quote: The game will have the few well known ancient civs (Greek, Roman, Aztec etc.) and civs coresponding to countries in wich Firaxis expect sales for the game (US, Canada, German, French etc.)

My preferred option, if some Rise and Fall of Civ will be implemented, will be to start chosing betwneen only historically accurate Civ, then chose one of the related Nation when they'll appear after some split of civ.

So, starting with Roman I can have the possibility of "evolve" into Italy or Spain (etc.), when games will eventually raise them from original Roman empire (when it will happens, the game will suggest me a list of realistic names, still will let me write a fantasy one).

So modern nations are names available for evolving Civ, as in real history: cathed two birds with a stone.

Of course you can also have some relevant event when game will let you change your Civ/Nation name (e.g. after a change of government, or some main war (main territory annexion, e.g. if - game case - England conquer Ireland it can change its name to Great Britain, to better show its new status).

It can add some mess with statistics and reports, but probably no more than that raised from Raise and Fall concept anyway ).

Do you want to play Canada? Better you don't start on Chinese Civ (earth like map) then .

Anyway I believe that the core civilizations, who MUST be included, should be chosen like this: Take every 200 years of history from 4000 B.C. to 2000 A.D. and write down the 3 (no more) most powerful civs, Military, Economy, and Influence on the world being the major factors in determening "power". These civs should all be added to the game. The only other factor to be considered is chosing ATLEAST 1 civ of each race of the world (that is if they arent on the list already). If there is enough space left to add more civs, like Canadian, Australian etc then sure go ahead, but they should NOT be added at the expense of other civs who are already on that list.

Imho that is the best possible way in determining which civilization deserves to be in the game.

Just for fun ill pick some civs:

From 1800-2000: USA (because of its strength as a nation today, and vast influence on the rest of the world since WW2).
Britain (huge influence on the world and military power from 1800 to the 20th century. Out of all the European nations, Britain has had the most influnce during these 200 years around the globe, although Germany was perhaps more militarily powerful most of the time, it did not have nearly as much of an effect on the world as the British Empire)
Japan: (I had some problems deciding Japan over China, but the reason was Japan simply has been a stronger nation for most of the time between 1800-2000. It conquered most of China during WW2, and has certainly been alot more economically successful during this time, plus it has had more influence on the world mostly from trading)

Good morning sunshine...