Kievan Rus is the name of the specific state, defined political creation.
The game is using labels for people loosely based on ethnicity/nationality. So clearly it doesn’t fit, doesn’t it?
I know that, but the public isn’t going to perceive it that way.
It’s also why I decided to rename the Russians to the Soviets in my modern Age of Empires concept, because it represents the entire Soviet Union instead of just Russia.
If I ever decide to make a DLC concept and add Soviet nations separately, I can rename them Russians then. But thanks to world events, equating Russia and Ukraine is problematic.
They are not added to the ranked ladder, so no issue.
Yes, because no one in their right mind would think of the Russians when they hear about the Soviets.
The Soviets were the Russians, but the Kievan Rus wasn’t the Russians. The Russians were the Muscovites. Or if you want to be really safe say Ruthenians instead of Rus.
If the reason for naming them Soviets instead of Russians is to disassociate them with Russians, congratulations, task failed succesfully.
I just wanted to play it safe with my concept and make it clear that the Soviets were representing the Soviet Union and not just Russia, since it has elements from the entire Soviet Union.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, since a modern AoE doesn’t exist yet, and might never. This is just a concept anyway.
Russia was like 90% of the Soviet Union. Anyway, everyone, even your average child, knows that the Soviet Union was basically just Russia. So I don’t see how you played it safe.
It’s like calling it the United Kingdom to avoid calling it the British Empire. In fact, this comparison is also failing because the United Kingdom was only a small part of the British Empire, even if they were the leadership.
I didn’t want to have to represent Ukraine and Georgia and other relatively insignificant former Soviet states as separate civs, at least right away. So I decided to roll them into the Russians. But to avoid controversy, I renamed the civ the Soviets.
Indeed the Soviets was quite an anachronism. But I can imagine it happening in the Middle Ages if for some reason, some weird heretic cult (like the Anabaptists) somehow took control of the Rus. This could be an interesting alt-history campaign.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine existed at the time, there was only the Kievan Rus. Both countries took very different directions after the Mongols destroyed the Rus :
- what would become Ukraine was conquered by Poland-Lithuania, which was relatively free for the time. Another dose of freedom was added with the Cossacks settling at the border of the steppe to escape feudalism.
- the Mongols outsourced the tribute collection to Muscovy, that grew more powerful over time. To the point of overthrowing the Mongols after some time. Muscovy kept more or less the same system (even to this day Moscow and St Petersburg cannibalise the rest of Russia) while growing to become Russia.
But before Genghis Khan, the main parts of the Rus were around Kiev and Novgorod (that was a merchant republic until crushed by Ivan the Terrible), while Moscow was a backwater.
Everyone seems to have missed that I am talking about a hypothetical new Age of Empires game that takes place in the modern day, not AoE2. This timeframe would be 1929-2019 (so the beginning of the Great Depression to right before the pandemic).
I think there’s a huge difference between Cold War era and post Cold War era. Sure, AoE2 has a huge timeframe, but the closer you are to the present the more is the difference noticeable. If you add the Soviet Union you have to make it a cold war themed concept rather than 1929-2019 concept. I guess you can make “Cold War” one of the eras, but then having USSR in the post Cold War era will always be weird. You could make it 1900 - 2023 and have 5 eras: Great War → Interwar → World War 2 → Cold War → Modern World. Or cut the interwar if you want 5.
Why do people pretend this game is historical in any way?
6 Likes
The ages I have are the Depression Age (1929-1939), the Invasion Age (1939-1945), the Prosperity Age (1945-1955), the Space Age (1955-1990), and the Modern Age (1990-2019).
So the entire Cold War would be within the Space Age, and then the Modern Age would have the Gulf War, 9/11, and the subsequent War on Terror.
I stopped the timeline at 2019 because anything beyond that is too recent and I feel that might make people uncomfortable. So the Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t even be depicted at all, which is the way it should be.
I actually realized that I could just call the Soviets the Russians like I did originally, and if I need to represent other Soviet countries, I can use other civs. Like the Polish represent the Ukrainians and the Yugoslavs represent the Georgians, for example.
How does that work? I reckon using Polish for Ukranians & Yugoslavs for Georgians would be even more weird than using Soviets for Russians in the Modern Age.
1 Like
Now you know my dilemma.
I just hope they don’t have gunpowder units.
The Romans? I highly doubt it.
7 Likes
Hadrian’s legions crushing the Hebrew rebellion in Syria Palaestina, colourised.
6 Likes
The devs love to sneak a Cannon Galeon in some civs…
1 Like