Predicting the XP Civs. (make your predictions as well)

[Bisonbison]

With all the voting going on, I thought it would be important to move on to predicting the civs that would actually be included in an XP, which is less about a personal preference than about reading the mindset over at Firaxis.

Let's really try to deduce the ones with merit in a way where Firaxis is inherently right in it's eventual conclusions, and where we're the ones who need to figure stuff out. After all, they do think about this game 60+ hours a week with an eye on making it better, and any of you that claims you do the same might want to get some fresh air.

So, with that in mind, they're listed in order of importance: these six are the ones I'd bet on. Six civs, even though it's less than half as many as are included in the release, still represent a large investment in art assets and balancing, and are about as many good candidates as I could justify to myself as really inevitable, so there you go.

Most of this is done with balancing and filling in the real world map in mind.

1. Mongolians
Perhaps the most glaring omission is the Mongol civ. They're great, they're hugely destructive, and they fill that space in northern and northeastern Asia that would allow China, Russia, India or Japan to get a little too ridiculously large. (UU: The Mounted Bowman, a modified knight. 5.3.3. From the knight's 4.3.2.)

2. The Inca
Fills in South America, which happens to be a large continent with no civ in it right now. Also, nice name recognition and good and distinct from Aztecs and Iroquois. (UU: I have no idea.)

3. The Polynesians
Fills in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and any pacific islands they stick in the map, and provides a nice pressure against China and Japan. Australia in the release version is gonna be a big unpopulated hole on the map, and I don't like that so much. (UU: I like the voyager canoe, a modified trireme with increased stability and movement, but it's going to be awfully limiting sometimes on random maps)

4. The Vikings (Scandanavians)
Again, as with the Mongols, what's not to like? They fill in Scandanavia, provide good pressure on Russia and on any civ in central europe, and are famous. Who else will keep the filthy English and Iroquois from colonizing Greenland? (UU: Longboat: fast trireme with bombard capacity. Might be limiting on random maps)

5. The Spanish
Well, this is one of those inevitable ones, and it makes Europe about as crowded as Europe can get. The spanish are big, were once world dominating and certainly deserve to be in. (UU: Conquistador? A modified version of the first gunpowder unit, with higher movement and attack? Who knows?)

6. The Maya
When I came to the sixth one I couldn't figure it out. There seem to be 4 areas in need of a civ on the world map: Northwest US/Canada, Central America/northern South America, West Africa, and your Mom. We all know your mom will be taken care of, so I'm going to guess that since the Maya have the best name recognition of any civ off the top of my head from one of those areas, it'll be the Maya. Nothing comes to mind in Northwest US/Canada, and to put carthage in the game is to put yet another Mediterranean civ in the game, and is going to squeeze egypt to a small nub.

So there you go. 6 predictions, all of them 100 percent correct. Anyone else want to post their predictions. Not the ones you "want" to see or the ones that "must be in the game", but the ones that will be in the game because they make sense and provide better balance. I'd personally prefer a good Seattle area native american civ, but I just can't come up with a good enough one to think they'd pick it over the maya.

[JellyDonut]

I think the Arabs are in good standing, too, especially with the recent world focus on them, they aren't going anywhere.

[Bisonbison]

I guess I'm just blind to the need for yet another middle-eastern civ.

I mean we have babylonians, persians, and egyptians, with the greeks and indians providing barriers to Europe and Asia. It had better be a fertile crescent, cause those three civs are going to be competing for space in any real-world scenario.

[JellyDonut]

You would expect a fair level of crowdedness if you were playing 32 civs at once (which may not even be possible), wouldn't you?

I'm just reporting that the Arabs seem to be in a stable position on the top 16 of Locutus' thread. Don't kill the messenger.

[Bisonbison]

Oh, no intent to kill the messenger.

But say we had 22 or 24 civs at once.

At release 5 are European, 3 are middle eastern, 4 are asian, 3 are american, and 1 is sub-saharan african. That's 8 civs on or around the mediterranean, and that's a lot. Even my attempt to spread the world out a little adds Spanish and Viking Civs to the European/North African area. If you were going to add 6 or 8 civs to the mix, would you want to add more European/Middle Eastern/North African ones, or would you want to add a sub-saharan one, an Australian one, an Asian one and so one.

That's kind of the point of the thread. Not that we're overlooking great civs in historically important areas, but that we have to look at areas that have been ignored.

[orange]

I forget this too, but you have to remember that most games are NOT played on the world map. Therefore crowding is not really an issue, it's worthiness and uniqueness of the civ that is being debated.

Spanish
Mongols
Vikings
Celts
Inca
Maya
Aksumite

[Bisonbison]

Crowding isn't an issue. I know that, but Real-world-map crowding is a symptom of over-emphasis on certain real-world-map civs.

What area do the celts occupy that isn't already defined by the spanish/french/german/british/roman civs? Or, what cities did the celts create that aren't merely reproduced in spanish/french/german/british and roman lists?

And while I'd love to see another African civ, it seems like no one will have heard of the Aksumites, so what is the draw there? If they are near-etheopian, then that has a valid recognition argument, but it leaves all of Australia and the pacific wide open.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Bisonbison
...what cities did the celts create that aren't merely reproduced in spanish/french/german/british and roman lists?

Are we forgetting Dublin? How about Cork (where some of my ancestors come from)? Galway? Cardiff (if you mean English, not British), etc., etc.

The Celts start out in Ireland in Civ II and seems logical enough that in a Civ III map, they would too. And the Roman Empire stretched over Spanish, French, German, English, Greek, Babylonian and Egyptian lands. The British Empire included India and the former Babylonian lands, as well as Egypt, America, Zulu Land, etc. The French held lands now owned by the Germans, the English, the Russian, etc. I don't see how this is any different.

And while I'd love to see another African civ, it seems like no one will have heard of the Aksumites, so what is the draw there? If they are near-etheopian, then that has a valid recognition argument, but it leaves all of Australia and the pacific wide open.

This is the main reason I voted for the Ethiopians, the Polynesians, etc.
In Civ, the game is centered around Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. Except for the Zulus and the 3 North American civs, the rest of the world is empty, void of representation! Crowding isn't so much a problem as proper representation. The Arabs may have been crowded in the Middle East if you played it on a world map, but they certainly represent a distinct culture and time period than the Babylonians, Persians or Egyptians.

[Akron]

Originally posted by Bisonbison
And while I'd love to see another African civ, it seems like no one will have heard of the Aksumites, so what is the draw there? If they are near-etheopian, then that has a valid recognition argument, but it leaves all of Australia and the pacific wide open.

Hmmm... Well if they haven't yet heard of the Aksumites, let them hear now! Or if you want, you could call them the ethiopians.

Before playing civ 2, I had never heard of the Zulus, but that doesn't matter. IMO, its fun playing with new and different civs.

The Arabs are definitely a good call. Turks are important too. I really can't understand why both were overlooked in this game. They both had some real historical impact, more than the Zulus or Iroquis. (Not saying these civs should not be in the game, but that the Turks and Arabs should be included)

[Bisonbison]

I think, again, that the hardest part of these discussions is that certain real-life cultures and civs can be conceived of as later parts of earlier civs.

For instance, the Britons or the Celts (or the Picts) settle all of the british isles, and get culturally cut off from mainland europe. You've got a briton or celtic civ right there. Then the roman civ invades, capturing all the Briton civ cities south of (what later becomes Scotland) When the empire retreats, those roman-british cities are culturally or militarily retaken by the british isles civ, but then the norman invasions happen, from the scandanavian civ (who happen to have invaded from land they'd conquered in france). That Norman group ends up breaking off from the Scandanavian Normans for reasons too varied to go into and you end up with an English civ in England and Northern France and a greater British civ in Scotland and Ireland.

That english civ ends up conquering all of wales and scotland, but can't seem to fully get with Ireland, and so a few thousand years later what do you have? And which groups do you make into civs?

The "problem" with the standard solution is that you're picking groups from different time periods, groups that later or earlier were likely part of the same group. The latter day arabs were the babylonians, but they got conquered by the greeks and romans and persians and egyptians and who knows who else along the way.

And I really support people's desire to play their personalized civ on random maps. I'd just like to get a good cross-section of the world on the real-world map. But if we keep on adding European civs then we keep having to point out that the English in 2000 were the celts, the romans, the vikings and maybe the french and germans along the way.

Geez, this got long.

[Pembleton]

Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Vatican City, Belize, Tajikstan, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia.

[Mister Pleasant]

Spain
(Duh!)

Mexico
Argentina
(Lets get more post-colonial civs in, US isn't enough - unless 'American' is supposed to represent US, Canada, and Mexico)

Mali
(makes more sense than the frelling Zulus)

Middle East and EUrope are already overrepresented.

Before playing civ 2, I had never heard of the Zulus, but that doesn't matter. IMO, its fun playing with new and different civs.

Zulus had their own movie w/ Michael Caine plus a sequal.

[Bisonbison]

But the point is to predict. And obviously Mexico isn't going to get in if the Aztecs are the pre-colonial Mexican civilization.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Arabs better be in the XP! They always get overlooked, even though they are one of the most important civs in history.

[Fiil]

Re: Predicting the XP Civs. (make your predictions as well)

Originally posted by Bisonbison
UU: Longboat: fast trireme with bombard capacity.

Why would the longboats have bombard capacity?

IIRC the viking didn't even fire arrow from them, they allways landed they troops. But maybe any unit in a longboat should be able to make amphibious assaults...