I think we’re giving too much importance to the representation of the whole world.
We have 13 civs slots left as much (not bcause any technical limit, but because of an actual design space issue). Including polynesians and mapuches for “representing the world” may translate in jurchens and georgians staying out of the game because we ran out of space.
The way to go is imo to focus in a combination of criterias with different weights that determines which civs are worthier to occupy the remaining slots. Something like:
Overall importance in medieval history and interactions with other civs: 40% of weight
Popularity: 25% of weight (yeah, no one knew cumans before TLK, but that doesnt make them any good addition instead of any other)
World representation: 15%
Intresting historical aspect that translates into gameplay: 10% of weight
Scope and overlapping: 10% of weight (not too specific. not too umbrella. no need to split teutons)
Mate, Bulgrians and Serbians underdstand eachother pretty well. I have Serbian friends and I can tell you that for sure. Some things need clarification but few smiles and we re all good. Plus you do not give counter argument to what I told you.You pretty much state all differancies but as I said modern Bulgarian and modern Serbian do differ a bit as they obviously are not the same language but in Medieval times (what matters here) there was little to no difference as it was the same literacy. Futher the similarity goes not only for Serbs and Bulgarians pretty much all slavic groups spoke much more similar language compared to modern times.
PS. I just read the examples given and I am going to explain them as they actually explain the similarity not the difference. Im doing it here as its besides the point of the conversation (dont want to drag it out) Still should be interesting.
Using latin makes them look more different than they actually are as the same sounds here are described with different latters while they would be the same if using cyrillic.
‘My name is…’ - Srb. ‘Ja se zovem…’ - Blg. ‘Az se kazvam…’
Bulgarian also has the word “nazovavam” zovem is shorter version anyone from Bulgaria would understand. nazovavam and kazvam mean the same “call” in turm of naming somebodies name.
“Ja” means “I” in all slavic languages but Bulgarian but "Ja is also common for several Bulgarian dialectic regional forms. Everyone from Bulgaria would understand this sentence. Further in Both Bulgarian and Serbian if you translate direct in English it is not “My name is …” but “I am called/named…”
‘I live in the country’ - Srb. ‘Ja živim na selu’ - Blg. ‘Az zhiveya v provintsiyata’
In Bulgarian provintsiya means country but in general it means everything thats not the capital so it can be a town or a village. At the same time there is the word “selo” same as “selu” in Serbian what means village. Provintsiya and selo can be used as synonims if you want to refer for smbd who is uneducated and rural, comes from a small place.I do not know if in Serbian selu has a bit more broad meaning but its the very same word in both languages.
You can see that živim and zhiveya are similar. Actually Serbian can be used with Latin so it has this ž letter while for Bulgarian is used zh but ots the same cyrillic sound/letter “Ж”.
We spoke about Ja and Az already but honestly the exmple here is not fair as it uses purposely different words and also changes the meaning a bit. A more fair example would be - Srb. ‘zhivim na selu’ ; Bg. ‘zhiveya na selo’. Both Ja, Az are not needed here and can be skipped. These look more similar dont they.
‘He didn’t sleep all night’ - Srb. ‘Nije spavao celu noć’ - Blg. ‘Toĭ ne spa tsyala nosht’
Here the difference is again mostly gramatical and again in “Celu” C is the same sound letter cyrilic “Ц” as TS in “tsyala”. Also in Bulgarian “Тoi” is not needed here. The sentence in Bulgaroan can be ‘ Ne e spal cyala nosht’. You can see Nije - Ne e; spavao - slal; celu -cyala ; noch - nosht. Pretty much identical as order and words only having few sounds different. But have in mind some dialect forms also have these options so ppl recognise where these differences come from. Those three sentences people from both sides of the border will understand completely for sure.
After all, saying the word “medieval”, the first thing we imagine are English castles, Crusades, Vikings and Christianization. I don’t want to say anything, but Europe is the most “medieval” along with Asia and North Africa. The rest of the globe was not that important at the time. Only Mesoamerican cultures can match the Old World. A game that can perfectly represent the tribes of the New World is AoE 3 - where the most powerful can have their own civ, while the rest can be Minor Nations. The best solution in the New World.
But there is no point in changing the Bulgarian civ to the Serbian civ, because it doesn’t make any sense. Bulgaria had its own powerful empire and therefore deserved to be represented in AoE 2. Serbia also deserves it, but not at the expense of the Bulgarians…
How do you measure importance? How do you measure interaction? It’s easy to add stuff where there’s already a lot with that metric which makes the additions kinda pointless.
Bohemia has absolutely zero importance when it comes to Western African history e.g. The same is true the opposite way round.
Medieval history isn’t just limited to Europe, just saying. Why would we have gotten Khmer otherwise?
It is still not recorded. That’s like saying that the King Arthur stories were recorded (since both are based in oral tradition). They probably chose Sundjata as the protagonist because they didn’t have much when it came to military history material for the Malians.
What you are essentially saying is you are personally more familiar with European history, and therefore you associate medieval history more with Europe… that’s not an argument, that’s a statement on the limitation of your personal knowledge.
Is oral history, myths and legends a good argument for adding civ???
Better to add civs whose history is well known to us. By adding indigenous civs, we would probably hurt them by adding content that did not correspond to the historical fact. It’s like creating AoE 1 civilization of the Amazons because they were in the myths.
Admit it, if you could, you would add 8 Slavic civs even though it would not make any sense from a coverage point of view.
It’s kinda say from my very personal opinion to see that this game might turn into a Europe circlejerk just because Forgotten Empires is afraid to add something new and interesting and instead adds “safe” stuff.
Nah . I was talking language only. I have edited one of the previous posts where you have posted examples I have explained them. If you want to see the actual similarites between modern Serbian/Bulgarian.
as the same sounds here are described with different latters while they would be the same if using cyrillic.
