The Delhi and Mughal civilizations and other Muslim ruled countries dominated India for the majority of the 13th through 19th centuries, leaving Hindu countries relegated to smaller eastern or southern Indian nations, most of which not having a large impact outside of regions of the subcontinent.
Not to mention Indian is a modern concept as created by the British Raj, prior to that time, different parts of India could hardly even be considered the same or similar cultures.
Adding minor nations like Punjab, Maratha or Vijayanagara before including civilizations such as Khmer, Ottomans, Byzantines, Spanish, etc would frankly be an insult.
If you have problem with a civ, dont play. Devs didn’t add these civs so people could relate to them, they added them because these civs were most influential in that era. Dehli Sultanates ruleed over 300 years.
In history, India refers to indian subcontinent not India as a country. And yes, in the subcontinent it was very influential in its era. There will be more civs coming later and I don’t see why it is a problem.
We can take any civilization and talk about what they did wrong.
It wasn’t. It was representing Indian subcontinent.
There is a lot of hate in this post. The sultanate of Delhi ruled over North India for a long time and was one of the largest empires of the time in the world.
They protected India from Mongol invasions many times during this period and had many contributions to art and culture etc.
I’m Indian and I’m sorry to say that the current situation in India is one that is extremely Islamophobic and all Muslim rule is being projected as oppressive. One might say that Rajput rule is also oppressive since the Rajputs forced their women to burn themselves alive after lost battles etc.
"While the Delhi Sultanate is the first Age IV civilisation set in South Asia, we chose to do this so we can revisit this region via future expansions and explore an indigenous Hindi-speaking civilisation being represented in the game as well,” a Microsoft spokesperson confirms.”
I’d be careful with wording there they did not promise anything they just acknowledged the existence of other cultures in India and that they would ‘explore’ a Hindi civ at some undetermined point, no guarantee we would see a civ. I dont see a promise there at all personally.
The wordings might be aggressive for the post. But the reality is that there is a reason people hate and it has nothing to do with Islamophobia. If some empire brings innovation, technological growth, trade and prosperity then it has all the respect. Akbar being muslim was and has been respected in India.
Instead this Sultanate especially earlier Mamluks have bought destruction and oppression of masses.
How much negative vs how much positive of an empire lasts its impression on any place. Would you represent China by Mongols?
Also its not even that influential of civ to be added as one of the CORE civs in AOE4. Doesnt make sense. Why not just got for Ottoman empire instead. I am happy India not represented rather than represented wrongly. People playing Delhi will relate to India as it is ■■■■■ capital, Delhi sultanate is moreover not even a dynasty, its an umbrella term for short lived dynasties over 300 years. It gives wrong impression about culture and tradition of India which is not influenced by sultanate.
I guess its true. Thats why lack of due diligence or lack of proper research before designing this particular civ. Or maybe there are more Pakistani Afghanistani and Irani players than Indians.
Just talk about this partiicular 600 years of history which suits you and leave the other 2000 years of history to gutter? What a play
And please be careful before exaggerating to extra 100 years. If they were so influential why its not seen India? Domination that was mainly based on destruction and conversion. Not to mention Maratha almost kicked Mughal out before the Raj.
What is your definition of medieval age? What era ? Lets talk about that. I will try to cover as much as possible.
Chinese civilization in game is based on 650A.D to 1600A.D. They mention since 907 but that doesnt make sense as Tang dynasty was almost dead.
Talk about India Grouping 5 short lived dynasties as Delhi sultanate for 300 years since 1200-1500 is not bigger than grouping Rajput dynasties since 700-1200 for 500 years Gujara Pratihara, rashtrakutas and Chalukyas to name a few. Could have grouped Gupta vardhana and Harsha too. That would have been from 300-800 A.D. Then you will say its before 650.
I havent even talked about other big South Indian kingdoms.
These have big influence on modern India. Indian players would certainly relate to them if played.
If you stopped deleting history from Indian books you would know that early medieval Indian subcontinent was like a clown fiesta of emerging and falling dynasties who are barely known outside of India (except maybe for the southern empires like vijayanagara Empire and Chola, those are cool but only Chola could be considered early Medieval).
You can say all you want but the most defining empires in medieval and modern era Indian subcontinent were the Delhi and the Mughal.
The hatred of Delhi largely comes from modern-day anti-Islam Indian movements (in part due to the tensions between Indian and Pakistani peoples). There was a significant amount of pillaging and destruction of cultures, but not excessively so when you compare to civilizations like the Mongols, HRE, English or Abbasids.
Also the idea of an INDIAN civilization in a game made before 1900 is laughable. India was never in anyway unified prior to British colonization. The idea of a civilization that represents India would be like trying to make 1 civilization to represent all of Europe. There were so many diverse cultures and nations across the subcontinent that were only vaguely related to eachother through race or religion (and even then less unified that continental europe as a whole)
But I think you understand the gist of what is being requested, right? Since India was never in any way unified, it is pretty well accepted that the Dehli Sultanate does not serve a very good proxy for the historic people of modern day India. Though whether a proxy can be achieved with just one more civ is certainly debatable. It may be that those asking for an Indian civ are understating things – it may be that several would be necessary to give that area of the world a similar representation as, say, Europe presently has.
I cannot imagine the blowback around here, though, to such a suggestion.
Well the blowback was more in regards to the post about how Delhi shouldn’t be a civ since they were “villain invaders” when like half the civs in the game could be categorized as such (I mean Mongols anyone?)
I’m also hoping India eventually gets a 2nd civ perhaps in a DLC with a SEA civ or Portugal, as both would have a decent campaign to make.
Keep in mind there are only 8 civs so far and we are missing big ones like Byzantine/ottomans and all of Africa is currently represented by the Abbasid/Mamluk dynasties (also muslim invaders of north africa and Spain.)
I am very curious to see how new civs are developed. I fear that they may have painted themselves into a corner with their categorization of shared units on the one hand and units totally unique to one civ on the other hand. Perhaps they will break that mold. I think it will be necessary. Otherwise there will only ever be one civ with war elephants or camels?
I doubt they will share uniques, it will probably something more akin to both Rus and Mongols have horse archers. There’s definately lots of design space left for elephants. (AOE2 had much different SEA elephants than Persian afterall)
I don’t think that AoE4 needs to stick to the AoE2 mindset of only 2 civs per DLC. AoE4 only has 8 civs, whereas AoE2 only had 35 before the Lords of the West, as well as being hardcapped to 48 civs total. I think therefore, that it could be reasonable to expect up to four more civs per DLC, although it could be anything really.