New Civs Update from IGN

[Spiffor]

Monkspider :
I don't advise to tell a Turk he's the same as an Arab... You'll have a punishment matching what you'd get if you tell him he's Greek

The only thing Turks and Arabs have in common is religion, and that the Turks dominated the whole Arab world for some time. But their language is extremely different (the Turks have an Altaic language, from Mongol origin), their alphabet is different (the Turks use Roman alphabet), their history is different, their way of life is different, their political organization is different (Ottoman empire was extremely tolerant to other religions, as long as these minrities payed tributes).
Saying Turks and Arabs are redundant is like saying China and Japan are redundant. It's simply wrong.

(btw, I still think the Koreans would be in : if the Hwacha was a feudal-Japan unit, it would have been called after the Japanese name, not the Korean one). I'm very happy with the Koreans, as I am with both Arabs and Turks

EDIT : lordy, I agreed with Imran on something !

[Capt Dizle]

Well, thanks for the apology Mark.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Korea was just too, too close to China and Japan, IMO, to be included. So I think the Incas will be in.

Boy though, Gaul and France are light years apart...

[monkspider]

Anyone else think that the prophet would be a cool leader for the Arabs?
Spiffor- I realize there are very real differences between the Turks and the Arabs, I just don't think the difference is as significant as say the Arabs and the Hebrews or the Arabs and the Koreans.
Trip- I think using the name "Gaul" is ridiculous, it would make so much more sense if they just called them the Celts. As you said, merely being the Gauls makes them very redundant with the French.

[Jon Shafer]

If they don't include the Incans, but do include "Gaul" that will make me quite upset. Yes, we can mod things, but as stated before it's not the same. A SA civ is necassary, simply to round things out both culturally and geographically.

[Andrew_Jay]

That is a very interesting question Monspider, Muhammad or Saladin? Probably not Muhammad, I can see cries of 'sacreligious' from the Muslim community. Not that I'm singling them out, but I think Christians would complain if Jesus was the leader of a civ. Especially since there is the possibility for Jesus to get 'furious' and declare war on people Same would be a problem for Muslims I think. Not to stereotype, but I don't think images of living things are too popular amongst more orthodox Muslims, and an image of Muhammad probably wouldn't be popular at all, with anyone.

[Jon Shafer]

Andrew is right. Including Muhammed would be treading on some very thin ice... especially since he's not supposed to be depicted in any pictures according to the Muslim faith. If Firaxis does include Muhammed, they might find themselves in big trouble somehow...

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by monkspider
I wonder who will be the Arab's leader, Saladin or Muhammad?

most likely, Saladin

[monkspider]

I agree it would be very controversial, I just think it would be neat, as long as it was done in a way respectful to muslims of course.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph

Not all Celts were Gauls, but all Gauls were Celts. Gauls was the name the Romans gave the in Gaul (or Gallia, ancient France) living Celts. Here is some literature about this region and its inhabitants.

Thanks I'm aware of that. Perhaps I misunderstand the terms Japan and Nippon, two words for the same country (civ).

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
I tend to think that the name "Gauls" is a mistake, and the actual one is "Celts". As pointed out above, both words mean the same. On a similar note, it would be great if the Celtic civ included ALL the Celtic tribes of W. Europe, not just a few of them.

I'm sure its just a typo but they dont mean the same thing.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by monkspider
Anyone else think that the prophet would be a cool leader for the Arabs?
Spiffor- I realize there are very real differences between the Turks and the Arabs, I just don't think the difference is as significant as say the Arabs and the Hebrews or the Arabs and the Koreans.
Trip- I think using the name "Gaul" is ridiculous, it would make so much more sense if they just called them the Celts. As you said, merely being the Gauls makes them very redundant with the French.

IMO the Ottomans are more different from arabs than the hebrews are. As Spiffor said, they originate from a totally different area with a totally different culture.

It should definitely be celts.

[Jay Bee]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I'm sure its just a typo but they dont mean the same thing.

They actually do. "Gaul" is Latin for "Celt". History narrowed the meaning to make it refer only to the Celts living in what is today France. So, all Gauls are Celts, but not all Celts are Gauls (unless, of course, you only speak Latin).

[Guynemer]

Can't believe that the Ethiopians aren't included...

[Harlan]

Just did five minutes of reseach on the Gaul - Celt question. Here's what the Mirriam-Webster dictionary web entry says:

Gauls:

Date: 1625
1 : a Celt of ancient Gaul
2 : Frenchman

Gaul:

Variant(s): or Latin Gal·lia /'ga-lE-&/
Usage: geographical name
ancient country W. Europe comprising chiefly the region occupied by modern France & Belgium & at one time including also the Po valley in N. Italy

whereas Celt is defined as:

Celt

Etymology: Latin Celtae, plural, from Greek Keltoi
Date: 1550
1 : a member of a division of the early Indo-European peoples distributed from the British Isles and Spain to Asia Minor
2 : a modern Gael, Highland Scot, Irishman, Welshman, Cornishman, or Breton

Note that Celt is also a Roman word, though originally from Greek.

Jay Bee,
If you have any info on Gauls meaning all Celts, I'd like to hear it. A short dictionary entry can oversimplify things. I found this page which makes me think that, while the Gauls got around, they didn't for instance include the Celts living in the British Isles. Perhaps because almost all Roman contact with Celts was with Gallic Celts, the words were often used interchangably, leading to confusion.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MA/CELTS.HTM

Here's the page's section on the Gauls:

Gauls

The earliest Celts who were major players in the classical world were the Gauls, who controlled an area extending from France to Switzerland. It was the Gauls who sacked Rome and later invaded Greece; it was also the Gauls that migrated to Asia Minor to found their own, independent culture there, that of the Galatians. Through invasion and migration, they spread into Spain and later crossed the Alps into Italy and permanently settled the area south of the Alps which the Romans then named, Cisalpine Gaul.

The Gauls were a tribal and agricultural society. They were ruled by kings, but individual kings reigned only over small areas. Occasionally a single powerful king could gain the allegiance of several kings as a kind of "over-king," but on the whole the Gauls throughout Europe were largely an ethnic continuity rather than a single nation.

Ethnic identity among the early Gauls was very fluid. Ethnic identity was first and foremost based on small kinship groups, or clans—this fundamental ethnic identity often got collapsed into a larger identity, that of tribes. The main political structures, that of kingship, organized themselves around this tribal ethnic identity. For the most part, the Gauls did not seem to have a larger ethnic identity that united the Gaulish world into a single cultural group—the "Gauls" as an ethnic group was largely invented by the Romans and the Greeks and applied to all the diverse tribes spread across the face of northern Europe. The Gauls did have a sense of territorial ethnicity; the Romans and Greeks tell us that there were sixteen separate territorial nations of Gauls. These territorial groups were divided into a series of pagi, which were military units composed of men who had voluntarily united as fellow soldiers.

The Gauls, however, were not the original Europeans. Beginning in an area around Switzerland, the Celts spread westward and eastward displacing native Europeans in the process. These migrations begin around 500 BC. The Gaulish invasion of Italy in 400 was part of this larger emigration. The Romans, however, pushed them back by the third century BC; native Europeans in the north, however, were not so lucky.

Two Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones ("Teuton," an ethnic for Germans, is derived from the Celtic root for "people"), emigrated east and settled in territory in Germany. The center of Celtic expansion, however, was Gaul, which lay north of the Alps in the region now within the borders of France and Belgium and part of Spain.

The earliest account of the Gauls comes from Julius Caesar. In his history of his military expedition first into Gaul and then as far north as Britain, Caesar dexcribed the tribal and regional divisions among the Gauls, of which some seem to have been original European populations and not Celtic at all.

The Gaulish tribes or territories frequently built fortifications that served as the military and political center of the region. These fortified centers took their names from the larger tribe—for instance, Paris took its name from the tribe of Parisi and Chartres was originally named after the tribe, the Carnuti, which had built it.

Gaulish society, like all of Celtic society, was rigidly divided into a class system. Similar class systems predominated among the Indians as well with largely the same categories. According to Julius Caesar, the three classes of Gaulish society were the druides, equites, and plebs , all Roman words. The druids were the educated among the Gauls and occupied the highest social position, just as the Brahmin class occupied the highest social position among the Indians. The druids were responsible for cultural and religious knowledge as well as the performance of rituals, just as the Brahmins in India. However obscure these religious functions might be, the druids were regarded as powerful over both society and the world around them. The most powerful tool the druids had was the power of excommunication—when a druid excommunicated a member of a tribe, it was tantamount to kicking that person out of the society.