Thank you. I honestly didn’t expect anyone would still check out this post.
I think the issue comes down to visuals. A heavily armored soldier with a two-handed sword doesn’t really match the image of lightfooted Trekker Infantry. I’ve seen some people suggest this too, but it seems like no one has really taken that part into account.
In my original post, the reason I suggested separating the sprite from the bleeding mechanic was exactly because of this. The Liao Dao sprite could still work as another Chinese unit in the Editor or elsewhere, while the mechanic could be kept for a new unit—like Trekker Infantry, or the Tibetan swordsman mentioned in the post.
Hmm… I think that’s something the community would never accept. That kind of argument is like saying the Romans and Byzantines should be merged into one civ, or that all the Germanic civs, the Turkic civs, and the Iranic civs should be lumped into one respectively. (oh no, my concepts for the Gokturks and Sogdians…)
The Mongols already have plenty of historical content to cover. Just let the Khitans stand on their own. There’s already a civ named after the Khitans, so it’s too late. Instead of removing it and saying it should go back under an older civ, it’d make way more sense to improve the accuracy so the civ better represents the people it’s named after.
Before seeing the current Wei, I actually thought it was reasonable and doable for the Khitans to also cover the Xianbei. But now we already have the wonder building and units with a clear Xianbei background. If Wei drops the Xianbei elements (as this post suggests), then reusing those and introducing the Xianbei (or named as Hu 胡) as their own civ wouldn’t be impossible either.