XP civ overlap.

[Bisonbison]

XP CIV OVERLAP.

The subtitle: Why you are all wrong and I am stunningly handsome (and right)

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I'm convinced that 90% of you guys who are advocating certain civs for the expansion pack are forgetting the basic concept of the civ games - that civs endure while nations and empires come and go. We can quickly eliminate some of the proposed civs by asking ourselves if their real-life existence could be explained by in-game mechanisms.

For instance, the Byzantines, currently #16 on the old voting list. The cities that eventually constituted the Byzantine empire may have been founded by Greeks, Romans or Babylonians, but they were controlled in the end by the Romans. When the Germans or French (or maybe Russians or XP mongols) conquered the Roman capital, the Roman civ underwent a civil war, and the Byzantine civ was born, constituting roughly half of the old Roman empire.

See? Easy peazy. No need for a separate Byzantine civ in the XP.

Now, of course I realize that the standard Civ3 civs already encompass some of these relationships - what is an American civ but a bunch of wayward English, French and Spanish cities? and what are English, French and Spanish civs but castoffs of former Celtic and Roman empires?

Nonetheless, if we agree that we can't, for the purpose of this discussion, alter the original civ3 civs, we should be able to better weigh the merits of the proposed XP civs. I'm gonna start doing it in a post to follow. Feel free to lend your own defenses and attacks on the popular XP civs.

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This will pretty much constitute a history of the world in Civ-like terms.

[Bisonbison]

#1 - The Spanish

I like the Spanish. The Spanish are almost certainly in the XP (if there is one), and I'm not going to go to great lengths to disprove the merits of a Spanish civ. In fact, let me make a wildly reckless statement and say that the Spanish make perfect sense as a very very small civ, which was almost extinguished by the Romans and the Persians/Babylonians (whichever you want to sub for the early Muslims), but which allied with other culturally similar civs, pushed the Persians out of Iberia, traded for some navigational tech and went on to conquer poorly defended Aztec, Iroquois and XP Maya cities with their early gunpowder UU, the Conquistador. Bingo, in a few very lucky game turns they went from very few cities to a huge world empire.

[Bisonbison]

#2 - The Mongols

Again, another perfectly sensible XP civ. As it stands in standard Civ3 Asia, the Japanese represent Japan and Korea [and I know that the former came from the latter, except for the Anu], but the Chinese have almost all of East-central Asia to conquer. Traditionally there were forces to exert pressure on China from the north, and that pressure is perfectly embodied in the Mongol civ, which we can imagine as having very little tech or culture, but a large enough number of cities to pour out their mounted bowman UU, which struck with near impunity from China through Russia and the Middle East to what is now modern Poland. Alas, despotism is not a good government with which to build a far-reaching empire, and the lack of roads or rivers (or much of anything but grass) in the mongol homeland meant little science, and that meant no monarchy or republic advance, and that meant too much unhappiness and real quick cultural reassimilation of their conquered cities. Soon Eurasian tech levels put another Mongol empire out of reach of hordes of horsemen.

[Bisonbison]

#3 - The Arabs

Well, folks, I have to say I'm not impressed. I mean I know the Arabs were hugely important and all, but they're not giving us anything that we couldn't concieve of as latter-day Babylon/Persia. If Persia, Babylon and Egypt are all sharing the middle east, surely we can admit that the area's pretty well full.

In my mind, the Persians initially take the Arabian Peninsula and areas stretching east towards India, while Babylon stretches north, from Iraq towards the Black Sea, running into the Greeks in and around turkey and finding the mountains around the Caspian sea not worth the trouble. Meanwhile, the Egyptians do their North Africa, Ethopia, Egypt thing. At some point around 700 AD, the Persians or the Babylonians discover monotheism and begin to kick butt, rushing across North Africa, pushing into Spain uniting most of the middle east and so on and so forth.

Those are your Arabs. A latter day Civ3 civ. They're well covered already, and, in my opinion, a little too politicized to make it into the game.

[Bisonbison]

#4 - The Inca

Civ3 will ship with 3 civs in the Americas (Iroquois, Aztec, Americans), all of which are in North/Central America, and all of which are pretty darn independent of each other. [the Americans are of course the great stumbling block of any attempt to make sense of the civs historically, but there's nothing to be done]

The Inca, likewise are independent of the N. American civs, and fill a nice and crucial gap in that little continent I like to call South America. They'll fit nicely with the Maya if the Maya make it in, and they'll fit nicely without if the Maya don't. Either way, for all intents and purposes it gives us a broad sub-panamanian civ in the same way that the Zulus give us a broad sub-saharan civ. No real way to fit it in except to say that the spanish conquered them (or the civ that had replaced them), and then the spanish got a little too overwhelmed by corruption and distance to manage them in a monarchy.

[orange]

I basically agree, but you're logic is incorrect about the Arabs and Spanish.

Byzantine in the XP with the Greeks and Romans is an absolute joke.

[player1]

Here are some civs with are enogh diffenert to be in expansion pack:

-Spanish civ (ruler of the new world)
-Turkish (Ottoman) civ (ruler of the middle easts in renessanse & indutrial age, with exising Middle East civs + Turks you won't need a Arab civ)
-Mongol civ (ruler of the Asia)
-Incas civ (most advanced South american civ)

I would also want to add a Cartgaginans as civ but then Phenicians shouldn't be in the game since that Cartgaginans are descendents of Phenicians (similar to that Byzantine, Italy, Rome thing).

So probably Cartgaginans are better choice than Phenicians because Middle east is alredy crowded, Africa is alsost empy & Romans need someone to beat up.

[jasev]

Originally posted by Bisonbison
let me make a wildly reckless statement and say that the Spanish make perfect sense as a very very small civ, which was almost extinguished by the Romans and the Persians/Babylonians (whichever you want to sub for the early Muslims).

What are you talking about? The spanish civ, as we understand it, appears as a result of mixing the roman, visigothic and muslim influences with original iberian people. They didn't almost exterminated the spanish civilization, they created it. And, by the way, to say the incas and aztecs were poorly defended is a lie. The natives of North America were weaker (dispersed tribes) and hadn't gunpowder when the europeans met them, and they were much harder to conquest. I'm not going to explain here why a few spanish soldiers achieved to conquer both great nations, but let me tell you that saying they were poorly defended is an uninformed simplicity.

[ranskaldan]

At some point around 700 AD, the Persians or the Babylonians discover monotheism and begin to kick butt, rushing across North Africa, pushing into Spain uniting most of the middle east and so on and so forth.

!?! the Persians and Babylonians did not 'discover' monotheism. The Arabs discovered monotheism, then they came out of the Arab Peninsula and conquered the Persia, Babylonia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain.

Arabs and Persians are totally totally different races and concepts! Arabs and Persians speak different languages (Arabic and Farsi) and have different histories and cultures. The only similarity is that they are both Muslim countries, and different branches of Islam (Sunni and Shi'ite) at that.

Thus, I am all in for the inclusion of Arabs for the expansion. They were very distinct from the ancinet Egyptians and Babylonians, or the Persians. The only thing is that they ended up conquering Egypt and Babylonia, and moved their cultural centers there.

[Bisonbison]

What I'm saying is that in terms of the game, if we look at the history of the world, and try to explain it [in an admittedly stupid exercise] in terms of the game, we can concieve of the Babylonian, Persian and Egyptian civs as enduring beyond the empires that we think of historically. In civ terms, they all exist in 1000BC, but they very probably still exist 2000 years later when we get the massive expansion of Islam.

Think: they're big, they're kicking butt, then the greeks come along and conquer most of their stuff, then the romans come along and also march through and conquer most of their stuff, which the eventually reconquer, especially when the Roman empire is split in two by the sacking of Rome.

Those middle eastern civs don't disappear, they just don't do much for a long time. Then, a few turns down the road, we might explain it as the babylonians discovering a new tech, or something, and suddenly they're off conquering again. This is in broad civ terms. The Arabs may only be as related to the Babs as the modern Italians are to the romans, but they're still related - No one in their right mind is calling for an Italian XP civ, why? Because they're already represented (if, admittedly, in a much different era).

The point of this thread is to provide a sort of mini-history of real life in civ3 terms, and use that to see if we can justify certain civs as independent of other civs with the same geographic area, ethnic background, historical continuity, so on and so forth.

[Bisonbison]

Originally posted by jasev
The natives of North America were weaker (dispersed tribes) and hadn't gunpowder when the europeans met them, and they were much harder to conquest. I'm not going to explain here why a few spanish soldiers achieved to conquer both great nations, but let me tell you that saying they were poorly defended is an uninformed simplicity.

Frankly, the reason all European conquest worked is simple: disease. I know it, and you probably do to. The spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs with a popgun and a horse because there was a massive struggle occuring over the throne. Why? Because the king and a huge portion of his subjects had just died from diseases that raced ahead of the conquistadors. I'm not trying to diss the Aztecs or any native american civ. I know that there were great cultures that simply disappeared in 30 years - the whole mississippi valley was for all intents empty, despite the fact that a truly advanced culture had existed there in 1492, the Europeans just marched right in to a place hollowed out by disease.

But.... BUT.... I'm trying to think of the history of the world as if those events could be explained through game mechanics, as a means of combining certain civs together and eliminating the need to include them in an XP.

I'll expound on the European civs in a second, as I keep my contribution to this thread above the egomaniac 80% line.

[Bisonbison]

If we're trying to historicize the European civs so as to justify a Spanish one, the problem is figuring out where these populations were on a world map that rome could expand like it did and they could still endure and come back after rome had been pushed back.

The English were obviously prexisting in the British Isle, so let's say that they founded some cities and then rome invaded and no cities remained in their control outside of (what is now) Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The brits slowly reconquered their lost cities, reclaiming the entire island set, and went on to do great things until the XP Viking Civ invaded them (from conquered French cities). That's the English. Easy.

The French and German civs, though, are hard. The roman empire covered all of Gaul for quite a long time, so I'm having a hard time saying that historically the French civ starting point was in modern France. Instead I'd start them in the forest of Germany, and start the German Civ a little further to the east. While the Romans spent their BC turns expanding through western europe and conquering barbarian villages, the french and germans just sort of fought each other, producing a lot of low grade units and occasionally harrassing each other and the other mediterranean and mid-east civs.

Finally though, with Germany feeling pressure from the civ (Russia) and barbarians to the east, they started pushing on France and Rome. France started conquering the Roman cities of Gaul (quickly acquiring a lot of techs), and the Romans (too overextended against the Egyptians, Babs and Persians to do much about it) lost a lot of cities in Europe, culminating in the German sack of Rome, which caused a [game event] civil war, splitting the empire into Roman and Byzantine halves, which remained allied briefly, then quickly fell away.

The spanish are also tough to fit into a game-type history here, especially since the Roman empire covered the entire Iberian peninsula. But if we can just think of them as pre-dating the romans (maybe they're the celts, or the basques as well), and holding on to just one little city on the peninsula throughout both the Roman and Muslim (Babylonian?) occupations, then they can be conceived of as an original starting civ. Otherwise, how do they arise to conquer the new world as I described above? How does the real life Spanish civilization translate into a spanish civ in game terms if not like I described? Ideas?

[ranskaldan]

The Arabs may only be as related to the Babs as the modern Italians are to the romans, but they're still related - No one in their right mind is calling for an Italian XP civ,

are you kidding? The Arabs are NOT related to the Babs as the modern Italians are to the Romans. The Italians are almost the direct descendant of the Romans. The Arabs, Babs, Egyptians, and Persians, however, are as separate as, say, the Germans, Russians, Greeks, and Hungarians.

By 2000 BC or so,
The Arabs are in the Arab peninsula.
The Babylonians are in Mesopotamia.
The Egyptians are along the Nile.
The Persians are in the Iranian highlands.

When Islam rose, the following happened:
The Arabs came out and conquered Babylonia, Egypt, Spain and Persia.
The Babylonians and Egyptians were slowly absorbed into the Arab cultural sphere.
The Persians and Spanish accepted Islam, but they retained their separate Persian and Spanish cultures.
Later Spain was re-Christianized.

There is no direct Roman --> Italian lineage here. The Arabs arose separately from the Egyptians and Babylonians.

As for the European civ thing: (and especially the Spanish civ)

If we're trying to historicize the European civs so as to justify a Spanish one, the problem is figuring out where these populations were on a world map that rome could expand like it did and they could still endure and come back after rome had been pushed back.

When the Roman Empire was at its height, none of the modern European civs even existed. There was only a vague Germanic civ. with very similar sub-groups. Only later did this vague Germanic civ split up into the Franks, Teutons, Burgundians, Goths etc. The modern cultural groupings (British, French, German etc) emerged very very late. The thing is, real civs don't behave the way Civ3 civs do. Real civs don't behave coherently. They constantly merge, split, move around, and disappear. Thus, we don't need a Spanish civ to survive the Roman Empire. The Spanish civ is a result of reactions between the Romans, Goths, Celts and Arabs, and it reached its present form much much later.

EDIT: rearranged some paragraphs.

[Christantine The Great]

Byzantine in the XP with the Greeks and Romans is an absolute joke.

Byzantines AT ALL are an absolute joke. They would only be valid if they did NOT have the Greek and Roman culture backing them. Still, they were the most important country in Europe for over 1000 years...I guess that's were people get the Byz support from.

[jasev]

Originally posted by Bisonbison
Frankly, the reason all European conquest worked is simple: disease. I know it, and you probably do to. The spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs with a popgun and a horse because there was a massive struggle occuring over the throne. Why? Because the king and a huge portion of his subjects had just died from diseases that raced ahead of the conquistadors.

Where did you study history, man? It's not a shame to ignore something, but it's quite stupid to talk when you don't have any idea. It's a good politic to listen until you learn.

Originally posted by ranskaldan
The thing is, real civs don't behave the way Civ3 civs do. Real civs don't behave coherently. They constantly merge, split, move around, and disappear. Thus, we don't need a Spanish civ to survive the Roman Empire. The Spanish civ is a result of reactions between the Romans, Goths, Celts and Arabs, and it reached its present form much much later.

A great explanation, I wouldn't have done it better