I’ve not come across Norses before, although apparently it was used that way in the 16th/17th centuries. Just Norse or Norsemen is ok, though to me the former feels a bit pretentious, and the latter somewhat gendered. I prefer Vikings personally, but I know some people take issue with it for various reasons I’ve never been able to get on board with.
This made me realise that, while Germans would feel too modern to me, I’m perfectly happy with Italians. Not sure why inconsistency on my part, I guess.
To avoid homophones I think you could either change the Chinese name to Huaxia or Hua, or maybe change the Korean name to Samhan or Goryeo, just my humble opinion.
Han is a somewhat anachronistic term to use for the medieval era.
I don’t know Chinese history and historiography as well as I’d like, but isn’t Huaxia more associated with Ancient times? I understood as mostly a Xia and Zhou concept that was seen as a bit outdated by the time of the Qin, but I may have completely misunderstood.
Sorry, I’m sometimes extremely confused by how plural works in English when naming ethnic groups. It feels weirdly inconsistant.
Vikings were not necessarily warriors. They were that as well as sailors, traders, explorers and raiders, and some of them focused more on some of those aspects than others. But anyway, yeah, not every Norse person was a viking, and having a Viking civ feels to me as if the Japanese civ was called “Samurai”.
The term Huaxia (or Hua for short) has been used from the Zhou era all the way till today. Although today its usage is rather formal and limited, it has never completely fallen out of usage. There’s even a bank in China named Huaxia.
On the other hand, the term Han or Hanren has a much more nuanced and complicated origin. Contrary to popular belief it did not arise with the Han Dynasty. Its first usage referring to a group of people was by the Xianbei referring to the Sinicized Xiongnu (aka Asian Hun) remnants and the Han kingdom in North China that they founded during the Age of Fragmentation in the 4th century AD. Then later in the medieval era its meaning broadened to refer to all populations in the Yellow River region regardless whether they were of Sinitic origin or not. In the Yuan Dynasty for instance it included the Sinicized descendants of Khitans and Jurchens. However the term Han had never been used to refer to the populations in the Yangtse region and further south. It wasn’t until the Republican era that the term Hanren finally included the ones from the South.
Its not. Its just an attempt to bring variety to strategy and decision-making. The connection to history is loose. In real there wouldn’t have been religious men who converted people in the middle of the battlefield and made them kill their own people. Plenty of other units and mechanics also have nothing to do with real history. This is why I said its kind of pointless to make massive changes to the game to maintain historical accuracy.
The concept of elephants was to trade speed and cost for hp and damage output and be a pop efficient unit. Likewise concept of lancer is a cavalry that shares some properties of other stable units but has its own unique ability and purpose. These are unit design concepts. The names given like knight, steppe lancer doesn’t imply they’d have to be the same as their historical equivalents.
How does 20 large elephants get inside a ship but 21 foot units can’t? How does a bunch of villagers tapping the ground raise a building? How does units hitting a building with sword repetitively set it on fire? How does villagers once born never die and keep working all the time forever? There’s no logic to any of these. Its an RTS game loosely based on medieval warfare.
Like I said its quite obvious that historical inaccuracies or inconsistencies as you put it, is what bothers you. But imo its extremely unnecessary to do massive changes to the game like the removal of CA from 25+ civs to enforce that.
I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. Perhaps you misread or misunderstood what I wrote?
The word is also very commonly used in the context of settlement outside of Scandinavia. Coincidently, I’ve come across it being used in that context twice today (the second time by Susie Dent – I’d trust her use of English over that of… well, basically anyone).
Exactly what Viking means seems to depend on where you’re from, though. The Wikipedia page on Vikings notes:
In their countries of origin, and some of the countries they raided and settled in, … the term “Viking” also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a whole.
That matches my experience of its usage in British English, and how it’s used by Norwegians. (Not sure about other Scandinavians.)
I think a civ called Samurai is more like having a one called Knights. But in any case, if the word Samurai had come to refer to all Japanese people during (some part of) the AoE2 time period, it would be a fine name for a civ. Compare this with Incas – to the Incas themselves, Inca just referred to the ruler (I think), but in modern English it has a much broader meaning.
No need to apologise – it feels weirdly inconsistent because it is weirdly inconsistent.