I’d always assumed it was intended as a new UU for Persians…but IDK maybe there was a third civ in mind. A third civ had never occurred to me as a possibility.
May I know why?
To me it felt like a third UU from Persians that can be trained for Stable or maybe they were planned to replace WE. But scrapped at the end as they decided removing WE will cause a big uproar in the community and 3 UUs will be too much for a civ.
I’d listened to a 20+ hour audiobook specifically about peoples of the steppes. I of course wouldn’t claim to know everything there is to know, but in all of that book, the only things that stood out to be to differentiate Khazars from the later Pechenegs and Cuman/Kipchaks was their adoption of Judaism and a closer alignment with the Byzantine court. interesting things no doubt, but IDK how to translate them into meaningful and interesting game mechanics. If you designed a civ for the khazars, you’d be using nearly the same set of facts as for Cumans, and if the civ design was different then it’d beg the question why weren’t Cumans designed that why. I think you can design a fun civ for Khazars that is significantly different from the Cumans OR one that is faithfully extrapolated for the facts at hand, but I don’t think you can do both. If you designed a khazar civ that was fun AND distinct from Cumans I think you’d be taking more creative liberties than I’d personally prefer to take if I were tasked to design a khazar civ.
If there are more differences between the Khazars and the later Pechenegs and Cumans that I am unaware of that’d inspire an interesting civ design I’d be willing to revise my opinion.
2 Likes
Personally when it comes down to it, I’d prefer to see am Alan civ than Khazars, and I do think Cumans are a close approximation to early Turkic nomads found between Ponto-Caspia and the western face of the Altai mountains prior to the Mongol expansion, whereas Tatars cover the Persianized Turkic groups that arrived on the Iranian plateau and Fertile Crescent with the Seljuk migration and then the Mongol invasion of Persia.
The Alans have a fascinating history that predates any of these migrations by thousands of years. I’m trying to figure out how to make another steppe cavalry civilization that would serve a niche not covered by Huns, Mongols, Seljuks, Tatars, or Cumans. In a way, I somewhat think that the developers tried to use Georgia to also cover the Alans.
1 Like
Yeah it’s not easy. I’m working on Jurchens, but with their steppe + gunpowder it’s hard to make them not seem like a re-shuffled turks. My uzbeks, which i’m using karluks, chagatais, and shaybanids for inspiration, I really want to lean into the heavenly horse of Fergana, but huns and cumans already have paladins. I’ve got two others which I think are currently worse designs but more unique concepts for identity.
With 45 civs already in the game it’s not easy. I wish you good luck in you theory crafting.
For one rhing they had not just steppe and lances but even FIRE lances… another they did have Sinospheric siege weaponry as well to go with their heavy cavalry focus as well as strong crossbows and horse archery.
This civ seems almost fit to be one of those versatility civs like Byzantines or Chinese
You think so? How do you figure?
Eh I think you can just deemphasize the cav archer aspect and make them a heavy cav, gunpowder and siege civ
Thats fairly unique imo.
2 Likes
I think a non-Persians iranian civ would be great to fill a few gaps that are currently represented by civs like Mongols and whatnot in the campaigns. The rest I think is pushing.
Uyghurs could be an “east turks” umbrella and a good fit in an East Asia DLC.
Cumans have the fastest CA in game but lack Bracer. So
A long range CA civ but lack husbandry to balance.
CA +1/+2 range in Castle/Imperial like Britons but lack husbandry instead of TR.
Difference from everyone except Magyars. But Magyars extra range comes in Imperial Age. But this new civ will have it Castle Age. Also no husbandry will be unique design for a steppe civ.
Cavalry + gunpowder = Burgundians. Somewhat Spanish and Turks.
Cavalry + siege = Slavs, Bulgarians. Even Khmer and Romans.
An unique Cavalry+Gunpowder civ could have Fire Lancer that has a charge attack like Coustilier but deals ranged attack instead. Can also be an UT for knight. Imagine a conquistador that has a very long fire rate but can fight in melee during cool down.
Notice how all the cav + gunpowder civs have bad siege and how the cav + siege civs have bad gunpowder
1 Like
And the cav/CA civs suck at both
1 Like
Wow! I didn’t. If you exclude BBC from siege, it really looks like such.
Huns, Turks, Tatars, Magyars suck at both?
Turks and Tatars arent a heavy cavalry civ last I checked and Magyar siege isnt great and a the treb accuracy is only vs units where trebs arent useful anyway
Oh you mean suck at siege? I thought you’re saying suck at cavalry and CA.
Bulgarians is the only cav civ with siege bonus. However, Slavs, Khmer, Romans also excel at both, often more than Bulgarians.
A few things I suppose. First, a lot of people haven commented about how Georgia does have such a strange emphasis on cavalry, and that Armenia and Georgia should really have their tech trees swapped. I think the cavalry dimension for Georgia can only really be explained by Georgia’s close military and dynastic ties to Alania, who were excellent horsemen.
There is also their CAs, which while not fantastic, seem to have done attributes to encourage their use, like Parthian Tactics. I think the CAs represent either Alanian or Cuman auxiliaries that fought with Georgian armies. I’m inclined to even lean more on the Alan connection considering that their only partial upgrades suggest a sort of rusticity, in that the Alans developed steppe cavalry warfare but later became overshadowed by Hunnic, Turkic, and Mongol cavalry.
I think it goes beyond that. extra dmg reduction on hills and health regeneration kind of makeup for their lack of the last archer armor. If you’re in a prolonged decisive fight, then probably not so much, but a series of smaller engagements then you might even be ahead in hp. Also with the Aznauri cavalry, CA take up 15% less pop space, and because of Lanchester’s Square law that works out to your ball of CA performing about 37% better offensively while also having 15% more hp collectively (admittedly still missing that last armor). So Georgian CA are about as pop efficient as generic fully upgraded CA. You have to pay more to mass up the CA, but if you do your ball of CA will perform much better than the tech tree would suggest.
I wouldn’t go so far to say they’re S-Tier, but maybe a fringe top ten.
Khazars
Cavalry Archer & Siege Civilization
Team Bonus
Rams +5 garrison
Civilization Bonus
- Mule Cart don’t cost food.
- 1st buy or sell of each resource saves 50%. (Selling wood/food/stone for the first time cost 50 instead of 100 or buying wood/food/stone cost 50% less gold for the 1st time. Can’t get discount on both buy and sell for same resource).
- SL fires 20% faster.
- CA +1/+2 range in Castle/Imperial.
Unique Technologies
- Fortified Church fire 3 extra arrows. (200f/250w, 45 sec)
- Mangonel line can track moving targets by better accuracy and faster projectile. (900f/500g, 50 sec)
Unique Unit
Cavalry with attack bonus vs archer.
50f/60g, 14 sec
HP = 80 (95)
Attack = 7 (10)
Attack Bonus = +8 (+10) vs archer
Armor = 0/4, 0/5
Speed = 1.5
Elite Upgrade = 900f/800g, 40 sec
Tech Tree
Rax = No champion, gambeson, last armor
Range = No Arb, EA
Stable = No Husbandry, BE, Paladin
Siege = No SO, BBC
Monastery = No atonement, fervor, faith, illumination
University = No Keep, Architecture, Heated Shot
Dock = No Heavy Demo, FFS, ECG, Dromon
Eco = No guild, last farm upgrade
Others = No sapper
5 Likes
Any fans of the Pechenegs ?
The Krygz, Kazakh and Tajik are too small to be mentioned probably.
What might an expansion look like of 4 Eurasian Nomad civs?
Gokturks, Uyghurs, Khazars, Sogdians
1 Like