Everyone Start as Barbarians and Evolve Modern Civ

[dervish]

This could be an option too. You don't choose your enemies and friends. The game chooses you. No need to pick any nation or ethnicity, this is picked up later during the game at its whatever amount of stages transferring from one age or epoch to another.
This is fair and square, in't it?

P.S.
Please, be nice to Barbarians - our ancestors.

[Coracle]

Yea, but this would require a lot of code by Firaxis. And they are not too fond of that.

Give me scenario-building first and foremost.

[Harovan]

I like the idea. The civ traits could be not constant, but gained by experience. For instance, if indicators show, that one is a warmonger, let his units promote faster with the time. Or one builds many temples early on, give him a production advance for religious buildings. And so on. But I think that's rather a suggestion for Civ4 than applicable for Civ3.

What concerns Barbarians, well, I'm proud my Germanic ancestors were about the only civ in Europe able to stop the Roman expansion. So the Romans called them Barbarians. So I try to be nice to the Barbs, if the game allows it

Coracle: I look forward to play your scenarios. If there will by any...

[dervish]

Thank you - for your support, lads!!! The reason why I try not to piss off our Barbaric past is that also we, in Central Asia and me, as Central Asian Turk, come mostly from Nomadic Barbarians too, which I am very proud of, especially when my computer gets cranky on me??? and huh....huh...hm...huh...hm, well many other things related to civilized way getting out of order at times. And one more thing I noticed on lots of Civ forums is that there are too many personalities shouting "how come our nation is not there!!???" - "please, firaxis, come on!!! - stop being so racist, or so sexist, or so rapist". You can't possibly include all of them into the game, but, there has to be a way to please everyone, even my Barbarian ancestors knew that better.

To Coracle,
I can't do that - cause I haven't got one. On computers I can only type and play. As true Barb. And as true Barb can I spread bull**** at times. Sorry.

To Sir Ralph,
And I agree with you, these indicators would eventually lead to assigning more certain attibutes to your Barbarian Tribe, and then Firaxis should develop such a scheme or plot that connects certain attributes plus geographical position plus many other things like manner of playing - connects all of that to certain nation or ethnicity that is believed to have been developped under such behaviour, environment and etc.

Let us found a Barbarian party!!!!! - We are new race, actually the oldest one - older than these.....huh....hm...huh....ya know what I mean

[Giovanni Wine]

Well every nations or civs had a Barbarian past!

Germans were considered barbarian by the Romans cause they were 4 meters tall, blonds (edited: I wrote blinds the first time) and with blue eyes (while the tallest Roman could berely make it to 1 meter), but they weren't very advanced technologically.

Romans were considered Barbarians by the Greeks because they allowed women suffrage, they were killing people in Amphitheatre and they attacked Greece and had to aborb Greek culture to become a Civilization.

Greek were considered Barbarians by the Cretians!

Cretian were considered Barbarians by the Egyptians!

So... I think I like the idea of starting off with a non-trait barbaric civ, have to aborb other civs culture, develop my own traits, strenghts and (hopefully not) weakness.

Like the Idea!

Barbarians as a playable civ

Saluti

[Rosacrux]

Starting off without traits and evolving... that sounds good, very promising and... huh... wait... isn't that the case in the Empire Earth scenarios?

Actually it's a great idea but as others suggest it would be rather an interesting idea for a new game, a "Civ4" perhaps (*critters*) and not this game - I don't think it's possible to incorporate such a drastic change right now at this stage.

And two traits per civ is not really very "deep" or "detailed"... I'd rather have a dozen or 18 traits and 4 of them for every civ... at least. Maybe 6 or more - tailored Civs in every detail.

And... hey, my ancestors were not considered barbaric by anyone for the last 4000 years at least. And, mind you, I am Greek but I am also Cretan!

Someone has to do his homework

[Jethro83]

Definitely a good idea for a possible Civ IV. But as it was already said, too late to add it to this game.

[Richelieu]

How about using the "goody huts" to steer a civilisation towards a dominant trait ?
You could start as a barbarian, and the first tech. advance you get from a goody hut would push you towards that particular path.

i.e. You get "Ceremonial Burial" from your fisrt hut, you become a religious civ... If you don't explore enough and discover the goodies, you're stuck without the benefits of specializing.

Just a thought

[dervish]

To conclude in short I like this "goody hut idea" too, plus geographical or terrestrial (if you like) position of your civ, for example if you locate your first city on water (major water source like sea), your chances of getting more naval traits are higher, and etc. Something that happened to Japanese.

I agree this is something to be offered to thread like "Civ 4 new ideas". I have so much on my wish list.

[dunk]

Originally posted by Giovanni Wine
Well every nations or civs had a Barbarian past!

Germans were considered barbarian by the Romans cause they were 4 meters tall, blonds (edited: I wrote blinds the first time) and with blue eyes (while the tallest Roman could berely make it to 1 meter), but they weren't very advanced technologically.

I didn't know that Germans were so tall. hehe. (wonders how he effectively lost half of his height over the last couple thousand years).

I think the Romans were at the tallest, about 5 feet (or 1 and 2/3 meters). The Germans were probably closer to 2 meters even on average.

Sorry, I'm just picturing people 12 feet tall fight people 3 feet tall. hehe. A Giant vs a Halfling.

[dervish]

There, there!!!! See that??? How many silly arguments going on whose nation omitted or not??!!! Firaxis should cling on to this "barbarian" idea, or else in no time we can all go back to our barbarian stone age.
We all start as barbarians, no traits, no attributes - we work it up slowly during a game depending on our position, climate, geography, goody huts, first buildings to build, first actions we undertake and etc.
May be, the traits and attributes should be picked up optionally as well?
By the way, how many of these traits, do you think, there should be in the game, and what kind of?
At present, we have - militaristic, religious, scientific, commercial, industrious, expansionist.
I don't deny them - they are OK, but, don't you think first traits at the dawn of civilization should be initial way of life of your first barbarians, like sedentary, food-gatherers, fishers, nomadics, pastoralists and the likes??
To back up our idea that we all come from barbarians, I recommend you look at Nostratic Barbarians

[dervish]

So, to conclude overall what I said on my other threads, if this "Civolution" game incorporated ethnic trees and barbarians as starting point zero in the game, you would start the game as, say, Indo-European barbarian, or Ural-Altaic barbarian, or Afro-Asiatic barbarian or Sino-Tibetan barbarian and hell there is a couple more big families to start with.
There might be a huge problem though with naming the first cities, their names. Plus, no one knows even vaguely their relative traits of such our very oldish ancestors as Indo-Europeans and Ural-Altaics. Nobody actually saw them. Will be hard to pick up a leader from such deeepest ancient time. Nobody knows them either.
What do you think there might be other problems in addtion to these ones?

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by dunk999


I didn't know that Germans were so tall. hehe. (wonders how he effectively lost half of his height over the last couple thousand years).

I think the Romans were at the tallest, about 5 feet (or 1 and 2/3 meters). The Germans were probably closer to 2 meters even on average.

Sorry, I'm just picturing people 12 feet tall fight people 3 feet tall. hehe. A Giant vs a Halfling.

That was the idea I wanted to give... a little bit of exaggeration

Saluti

[Imp. Montezuma]

Originally posted by dervish
So, to conclude overall what I said on my other threads, if this "Civolution" game incorporated ethnic trees and barbarians as starting point zero in the game, you would start the game as, say, Indo-European barbarian, or Ural-Altaic barbarian, or Afro-Asiatic barbarian or Sino-Tibetan barbarian and hell there is a couple more big families to start with.
There might be a huge problem though with naming the first cities, their names. Plus, no one knows even vaguely their relative traits of such our very oldish ancestors as Indo-Europeans and Ural-Altaics. Nobody actually saw them. Will be hard to pick up a leader from such deeepest ancient time. Nobody knows them either.
What do you think there might be other problems in addtion to these ones?

Civolution or Civilization IV: Rise of Barbarians

Names of Gods and Heroes are source for leader and ruler names.
Odin - chieftan of Ases, mithic tribe from Asia, proto-Germanic, Asgard - capital.
Noah - leader of Afro-Asiatic
et cetera

[Imp. Montezuma]

Originally posted by dervish
... and me, as Central Asian Turk...

Turk? Or Turkic? Where from?