as a German, could feel just as offended. A couple of weeks ago there was a collumn which mentioned the ideal civ-specific unit for the Germans as the Panzers. In my opinion there would be others that would be even more significant for the German civilization. but I didn't complain, because, even if we all agree that this is a tremendously fun and creative way to spend our free time, hell, it's just a game, and if it becomes the object of international arguments we'll never be able to live together. Yes, this sounds pathetic, I agree, but as a matter of fact this phrase was quoted from an American song. Not a communist one but one I learnt at school over there. Interestingly enough it is precisely the Americans and Canadians who are the most aggressive ones here.

My two cents to that topic.

Stefan, I love your scenarios (im currently struggling with Dareios) but with all due respect I must disagree. To say "its only a game" is equivalent of saying "its only a movie" or "its only a book" I believe that cultural products matter, they inform peoples views of the world, much though we deny any outside influences on our thoughts. Culture matters. My own favorite for the German special unit is "weimar intellectuals" and i believe at least a few of them would agree.

My own favorite solution of course is generic civs. I believe that generic civs, at least for the basic 6000 year game, was the ture expression of the civ view of history, and had the added merit of avoiding the kind of nastiness we see here.

LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Spain did not even exist as a nation until 1469, and it took until 1492 to regain the entire territory from the Moors, with Granada the last region to fall.
They got rid of all Muslims and Jews, and with the estabishment of the Inquisition everyone who was not Roman Catholic quickly followed. Thus the Spanish civilization took shape, it wasn't pretty.

In 1519 Spain defeated the Aztecs and took control of Mexico. The Incas and Peru were next in 1531-1533. Around that time one could say that they took the #1 spot of world powers, ahead of the Portuguese, Ottoman Turks and others.
In 1580 they even gained Portugal by marriage. One year later the Dutch declared independence and in 1588 the decline of the Spanish empire began with the sinking of the Armada. They lost Portugal in 1640, and when the Habsburg dynasty died out in 1700 a succesion war started, won by the French who put the Bourbons on the throne in 1714. Long before 1700 Spain had lost their lead to the Dutch, the English and the French, they never had full control of the territories they had seized by force.

Spain ended their reign with less citizens than when they started, unable to be self-supporting. They made no technological discoveries whatsoever. Basically what happened was: they inherited both land and a war engine by intrigue, and used it to plunder newly discovered territories where they destroyed existing peaceful civilizations bringing nothing but terror, disease and death.

spain didnt inherit its military machine, it built it, unless you maintain the absurd fiction that the 15thc castillians were not Spaniards. You might as well say that Britain did not build its navy, but inherited it (from England)

Yes they gained power through royal marriage - i take it you have at least some awareness of how england and scotland were joined ( i believe similar intrigues played a role in the original rise of Wessex) And the English were none to reluctant to use intrigue to gain control of France during the hundred years war.


Peaceful civs? if you think that the Aztecs were a peaceful civ, you are not fully informed on the history of pre-columbian america.


During the Falklands war i attended a university with students from all over the world. The only ones who were as intensely partisan for the Argentinian side were the Indians, and IIRC, the Irish. This was no coincidence. The english have done there fair share of plunder, terror, disease and death.


As for science, i must again recall that spains geniues has lain more in the realm of art, literature, and music.

Where is the English equivalent of Picasso, Goya, Velazquez, Dali? Diego Rivera?


LOTM


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[Harlan]

This is already old, but I'm just looking at that "Spanish" rock drawing for the first time. That's the most sorry evidence I've ever seen.

That pyschic website, while interesting, is completely half-baked. Many Asians visited Australia from long ago, but that website seems to think only Europeans can discover anything. The northern shore of Australia (around Darwin) has a tremendous amount of sea cucumbers for years, and the Chinese and others collected them over a thousand years before the Europeans got there. Many foreign ships still come there today for the same purpose. Sea cucumbers always were and still are very expensive luxury foods, like truffles or caviar.

On a totally unrelated point, some people here seem to think that the Spanish civ would only begin around the time of Spanish unification in the late 1400s. I disagree. There was a thriving yet little known advanced civilization in the Seville / Cordoba region from about 800 BC.

This people have remained unique ever since. The saving grace was the Pyranees Mountains. Many conquerors, including the Romans, Visigoths, and Muslims, conquered Iberia. The conquerors imposed foreign cultures, but never succeeding in converting everyone. In particular, all of these conquerors never quite subdued all of the Pyranees (except for the Romans for a time). New kingdoms appeared in the Pyranees area in the 400s AD, and there were kingdoms continuously independent from that time on. It was from these mountain bases that the reconquest began, and over many centuries eventually conquered all of Iberia.

So the Spanish go way back, IMHO, even though the names have changed. If you look at time, the Spanish civ reached a level of advanced civilization before most of the official ones (800 BC). All the official civs in the game have been conquered by foreign powers at some time or another, many for centuries, except the relatively new Russians and Americans. Thanks to the new civ concept of culture, a civilization's existence is not necessarily synonymous with it having a unified politically independent entity.

Civ3 would be really great in my opinion, if your civ could be completely conquered, yet your culture survive, and then after some turns where only the computer AI is playing, a revolt is sparked and your civilization comes back from its political death. That would be a lot of fun, to even win after coming back from the dead.

[Harlan]

As a preemptive strike on those who would claim there was no substantial native civilization in Iberia prior to the Romans, here's something I found on the net:

Tartessus

Tartessus was the first indigenous historical kingdom in Spain, based in the Andalusia region. This kingdom grew wealthy and advanced surprisingly early, mostly due to the large mineral wealth nearby. Its founding remains unknown, but the Phoenicians established a colony in Cadiz in 1100 B.C. to trade with it. Cadiz was founded 500 years before more famous Phoenician settlements like Carthage, and in fact is the first city on mainland Europe, since the capital and other cities of the Tartessians remain unknown.

The Tartessians had a writing system (as yet untranslated) but almost no literature has survived. The Tartessians are mentioned frequently by the Greeks and Romans however, and are even mentioned in the Bible (as the Tarshish). The Tartessians traded widely along the African and European coasts, including trade with the British Isles for the tin found there.

The Tartessians kept a record of written laws, had advanced farming practices, knew how to manufacture metals, and developed large urban centers. Their kingdom was destroyed around 500 B.C. by the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians occupied the coastal areas, and inland the Tartessians were replaced by other, smaller Iberian kingdoms.

----

Sounds pretty Civ3 worthy to me! The Germans, French, British, and even Greeks (unless you count the Minoans) and Romans don't go that far back.

[Stefan Härtel]

Stefan, I love your scenarios (im currently struggling with Dareios) but with all due respect I must disagree. To say
"its only a game" is equivalent of saying "its only a movie" or "its only a book" I believe that cultural products matter,
they inform peoples views of the world, much though we deny any outside influences on our thoughts. Culture
matters. My own favorite for the German special unit is "weimar intellectuals" and i believe at least a few of them
would agree.

My own favorite solution of course is generic civs. I believe that generic civs, at least for the basic 6000 year game,
was the ture expression of the civ view of history, and had the added merit of avoiding the kind of nastiness we see
here.

LOTM

Well, I do think that not including the Spaniards in this game is a very fundamental mistake. But the discussion here has become more than that.

In any way, perhaps Civ is a bit more than a game. But we still shouldn't take it that serious. If it offers grounds for peaceful political and historical discussion that is wonderful. If it however is the trigger for flame wars, I think people should reconsider the usage of their leisure.

Other than that, I don't think the recent sollution to the game itself is a great improvement. It appears like editing the game for your own pleasure as in Civ2 will not be possible. My personal enjoyment from the game has been the fact that you can change it yourself.

PS: Glad you like my scenarios! Any comments and thoughts welcome

[kittenOFchaos]

Glad you agreed with me Harlan concerning the rock-paintings on that wierd website (I wonder how he ever found it)...shows my judgement ain't all that wrong!


...its just a game that will be VERY much a part of our lives (civ2 was!) so it IS important.

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Perhaps you've done some reading about the extermination of the Australian aborigines? that all took place where Britain was sovereign, so perhaps you will accept some blame there? nd you might read "the fatal shore" to get an idea of some things Britain did to British white people, as well. Not pretty, no, not pretty.

Since I am not British, I won't accept the blame
But the fact that others behaved badly, too, is never an excuse for your own mischief.

By the way, I never said that there was no civilization in Iberia before the Spanish. There was civilization in Italy, too, before the Romans. They just weren't Romans.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Ribannah


Since I am not British, I won't accept the blame
But the fact that others behaved badly, too, is never an excuse for your own mischief.

Though I don't want to enter the debate regarding Spain at this point, I do not think that (assumed) atrocities by a civilization/nation can be a valid reason for exclusion, nor is it very relevant information in this context. So I see little need to point them out.

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy
Though I don't want to enter the debate regarding Spain at this point, I do not think that (assumed) atrocities by a civilization/nation can be a valid reason for exclusion, nor is it very relevant information in this context. So I see little need to point them out.

Neither do I, Grim Legacy, there would hardly be any tribe left!
It is, however, relevant to point out the differences between the Spanish and other empires. Just making a claim to the Pope and raiding a territory apparently made the Spanish empire look larger and more important to some, compared to the colonial governments as established by the English and the trading posts of the Dutch. It helps explain why Spain was not included.

[Dr. Nick]

For one, Britain also inherited a war machine and a battle hardened navy with nothing to do. They needed to increase their economy and they took it out by taking over foreign economies and forcing them to sell raw materials to Britain for low prices and forcing them to buy the manufactured commodities at alsmost unpayable prices. They used their navy to project their power and eventually took over the lands to protect British interests. They had a commercial empire made up of areas of British commerce and areas of interest made in order to act as buffer zones in case of war.

Simply what every other empire did.

The Spanish, on another hand, stumbled upon America and decided to put what they had into good use and increase commerce. First they set up trading posts, then they occupied the land and governed it in order to protect their interests.

In other words, the Spanish have as big a claim to fame as the French, British, Germans, Dutch, Romans, Greeks and pretty much anyone who extended their borders beyond what started out as their motherland.


On a side note, yay for the Irish and Indians