I played ZHOU, MING and finally chose China in the recent BETA. I'm not sure if there will be Chinese culture in Classical and Medieval eras. I hope there will be. Chinese civ is basically consecutive, just difference of dynasty. Chinese bureaucracy system is very complicatated. And the implementation of  bureaucracy largely inluenced the later dynasty. So I expected to have more choice on government management. But currently, I dont see any of this. Just simple city management, rarely happened events(comparing to combat every turn), and civics. The civics only matter the buff amount.


About Contemporary Chinese. Yes, chinese is kickass in economy in recent years. But I feel like Chinese is more builder than merchant. We are good at build big stuff. And the effect of people's congress: +3 Influence per adjacent Market Quarter. I think we are still socialism not capitalism?. The power of Modern China is related to the current ideology of communism and it also inherit from all of the previous dynasties. We don't become merchants in these years, we actually started to trade with the west on through silkroad 2000 years ago. 

 

Though i'm chinese, I feel strange to have china in contemporary era. Contemporary China itself is the result of combining ideology and the culture of all the previous dynasty. We dont create new trait these years, we just inherit. The difference is that, currently, ideology plays a more important role. And the fact that many countries in our era are also shaped like that. So does other contemporary countries, most of them are shaped by their history, geography and civics in the game.

 

So should the trait of culture in contemporary era give such significant influence on a civilization? I hope ideology can play a more important role in later era, and politics can be more complicated. Ideology determined so many things, the current machanic is too simple. Moreover, currently in BETA, we can only choose Country in contemporary era. No offense but I think some countries are there just to fill up the blank. 

 

P.S. Currently in the close BETA, the number of culture player can choose in each era is 10. Is it necessary to set the amount of culture in each era the same? There are much more culture in classical, medieval eras. Can we have more to choose? 

Or can we design such mechanic: 

  1. The culture players can choose is less than the player in ancient era or allow the player to choose the same culture in ancient era.
  2. The culture amount will increase in the later era, giving player more choices, while giving punishment for the one who choose the culture have already been chosen or even do not allow the players to choose the same culture.
  3. When it comes to industrial era, the culture amount decrease and do not allow choosing the same culture. For the players who have to or choose to inherit the culture, strengthen the trait. 

Such mechanic will allow civilizations to origin from the same culture, then giving them more different ways to develop.