This poll is objective and conclusive proof that even after this DLC, we need only European civilizations,
since it’s not like we have communities in other languages who would want their regions represented.
Also, for those of you dreaming of new “civilizations” in India, China or the Saracens, you can go on dreaming but it’s too late as they are already covered.
Despite how much I love splitting civs and even being the middle east my favourite historical region I think saracens is a good umbrella for the arabs. If we consider the civ represent the caliphates, sultanates and emirates from egypt to the whole arabian peninsula and the levant and mesopotamia… I think they are correctly designed in the game. Sure, we could split them in bedouins, mashriquis and egyptians, but the civ beign design around camels, monks and merchants (siege archers seems like a pure a gameplay decision so I’ll ignore it) is a good representation for the whole non-berber arab world.
Also many dinasties ruled over multiple territories, so abbasids would be both bedouins and mashriquis? Would umayyads be also persian? Saracens are fine as a single civ. I just wished they were called “Arabs”.
Saracen is more of a time period naming convention.
The name was specifically chosen to be an umbrella designator, by default.
The Siege Archers are because of Arab Archers being renown, and because they wanted to make the standout against the other Archer civ in AoK: the Britons.
Egypt is byzantine before the islamic conquest so pretty much covered.
How would you be splitting Chinese if it is NOT an umbrella civ in the first place?
But it is. Kithans, Jurchens, Tibetans… all major powers of the Medieval World that get swept under the “Chinese” umbrella", even if they were definitely not parts of China most of the Middle Ages.
Chinese is a distinct ethnic identity from all those you mentioned. Chinese and Tibetans can coexist together in the same game, they were never each other. But Indians and Tamils cannot, since Tamils are an Indian, similarly Poles and Slavs cannot since Poles were a Slavs.
You need to understand what an umbrella civ means, Chinese is not an umbrella civ, you cannot divide it further. You are just adding more civs to East Asia not splitting Chinese.
Depends on which China we are talking about.
Jin China?
Sui China?
Tang China?
Yuan China?
Ming China?
All perfectly Medieval, and all different.
Yuan China was Mongol, for example.
Which China is in the game?
So now you want to split according to dynasties that came one after other?
I never said. You said it could not be split, while I showed it can. Several of those dynasties were also set up by foreigners, so they are not actually Han chinese either.
They had diferent cultures.
Yeah as if other civs didn’t have dynasties of different cultures.
Exactly. Tibetans and Han, Zhuang, Hui, Manchu had distinctly different cultures while Tamils, Marathas, Rajputs did not. Even when later both China and Tibet started following Buddhism, even their Buddhist traditions were different. Tibetan Buddhism was strictly Vajrayana while Chinese Buddhism was loosely Mahayana fused with local traditional spiritual beliefs and practices.
Tamils, Marathas, Rajputs were all followed Dharmic traditions. The only thing that differed was their dialect even though their writing system all descended from the ancient Brahmi script.
Being the devil advocate here :)) I am not at all expert of Indian subcontinent but if those Indian factions are not at all different in language and religion one from another what does it mean for Sicily , Burgundy, and the Swiss for example how unique they are in culture, language and religion in comparison? 
Religion was same yet different, Catechism vs Protestantism and they never got along. Lets take the example of Sicilians who were Roman Catholic and Burgundians who were Arian Christians and that too was a cause of tension between them. And that was the biggest problem with Europe, the constant infighting between Christian denominations. Also cultural differences due to local customs and traditions and religious influences of the different denominations for example Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals were beautifully decorated with art while Protestant ones were essentialists.
This was never the case with the Indian states and Dharmic traditions. There were differences like the shape of temple domes, art style etc. but not that stark in comparison with Christian ones.
They all spoke diferent languages and had diferent political systems.
Swiss, as a mountain people, learned not to rely on farming or cavalry, so they became a giant mercenary camp in the middle of Europe.
Sicily was occupied by 4 major powers of the period, and actually did adapt to all 4 cultures, retaining artifacts of them to this age.
Burgundy was a wealthy, semi-seperatists sate that at one time had more of France under it, than France, and had a Low Countries culture.
Protestantism is post-Medieval. At this time, they were all Catholics, except for religious minorities like the Cathars.
Good point but not all the civs in this game were truly Medieval either. But Burgundians were Arian Christians and that was a cause of conflict. Also the origins of Protestantism was within the medieval time frame with Arnold of Brescia, Peter Waldo and John Wycliffe but yes the movement started by Martin Luther was early modern period.
@JonOli12 , @ULTRAMAG5762 So religion and language were mostly the same (not unique) but the difference is Europens would much more often have power struggle and go to war in general (stress on their differencies) and create devisive identities?
Languages were not the same at all. For this period, even within one state, people did not speak the same language, sometimes even between villages on each side of a river, people would have a diferent language.
Even cultures were drastically diferent.
For a lot of the period, Italy was full of republics, for example.
Europe was, by far, the most culturally, linguistically and politically fragmented continent of the time.
The only common binding, was religion, and even then you had huge divides, like Orthodox, Catholic, Cathar, Arian, Sabellian…
Let me give you the example of medieval England, after the Norman conquest of 1066 had primarily two major factions, the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons. They had different culture, different traditions and were at odds with each other. We have a civ in this game called Britons which represent the Anglo-Saxons mostly leaving Normans free to be represented by other civs but that’s historically inaccurate. Since we are playing the campaigns of Edward I which happened long after the Norman conquest.
Point is, history is a very convoluted subject. Try to make too much sense of it and you will go crazy and try to accurately represent it in a game and you will go crazier.
But let me bite the bullet here and tell you why some people here are so hell bent on splitting up Indians as a civ. It’s all due to the political ideology they follow which they inherited from the British, when they ruled India, tried to break up the people from inside giving them separate identities and fake racial backgrounds. Thankfully such people are a minority and there are always level headed people with better knowledge of history around to counter their asinine political wet dreams.
