The List of Civilisations

[red_jon]

I think that "lesser-important" nations that are included (like Mexico and Brazil) should be included as otherwise, there would be no representation for South America and Africa.

These countries have large populations and we can't just pretend they're not on the face of the Earth just because they're not powerful.

I like playing with random civs, because its funny. What if the Native Americans had met the Greeks? If we were going 100% accurate with it, every time its played it would be the same.

I think every nation that has ever been on this Earth should be included!

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...And if the British Commonwealth and its people live for a thousand years, man will still say "this was their finest hour"- Winston Churchill.

[MagyarCrusader]

Finally, someone posts the lists of civilizations. Good, now I definetly know I'm not going to cough up money for these cheesy civ2 knock off.

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"There is no more illustrious history than the history of the Magyar Nation... The whole civilized world is indebted to Magyarland for its historic deeds."
-Theodore Roosevelt, to the Hungarian Parliament,
April 2, 1910

[MidKnight Lament]

Ok, we'll catch up with you in another thread, shall we? Talk to you some other time.

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- MKL
"And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!"
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org celebrates it's First Birthday today!!! All welcome.

[Monkey]

quote: Finally, someone posts the lists of civilizations. Good, now I definetly know I'm not going to cough up money for these cheesy civ2 knock off.

Huh? You're basing an entire game based on the list of civilizations? What's the difference? There are no fundamental differences between the civs in CTP, CTP2 or civ2.

[Stratesford]

You can make your own civs in a scn. anyway

[PRoy]

quote: Originally posted by Stratesford on 10-28-2000 02:44 AM Have you ever been in something called a history class? The Romans came form the Etruscans not the Greeks, the Vikings came from the Teutons, but the germans came from the alemani, the burgundi and some of the gothic tribes and some Romans. The British originally came from the Romans and then they mixed with the Celts, Vikings, Germans and the French. The Slavs came from the Huns and the Vikings and then from the Turks and Byzantines (who came from the Romans and the Greeks). I think this is correct... Activision, why didn't you include the Byzantines? I consider them important why not make a last minute change and put them on their?

Yes, I know it isn't perfect because there were so many "tribes". I said Romans from Greeks because Rome was a Greek colony. The Germanic peoples of northern Europe displaced the Celts of central Europe during the ancient era, which is why I refer to the original group as Scandinavian. As for Britain, what a mess! It started as Celtic, then dominated by Rome, then the Celts were displaced by Germanic Anglo-Saxons, not to mention later incursions from Normans and Vikings! Still, they are mostly Germanic in character, which explains a lot of her history . .

Just don't call them German!

Anyway, my point was that there should be some mechanism to "morph" over time to your desired final nation. Right now you can only combine nations, through conquest, but there is no mechanism for division aside from civil wars which you have no control over. Sometimes these things happen more peacefully, or at least more organized, too.

I think everyone should have to start from an ancient civilization or recognized cultural group, and work out their history from there.

[PRoy]

I'd also like to see it where when you take an enemy city, it is NEVER really happy with your rule, and you have a few choices:

1. Keep it as an inefficient and riot-prone city.

2. Repatriate it to its original country.

3. Force the resettlement of its population, thereby destroying it.

4. Starve it to death.

5. Give it full independance as a new nation.

Obviously there are different political implications depending on what choice you make and what period of history you are in.

Forced resettlement is not unusual. At the end of WW2, millions of people were resettled due to the new national boudaries. My own belief is that such a similar forced resettlement, of Arabs out of Israel, might be necessary to bring long-term peace in the Middle East. Arabs and Jews have shown they can't live together, and the destruction of the only homeland Jews can call their own is completely unacceptable, when Arabs have so many larger Arab nations to choose from.

Getting back on topic, my model would also make it possible for you to liberate conquered nations, by retaking those cities and then setting up an independant government for them. Whenever you voluntarity liberate a nation, they would automatically have some good will toward you, however fleeting (as the French for the Americans).

In my model, a city would always retain the national character of its original nation.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

The whole Civilizations question goes back to some of the first discussions of Civ III a year and more ago. Bottom line, no game of the scope of the Civ games (4000 BC to ???) can hope to include every civilization or culture that has existed in all that time. If the actual name of the civilization or leader you are playing bugs you, then change it: I started doing that in CivII, and I've been doing it in CtP, and except for changing graphics of portraits or city-styles, changing text is no big deal for anyone (I'm a historian, not a techie - if I can do it, anyone can!)
As for starting Civs, there wouldn't be a whole lot of them that would be recognizable to any players. In 4000 BC, about all you would have able to build "cities" in game terms would be Chinese, Egyptians, and Sumerians - everyone else would be Barbarians!
By the way, Rome was not a Greek colony - influenced by both Greel and Etruscan cultures, but primarily Etruscan/Italiot in foundation. In addition, the Celts hadn't reached Britain yet at that early stage: the inhabitants were still 'Beaker Folk' and the Hallstadt Celts wouldn't arrive until around 600-2500 BC, which is pretty far into the early part of the CivII/CtP game!
Basically, starting at 4000 BC or anywhere within a 1000 years of that date means all the normal "civilization" titles are fantasy: the bulk of the "starting players" will be Barbarian-equivalent nomads, which won't build their first "city" for several thousand years, and none of the modern civ-names is accurate for any of them: even Chinese or Egyptian are only vaguely applicable to their early cultures, not to any political entity that existed.

[PRoy]

You are all missing the major thrust of my argument, which is about nation building. The fact that there was no America, France, Germany, etc, at the dawn of civilization is enough to make the point. It would be impossible to detail every transformation of national groups in a way that would satisfy the nitpickers.

I've addressed the issue in a workable fashion. Perhaps you should re-read my posts and offer relevant criticism to the point of how to resolve the problem, rather than nitpick marginal points.

[JPF_civplayer]

IMO this whole topic is close to the bottom of importance to worry about. Gameplay is important, the list of Civs isn't

[Chris Horscroft]

At risk of being disappointed by the answer, how would PRoy's "model" allow for the noble goal of global conquest as a means of victory? Permanently inefficient, unhappy cities would presumably greatly damage your chances in that regard, and since conquest is a legitimate means to victory, I'd suggest that this "model" would change the game into something else entirely.

And since PRoy, you started by suggesting that no "offshoot" civilisations should start the game, you can hardly accuse Diodorus Sicilus of nitpicking when he points out that only 3 or 4 groups would possibly qualify as starters in your model.

In any event, I dispute the realism of your permanent civilisations model. The descendants of the first Egyptian and Chinese civilisations are no longer around, in any form. The populations of Cairo and Beijing do not agitate for liberation in the sense you are talking about (No first dynasty egyptian spies stir up the people of Cairo to restore Pharoah!). Nor is today's India any reflection of the early Indian groups. Nor does modern Iraq really descend, intellectually, economically or politically from ancient Mesopotamia (and Bagdad doesn't care). There is no nationalist agitation (that I know of) to free Sparta from the yolk of modern Greece, or to liberate London from its Roman or Viking or Saxon or Norman conquerors. What you claim is a permanent feature of human life (misery under foreign conquest leading to eventual revolt) is a relatively modern issue called "Nationalism". It did not exist in any clearly recognisable form 250 years ago.

Conquered peoples usually had little interest in worrying about whichever king was their leader, and whether he spoke French, English or German made no real difference in the middle ages. (Even in modern times, the English Royal Family was Scottish until it became Dutch, now it's basically German - this has had little effect on the English people's willingness to fight against Germany in the 20th century. The willingess of the (often conquered) populations of the European empires to get involved in WWI demonstrates little recognition of "nationality" as an issue in national policy well into the industrial age).

The Roman and Persian empires functioned perfectly well despite being incredibly multiracial combines - more so than the US or the USSR. (Palestine is an obvious exception to this otherwise general rule). Carthage never restored itself after Roman conquest, nor did Egypt reinstitute its pre-Roman rulers again to challenge Rome as Rome declined.

Modern democracy and the greater involvement of the average person in the political process changes the picture somewhat, but your model would not reflect reality if applied in general to the world between 4000BC and about 1750AD. Nationalism is a modern force, not an ancient one.

I write all this to be relevant criticism, rather than nitpicking. I do not think you model, in its current form, is either workable in a conquest-based game or historically accurate (in any sense)
[This message has been edited by Chris Horscroft (edited October 30, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Chris Horscroft (edited October 30, 2000).]

[Matthew]

The only real glaring oversight I see is not having an Arab Civilization. Come on. Not only did the first Caliphate eventually stretch from Spain and Morrocco to the borders of India, (over much of which,if not most, Arabic is still the dominate language) but preserved and in fact advanced science on a scale that would make the whole Greek thing look like a preschool exercise, and spread a religion which boasts over a billion adherents. Granted, not every civilization can be included, but how on earth can you simply skip the Arabs while including some of those others?

Unless you believe the whole semimythical legend about the semidivine Romulus and his brother, no, Rome was not a greek colony.

And another point. Rome completed her conquest of most of mainland Italy shorthly before the beginning of the first Punic War. Just about all of her Italian allies had at one point or another been forced either to join or to remain in this permanent arrangement by force of Arms, most of them within the century before the first Punic war. Yet by the second Punic War, about 20 years later, Hannibal, much to his dismay, could not pry these allies away from Rome by force of Arms, let alone get them to abandon her willingly.

And no, I am neither Arab nor Muslim.

[Maccabee2]

Prince of Manhattan, I agree. The Arabs would be a great civilization to include. I also agree with the earlier post about the Byzantines.
As far as "Oh, just go edit the text files," what am I paying for? I want to customize it out of the box, not wade through a dozen screens via the "My Computer" icon, knowing if I mess up, I'll have to uninstall and reinstall the game. I want to spend my time getting into the game quickly and customize simply, not spend my precious few hours of leisure time dabbling in text files. My definition of "customize" is to click a few virtual buttons, not delve into reprogramming like Mickey picking up the Sorcerer's wand.
If Activision overlooked this critical item after all our input about customization, then I will defer buying the game by a few years until the price drops by 50% or so. In the mean time, I'll play a few games that have proved themselves and that I've never gotten around to....like AOE. I can buy that for about $20.
( I know you're all wondering what rock I've been under. When I said my leisure time is a precious few hours, I wasn't exagerrating. Hence, my reluctance to go fix something that should have been made into a few mouse clicks by the people who want my money.)
To paraphrase an earlier quote, "Can't we all just customize and get along?"