With Iroquois now representing all northern native americans, do they belong in civ?

monkspider · October 5, 2001, 16:57

Yes, I am fully aware there have been several bitter debates on this subject. But with the Firaxis decision for them to represent all nothern native americans, does that change your opinion on them? For me it does. I have been a tad bit skeptical of the Iroquis being in, with the Mongols on the sideline. But I did realize the necessity of the representation in some form of the north american peoples. I think if you take into account the new scale of the iroquois representation, they become much more attractive as a legitimate civ. While fair cases could be made for possibly other civs being more important, but with Civ III's purpose of rewriting, rather than reliving history the Iroquois become far more reasonable. After all, who knows? Perhaps in another world, in another time, on another plain of reality, the Iroquois ruled the world. Again, given the larger scale of their representation now, it's not entirely unbelievable.

It could certainly be fairly argued that the Mongols or Arabs or whomever may have been better additions, but the fact that they now represent such a large group of people makes them at least a "reasonable" addition.

Martinus · October 5, 2001, 17:06

I agree. If they are to represent the whole Native American tribes of North America, there should be in.

However, I think they should be named Native Americans, not Iroquis. Just as Greeks are named Greeks, and not Spartans or Athenians, or Germans are not named Prussians or Bavarians.

monkspider · October 5, 2001, 17:27

Good point Martinus.
Probably the reason they don't is because "Native Americans" isn't really a self-chosen title. The Americas as we know them recieved the title by a spaniard named Amerigo Vespucci (sp?). I can't think of anything that the entirety of the native american peoples refer to themselves as. I definitely agree with you in that I wish they were called something a little more all encompassing, but given the circumstances, being named after what is probably the largest and most influential tribe of the people doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Maybe we can think of it as being sort of like the entire Roman empire being named after the single city of Rome.

Martinus · October 5, 2001, 17:59

I agree in principle.

However the comparison with Rome is not a particularly good one, IMHO. First of all the Roman Empire did actually encompass well, the Roman Empire, and this was a name the Romans referred to themselves.

Isn't there really a name all North America Native Americans referred to themselves? The only thing that comes to my mind could be the Children of Great Spirit or somesuch - anyone knows how it translates into one of the native languages?

Odin · October 5, 2001, 18:10

I Think the Native Americans should be in. Most people stereotype Native Americans as primitive hunters. Actually they had farming techniques superior to Europeans. The 3 stongest Native American Nations were: the Anazasi (500ad-1200ad), the Adena/Hopewell Mound-builders (500bc-1000ad), and the Iroquois (1000ad-1800ad).

Steve Clark · October 5, 2001, 18:23

Ummmm, guys? Look at line 174 in the text file. See where it says, "Iroquois, Hiawatha, Salamanca, Mounted Horsemen...."? Open up that file in Notepad (or your favorite text editor) and replace the word "Iroquois" with "Native Americans" (or "Sioux" or whatever you want actually). And get this, you can change the name of capital city and unique unit too!

And I don't want to hear any whining about them not getting it right the first time. Their selections are no more right or wrong than anything you can come up with.

Gothmog · October 5, 2001, 19:30

I say no. Wouldn't that be like saying that all Asians should be represented by one tribe? After all that is a lot of different languages and customs to be gathered together under one civilization.

PGM · October 5, 2001, 19:49

IMO they deserve a place in civ3, since it was recently revealed they represent all native americans. Also, they're necessary for geographical gameplay balance.

DarkCloud · October 5, 2001, 19:53

Yes, they do if they represent all AmerInds.

As a group, the AmerInds were a good civilization, though ununited.

Thus, I will vote for this because, representing all tribes with one is a good idea- the best idea, however would be to represent the 8 major groups of people and have them fight eachother:

AmerInd
Slav
Mongoloid
Aryan??
... and some others I forgot.

Hoek · October 5, 2001, 21:43

Um...there were very few Indian tribes which exhibited the classic characteristics of a civilization. The iroquois were one, but the vast majority of indian tribes didn't even have permanent housing. I forget exactly what the generally accepted characteristics are, but permanent housing is one of them.

monkspider · October 5, 2001, 22:54

(ren?) hoek, I think that you greatly overestimate the number of native american tribes that didn't have permanent housing. Perhaps the great plains indians and so forth were semi-nomadic, I don't think fair to dismiss the entirety of Native Americans as barabarians on the grounds of this minority. Moreover, the Mongols, a civilization few would so easily dismiss, and had, in fact the largest empire in the history of the world were far more nomadic than the great plains indians were. I don't feel that lack of permanent housing for a section of the native american populace should be any kind of a determining factor in this matter.

Ribannah · October 6, 2001, 04:04

AFAIK the Amerind tribes that had tepees or wigwams instead of longhouses or pueblos, weren't constantly 'on the way'. Some might have had a summer and a winter camp. The location of the summer camp could be slightly different each year (they would know a few good spots) depending on the route of the big herds. Having tents was also very convenient in times of war, while the Greeks and comtemporates had to rebuild their villages from scratch each time they got raided.

player1 · October 6, 2001, 05:22

I think that one of the resons why they have included the Iroquois is
that Firaxis wanted to give as diverse civilizations, different cultures.
Although I liked having Incas instead Iroquois, Incas are pretty similar to Aztecs, but Iroquois are tottaly different.
Spaniards are execellent civ but Firaxis thinked that they have allready too
much similar european civs (like English or French). That is probably the
main reason why they included Iroquois and Zulus.

Of course there can be one other reason:
-Firaxis wanted to give AMERICANS a civ to make war against