Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack: English vs Brittish

[Wulfram]

Well, Wulfram, the set of civs that you are proposing is basically just Egypt, Babylon, Mycenae, Celts, Germanics, India, China, Japan, Aztecs and Incas..... right?

Well go ahead if you want... i'd prefer to play some non-super-ancient civs myself.

Well your missing the Romans there, but generally yes, those are the only civs that make sense

Do you have the stats to back that up?

Regiment VCs
Royal Artillery: 51
Royal Engineers 41
Royal army medical Corps 29 including two bars
Rifle Brigade 27
South wales Borderers 22
King's Royal Rifle Corps 22
Royal Fusiliers 19
Lancashire Fusiliers 18
Seaforth Highlanders 18
Gordon Highlanders 17

You can see that of the location specific regiments the top are the Borderers the the Highlanders

If that were true I would think that it was due to economic conditions not the fact that they were the best. Joining the army was a popular choice for those without formal education or other means to earn money.

Being the "best" and being the most populace does not equate. If it were then China would be the best army in the world. Or you could say Privates are "better" than Leiutenants who are better than Captains.

True, but Wellingtons army was one of the best Britain ever had.

I have no idea why you make this statement. Yes, I have been to Scotland, and the head of the Church of Scotland is the Queen, like it or not. Scottish Protestants, both at 'home' and abroad, in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, East Africa and India, have been most assiduous in cultivating a British culture and identity. The Queen of course, has Scottish ancestry, as does her mother who was of course, born there. Representation for Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland hardly implies imminent destruction of the United Kingdom.

The point is that Scots regard themselves as Scots before British

England in the 17th Century, the period I am referring to, possessed Dunkirk, won at the Battle of the Dunes, and then sold it back to the French for 400 000 sterling. The England you seem to be referring to may be the Anglo-Norman-French entity wiped out by the Hundred Years' War, ending in 1453. I'm not sure which English history it is you're learning, but it seems somewhat vague with respect to dates, dynasties, wars and facts.
As for the defeat of the Spanish being luck- what lucky happenstance do you mean?

Well I have already conceded that the 17th Century was the time when England was powerful enough to have an effect on the world, but capturing Dunkirk isn't exactly something major. If you don't accept the pre 1453 England as English then the English only lasted 254 years which is no where near enough to be a Civ, especially considering the power of civs contempory to that.

The Vikings (by which presumably you mean Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, the hybrid Anglo-Vikings of Jorvik and hybrid Hiberno-Vikings of Dublin) were not Germans. They had a distinctive and different culture, they shared some religious beliefs, had different languages and expanded territorially in different directions. You may as well say the Romans were Greek on that basis.
If as you say, England has a distinctive culture, and it's Saxon, then back it up. To which bits of English culture are you referring?

Well actually it's Anglish, but they're generally counted with the Saxons. The very name comes from that. I don't think that England has a Distinct culture, especially compared to the amount of variation in Civs such as the Indians. In world terms is just a standard Northern European Culture with formerly more emphasis on seafaring because of it's Island position.

[quote[Oh, and i forgot to mention that they weren't really successful despite;-

a) in fact the Britsh army is man for man one of, if not the, best in the world

Your words, not mine! [/quote]

That's now, in victorian times it was pretty bad, it's just we avoided any serious wars, when it was put to the test we did rubbish (WW1, Crimea)

Now the Army is a highly trained, well equipped but tiny force. It has just dropped to a size smaller than it was in Wellingtons time.

Other points

I'm using Germany for the Germanic Peoples as we are talking in Civ terms and Germany is an existing Civ which I can accept as the Germanic Peoples

Molly Bloom: Right so the English is a mix of Roman, Celt and Germanic all of which need to be represented, the english don't.

[Tolls]

"when it was put to the test we did rubbish (WW1, Crimea) "

I'll give you the generalship in the Crimea (which was an absurd idea anyway), but we were the best trained army in the world in 1914.

[Wulfram]

"whenI'll give you the generalship in the Crimea (which was an absurd idea anyway), but we were the best trained army in the world in 1914.

Best trained possibly, but too small and not enough machine guns. Think about it Britain, France and Russia vs Germany and Austria. It should have been over by christmas!

Same in WW2, a country which had been on the verge of collapse 7 years ago defeated one powerful country, blocked another country and nearly captured Moskow. In both world wars we did rubbish and Germany did amazingly well.

[Tolls]

Sorry, but in WW1 the French and Russians have far more to blame than us for the situation in 1914...if anything it was the British army that prevented a collapse in France!

We have never had a large army, because we refuse to use conscription (except in war)...the nation would never have agreed to it. In any case, a big army isn't everything...look at the Russians.

Again, in WW2 the BEF was the only entirely mechanised army in the world, but we (us and the French) cocked it all up). Once more it was French reluctance to attack in '39 that screwed us over...we would have been happy launching an attack, but the French were in charge.

[Tolls]

Just done a check on the Borderes, and the % of Welsh in the regiment at the time of Rorkes drift was on the order of 10-15% (half were English). Considering that 11 of their 22 VCs came from that battle, sort of knocks them down a bit.

Not sure about the Highlanders, but I'd bet they weren't all Scottish.

Edit:
Here we go - http://www.btinternet.com/~james.mckay/linintro.htm

The important quotes being:
"In April 1809 an order was issued stating that as the population of the Highlands of Scotland was found to be insufficient to supply recruits for the whole of the Highland corps in His Majesty's Army, and as some of these corps, by laying aside their distinguishing dress, which was objectionable to the natives of South Britain, would induce the men of the English Militia to enter, the 72nd, 73rd, 74th, 75th, 91st and 94th Regiments were ordered to discontinue wearing the Highland dress for the future. "

and:
"Up to 1881 the Lowland regiments were dressed like English line regiments although pipers had been given to some of them. The result was, to some observers, that they had to some extent lost their nationality and had as many English and Irish as Scots in their ranks."

[Wulfram]

OK Toll, I'll concede the best troops are Scot/welsh/irish from that, although still a higher proportion than would be expected from population.

I know we don't have conscription and I'm glad for it, but we still have done pretty poorly in all major wars since 1815 and in the Napoleonic Wars we merely did well compared with Non-French Europe

When looking at history all I can say is I'm very glad we had the channel

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Wulfram
Lancashire Fusiliers 18

Does this mean that Lancastrians are the best soldiers in England?

[Tolls]

I hate to push this, but did you miss the bit where I pointed out that 60% of the British army in the 1800s was English?

That that ties in quite well with the fact that approximately 60% of the population of GB and Ireland is English?

The other nations did were not disproportionately represented.

As for the armies in general, our forces were on a par with the French forces during the Napoleonic wars...you just need to look at the Peninsular campaign to see that.

After that...well, the Crimea was a bloody silly place to campaign, but the troops performed well. I'll ignore our colonial wars (since they were generally against poorer troops, using poorer troops)...which brings us to the Boer Wars. Which weredefinitely a disaster...but resulted in the changes to army training which gave us (little more than a decade later) the top of the line troops we had in 1914.

Yes...I'm glad we had the channel, since I expect we'd have ended up like the Dutch...stuffed by all and sundry. With the channel we could at least use our navy to defend ourselves from the continental toings and froings.

Anyway...having said all that I think the English ought to be a civ, along with the Scots, Irish and (of course) the Welsh. British doesn't really cut it for me. I can understand the desire to start with only the ancient core civs, but then you'd never get any of the later ones...

[Wulfram]

OK, I've had enough of this so I'll just edit them out of my copy when I get it and leave you in peace about this.

[History Guy]

Wulfram,
You are the kind of guy I shall never understand. O.K., well have loads of fun editing the British out of Civilization III.

[ranskaldan]

Wulfram, you will probably also edit out the French. And why don't you edit out the Romans too, since they derived most of their culture from the Greeks?
Since you're editing out the English I suggest you do the same for the Germans. In 2000BC there were only Germanics, no English or Germans yet.

So your civlist would look like:
Egypt
Sumeria
Assyria
India
China
Hebrews
Olmecs
Incas
Germanics
Slavs
Celts
Greeks
Phoenicians
Javans
Australians
Iroquois

What we have here is basically an ancient civs modpack! And you're going to play with these civs right through to the spacerace?

.... History Guy's right. We'll never understand you.

[Wulfram]

Actually I'm keeping Germany to represent the Germanics. And I'm going to keep them until the space race (if I survive that long) because I see Civs as cultures and cultures don't die very easily, so in the end it works out quite well. I don't understand how people can call a game historical and put the Americans and the English starting at the same time, if your going to do that you might as well add dragons and turn it into the midgard scenario in Fantastic Worlds. I'd never thought of the Javans by the way, why do you suggest them? And you forgot the Romans, or do you have a reason for not including them?

[ranskaldan]

The problem here, as I see it, is that Germany no better represents the Germanic than England or Norway. The modern languages of English, German, and Norwegian are all equally descended from proto-Germanic. And anyway, a common ancestral language doesn't mean they all had the same ancestors.

As for the civilizations as cultures part, i know it is pretty weird to have the Americans, English and Russians all start in 4000BC. However, since the civilizations in civ3 all *act* as coherent nation-states (and not cultures), people want to see important nation-states. Like USA. or the British Empire. Since the USA and the British Empire existed at the same time, and they still do, in fact, people see no problems if they exist together in civ3 too.

The Javans? Oh... that was just an attempt at filling out Southeast Asia. As for the Romans, their culture is obviously built on top of the Greeks, so there's no reason to include them by your logic.

[Wulfram]

Well, I prefer to say Germany instead of the Germanic Peoples, it's less clumsy. I am intending to change the Leader to Arminius though.

The Romans were not built on top of the Greeks, they learnt from the Greeks and were certainly influenced by them, but their culture was very different at the start and remained different even after they conquered Greece.

[ranskaldan]

The Romans were not built on top of the Greeks, they learnt from the Greeks and were certainly influenced by them, but their culture was very different at the start and remained different even after they conquered Greece.

Well then, that's my point, isn't it? Why not include British, Vikings, Spanish and French?
Just as Greece is a contributor and not the creator of Rome, Rome is also a contributor but not the creator of France and Spain.