Civ specific traits, and civs

[Blake]

Heres an interesting little finding of mine (probably not original...).
Each civ has 2 traits, out of a possible 6 traits.
If you know anything about statistics and 'combinations' this means there are nCr ways to select 2 from 6, or:
(6!/(2!x(6-2)!)) = 15

Thats right, there are 15 different possible combinations... but there are 16 civs, meaning 2 are repeated. After about half an hour of failing to see the repeat I worked it out systematically, and determined that, at the moment, Japanese and Aztecs are Militarstic&Religious.

This is possibly why Militarstic starts with either Warrior Code
or The Wheel, prehaps if Japanese and Aztecs are in the same game one starts with Wheel, the other Warrior. Making for 16 'unique' civs.

Getting back to the combinations thing, unless Firaxis finds some way to defy the fundamental laws of Statistics, if they added 16 new civs in an expansion they would all have to be double ups of existing civs, meaning the addition of more civs would be purely cosmetic. i for one wouldn't care much for cosmetic additions.

Unless they bought the number of traits up to 9, from which you can select 2 traits in 36 combinations, allowing for 36 unique civs.
(Or they could go up to 8 traits, and 28 combinations, and have 4 repeats). But adding more traits would make balance exponentially more difficult.

Anyway, I'm sure this has been noted before, and I'm not convinced that there is a moral to my post. But I was bored.

Link to civ specific abilities developer update
http://www.civ3.com/devupdate_civspecific.cfm

edit: (inserted URL)
edit: Oh FFS, the places smilies turn up...

[old dog]

Keep in mind that the unique units also vary from civ to civ, and the AI may be different too.

[Akron]

Even though there may not be enough civ abilities to make all the civs unique in that respect, I'd still like more civs in the x-pack. Of course, more abilities would be even better.

[dainbramaged13]

no, no new abilities. however, this is a good point to consider when voting for what shoudl be included in the xpack. But the point of making new civs for the xpack, is in most ppls minds, the art that comes with it, because while anyone can create their own civs, most people cannot create their own leader animations/etc... so i think a lot of the expak will be art for units, leaders, etc...

[Akron]

What's wrong with new abilities? There is definitely room for more. One suggestion from before was agricultural, which could help food production and population growth.

[Skanky Burns]

Another Civ ability - an Evil Civ
Their nukes cost half as much to build, and have a larger destruction radius...

I rekon that trait will be popular to play against

[Blake]

because while anyone can create their own civs, most people cannot create their own leader animations/etc...

Actually... how can you create 'new' civs when every combination of traits is already used ?!
One way would be to have 3 trait civs, or 1 trait civs, or 'Double trait' (same trait twice, may just work). But they wouldn't be balanced.
Or prehaps you can define your own traits.
(Or, prehaps 'behind the scenes' something akin to SMAC's SE is used, but is generalised for the abilities table...)

I liked SMAC, where you could make truly unique factions which played differentely...

Chances are 15 different playstyles will be plenty enough for me... and I'm griping about nothing... but I'm bored

I would actually quite like a new set of leaders in Civ3X (ie, 2 leaders for every civ, you can choose which one is used). I guess having 16 'new' civs with the original abilities is just like that... just doesn't sound as good to me.

Geez, midnight.

[TVA22]

I don't know how this will go over, but, what's wrong with having a couple of civs that have similar traits and/or personality types. I mean to say, if some of these civs were geographically close to each other in real life, like the Tang Chinese and Koguryo (Korea). The Koreans often mirrored the Chinese political and domestic policies largely as a reaction against the Chinese. Don't know if the Koreans would be in, just an example. But I don't see a problem with a few repeats of civ abilities.

[Jason Beaudoin]

I'm really going to miss the Mongols. They were always a tough civilization to deal with in CIV I and I would have liked to see a really aggressive CIV like that again.

I'm sure the Zulus will be tough.

[Faboba]

They might be tougher than you think as they'll have an early start ( their first battle is probably going to result in a golden age!! ) As in reality they'll probably going to have control of a vast area of the map with very little technology later in the game......

As for the point in question this is at best an interesting passing comment at worst a churlish nitpicking exercise. There have always been civs in the games with similar cultural traits, this game will have more inter-civ variation than the other for one point due to the unique units however. Also you'll only ever have ( I think it's still ) 7 rival civs on the map anyway so it's unlikely you'll get the double-ups in the same game.

If you don't want to use the expansion pack civs you don't have to. This is the first of the civ games that lets us choose EXACTLY which rivals we'll be up against ( and in which combination )

If they do ( as we're assuming they probably will ) include a world map I don't see how the game can be even slighly limited if two civs on the opposite sides of globe have similar behavioral traits. Especially as they have different unique units and consequently will most likely be experiencing their golden ages at different times.