The Sindhis were always ruled by other people in the game’s time period.
Huh they had their own kingdom throughout time period only changing dynasties overtime - Habbaris, Soomras, Sammas, Arghuns and Tarkhans. This is until the Mughals conquered them. But soon after the disintegration of the empire they again became independent under Kalhora dynasty.
Jewishness is actually an ethno-religious identity, so to simplify, its both. But regardless they had no medieval state let alone an empire so are not fit for being included here as their own playable faction. Kingdom of Judea on the other hand would be a good addition for AOE1. Or maybe even the Chronicles expansion.
Weren’t they mostly ruled by The Umayyad and then the Mughals with some period of tribal autonomy in between? I am no expert so feel free to educate me if I am wrong.
Habbari were Arabs.
Arghuns were Afghans and Tarkhans outside the time period of the game.
Soomra and Sammas seem to be local tribes, but were they really an empire in this time period? This is Age of Empires after all. We can’t include every single little poitical entity unfortunately otherwise what’s even the criteria for adding civs to the game?
Edit: Just read a bit more on the Soomra on Wikipedia and it seems they really were a minor entity on the fringes of Ghaznavid territory. Really seems like there isn’t much that would warrant including them.
I think you don’t understand what local kingdom means.
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I’m curious to know how many civis will you quit this game when it reaches?
After the next DLC update, this game already has 50 civs, isn’t that enough to make you leave this game?
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I do understand. But this is not Age of Local Kingdoms, its Age of Empires.
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And what is an “Empire”, only a few civs did really have the “Emperor or Equivalent” title (teutons, byzantines, Chinese, Japan…), most of the civs are only kingdoms (Franks, Spanish, Britons, Polish, Malians, Georgians…), duchies (Lithuania, Burgundy…) or cultural groups (Vikings, Celts, Turks, Slavs, Berbers, Italians, Mayans…).
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The distinction is that a king rules his own people, while an emperor rules over several different peoples — Franks, Turks and Malians had empires, for example. Aoe2 does not make this distinction, however, the names generally being of ethnic groups, which is good because a civ can encompass several kingdoms/empires of the same people.
Yeah, the game lacks a coherent description of what the civilizations actually represent.
You have the Poles, Bohemians, and Bulgarians, who are Slavic, but then you also have “Slavs” that but represents only the East Slavs.
You have the Tatars and Cumans, who are Turk, but then there’s a separate “Turks” civilization that represents only the Oghuz Turks.
It’s like creating a civilization called “Blacks” but excluding Ethiopians and Malians, even though they are also Black.
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Moreover, the game never really calls them “Empires” in-game, they are call “Civilizations”, that is a broader term.
If we go by your logic of dynastic ancestory, Europe only has Germans everywhere.
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And you think Sindhis are local? Forgot the original topic of this thread? We are talking about Romanis, who are anything but local.
Obviously the game is a bit loose with definitions but I think looking at it holistically its an entity that at least at some point ruled over an expansive realm, united some otherwise disparate people, and had some significant cultural impact on the world around it. Now you can try and get nit-picky and try to find exceptions to the rule and bend the definitions to suit a particulr realm or people you are fond of and want included in the game and yes we could debate where the line is really drawn all day but I think there is clearly a distinction between say the Byzantines who ruled over their realms for 1000 years in a continuous manneror and left a religious legacy that is still important to world politics to this day, the Mongols who spread from East Asia to the Mediterranean and became conduits for great cultural and technological exchange and trade from east to west and some small vassal state wedged between powerful empires who barely left a written account of their rule let alone some sort of cultural legacy that was felt beyond their own borders.
The only other good reason for including a civ would be if for example that civ also played an interesting role in relation to another civ in the game so that having one without the other would make the game feel incomplete, for example if the campaigns of one civ requires the other civ as an antagonist or ally or something along those lines.
This is merely a naming issue. Otherwise its pretty coherent.
“blacks”… 
Really not sure what you are trying to argue. That is a pretty big overcimplification. “Germans” wasn’t even really a thing back then. There were many different Germanic people and they spread out and formed very distinct cultures and languages and political entities. If you want to use that logic then you can just go back even further and say all Europeans and Indo Europeans came from the Yamnaya culture so none of the other distinctions matter… but that gets pretty ridiculous.
Yea but they were a diasporic people living under the rule of others when they were not local.
Yeah so why are you checking the ethnicity of a Dynasty to determine if the kingdom is local or not?
What? I really can’t follow your line of argument… What is your point?
Strange, I feel like you didn’t read the rest of my post after the part you’ve quoted…
Ok but not all civs currently in game are the Byzantines and Mongols. Bohemians, Burgundians and Sicilians aren’t really more relevant than Sindhi (or many other possible Indian civs for that matter).
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How so?
Yea you see the reason I don’t like this logic is that it basically says there are some questionable things in the game already so why not add more questionable things in and less of the good stuff, to put it simply.
I for one agree there is an over-representation of European civs and I would like to see other Asian civs/empires/peoples (whatever you wana call it) represented. I just think there are some much more important ones that should be added waaaaay before random province number 249 that ruled over a couple of hill forts noone at the time even knew existed (I exaggerate but you get what I mean).
Here is a list of civs I would like to see before adding your fantasy Sinti civ.
- Tibetans (possibly/hopefully coming with the next expansion)
- Seljuks (a very important medieval nomadic turkic people who would be a really good addition specifically because of their relation to the crusades for example)
- Fatamids (basically the precursor to modern Egypt and also an empire that left a long lasting cultural and religious legacy and a good representation of a Shia muslim faction in game which we currently dont have, also important players in the crusades)
- Avars (They basically fought everyone from Slavs to Lombards to Byzantines, laid siege to constantinople twice and it took the full might of the Frankish empire to bring about their downfall, they introduced the stirup to Europe. They can have a really epic campaign desigend around them)
- Nepalese (ruled by the Malla dynasty for 600 years they transformed Kathmandu and much of norhtern India. The monunments they built stand to this day.
I also dont really agree with your point that Bohemians, Burgundians and Sicilians aren’t more important that Sindhi. But this reply has already gotten pretty long and honestly I can’t be bothered right now to go into it. So lets just agree to disagree…