Civ clones with culture dependant on environmental factors?

[circ]

I was reading some stuff about earthquakes and started thinking of civ games and wondered if there has ever been a civ-like where instead of the player choosing what cultural activities to pursue, the AI does it instead depending on environments. For example, start your civilization in an area with lots of volcanic activity, which causes the citizens to say - pursue an interest in bathing in hot springs, create a pantheon consisting of something fire inspired and so on. Although at first thought I can't think of anything with this level of detail, but there may be some forgotten titles that weren't exactly civ-styled but similar.

 

[Malakal]

I cant really think of a single civ clone game so finding clones with more specific features is even harder. Civ clone civ clone... not a clue.

 

[Hellraiser]

Well to be honest as far as my armchair anthropology/cultural/whatever expertise can tell me environmental factors didn't play a role in developing any of those, cultures around the world worshiped deities of similar things (hence "interpretatio graeca" made some sense). However they decided how important certain deities, things etc. were to cultures depending on which ones were vital to the survival of the community. An islander community of fishermen would be most likely to worship spirits or a god of the sea the most than ones of fertility, it is hard to grow crops when there's jack for arable land after all. If the islander community

That and quite frankly I don't see how the idea would work as far as gameplay is concerned. Sure, it would be nice symbolic fluff that when the islanders expand onto the mainland, and develop sophisticated craftsmanship or become a warrior culture, their primary worshiped diety becomes a god of war or of craftsmanship with the cult of the sea taking a back seat before being forgotten.

What I personally think would be better would be local resources affecting research rates thus resulting in your civilization specializing in certain things depending on those resources. Sure, it is assumed the player will pick what he needs the most. But tell me how the fuck does a landlocked civilization develop the navigation means necessary to traverse the ocean when the most water they ever saw was an over-sized puddle of a lake or a river. The same applies to other things. The japanese blacksmiths got obsessed with perfecting their craft by removing impurities from the steel because iron ore in japan was utter shit of poor quality. The teutonic knights mastered building clay brick castles and built indeed built the largest of those in history, because there are no local sources of stone on the southern baltic shore. Necessity is the mother of invention. You lack a resource you look for a way to substitute it or you try to use it as efficiently as possible.

Basically I think that if anything should depend on environmental factors it should be some civilization specialization/bonuses.

Either way I can barely think of games that actually sue culture let alone would have it based on the environment.