I hated CTP for many reasons, and on of them was the dummied-out civilizations. They included "civs" that were "created" in the 18th century, with the cost of the historical ones. For me, a unified (for example) Polynesian civilization would fit much better.

Ethiopians are good too. Khmers.

I disliked the including of the Americans in the previous Civs. They were added just because of popularity questions, as many people want to play their "own Civ".

quote: Originally posted by Patriqvium on 01-26-2000 08:11 AM This makes even more people angry, but... I disliked the including of the Americans in the previous Civs. They were added just because of popularity questions, as many people want to play their "own Civ".

Damn straight. I know that Australia has never been a civ in this sense of the word. Sure, the U.S. is a super-power now, but let's face it... they're in there so people can play as their own civ. I agree whole-heartedly.

Fact is, I'm Australian, and I won't be really fussed if we're not included. But it is funny to see everyone get fired up.
Perhaps a wide range of civs should be included with a check box for a particular game to include only historically accurate civs. And I'm talking about the ancient ones here, not the Americans.

Civilizations are NOT IDENTICAL with political structures, nor with one ethnic group, nor with one linguistic family!!
As a rule its religion and cultural identity that ultimately defines a civilization.

The game CivII acknowledges this difference; its makes clear that a Republic should be understood as a federation of city states all belonging to the same culture.
One cause of the existing confusion is that the makers of CivII haven't been consistent (for example including both French and Spanish, both being Roman Catholic and Latin nations), while at the same time totally neglecting the isssue of domestic policies, which in my opinion is a true shame! I hope CivIII will at least correct that.

I want to thank the Joker for his declaration of approval, though its partly his own idea.

Its true that not all "original" civilizations existed in 4000BC, but some of them did: the Sumerian, Egyptian, Indus and Chinese. Then some more creative posters came with the idea of introducing the rise AND fall of civilizations: today the only civilization clearly still there, is the Chinese, which is an achievement in itself. Hurrah for the Chinese!!
And why should all civilizations start at the same date? I think the game could be made much more interesting for the advanced player if he could choose a late-starting civilization. A player could earn points for every year his civilization existed. Nor should military defeat necessarily spell the end of a civilization! Normally a civilization will absorb the conqueror through assimilition.

By the way, the German empire is older than some posters seem to know: in 962AD Otto I the Great founded the Holy Roman Empire Deutscher Nation, which was not a nation based state in the modern sense, but the German element was certainly dominant in it; this first "Reich" lasted until 1806. I would date the birth of the English kingdom at 1066 at least, of the French kingdom at 987 (Hugo Capet), possibly even earlier (Clovis). Someone like Jeanne d'Arc proves that some sense of national identity did exist in the later Middle Ages, in Europe at least.

To those intelligent readers really interested in the concept of a civilization I would like to recommend W.H.McNeill: "The rise of the West(1963)"

quote: Originally posted by S. Kroeze on 01-26-2000 05:53 PM If a small nation (14 million inhabitants??)like the Australians would be included, the Indian civilization alone...

Well, if we're going to be accurate about everything, I should point out Australia's hit 20 million, but your point's taken.
Although, somewhere we've got to draw the line between historical accuracy and wanting to play your favourite civs. I'm sure Firaxis want to get everything reasonably accurate, but I think there's other things (ie. balanced gameplay, tough AI, implementation of some of these great forum ideas ) that they'll be putting more time into.

Fact is, no matter who they put in and leave out, there's going to be a lot of complaints anyway. They're in a bit of a no win situation here, so I'm not going to be too fussy. But then, I haven't studied much history...

Btw, what do you think of the idea, that every nationality should have a flag. Maybe you could draw your own flag. Instead of the color thing: blue, red, orange, there are flags!

quote: Originally posted by tanis on 01-27-2000 01:02 PM There would be nearly no use for the flag...

There would be a use, on occupied cities, in diplomatic antechambers, and in the status bar. I think there woulb be many options for flag rasing. You could have a sequence when a city was taken over.

Flags are just about everywhere, they are a sign of unionism, of people that belong to the same group. Giving you a more nationalistic feeling. You are not batteling blue ones, e.g.: you are batteling the union jack. I think that involves you more with the game.
Of course, I know this is not easy to include with the game, but it would be nice.

Or one thing I liked about some Civ2 Scenarios was that you had right the same unit as your opponent, but the look was different. So, that the french musketeers for example had their blue-white-red uniform, while the english had red-blue-black and austrians had green-white. I quite liked that. Because it showed that these units belong to this nation and they were my units and nobody else could recruit them....

Comments?

Just to be fair Luxemborg

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Its normal to be weird here and weird to be normal~ Brain

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CtG

But Colombia never reached anything. It was a Spanish colony, that never reached a big status. It had a great leader - Simon Bolivar - which dreamed about a united and free Spanish America, but died without seeing his dream come true. After that, it never reached any status to be acclaimed as a great civ.

By the way, the Colombian era you refer to happened after American Independence and Colombia's history is kinda brief.

If you were talking about Incas, and their home was Perú, if I'm not wrong, then I would totally agree with you. As they were one of the few original inhabitants of the Americas, along with the Aztecs and the Mayas. One last thing about Incas, have you heard of Machu Pichu?

From 962AD until about 1250 the German Empire was a formidable one, no doubt about it- taking stock of the fact that all power was very limited in those days, absolutely nothing in comparison with the modern nation-state. The emperor was considered the highest authority in western christianity, having great power in Germany, Italy, Burgundy and considerable influence in surrounding countries like France, Bohemia and Poland.
The dynasty of the Ottones saved this part of Europe from the onslaught of the Hungarians. The empire expanded rapidly eastwards during this period, subjecting many Slav people. Temporarily they even controlled the church, selecting the pope and acting in all respects like the equal of that other emperor, ruling the eastern part of the Roman world from Constantinople.

Their very success brought about a reversal, because it created many enemies, who all allied against them: the papacy, the German aristocracy, in Italy the city states. The decline set in with the Investiture Controversy, the central issue being the appointment of bishops. Because the kings/emperors ruled through those bishops, control of the investiture was the very cornerstone of their power. The Papacy, beginning with Gregory VII (the other power claiming universal authority), and empire were at one another's throats for centuries and went down together. The French Capetians were the one who's sitting pretty: in the end the pope ended as their hostage in Avignon.

Because papacy and empire with their universal claims balanced one another, the future belonged in Europe to the national monarchies; an essential point in the development of Western christianity, a "true" civilization, becoming in this way a dominant feature as is aptly proved by this page. Greater personal freedom is an other result of this unresolved battle between church and state.

But until 1250, when Frederick II of Hohenstaufen died the outcome of the battle wasn't clear. For the emperors it was unfortunate that the emergence of the German cities, their natural allies against the aristocracy, was relatively late and less spectacular than in Italy.

A remark about the use of flags. Though the flag of my country is less ugly than most, I cant become wild because of it. And it is very anachonistic! Only with the French revolution and Romanticism became people emotional about flags.
In my country only hooligans and fascists will run after it.

If being a stone-age civilization were important (which seems odd since America's included), then how about including the Australian Aborigines instead? They lasted just as long as the Zulus... until European colonization.

Then, how to satisfy for the mopdern nations players?

Well, How about adding the option to choose which civ you will belong or play when the civ get splited to two or more?

What I am asking myself is: How can engineers develop newer and better weapons, when they havent seen the older ones in action?

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 02-01-2000 01:17 AM Well, How about adding the option to choose which civ you will belong or play when the civ get splited to two or more? So when we play the British Empire and have overseas colonies like America or Australia, and the colonies want independence due to whatever the reasons, then we can choose which side we are in.

i may be misinterpreting you here, but it sounds like you're suggesting events that are almost pre-ordained to occur. (and if not, what's the likelihood of a split occuring if an aussie like myself wants to play their own civ? are we supposed to sit and hope?)

some people seem to have raised similar ideas based on historical accuracy, but i'd be much happier to leave the player free to shape their world, rather than being tied down to a storyline of how _our_ world turned out.

NoviceCEO: Hello!(I don't know in Portugese->hello. Pardon me for my ignorance)novice!
What a nice example you gave to us.

Midknight Lament: Gee'Daay MATE! How's it going! Haha, I just made the suggestion for the case if the game won't include Australia when it still have countries like America.

If there will be some modern nations to begin with in Civ3, of couse, Australia has every right to be included in it. It's simply not fair to have some modern nations along with great ancient civilisations because they are simply well-known or powerful while most of modern nations are left out in the game.

However, when the game starts to include all the modern nations like CTP, we might have to change to game name itself to "the World" or Nations,etc. Since the game's very purpose is to play ancient civilisations and watch them grow(at least that's what I thought), there shouldn't be any modern nations to begin with.

I don't want to see a civ (using the term broadly) included only because it's ancient or excluded only because it's modern. There's no way you could have a game called Civilization and exclude the Americans, for example, as some seem to want to do. The historical importance of the US and its impact on the whole world just cannot be denied--the US has a unique culture which is emulated, envied, or reviled the world over. It is a major civilization. History is not a union shop where you get promoted just for being around a long time. It's a meritocracy. If you can develop a unique style of civilization and become great and a world power in 200 years (or less, really), good for you; the history books won't devote any fewer chapters to your civ because it all happened so late in the game.

The Australian aborigines should not be included. Sure they've been around, but what have they done? The modern nation of Australia is far more deserving of inclusion. Same with the Picts, Pygmies, etc.--keep them out. To prefer the Pygmies to the Australians is really only a kind of prejudice against moderns. On the other hand, there's really no reason to include Nicaraguans and Jamaicans. No disrespect intended to those nations and their people, but Australia is more significant than those.

Anyway, gameplay should ultimately decide, imho. Australia should be included if for no other reason (not to say there aren't others) than that it occupies a significant land mass which would be a great place to start a civ. Other civs I'd like to see: the Mali (or Songhai, but I prefer the Mali), the Canadians, the Khmer, and the Turks, maybe Ethiopians (Axumites) and a few more Europeans (Poles, Portuguese, Swedes, Dutch). And that's about it. But as long as you have the option of playing with only those civs you want to play with (not just one out of the three that happen to have the same color), I won't complain if others are included as well. I think that's really important: that you can play with any or all civs, and that you have complete control in deciding which ones.