It's from Civ 1. Lenin is the leader in Civ 2. Mao was the leader of China all the way up to Civ 4 and was later added like Stalin.
India meanwhile? Gandhi always :sadn
instead of russians they should have been called soviets :soviet-huff:
i liked that in 6 they added the mapuche, it was really cool
yeah, they've been slowly adding a lot of native peoples and pre colonial states, which is neat. but, civ is this series that just so obviously embodies settler colonialism, and they go for the liberal route of "no see, you can do imperialism and resource extraction as the native Iroquois now! it's not just a Euro American wank fest!" without any analysis of the formula of 4X as a genre with some, dare I say it, critical theory
Does it really require much of an analysis to conclude that "eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate" involves colonialism?
apparently, as there are people disagreeing with me lmao
I think it's the please don't take away my toys defensive posture. Which is fine, I enjoy 4X games. The formula leads to natural conflicts, and conflicts are fun in games. Like it's fine to play colonialism simulators, as long as you understand that this isn't how humans ought to be treated in real life.
Like it’s fine to play colonialism simulators, as long as you understand that this isn’t how humans ought to be treated in real life.
Me when Vic 3 drops.
me starting up France in 1836 "god fucking damn it, why can't I get the reactionaries in power"
yeah, the civ games are very colonial, humankind looks like a fun spin on the civ games with having a diferent culture on every era, and on the modern era you can choose the most powerful culture
The Soviet Culture :USSR:
yeah, I've been seeing things about its development here and there. it seems like a much less yikes look at the 4x genre. I think however the whole idea of 'explore, expand, exploit, exterminate' is always going to be an inherently settler colonial framework. you cannot be an anti imperialist in a 4x game, you will lose, it's a genre where imperialism is the only way to play
I think however the whole idea of ‘explore, expand, exploit, exterminate’ is always going to be an inherently settler colonial framework. you cannot be an anti imperialist in a 4x game, you will lose, it’s a genre where imperialism is the only way to play
I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, Stellaris has plenty of mechanics for building tall and not really expanding very much. You can win by making a lot of friends and agreeing to defend each other from imperialism.
you can do that in any of the 4x games, but you will not 'win' the game most of the time by any metric. winning in the context of these games is not about co-operation, but about hegemony, be that through direct militarism or cultural and political.
Sure, but in Stellaris you can win the game that way. I guess all I'm trying to get at is that in a story about an imperial power trying to conquer everything, you can just as easily focus on the ones resisting imperialism as you can the ones doing imperialism. The problem is that typically in the 4X format, everyone is trying to out-imperialism everyone else, but that doesn't necessarily need to be the case.
the game is 100% set up to get you to play the 'everyone is trying to out-imperialism everyone else' game. but, that aside, there are still so many other things in the genre, such as this idea of 'empty unclaimed land' that is just free to be taken and settled, the inherent nature of any kind of historical roster reflecting biases, the unchanging nature of polities as this direct linage back to 'the first ancestors'. it's inherently filled with reactionary ideas and none of the games directly challenge this, they paper over it by saying well you could play tall if you want, or you could play as native americans if you want, that's not a critique of these fundamental conceptions.
I'm not saying don't play these games, I have thousands of hours in genocidal colonialism simulators like EU4, Stellaris, Civ, and so on. they are fun games. but we as communists must take a critical lense of analysis and dig to the core fundamental ideas being reflected in the ideology of our media, not the mere surface level
My current Stellaris play through has half the galaxy voluntarily joining my Soviet because it is so based.
Civ 5 did have Ethopia whose entire thing was defending against large empires
the exceptions prove the point if anything, that defense is their uniqueness
Gandhi was never even leader of India. like don't get me wrong, he is seen as like the grandfather of modern India and its struggle against Britain for independence for a reason, but it is cringe as hell the only Indian leader they could think of was Gandhi. what about one of the Mughal emperors, you know the guys who build the Taj Mahal? or the Maratha? there have been loads of Indian states and empires in their millennia long history
This is also the same franchise that had Joan of Arc as the leader of Fr*nce for two games so the bar is very low.
As much as a chauvinist can be a chad. Do I have to say fuck Napoleon?
are you telling me that the army officer who did a coup to overthrow the government and crown himself emperor of like half of Europe, invaded Haiti, and tried to re-instate slavery in the French Empire, was kind of cringe?
"local height challenged Corsican police officer mysteriously found dead"
yeah, I remember. and then 5 and 6 they went back to Ghandi again
A Mughal leader for India would be incredibly based, since it would rustle the jimmies of so many Hindutva chuds.
Civ VI had Gandhi as India's leader at launch, but later added Chandragupta as an option. He's geared towards violent expansionism.
i wish i liked civ 6. especially since i spent like £50 on that game and wasnt into it
maybe i should give it another go, but it felt so micro-managey and that's the opposite of what i turn to civ for. plus i wasnt a fan of the art style really
While I don't think they'll bring back Mao as a Chinese leader, I think it would be interesting if they go with a modern Chinese leader in the next game and pick either Sun Yat-sen or Deng Xiaoping.
everything is sterile and has no balls these days, it fucking sucks
I've only played 1-4, don't spoil it for me. Lots of neat mods for some of them, but 4X games are meant to be played a certain way just like their board game processors that really limits what you can do and explore as far as human side of things go (and leads to cringe when terminally online gamers think RL and games are 1-1).