That is different from the ingame civi slots.
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Were they? They seem pretty similar to how they were before Bulgarians.
Because they are designed around the Kievan Rus primarily, the problem is not so much the design being too wide as it was with “Indians” (very stupid umbrella name btw), but the name “Slavs” which is too general, as it comprises many other peoples, many of them already included in the game. That’s what they mean by “Slavs are already divided”, because the developers have implicitly already given us many playable Slavic peoples: Bulgarians, Poles, Bohemians (even though in game they are just the Hussites but whatever), it’s just that the “Slavs” civ should be renamed to make it obvious that they are not the only Slavs in the game. Maybe renaming them to “Rus” would be ok, but I’m no expert.
If you like being anachronistic, yes.
They either have always been divided or have not been divided at all. The name and the presence of other civs that can be included in it matters little imo. It’s not like the Indians, who pretty much ceased to exist and were replaced by four entirely new civs (even if one of them has pretty much the same name).
I mean, it’s a medieval game, basing a civ from the past on a modern phenomenon without making the most minimal research of the political landscape of the region in question is sloppy to say the least (from an academical perspective, in terms of gameplay or popular appeal who cares).
The civ in game has not been divided, of course. But the ethnonym Slavs has been divided simply by the mere inclusion of the new civs I’ve mentioned. I think that’s the reason why many people consider (myself included) that there’s no point in keep adding Slavic civs specially when there are many other regions of the world that have little or no presence in the game.This is a matter of personal preference obviously, but I agree that other regions should be given more presence. I don’t think Slavs need to be reworked, just renamed.
Pretty sure India has a very old etymology but what do I know
The problem with the Indians civ was that they were supposed to represent all cultures in the indian subcontinent (which is a modern concept afaik), not their name (so much so that the “new” Indians have a name that basically means the same thing but taking a detour through Persian).
I think getting renamed would imply a change in the civ, at least a bit. They are still supposed to represent all slavs (and then some), so if we want to change the civ to something more specific like Rus, I think we should accept that at least some aspects of the civ would be changed to represent this change in identity.
There is nothing to change.
Everything already represents East Slavs, from unit names, civ icon to wonder.
They should just be renamed to Ruthenians, Kievan Rus, or simply Rus.
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Honestly if there is no reason to change the civ then there is no reason to change the name.
There is, because Slavs do not represent South Slavs or West Slavs, only East Slavs.
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Do we really want to talk about accurate names in AoE2 of all things?
No, but its like naming Turks, Tatars.
Tatars with Janissary units, etc…
It’s simply not right.
I really don’t get your point.
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Slavs would imply they represent all the slavic people. But they dont.
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Would. If name accuracy was a consistent thing in this game.
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I thought that it was obvious that I was talking about the context of the game. I’m not saying that the denomination “Indian” is inaccurate as it refers to the peoples of that peninsula, or anachronistic, but rather that having a single civ representing the entirety of Indian kingdoms was stupid. There wasn’t such a thing as a single indian civ, hence why I called it a stupid choice for a civ name, because the civ concept itself was flawed.
Yep.
That’s a false equivalence. You can maybe change something about the civ, but given a that people seem to agree that “Slavs” are pretty much Eastern Slavs anyway, I don’t think there’s need to.
Lol, whatever the thread topic, if it goes on long enough it always devolves into these goofy arguments. When you consider that the alternative was having no Indian subcontinent representation, you see the FE addition of “Indians” as an imperfect but essential first step.
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In this case, I kind of agree, but I also kind of agree with SirWiedreich’s point. From the very beginning the AoE2 civs were mostly just loose representations of a bunch of irl cultures and states grouped together by sometimes arbitrary criteria; especially when you consider the context of The Forgotten’s development and release. Overall I think we’re in a good place now regarding what is now known as India, but to me the name change was more due to the fact that the Indians and the Hindustanis are essentially different civs rather than different iterations of the same civ. Just like the Slavs, the Indians were already mostly northwestern indians anyway, so you could argue they didn’t need as many changes as they got. But they did. And I’m glad they did.
You can say there is no point in changing the Slavs since they are already basically East Slavs, although there are still some peoples (like the romanians and the moravians) who are represented by them. Do they need to be changed? Not really; but I think if that’s the case then a name change wouldn’t reflect a change in the civ itself, but one in the overall state of the game, which to me makes no sense.
Ultimately the historicity (or lack of) doesn’t matter in terms of gameplay, and I understand that most people don’t really care about whether this civ makes sense or not, it’s a game after all, but I think that you cannot take so many creative freedoms as a developer or designer when you are trying to represent events inspired in reality because when many people still identify with those ancient peoples in a serious way (not me personally).
In regards to “either we introduce this very flawed representation or nothing” mentality, this doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying “let’s introduce the Andean civilization, because otherwise we cannot represent the entire region of south America” and yet, we have a particular Andean civilization, the Incas, instead of a inaccurate mishmash of many civs into one. I think a pretty safe move could have been to represent one indian group into the game (current Hindustanis for example), then add others if you like later on (like, there’s no reason to not keep adding civs from already explored regions, Europe anyone?).
Again, I understand the logic, but it didn’t need to be this flawed.
This conversation is admittedly irrelevant for the game, but being a little nitpicky and critical of certain historical representations is important to not leave people with false impressions on how ancient peoples used to be.
Taking this argument to the extreme you can say a lot of civs shouldn’t be in the game since they can be subdivided even further.