The Educated Civer's Guide to Voting for Expansion Pack Civilizations

[Solmyr]

Wrong, both. And on both aspects. Ranskaldan, Turks (the Turks of that time we are talking about, ok?) and Mongols (of the same time frame) were of the same origin, you agree on that.

Of the same origin just as Indo-Europeans are of the same origin. Not much more than that. Mongolian peoples lived in the eastern steppe while Turkic peoples lived in the central steppe.

The Greeks thought of the Macedonian as barbaric? LMAO, yeah sure... that is why the Macedonian took part in the Olympics from 450 BC. Perhaps do you know that noone that wasn't Greek was accepted into the Olympics? Yes?

Yet 450 BC is far later than the beginnings of either the Olympics or the Macedonian kingdom. Why weren't they accepted at the Olympics before then?

Note that I never said that ancient Macedonians were Slavic - that's ridiculous. I don't know where you got that impression from my posts.

I don't see why. France grew up in the early centuries of this millenium from a variety of competing little fiefdoms with political structures that did not originate from Roman political structures. It did not inherit its authority from Rome in the way that the Byzantines did.

Pretty much all western European states (and most especially France and Germany) inherited both their political structures and authority from the Roman empire. Simply because they had neither on their own to speak of.

I only consider civs illegible if they broke away from another CIV. And I don't consider the Holy Roman Empire a proper civ. It never had any real, effective power and was used mainly to make dominant kings look more impressive and try and boost their power.

What I meant was that both modern French and Germans originally come from common Frankish "civ" which gradually split in the 9th-10th centuries. And I'm still arguing that the difference between ancient Romans and Byzantines is as great as that between French and Germans.

Okay I think you've just convinced me on that one. As with the Arabs, I will no longer be upset if the Mongols remain in the top 16. I'm still sticking to my guns on the Byzantines, Vikings and Celts though

It's okay. I enjoy these historical debates I'm going to create a Byzantine civ for my game regardless, so it's really a moot point for me in that sense

I can cope with Normans, its just the term "Vikings" I don't like. I still wouldn't want the Normans included though as I think their role in history still isn't important enough to justify yet another European civ.

Well, they only seriously affected a few insignificant places like England, France, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Byzantine Empire, North Africa, Russia, and the Middle East. Not important enough

I wasn't talking about Indian culture, but about the existence of India as a constitutional entity. Think about it, what was "India" before British colonization? It was simply southern central of Asia, containing a huge variety of very diverse cultures and controlled by a variety of different kingdoms, none of which ever suceeded in uniting the entire subcontinent.

Some came pretty close, like the Maurya and the Gupta empires, and in the more modern times the Moghuls.

[Ubik]

Solmyr and Ranskaldan

Points taken and I think we don't have a disagreement here. As for the Mongolic/turkic thing, I am with Orange. But anyways... the only point that looks kinda ridiculous is the Spanish/French.

Ranskaldan, you claim they both are of Roman heritage and that is simply wrong. The Romans, in both places, were conquerors. Of course they build cities and they installed a number of settlers (not too many though, especially in Hiberia) and it is also true that the local upper class was culturaly Roman-ized.

But from that point,to stating that "Spanish and French derive from Romans" is a huuuuuge gap.

Let me repeat myself:

Spanish derive from Hiberic, Roman, Celtic, Gothic and some minor local tribes, with strong Arabic and Hebrew influences. French derive from Gaul, Frankish (E.N. that is Germanic) Normandic ancestry, with Roman influences...

They are not of Roman heritage, capito? Read some ethnology, it's all in there. And... if you say to Spaniard that he is a descentand of Rome... he will slap you in the face

[ranskaldan]

How interesting it is then, that the Spanish and French speak languages that are direct descendents of colloquial Latin, and follow the Roman Catholic faith. It seems that the upper-class was not the only Romanified layer.

From a bloodline point of view, the French are Celti-Romani-Frankish, but culturally and linguistically, the French and Spanish are Roman, with Celtic and Frankish/Gothic influences.

Anyway, i used the French-Spanish thing to illustrate that the Mongols and Turks are separate races, and to argue that they 'belong to each other' would be about the same as saying that the French and Spanish 'belong to each other'.

[Jay Bee]

Originally posted by Ubik
Let me repeat myself:

They are not of Roman heritage, capito? Read some ethnology, it's all in there. And... if you say to Spaniard that he is a descentand of Rome... he will slap you in the face

Uhm, that's not quite correct, Ubik. If you change Roman to Gothic/Germanic in your post then you have a point.

We Spaniards are very proud indeed of our Roman heritage, which is much stronger in Spain than in France and many parts of Italy. However our Arabic heritage is what distinguishes us so much from the French, just as France's big Germanic influence separates them from us. In summary Spain and France may share many similarities but still are clearly different entities.


(EDITED AFTER READING THE WHOLE THREAD )

[orange]

ranskaldan -
So because Britain was conquered by Rome, and because English has Latin roots, and because they were once dominated by Roman Catholocism...that makes them Roman?

The same applies to the French and Spanish. You could also say that those in southern Spain are actually moors, becuase the moors ruled them for such a long time. Heritage is different than rule. The romans did rule over Gaul and Hispana, and even Britannia, but these areas were not vastly settled by the Roman people. Cities were built as military outposts, markings of territory...in the East, population was much more dense, and cities were larger. But even still there is a difference between Romans and Byzantines, even though it is easier to argue that Byzantines should not be included in Civ III if Romans are, because technically the Byzantine empire was simply the Eastern Roman Empire after the division and fall in the 4th and 5th century AD.

Franks were not Romans. Please understand this.

[ranskaldan]

Franks were not Romans. Please understand this.

FRENCH is not equal to FRANKS. The FRENCH are Romans, but they got their name from the FRANKS, who were Germanic. The reason is that the FRANKS ruled France for a long time.

So because Britain was conquered by Rome, and because English has Latin roots, and because they were once dominated by Roman Catholocism...that makes them Roman?

English is a Germanic language with Latin roots. Its entire culture
is Anglo-Saxon, with Latin influence.

French and Spanish, on the other hand, are Romance languages, meaning that they are basically modified versions of Latin. The entire culture and everything of France and Spain is Roman, with Gothic/Germanic/Celtic influences.

The same applies to the French and Spanish. You could also say that those in southern Spain are actually moors, becuase the moors ruled them for such a long time. Heritage is different than rule. The romans did rule over Gaul and Hispana, and even Britannia, but these areas were not vastly settled by the Roman people. Cities were built as military outposts, markings of territory...

France and Spain WERE vastly settled by the Romans, so much so that Latin became the language of France and Spain, and the local dialects of Latin became modern French and Spanish. It is impossible for a language to take over an entire COUNTRY unless speakers of that language settled en masse into that country.

As an opposite example, the Normans conquered Britain, but didn't really settle into Britain a lot. Thus, although French became the official language of England for several centuries, English, the language of the original Anglo-Saxons, still emerged in the end.

[Jay Bee]

Originally posted by orange
The romans did rule over Gaul and Hispana, and even Britannia, but these areas were not vastly settled by the Roman people. Cities were built as military outposts, markings of territory...

I can safely assure you the Romans did vastly settle Hispania. It's true that in the beginning the cities were built as military outposts but later most of them developed into very large cities. At a moment in history the city of Emerita Augusta (today Merida) rose to become the second largest city of the Roman Empire (Emerita was the hometown of Maximus in the movie Gladiator

[Harlan]

Dang!
There is so much misinformation and mindless debate circling around these which civs are worthy threads like this its just staggering.

I think part of the problem is people have different definitions of what a civ is. In reality, Civ2 (and Civ3 no doubt) defines a civ as a larger group of many nation states. For instance, the Civ3 website defines the Babylonians as including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites, Hittites, Kassites, Assyrians, Arameans, and Chaldeans, as well as Bablyonians! But in practice, civs are played in the game as if they are a continuous unified nation state. This has caused a lot of confusion on this thread and others, to say the least!

In reality no civ has lasted long as a single unified nation state. The only ones in Civ3 that could fit the continuous nation state definition are the Aztecs, and Americans, and only because these are late starters, neither having existed for much over 200 years.

Given the above, the statement by Lumpkin that India is just an offshoot of the British is just plain wrong (and never mind the previous times in history when the Indian subcontinent was unified!). Civs as defined by Civ2 and now Civ3 are not unified nation states, but collections of people sharing a similar culture, sometimes unified, sometimes not.

If you have a problem with that, make or play scenarios, where civs correspond to political states much more frequently.

Can we all agree on this definition of a civ, so people can at least be arguing with one shared assumption? That will greatly lessen the misunderstanding, I think.

[Lumpkin]

Harlan,

I agree that there has a been a lot of confusion caused in this thread caused by the lack of definition over what constitutes a civ. There seems to be three different definitions being used:

Definition A: Civilizations as defined by the choice and description of civs in Civ2 and Civ3 - a grouping of various tribes or nation within a specific culture and region

Definition B: Civilizations as defined by their behaviour in Civ2 - a unified city-based state. This is the definition I used when I started the threat and upon which I based my civ-choosing criteria.

Definition C: Civilizations as defined by the word "civilization" (not necessarily the same thing as in the game "Civilization"). www.dictionary.com came up with two applicable definitions
1) An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.
2) The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.

The reason I chose to go with Def. B rather than the more obvious Def. A is that I have a proper when cultures that never came anywhere close to being a unified state, like the Celts, or that were not in any way city-based, like the Sioux, start building unified empires and vast cities. Obiously that is just my personal preference, not Firaxis' - I prefer my civs to be based on some kind of historical precedent.

In reality no civ has lasted long as a single unified nation state. The only ones in Civ3 that could fit the continuous nation state definition are the Aztecs, and Americans, and only because these are late starters, neither having existed for much over 200 years.

Agreed, but please note that I never specified any particular length of time during which a civ had to be a united, unified nation. I certainly did not use the word "continuous" and if I implied that they had to be unified since their conception then I certainly did not mean to. I guess I should have worded it as "must have been a united independent nation state at some point to make that clear. So I would disagree that my criteria exclude most of the civ3 civs.

Given the above, the statement by Lumpkin that India is just an offshoot of the British is just plain wrong (and never mind the previous times in history when the Indian subcontinent was unified!).

Why is it wrong? Remember I was talking in terms of India as a political entity. I don't think I used the word "offshoot" either. I said, "breakaway province". "Offshoot" wouldn't be right when talking about India's culture, but the growth of distinctive, self-aware Indian consciousness and culture came about as a direct result of British colonisation. There was no self-defined Indian people prefer the British created the empire of India. Yes, there was a Mughal empire and a Gupta empire which united most of the Indian subcontinent, but if this is the civ being referred to they should be called the "Gupta Empire" or the "Mughal Empire" not the "Indians". As I've already said, India before colonisation was a badly (European) defined geographical area, not a culture or people, and certainly not a state.

It wasn't a region like Greece or Germany either, whereby even though (prior to unification obviously) there was no political unity - you could still draw out fairly distinct about borders about where the regions of Greece and Germany ended based on profound linguistic and cultural similarities. India was more diverse and its border far more blurred. If the British had been a bit more powerful or had organised their colonies differently then maybe present-day Afghanistan or Burma would be considered India. The borders of India are artificially-imposed borders defined by the extent of British power, not by any pre-existing cultural ties.

So I still don't think it is unfair to say that India, as a distinct, clearly definable cultural unit and as a unified, political state, originated as a breakway British province.


Solmyr,

Pretty much all western European states (and most especially France and Germany) inherited both their political structures and authority from the Roman empire. Simply because they had neither on their own to speak of.

What I meant was that both modern French and Germans originally come from common Frankish "civ" which gradually split in the 9th-10th centuries. And I'm still arguing that the difference between ancient Romans and Byzantines is as great as that between French and Germans.

I don't deny that the Romans and Byzantines were very different, my problem is simply that the Byzantines were the direct constitutional descendent of the Romans. Roman power, in the east, essentially became Byzantine power. There was no complete collapse of legitimate authority and the splintering into thousands of little fiefdoms. There was no several centuries of in-fighting which would effectively erase the old systems of authority of national boundaries. You say that France and Germany "inherited their political structures" from the Roman Empire but I fail to see how feudalism is descended from governors, citizenship and civitates.

Also, I would disagree that France and Germany "come from" the Frankish civ. The Frankish empire collapsed into lots of small kingdoms and these small kingdoms were eventually unified by a dominant kingdom which then reminded everybody of historical precendents of unity in an attempt to reinforce their authority.

[Harlan]

Lumpkin,
You may want to go with definition B, but I still disagree. If we were to play on a world map with definition B and watch history go by, most of the world would be uninhabited except by barbarians. Every now and then a civ would pop up and disappear after a couple centuries on average. The Romans would probably last by far the longest, from about 500 BC to 1204 AD. Clearly you can see this is non-viable as a practical definition, except in scenarios?

If your point is that to be qualified as a civ it must have had a large unified country at one point, that virtually every civ under discussion fulfilled that condition at one point or another, except the Celts. The Vikings may not have controlled all Viking areas at once, but they did make the Rus empire, which in the 900s and 1000s had a unified empire larger than most of Western Europe. That's at least as much justification for inclusion as say, the Aztecs.

I also disagree that a civ had to have a completely unified culture and/or language over all or most of its territory to be civ-worthy. By that definition, you'd have to remove many of the civs already in Civ3, like the Persians, Bablyonians, and the Aztecs. I'm afraid your concept of a distinctive self-aware national consciousness is a relatively recent phenomenon (eloquently expressed by the Nationalism tech in Civ3). Even the Romans don't qualify, since at no time during the Roman Empire did more than about 1/5th of the population consider themselves Roman (non-citizens not having a buy-in to the system). Few people know this, but a large majority of the people in the Roman empire never even spoke Latin!

Your definition is simply too strict, and really only pertinent to recent centuries. We have a tendency to take our knowledge of the world today, and imagine that's how it was ages ago. If you could go back in time to the 13th century and ask a peasant in France about "France", chances are great he wouldn't know what you're talking about. Throughout history, most peasants didn't even know who their supreme leader was, cos it had no relevance to their life (I can testify to this on a personal level, as it can still happen today. I've met some peasants in Indonesia who took decades to realize the Dutch weren't still their overlords!).

Regarding India,
To call previous empires the Guptas or Mughals and not Indians is like saying there was no such thing as China until 1949. Cos anything prior to that was the Han, Ming, Manchu or whatever. That's playing a name game.

The fact is, the Ganges River valley was as continuously ruled by one unified empire as China was if not more, for thousands of years. Dynasties would change, so names would change. Sometimes this empire would spill over into surrounding areas and control them, sometimes not. But simply controlling the Ganges river valley, with its huge population and great culture, is civ-worthy by any definition. Certainly greater than nations like France and Germany in size and population, and unified in culture, religion and language (Hindi). Since there's no word like Gangesians, we call them the Indians. We don't have to wait till there is a unified nation and language over all of India to count them as a nation - that is much like saying there was no civ in Europe until the European Union.

[ranskaldan]

How do you define a civilization?

A nation-state? The truth is, no civ has ever succeeded at existing as a nation-state for long periods of time. All civs periodically fall into civil war. They are constantly overrun by barbarians, constantly being conquered, constantly destroyed, constantly colonized.

If a civ is a nation-state, then China ended its status of a civ during the first dynastic changeover. India ended its status when the Aryans toppled the Dravidian civilization. America ended its status with the Civil War. Egypt ended its status when the Old Kingdom ended in Civil War. Germany only became a civ in the 19th century. Greece never was a civ, except under Alexander the Great.

All of the civs that we have, the English, French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, etc... are all basically 'ideas'. They are 'ideas' that people have of a 'civilization'. It is hard to define 'civilization' in this case, except as a group that is different from other groups and has self awareness as a 'civilization', or 'culture'. These civilizations profoundly change over time, and they are undeterred by political entities and the like. They are shapeless cultural groups, expanding and contracting, fading into each other.

However, in civ, we have to simulate political entities. We can't play shapeless 'cultural groups'. So, how do we pick the civs?

Political entities? Great. Here are important political entities:
Persian Empire
Macedonian Empire
Roman Empire
Byzantine Empire
Holy Roman Empire
Abbasid Caliphate
Tang Empire
Mughal Empire
British Empire
United States of America

Shapeless culture groups? Well...
Egyptians
Babylonians
Greeks
Chinese
Indians
Romans
Persians
Aztecs
etc.

which group do you pick?

[Solmyr]

Originally posted by Lumpkin
I don't deny that the Romans and Byzantines were very different, my problem is simply that the Byzantines were the direct constitutional descendent of the Romans. Roman power, in the east, essentially became Byzantine power. There was no complete collapse of legitimate authority and the splintering into thousands of little fiefdoms. There was no several centuries of in-fighting which would effectively erase the old systems of authority of national boundaries. You say that France and Germany "inherited their political structures" from the Roman Empire but I fail to see how feudalism is descended from governors, citizenship and civitates.

Between the times of Justinian and Heraclius, there was plenty of infighting and cultural and political change in the Byzantine empire to make it a separate entity. One of the more profound differences is the "principate" of the Roman empire (where the emperor was, technically, "first among equals") as opposed to the "dominate" of the Byzantine empire (where the emperor is "equal to the apostles" and wields autocratic power). Basically, all I'm saying is that the Byzantine empire is as much different from Rome as France and Germany are different from the Frankish empire. You decide how much.

And regarding the western political structures, the original counts and dukes were regional administrators for the king. The same political structure existed in the Roman empire since Diocletian (even the words count and duke are Latin in origin - comes and dux). Only later did this develop into a hereditary system known as feudalism. So yes, I stand by my assertion that western political structures were largely inherited from Rome.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by Lumpkin
Also, the whole term Viking is very misleading. When people talk about the Vikings, they are actually referring to two distinct culture/races: the Norwegians (or Norse (later Normans)) and the Danes. These two peoples came in seperate waves and fought each other for land. The term "Viking" was coined by their victims and means "pirate". So when people use the term "Viking" they should be aware that what they mean is "Norwegian and Danish pirates of the Dark Ages".

Norse is a name for the old Norwegians, Danes and Swedes (who you seem to have forgotten), not just the Norwegians. Therefore, a better name for the civ would be the Norse, as the ones called "Vikings" were Norse raiders and pirates. The Normans, BTW, were mainly of Danish origin.