The most influental continent was Asia in the Middle Ages, BY FAR.
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In AoE3 time? Yes.
In the Middle Ages? Europe was less influential than Persia and China, especially China
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I talked about several different ethnicity who adopted Judaism and were thus Jewish, and I didn’t even mention all of them. I could have talked about the conversion of the kingdom of Himyar in Yemen, for instance. And even the people who didn’t adopt Judaism during the Middle Ages and supposedly descend from Ancient Hebrew were split into Sepharadim, Ashkenazim, Mizrahim and other ethnic groups. So no, Jewish people have not been one ethnicity since the diaspora has started.
The discussion is about the possibility of adding Romani (or now Sindhi) people eventually, not making it a priority, so this list isn’t really relevant to the conversation. To be perfectly honest, I have a longer one for South Asia alone before we even consider splitting the Gurjara civ (since the Sindhi would technically be part of their umbrella).
It easier to sell European civilizations that most western audience will recognize than unknown Asian ones that blend together in European eyes. Persia and China are influential but they are only one civilization whose post-DLC core land will probably not be divided again, precisely for having more defined and unified culture to export. Apart from them, the rest of Asia is at the probably the same level of importance as any other random European kingdom that is not yet in-game.
You cant expect to have multiple civilization from more unified areas, but from the fractured ones.
All educated do recognise even “unknown” civilisations. Don’t try to cater to uneducated. You will do more harm than anything.
Education with time will go up not down. And they will question your ill decisions one day.
You know, Europe isn’t the only market for video games. And surprisingly enough, Asian people are educated about the history of their own country and their neighbors just like European are about their (I know, crazy) so betting exclusively on a Western audience’s lack of knowledge and curiosity about the rest of the world isn’t necessarily the best strategy.
Not really. There are enough possible civ from China that people can’t agree on the list of 5 possible new ones included in the dlc, and Iran has not really been split as the new civs accompanying its update are from beyond its borders (and I can easily think of multiple civs that could have been part of this dlc).
Just no. “Important” is a very nonsensical notion when it comes to comparing civs, but I don’t see any metric by which, say, the Albanians would be more “important” than, say, the Siamese.
What makes you think Asia was a unified area at any point during the Middle Ages?
There are a lot of obscure civilizations you don’t really have to recognize, as they aren’t really represented in western games and if you are not really invested in Chinese and Indian history, you will not know many of potential civilizations. How many veteran strategy players did know about all the new potential civilizations of this DLC and why they are unique and deserving of being in the game?
World is moving towards globalisation. Not only are the Chinese and Indians getting educated to read their own history, but also the Western Audience is reading outside their comfort zone about others’ history. Although history is never theirs or ours. History is always ours. I am saying this being of mixed origin myself.
If you think Western Audience doesn’t buy world history stuff, only buys knights and crusader themes, I think you are grossly mistaken. This trend is only going to change as more audience joins in with more education.
I was talking about game industry traditionally, when they considered enough having “India” as one civ, because they didn’t have Asian market in mind, and not enough time and available material to research. Recent years show that they now want to do more granularity, which is good.
They have already added almost every best known civs and started adding some more obscure ones; of course there some more known, like the Thais, missing yet (which should have been in that DLC), but most of the ones that are left are more minor or included inside an umbrella.
I meant that China has a tendency break apart and reunified fast into few big sinicised kingdoms and the Persians and Arabs has a similar tendency to adopt an unified culture and state after collapsing. India and Indochina are more similar to Europe in granularity of smaller independent kingdoms.
If it was that easy to break apart Persians and Chinease. Why aren’t they even changing their names for the one of a smaller entity?
Because it is not a Chinese split.
Chinese is a huge homogeneous culture. The ethnic groups that have been added are not Chinese, they are neighbours of Chinese.
India split is different because there is nothing like one Indian ethnic group, it is a conglomeration of smaller cultures, so it is Indian ethnic groups.
This is why there is no need for name change of Chinese.
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I think that’s a little bit of a simplification. When Forgotten Empires created “Indians”, they were not an official game dev team but a bunch of modders doing pretty much the impossible. Each of the five civs they’ve added to what would later become “the Forgotten” was basically computer witchcraft, and there was no certainty at the time that they would get to work on more (by which I mean, even going up to five was a small miracle). In this context, yes, Indians sounded like a reasonable compromise since the only alternatives were not covering the subcontinent at all or not adding one of the other civs that were sorely missing from the game. I don’t think the guys ignored the fact that India was an area with very diverse cultures and kingdoms, and they probably already knew about all the civs they ended up adding with DoI.
I don’t exactly agree with that either. Aside from the civs who might be part of the next dlc, there are quite a few very important civs from Africa and Latin America still missing from the game. I’d say from Central Asia as well, but I guess the Tatars can be used as an umbrella for this region far better than the Incas, Malians and Ethiopians do for entire continents.
Those assumptions are not entirely exact.
“China” never exactly had its modern day borders during the Middle Ages, yes there was pretty much always at least one state that claimed to be the Empire of China and own the Mandate of Heaven, but there were also smaller states of various cultures and various degrees of sinisations all over what would later become its territory and nomads trying to push on its northern borders (sometimes with enough success to take the Mandate for themselves). Aside from the people who want to split the Chinese by dynasties or to have the Three Kingdoms represented, when people ask for a Chinese split they’re talking about those smaller states (and when I say “smaller”, I mean comparatively to China itself, some have built empires bigger than France or the HRE ever were during this time period).
“Persia” basically didn’t exist from 651 and 1501. During height centuries and a half, it was either under foreign occupation or ruled by non Persian dynasties. Some of them were Iranian (the Buyids were Daylamites and the Khwarezmian were their own people at the time), but Persian are only one of the many Iranian cultures, just like the Russian are one Slavic culture.
And there’s been no unified Arab state since pretty much the start of the Abbasid caliphate, which is still in the first half of the game’s time period (not mentioning, they had only been united for a few centuries by this point). Pretending otherwise is either ignorance or a lie.
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Important is a subjetive term, everyone considers more important the cultures they like more. I consider most important the ones that most people could already know their name and why their culture is different and the impact they had. I said there still some important like the Thais and several African empires. But then American ones are pretty unknown to be considered important by most people (every game tends to add the same three civs). They may make an american DLC in the future? Maybe, but it is not the most important
And please don’t call anyone ignorant or liar, this is a civil discussion and there’s no need to insult others for not agreeing which you or not knowing something you do.
Considering how much I and many players learnt about world history thanks to Age of Empires (with the obvious caveat that it’s still a game so no information should be taken for granted and everything is better double checked before repeating), I’m not only of the opinion that general knowledge is a pretty bad metric, but also that on the opposite a civ that the game could teach me interesting stuff about is possibly more “important” that one for which I already know everything I could need.
And I rarely call people ignorant, as long as they don’t spread misinformation. I try to refrain as much as possible from talking with confidence about stuff I don’t know about, and it always irks me when people do the opposite, especially when they use it for stuff like painting entire parts of the world as big uniform blobs or unworthy of attention.
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You are right that American civs were never significant technologically. But Important is not really relative term if you would learn everything with no bias. Only the uneducated on world history has a differing opinion. It’s simply because he doesn’t know.
But leave aside Importance and Significance. Let’s focus on gameplay value. Wouldn’t American civs be super unique and fun to play if designed properly? Let’s take the bold step and include all the civs we can.
Ofcourse there is a resource and time limit, so our first priority should be pick the regions (for example South Africa) then apply the logic of importance within the region to pick the civs. If you try to do the opposite then the game just becomes stale, you no longer cover civs with diversity.
I want the game fun and as diverse as possible first. This is a game guys not a history lesson. So stop fighting this civ from East Europe was more powerful than this civ in South Africa. Instead give each region a chance and compare the civs within that particular region to chose the best ones.
And that considering that “general knowledge” is completely relative, even within European countries that definition can change massively. For example, for the English and the French the Battle of Agincourt was a big deal, but in other Europeans countries (even neighbouring ones like Spain) most people don’t know about it and it isn’t even taught at school.
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Why don’t you people just take it as knowledge rather than a big deal? Yesterday you didn’t know about it, now you know it. Why in order to accept any new civilization you have to know about it yesterday otherwise it is a small deal? You can’t possibly learn about everything in the school itself, nobody can.
But I didn’t say they were one ethnicity. I said it was an ethno-religious identity meaning that ethnicity was also a strong cornerstone of that identity for a great many of the people. But in any case I don’t care, its beside the point. I don’t think there should be a Jewish civ in AOE2, maye in AOE1.
Oh boy, if only…
If you look it from another angle, you need to market the game, and everyone have a different level of interest on civs they don’t know. They added some more unknown civs (like the cumans)?, yes, but the devs clearly had a general priority.
The map is mostly filled in one way or another with umbrellas except for Africa, America and Oceania which are mostly empty, and the civs we have from those places are the most known (Aztec, Maya, Incas, Mali and Etiopia). They are at a point where it going to be difficult to market new civs, people will say in future DLCs that they are either too minor or too unknown.
I’m not against any new civ, but if you want to predict which ones, they are going to be the most potentially profitable. They are a company after all.