To flavor dave:
I have a confession to make. I AM a perfectionist. I am the one who picks the psilon at moo, the guys who build the super-armies at SC ( but get swamped by rushes ), the one who likes to mend it cities in civ.
So, I KNOW but you mean about winning with 8 good cities.
This method would be very hard however, against human players. But, that's not what I mean.
You need to understand, flavor dave that I am not talking about a civ for 5-8 cities. NOT AT ALL. That civ is maybe not big, but neither is it small.
Nay, when I say "little" civ I mean a civ of one or two cities ( maybe three is VERY big maps ). Thats it. And you have to admit, that winning with one city against HUMAN players ( and AI, if they were good ) is very hard.
About the player who won with one city at 1821 AD. I can tell you one thing: he played at easy level. How do I know? Beacause I did, several times, a similar thing at moo. I became to good at that game ( always won even with 8 players, impossible ) so I did the following thing: set the game to easy level and begun playing the entire game without leaving my home solar system. I won, btw.
BUT, there are some problems with that:
A. You need to be a very good player, and not everyone are that good.
B. We both know you can't really win at a hard level.
C. That method would NEVER, EVER work against human players, mainly when you start to build the space ship.
But lats leave that behind. We talks about realism and playability.
Well.
Small civ, we all agree, are better orginised. You can effect and shape your populas easily, and you can direct your economy into much narrower regions more effiecently.
Big nations can't offord to specilize in one thing like smaller nations can. Nor, even if they try, can they do that with the same success.
This is true in real life. Adding this to the game would make it too realistic.
Even if the bonus would be very small ( usless, as you say ) we added another side of realism into the game. So, add a simbolic bonus to minor civ. Doesn't have to be very big: a +50% to the value bonus and no SE minus from the value ( the other still give a minus ) to a one or two cities civ ( no more! ).
Hardly big, and it will:
A. Encourge trade and diplomacy.
B. Increase game ballance.
C. Allow perefectionist players to play easier.
D. All more realism.
To Maniac:
About the Minouns.
The "old" egyptain empire lay "south" of Thebes, many many kilomters along the river nile and very far from the ocean.
A trade between the two nations is hard to imgine.
The minoun hardly took over Athenas as the greek culture was created years after the minoun pitfalls. However, the greek used the minoun relics for the source of culture, architecutre and social structre.
Our entire wested civilaztion derives from the minoun, not the greeks.
The minoun were a peaceful nation and hardly knew off combat. They had almost no troops.
Check with diodorus scilus, he is the historian
