Map of Civilizations I want in AOE2

[UpmostRook9474]

@KarstHillFort77

North China was only important for the Sinitic people but not important for others. China isn’t just made up of Sinitic people. And no, Han does not cover the south. Even South China (places like Guangdong, Guangxi, etc.) weren’t culturally Sinitic in the Middle Ages, and the peoples there were never called “Han” at that time.

Avars → Huns
Kazars → Cumans
Angles and Saxons → Goths
Sinhalese → Dravidians
Castilians → Spanish
Low Countries → Teutons, Franks and Burgundians
Gaelic Irish and Gaelic Scots → Celtic
People in Francia → Franks
French → Franks
Kalmar Union → Vikings

Academically, the above formulas may be not equal, at most approximately equal, but in the game, equal is valid. That’s how umbrellas work. Any civilization is inevitably an umbrella, as games cannot have infinite civilizations.

You think it’s not a decent name with academic logic, but I think it works from a practical point of how the game works. The ancient northerners migrated to the south many times on a large scale and assimilated the local people, making them the main ancestors of the people (national Han) in the north and south of China today. Han is a valid name for the ancient northerners (obviously you at least don’t deny to this), and it is also the name of the major nation of China no matter in the north and south today (even if it originated from nationalism later), so it effectively covers the ancient south as a game content, regardless of whether the south belonged to the Han people in the Middle Ages.

Unless you split the umbrella, making the south and the north are different civilizations, but this is riskier than introducing the Tibetans.

@KarstHillFort77

I prefer the name “Sinitic” rather than “Han”.

We don’t know whether a name of language family is suitable as a name of civilization in the game.
Also, “Sinitic peoples” in Wikipedia redirects to the page “Han Chinese subgroups”.

@KarstHillFort77

You don’t want your Taiwanese identify to be defined then it’s fine I totally don’t care about it, but why are you always trying to define the identity of us South and Southwest Chinese? We were not Han for much of history and we don’t like to be called Han.

I respect your disapproval of Han Chinese identity, but to be honest, your views on Han can’t represent the views of most people in southern China, and most importantly it has nothing to do with your self-identity. Your distaste for the name comes from your self-identification outside of the game, not because the name doesn’t fit the way the game works.

What I am expressing is that the name of “in-game” civilization can still cover some groups that did not belong to this name academically to some extent. For example, the concept of Malays was formed very late, but it is still valid as the civilization of ancient Indonesians such as Majapahit and Srivijaya, even though people there have probably not considered themselves Malays since ancient times. I’m talking about the content of the game with you, and it has nothing to do with labeling the real identity. Whatever your and my national identity, the words I give you are still the same.

@KarstHillFort77

Enough said, now let’s get back to topic.

I honestly don’t think we’re completely off topic in these discussions.

The introduction of new civilizations can be likely to be accompanied by the splitting and renaming of old civilizations. The Indians have done this, and there are calls for the Slavs to change their names. For a potential East Asia DLC, this needs to be thought about even more, as it helps decrease the risks from CCPs.

@Temudhun

Even the idea of France having an earlier concept of national identity because of the Hundred Years War is quite exaggerated. England had lost almost all territories on the continent and had failed to reclaim the French throne, but the state was still closely (and actually more than ever before) tied to the king and no one else. He no longer had any ###### able to challenge his authority, and he now directly controlled almost all of modern France. The idea of a French nation was trully changed with the Revolution, when it became every French person’s affair rather than one man’s property, and its this new idea of the nation as something each of its inhabitants had a relation with which spred to the rest of Europe in the early 19th century. Not that it wasn’t redifined again afterward, obviously.

What I have stated is that French nationalism can be “traced back” to the Hundred Years’ War, which doesn’t mean that the feeling of unity at that time is same as the current French nationalism. We can all agree that the Revolution made French nationalism really mature and approach what now we are familiar with, but it wasn’t born suddenly at the end of the 18th century, some concepts are centuries old.

National feeling that emerged from the war unified both France and England further. Despite the devastation on its soil, the Hundred Years’ War accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a centralized state. A centralized state with people having national feeling is a good soil for nationalism to germinate. A centralized state gives people a common identity, and people care about this common identity, so they are more likely to make choices that benefit the majority rather than the minority. In contrast, the divided Germany and Italy did not really realize and yearn for a common nation until they saw the Revolution.

[KarstHillFort77]

@UpmostRook9474

That’s how umbrellas work. Any civilization is inevitably an umbrella, as games cannot have infinite civilizations.

I do not propose the game to have an infinite number of civs, but merely adding the Dians or the Baipus civ to cover Nanzhao/Dali and some other tribes in South and Southwest China that had not yet sinicized at that time.

@UpmostRook9474

The ancient northerners migrated to the south many times on a large scale and assimilated the local people, making them the main ancestors of the people (national Han) in the north and south of China today.

This is more of a myth rather than reality. First of all, according to historical records the south wasn’t the only direction of migration of the ancient northern Sinitics; a lot of them also migrated en masse to the Northeast (to Korea) and to the Northwest. Secondly, even those migrated south did not move to the Far South or the Southwest; the majority of them stopped after reaching Jiangsu, Zhejiang, or Hubei, and some continued further to Jiangxi and Fujian, but very very few reached Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Guizhou, etc. According to genetic studies and data published by genetic testing companies (which I won’t go into detail here if you wish to know more you can search for yourself), Guangdong and Guangxi people have largely preserved the pre-Sinitic native Tai-Kradai genomes, whereas their North Han genome is only around 5% to 10%.

And the sinicization of South China took a long time and did not occur all at the same time, it differed from region to region. Places like Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Hubei were sinicized during the Qin and Han eras, places like Fujian and Jiangxi were sinicized during the Tang era, whereas for places like Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, they were largely sinicized during the Ming and some perhaps even later in the Qing.

@UpmostRook9474

Han is a valid name for the ancient northerners (obviously you at least don’t deny to this), and it is also the name of the major nation of China no matter in the north and south today (even if it originated from nationalism later), so it effectively covers the ancient south as a game content, regardless of whether the south belonged to the Han people in the Middle Ages.

The game is set in the medieval period, so the situation today is completely irrelevant to the game, and the name “Han” did not cover the South and the Southwest at that time.

@UpmostRook9474

Unless you split the umbrella, making the south and the north are different civilizations, but this is riskier than introducing the Tibetans.

I did not advocate for splitting the Chinese civ to North and South Chinese, I was merely arguing for adding a new Dians or Baipus civ to represent Nanzhao and Dali as well as those tribes in the South and Southwest which had not yet sinicized at that time (like the Li, the Liao/Raeu, or the Man, etc.). Nanzhao and Dali together lasted for more than 500 years which was a long time and they were once a quite powerful kingdom in the region even raiding deep into Tang territory, and if you consider their Baipu, Dian, and Cuanman predecessors then their history is even longer. And it’s not risky at all if you only add them in a medieval context and do not talk about anything related to the modern era or modern ethnic groups (which is why I don’t support calling them Yi, Nuosu, or Bai).

@UpmostRook9474

We don’t know whether a name of language family is suitable as a name of civilization in the game.
Also, “Sinitic peoples” in Wikipedia redirects to the page “Han Chinese subgroups”

Well, even in such case there’re perhaps better terms than the “Han”, such as “Huaxia” for instance.

@UpmostRook9474

I respect your disapproval of Han Chinese identity, but to be honest, your views on Han can’t represent the views of most people in southern China, and most importantly it has nothing to do with #### ##lf-identity.

May I ask how many South Chinese have you interviewed to say this? It’s impossible that you have interviewed most people in South China (which amount to several hundred million), hence you cannot represent the South Chinese and you’re projecting your self-identification as Han onto them.

@UpmostRook9474

What I am expressing is that the name of “in-game” civilization can still cover some groups that did not belong to this name academically to some extent.

@UpmostRook9474

I’m talking about the content of the game with you, and it has nothing to do with labeling the real identity. Whatever your and my national identity, the words I give you are still the same.

I’m only focusing on the setting or the context of the game which is the medieval period, while you keep projecting modern Han nationalism onto the game.

[KarstHillFort77]

@UpmostRook9474

The introduction of new civilizations can be likely to be accompanied by the splitting and renaming of old civilizations. The Indians have done this, and there are calls for the Slavs to change their names. For a potential East Asia DLC, this needs to be thought about even more, as it helps decrease the risks from CCPs.

Then rename the in-game Chinese civ to “Huaxia” or “Sinitic”, no one would object to that.

And while censorship does exist in China and I’m perfectly aware of this, you shouldn’t blindly exaggerate about it. Like I said earlier, as long as you keep the context and content set in the medieval period then it won’t be risky at all. Even Uyghurs and Tibetans could be introduced if they are renamed as Huihu and Tubo.

[UpmostRook9474]

@KarstHillFort77

Places like Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Hubei were sinicized during the Qin and Han eras, places like Fujian and Jiangxi were sinicized during the Tang era, whereas for places like Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, they were largely sinicized during the Ming and some perhaps even later in the Qing.

For fear of misunderstanding, I have never objected to giving way to those unsinicized peoples who had their own kingdoms in the Southwest (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, etc.) to have their own civilization. I’m just calling this civilization Nuosu or Lolos, and more than once has been brought up this in the thread as well as the forum.

On the other hand, what you state here is exactly what can be used to support that if the Chinese civilization were renamed Han, it would still be able to cover the medieval South (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Fujian, Jiangxi, etc.) .

You can notice that I never classified the region of Southwest China as part of South China. It would be dumbfounding if the misunderstanding simply stemmed from our different definitions of the South.

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@KarstHillFort77

“Huaxia”

Huaxia

Huaxia is a historical concept representing the Chinese nation, and came from the self-awareness of a common cultural ancestry by the various confederations of pre-Qin ethnic ancestors of Han people.

If people don’t think of themselves as Han, how can they think of themselves as “Huaxia”?
In my opinion, “Huaxia” (or “Hua”) and “Han” are similar terms in many cases.

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@KarstHillFort77

And while censorship does exist in China and I’m perfectly aware of this, you shouldn’t blindly exaggerate about it. Like I said earlier, as long as you keep the context and content set in the medieval period then it won’t be risky at all. Even Uyghurs and Tibetans could be introduced if they are renamed as Huihu and Tubo.

I answered this a long time ago…

@UpmostRook9474

CCP is not afraid of Tibetan civilization, but they are afraid that the content of the game will be used to insinuate modern political views that they do not like. Even a game like Animal Crossing, whose world view has nothing to do with the real world, got banned by the CCP because some players draw signs related to Hong Kong and Tibet in the game. Imagine if someone created a scenario that the Tibetan civ rebelled against Chinese civ and implied modern politics. This might be risky.

Games that have nothing to do with history will also suffer. Even if you emphasize the Middle Ages you are not completely immune to risk. The focus is on whether the game content becomes a medium to promote political views that the CCP does not like. If the situation about this kind of abuse is not serious, even if it is directly a civilization called “Tibetans”, there might be no problem. If now the game content is often used to imply issues that do not please them, even if there is no any DLC in the future, this game is at risk of being banned.

Having said that, I’m hoping for the best and assuming the worst. May one day we can see Tibetan civilization.

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@KarstHillFort77

hence you cannot represent the South Chinese and you’re projecting your self-identification as Han onto them.

Stop accusing please. I have never claimed that I can represent anyone other than myself, nor have I claimed anyone’s identity. What I stated is that an umbrella civilization can work in this way in the game, and it has nothing to do with the identification of people in the real world.

On the other hand, it is you who speak for someone other than yourself.

@KarstHillFort77

We were called Li, Liao/Raeu, Man, or simply Turen (土人) in the Middle Ages, and our ancestors were looked down upon by the Hanren or the Zhongyuanren in Northern China. We don’t like to be called “Han”.

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@KarstHillFort77

while you keep projecting modern Han nationalism onto the game.

I never said Han is the perfect name but just a valid name for an umbrella. With the replies before I already explained why what you care about is not important to the game. The community does not care so much about the names of civilizations whether the national names used are exactly in line with the definitions in the Middle Ages, as long as this term allows the major of players and the market to clearly understand and imagine the power and culture it represents.

You emphasized that Han is a product of modern nationalism, so I started to discuss nationalism with you, responding to why these nationalistic things are not what the game cares about in certain situations. And now you’re saying I’m the one who imposed nationalism on the game. It was exhausting. If you can’t understand that my focus was never on the nationalism and whether the people were Han Chinese in the South China in the middle ages, if you just read me as a modern Han nationalist, then it’s useless for me to explain.

Good night.

[KarstHillFort77]

@UpmostRook9474

For fear of misunderstanding, I have never objected to giving way to those unsinicized peoples who had their own kingdoms in the Southwest (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, etc.) to have their own civilization. I’m just calling this civilization Nuosu or Lolos, and more than once has been brought up this in the thread as well as the forum.

And I’ve also repeatedly mentioned that calling them Nuosu or Lolos is anachronistic, not historical, and risky as those are the names of modern ethnic groups. Nothing proves that the elite of Nanzhao and Dali were necessarily of Nuosu or Lolos origin. And more importantly I wish such a civ could cover most of the Non-Sinicized groups in the region, and there were not just Nuosu or Lolos tribes in the region but also various others like Tai-Kradai, Hmong-Mien, and Austroasiatic, therefore names like Dian or Baipu serve better as cover-all terms and are not risky as they do not evoke any particular connection with modern ethnic groups.

And I’m objecting to your idea that the Sinitic civ should cover the eastern parts of South China like the regions you’ve mentioned, but it should not cover the Far South (Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan) and the Southwest (Yunnan and Guizhou).

[KarstHillFort77]

@UpmostRook9474

If people don’t think of themselves as Han, how can they think of themselves as “Huaxia”?
In my opinion, “Huaxia” (or “Hua”) and “Han” are similar terms in many cases.

Fine, whatever, if you wish to name the in-game Chinese civ as “Han” then it’s alright it’s your choice, I’m simply suggesting that there’re better alternatives. As long as you don’t project this name onto the peoples of Far South and Southwest China then I’m totally fine with it.

@UpmostRook9474

The focus is on whether the game content becomes a medium to promote political views that the CCP does not like

Then perhaps they should censor their own party media CCTV first since they’ve made countless documentaries about various ancient and medieval peoples in China, using the names that I’ve given above.

There is censorship in China I don’t deny, but going so far as suggesting a game set in the medieval era would be censored is perhaps a bit too paranoid.

@UpmostRook9474

Stop accusing please. I have never claimed that I can represent anyone other than myself, nor have I claimed anyone’s identity. What I stated is that an umbrella civilization can work in this way in the game, and it has nothing to do with the identification of people in the real world.

On the other hand, it is you who speak for someone other than yourself.

I’m entirely focusing on discussing history and the game content, I do not represent anyone else either. It’s you who cannot accept real history and keep projecting modern forms of nationalism onto the past. The peoples of Far South and Southwest China were not called “Han” back in the days and they were mistreated by the ancient northern Sinitics, it’s a historical fact that you gotta accept and deal with.

@UpmostRook9474

You emphasized that Han is a product of modern nationalism, so I started to discuss nationalism with you, responding to why these nationalistic things are not what the game cares about in certain situations. And now you’re saying I’m the one who imposed nationalism on the game. It was exhausting. If you can’t understand that my focus was never on the nationalism and whether the people were Han Chinese in the South China in the middle ages, if you just read me as a modern Han nationalist, then it’s useless for me to explain.

It is indeed a product of modern nationalism in the past century, no matter how hard you try to project it onto the Middle Ages.

But at this point I don’t even bother arguing with you cause it’s quite tiresome and you obviously won’t listen to me, if you wish to rename the in-game Chinese civ as Han then it’s your choice I’m totally fine with it, you could even mod it if you wish. But please do NOT projecting the Han nationalism onto the past and please do NOT label the peoples of Far South and Southwest China as Han.

I’m done with it, good night.

[UpmostRook9474]

@KarstHillFort77

Then perhaps they should censor their own party media CCTV first since they’ve made countless documentaries about various ancient and medieval peoples in China, using the names that I’ve given above.

There is censorship in China I don’t deny, but going so far as suggesting a game set in the medieval era would be censored is perhaps a bit too paranoid.

The point is whether it has been abused as a medium for those views, no matter it features the Middle Ages or not. The party media will not convey views that the party does not like, so those documentaries you mentioned will not become the medium I mentioned. But the game is different. Even having nothing to do with the real world, Animal Crossing got banned since it was abused.

[M00Z1LLA]

Most people are extremely uninformed about the region so a poll is probably not the best way to gauge this. Mississippians and Puebloans are very strong contenders, just not as familiar as options like Tarascans.