No Spanish Civ????

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
Grim, what is laughable to me is to blandish a "it's so much work" excuse not to do something. If there are technical problems then that's an entirely different matter. Sorry if I did not make myself clear enough on this particular point. I was not attacking your take on this at all.

Oh, ok, no problem at all. I agree with you even!

[SITS]

On a semi-serious note have you considered contacting various Spanish based embassies to ask them to put pressure on Firaxis because of this slight to their history? A whole generation of Americans are going to be ignorant of important parts of history etc.....

It might work...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snapcase
*shrug* You have to have a cutoff somewhere. I probably would have put it at 14 myself. However, I'm sure they've laboured with every possible number while writing the design docs. I don't think its pure coincidence. Anyway, that was vaguely adressed at LOTM and the rest of the "64 civs!" crowd.

OK - I'll take it on.

What is the rationale for a 14 cutoff instead of 64 cutoff? Too hard to create more? Yet whenever someone complains they are told how easy it is to create more with the editor - if firaxis jsut did that and shipped them with the game it would cut off all this stupid debate.

Is it the art? multiple leader graphics for each civ? now i may not be in the graphic doesnt matter at all crowd, but is that really a worthwhile trade-off?

Or is it the need to playtest and balance the "unique" civs. Thats what i think is the issue. and in return for that ahistorical and uncivish feature, we get a general deterioration in the Civ community.


They took an AOE type feature, and they are making this an AOE type community.


LOTM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snapcase
Aww, served well in Civ2, eh? As faceless, pointless, samey carbon copies of each other, that's how. I know! Let's double the number of species in StarCraft, I mean, sure it's perfectly balanced for three species, but six would give people more options so it doesn't matter if all the individuality and personality dissapears. Let's just change a jpg here and there and people probably will think they're completely different, tee hee.

Guys, it's a Design Decision. If you don't like it, this is really not the place to complain, because it's already in.

Starcraft!!!

Obviously someone who completely misses the point of what civ is all about.

Im not as much concerned about civs becoming carbon copies of each other, as strategy games becoming carbon copies of each other. Why must Civ become like every garden variety RTS? Its not a clickfest about different species, its a serious game about the history of humanity - oh, what's the use.

LOTM

[Footie Mad]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

its a serious game about the history of humanity

LOTM

I want it to be fun not some history lesson, yes it can be both but I would rather have a fun game thats a little fake than some extremly accurate boring game.

[Buck Birdseed]

Now look who is missing what games in general are all about. Go make your stupid perfect realism mods, LoTM, and don't bother those of us who go for great games no matter what the genre is. You may be a dry history buff who wants to play a game to simulate your intensely boring and repetitive dreams, fine. Don't foist your crap on the rest of us. Puh-lease.

[kittenOFchaos]

4 the Dude...who slatted my arrogant and uncalled for (no-one called for this thread) post earlier on the spanish worthiness...

Uneducated...ha!

BUT honestly...the spanish only hit the conquest of empire in the 1500´s having only recently finished off the Moors (the only cultural sites of interest in Granada and MUCH of Andalusia!). They wiped out civilisations and replaced it with massive latifundos in Latin America...and it was pretty grime EVERYWHERE they went without exception.

Bringing christianity and pillage vs the 3 C´s of christianity, commerce and civilisation (of most western civs of the time) the spanish made ****ty places ****ter and none of these places appreciated Spain (no commonwealth heh) and generally escaped by revolt (Simon Bolivar).

What good did the wealth of spain bring...well it helped fund war to keep the holy roman empire and build a few more pointless cathedraels for the papacy but nothing tangible and worthy.

The empire was puny by the 1700s and dead in the 1800s after Boney invaded (Napoleon).

The 1900s Spain enjoyed losing all her empire short of some dust in north africa and then had a nice civil war followed by nationalist government and finally some democratic government.


Well, Richard Grenville is what I say to you! No papacy in civ3!


(only teasing ya...! go to montril...see the fun and games and culture is NOT about teasing bulls).


As for Halifax, we had the world´s first Jibbet first...the only remaining woolmarket (the Piece hall) MANY arts and crafts things (especially the WONDERFUL "Dean Clough") and Halifax only has the pride of the Wainhouse Tower and a town hall designed by the dude who designed the "houses of parliament" in London -the Palace of Westminster.

PLUS for culture who can deny the Colisseum of Halifax where mrs wet t-shirt can be had...or the multitude of classier clubs etc. IN combination with the Northern Broadside acting group playing alot in the cellars of Dean Clough PLÜS the Square Chapel venue for plays, music etc WE have plenty.

Go to Granada, look at the Moorish thing (and the amputees, there our tonnes)..got to Montril, commit suicide.

As for a third world...of course it exists, poverty vs wealth, health vs depridation etc.


The spanish would be nice in the game EXCEPT that their reign was not civilisation...it never brought that anywhere it went, it brought war, conquest and indoctrination to the one true faith...it destroyed more than it created...let is be a barbarian event like I hope the Mongols will be.

[Waku]

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
The spanish would be nice in the game EXCEPT that their reign was not civilisation...it never brought that anywhere it went, it brought war, conquest and indoctrination to the one true faith...it destroyed more than it created...let is be a barbarian event like I hope the Mongols will be.

You forgot to mention Cyprus, Israel, Kuwait, Appartheid, Northern Ireland, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, talivans, Kachemir,... where anglosaxon brought the seed of war.

Some "more civilizated" countries don't have a rate of 0 (zero) dead penalties/year. God bless America.

[Waku]

Originally posted by Wille


I want it to be fun not some history lesson, yes it can be both but I would rather have a fun game thats a little fake than some extremly accurate boring game.

Yankees are too simple:

GOOD GUYS/BAD GUYS:
allies/germans
cowboys/indians
pirates/spanish
capitalists/communists
yankees/vietcom

You've been writing the same old story a long time ago, unfortunately it seems to work quite well for you as people only want to know who is John Wayne.

[jsw363]

kittenOFchaos-

I'm that Dude...

You still missed my main points

1. The Third World is an anachronistic term. It was used during the Cold War and doesn't have a place in discussions any more. Those of us in the modern world now say "developing countries."

2. There are hispanic countries which aren't shanty towns. Are Spain and Portugal underdeveloped? It's great that you Brits go down to Ibiza to party, there's more to Spain than the beaches. There's more in Granada than the Alhambra. Try the Catedral and Capilla Real for non-moorish attractions.

3. I'm glad that you're proud of Halifax. You have to live there... but it's no Buenos Aires or Rio.

4. You say that Spain "messed up" it's colonies. Well as Waku said, no worse than anyone else. The Middle East is still chaotic because of the Brits. And, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but in the 1900's EVERYONE lost their empire, not just Spain.

5. Again, I think the Spanish empire lasted from 1492 to the end of the Spanish-American War. I assume that you are classifying all of that as the "very quick" decline of a decadent civilization.

6. If you look at the way Latin America has turned out compared to the "brilliant" job that the rest of Europe did in Africa, you'll see how much civilization the Spanish brought. At least the Americas don't have multiple wars going on all over the continent that are a direct result of the colonial legacy.

The Iberians weren't perfect. No civ was. But don't treat Latin America like it doesn't exist or is filled with "shanty towns, cheap housing, dodgy electrics." At least visit Latin America before judging it.

[Harlan]

This is a disturbing thread. I'm not ethnically Spanish, but I still hate to see some ignorant people knocking Spain's many accomplishments.

Does Spain deserve to have a spot in Civ3? Heck yeah. They only created the largest empire of all time. But in terms of "are they interesting" and would they add to the game, yes and yes.

The four biggest omissions IMHO are the Spanish, Arabs, Vikings and Mongols. Vikings aren't overwhelmingly historically important, but they more than make up for that with color. I'll bet anyone can easily think of special units for each of them.

Not so for some of the civs Civ3 decided to include. The Zulus? Please. I don't know what Snapcase was smoking when he said they "subjugated an area the size of Western Europe, with a population of millions". The modern country of South Africa is about twice the size of France, and Shaka Zulu only conquered a portion of that in his whopping 12 years of power.

My historical atlas shows at least 8 other sub-Saharan kingdoms in the 1820's that held as much or more land than Shaka did. The only thing the Zulus have going for them was nearby British and Dutch settlements to help record their events for posterity. And the only "interesting" thing that puts them above more deserving sub-Saharan civs like the Ethiopians is Shaka, a character that some people recall the name of. Of the many African empires that came and went in history, who knows how many other Shakas there were they we only dimly know of, if at all. If it weren't for the PC factor, the Zulus would be so gone (normally I'm a PC guy, but things like making Cleopatra black gives being "PC" a bad name).

The Bablyonians are another civ that shouldn't have made the first 16 cut. The Civ3 website admits they had to lump the Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites, Hittites, Kassites, Assyrians, Arameans, and Chaldeans all together to give this civ enough significance. This is some kind of Frankenstein civ- the Hittites and some others in the above list have very little in common with the other groups - different languages, religions and so on. Do they have an immediately obvious military special unit? No. Terribly distinctive or well known? No.

But why do we argue about which civs should fit in the 16 limit, like dogs fighting over scraps? 16 is too small. The ONLY reason there aren't more is because Firaxis didn't want to do the work. As for playbalance, how much do you want to bet there will be an official expansion pack that somehow miraculously finds a way to balance in some new civs?

Unfortunately, it won't be easy for non-Firaxians to make new civs well - how does anyone propose the 3D units and leaders be made? And, as far as the screenshots show us, it looks like there is no room to pick from more than 16 civs at the start of the game, so if you add some, you have to take some out. I hope that isn't true, but that's how it looks.

Furthermore, chances are lots of different mods will pop up, and none will have the tons of hours behind them to have them properly playbalanced into the rest of the game.

I propose that people who care make a short list of "must add" civs and work together as a team to make one commonly accepted mod pack, done really well, rather than a bunch of mutually exclusive half-done ones. Not something I have time to spend on, but I know JB is the man if you want someone who knows the Spanish inside and out.

[SITS]

In CIV3 there new big thing is about culture. If you look at how many countries speak Spanish then you will see that the Spanish had a major impact on culture in a number of countries. I might be wrong but doesn't Chinese have the most people speaking it? But how many countries and continents have it as their primary language? Probably the most civilising empire was the romans who kicked our ass through several tech's (to use Civ terms!)

Kitten - you mention the third world (or the developing nations if you like....) Britain was the major contributor to their current poverty. In fact I would say we have had a major influence in shaping the modern world. There are 54 nations in the Commonwealth.

He is a quote from here

What is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of more than 50 independent sovereign states, which provide support to each other, and work together toward international goals. The Commonwealth is described as a "family" of nations, originally linked together in the British Empire, and now building on their common heritage in language, culture and education, which enables them to work together in an atmosphere of greater trust and understanding than generally prevails among nations.

Bringing together some 1.7 billion people of many faiths, races, languages, traditions and levels of economic development, the Commonwealth represents almost one-third of the world’s population.

The modern Commonwealth emerged in 1949 when it was agreed that India could remain a member on becoming a republic (prior to that, members shared a common allegiance to the British Crown).* Its growth accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s with the independence of many new member countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. [*Today, 33 Commonwealth countries are republics, 16 have constitutional monarchies with HM Queen Elizabeth II as their Head of State, and five have national monarchies of their own.]


You say about the impact of the Spanish being negative what about us the British and our empire? How many of those 54 nations are rich and are classed as developed? Lets not forget the Crusades...

I personally don't think the exclusion of Spain as a Civ can be justified. Their impact on the world has been massive. Not all of it positive but name an empire that was wholly positive on their impact of others? By their very nature they 'Arrest the Development' of smaller nations by imposing their own beliefs on others for their 'own good.' That is how the world works. The winners write the history books. I believe every nation has something to be proud of and every place has it own uniqueness and history. And Spain, in a game about Civilisations, about culture, about building empires belong there.

[Jay Bee]

Harlan,

Thanks for your support, man. It's the opinion of people who actually know, like you, Chris and others that I have just got to know in this thread that I was seeking when opened this thread. I am happy to see you around. But as you have noticed this is a lost cause. The big pile of ignorance, disinterest and bad manners displayed on this thread is definitely revealing that a major portion of Civ3 future users do not give a damn **** of whether Civ3 is or is not historically biased. Okay, that's fine with me now. I learned my lesson.

As for the future, if you are in as well, I am sure that making a patch that solves these and other potential problems will not be an impossible task to do.

One last time: this is not only about the Spanish being in or out, This is about the arbitrary way the designers picked the tribes. Of course, tribes ain't important, it's only a game, right? That was the lesson I've gotten. BS.

Oh, jsw, Waku and others, ignore kitten et al please. He is just trying to poke fun out of you. That, or his Spanish girlfriend dumped him and his hormones couldn't resist it.

[Fiera]

Originally posted by Harlan
But why do we argue about which civs should fit in the 16 limit, like dogs fighting over scraps? 16 is too small. The ONLY reason there aren't more is because Firaxis didn't want to do the work. As for playbalance, how much do you want to bet there will be an official expansion pack that somehow miraculously finds a way to balance in some new civs?

This sums up perfectly my opinion on this matter.

Oh, and Jesús, I'm sorry that I hadn't showed on this thread before to bring you my support (which obviously you know you have), but I knew since the beginning it was, as you said, a lost cause.

Besides, I don't normally enjoy discussion with people that don't know what they're talking about, and make use of bad manners to hide their lack of knowledge. Sometimes the Apolyton forums are fun, sometimes not.

[Wernazuma III]

Bringing christianity and pillage vs the 3 C´s of christianity, commerce and civilisation (of most western civs of the time) the spanish made ****ty places ****ter and none of these places appreciated Spain (no commonwealth heh) and generally escaped by revolt (Simon Bolivar).

those who escaped the english at that time didn't want a commonwealth either AFAIK. English just still were stronger by that time.

The spanish would be nice in the game EXCEPT that their reign was not civilisation...it never brought that anywhere it went, it brought war, conquest and indoctrination to the one true faith...it destroyed more than it created...let is be a barbarian event like I hope the Mongols will be.

in the latino countries, there exists quite a degree of christian syncretism. mexican catholicism is quite different from european. granted, the treatment of the indios was horrible, especially in the caribic but in the 16th century, Spain had a bunch of fine humanists too (Las Casas, Motolinía, Quiroga in the Americas e.g.)
As if the english rule wasn't barbarian... They cared **** about the indians (just like the americans for a loong time), the boer wars weren't really heroic either. General Kitchener sent the skull of the dead Mahdi from Nubia to Queen Victoria as a drinking cup (OK, she was not amused) etc.

Barbarian acts lamentably were a standard tool of Civilizations until lately in history or even today.