They match slavic groups quite well
“Slavs” : Eastern Slavs : Ukrainians, Russians, Belarussians
Poles : Western Slavs minus Bohemians
Bohemians : Bohemians, espacially Hussites (as this one is very definite), more influenced by the HRE
Bulgarians : Bulgar/Bulgarians + placeholder for other Southern Slavs.
The 3 groups split very quickly during the invasions period, there even is a legend of 3 brothers going in their own directions (forming the Russians, Poles and Czech, it implies southern Slavs had already left earlier), to the point I don’t think we need one designated civ to be used for the earliest ones.
Especially the critical approach to the very idea of “middle ages” and the impossibility to apply it to places like China. Heck, not even the muchcloser Byzantine Empire fits in whatever concept of “medieval” one crafts to tell its story.
At this point, the chronological limits to the game seem to be anything not too close to the barrier of Year Zero (i. e. Christ) nor too deep into Colonization.
Well, maybe we don’t need to worry much about the term “medieval”. Apparently, there is a recent trend among some historians to use the term “Global Middle Ages” to refer to the period roughly between 500-1500. Of course, it is not universally accepted and is still debated, as is customary in academia.
Their goal is not to impose a Eurocentric model on the rest of the planet, but just the opposite: to make Europe, as well as all other regions, mere provinces of a larger system of connections that are much older and more extensive than we imagine, and to try to show that no development really occurs in isolation.
Interestingly, I am currently reading an article that seeks to connect certain events in Africa to economic, political and religious changes in Europe: the fall of Ghana → (leading to) a gold bullion famine in Europe → the creation of a credit system → the Church condemning usury; then followed by the founding of Mali → trans-Saharan gold trade restored → European mercantile system gains strength → Church creates idea of purgatory to “redeem” money lenders. (There are more, but I’m only halfway through).
This is a very recent article and not definitive, of course. But it illustrates the idea above a little.
This link explains it a little better. Or just type “Global Middle Ages” into Google and you’ll get several proponents discussing the idea.
No place exists in a vaccum and everything is interconnected, but that doesn’t mean “Medieval” is a term that fits the entire planet. I believe it’s more reasonable to look at each region’s history individually, rather than try to create global time periods, and personally I’d make up a different name than “Global Middle Ages” and use less vague years, but I’m not a historian so I’ll let them do their thing.
Anyway, I guess this proves once more the Three Kingdoms don’t fit the game? xd.
True! When someone in this forum mentioned the potential censorship in China, they should really know this.
Anyway Tanguts definitely have no problem.
Tibetans and Uyghurs are tricky because of some separatists. But they are recognised as non Han Chinese.
But if someone say ppl in Sichuan are not Chinese - he must be crazy
So I went and posted the planning document I have. It’s here:
Had to split into main post and comment because of the 32000 character limit, when it totaled over 52000 characters according to this forum (only 51500-some in Word though).