Should the next DLC be: Slavs rework, Croats, Serbs, Romanians?

Cool its still not the word Tibet. Loophole?

Songhai and Mali are leas related than say the Germanic civs

Please start a separate topic what can bring us a possible new DLC for East Asia, I would like to read it. Posting it here in this tiresome Slavs topic makes no sense as it will only bring more attention to this pointless topic.

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You say a lot that I already knew. I already said that

so you do not need to show those to me, particularly I can read Chinese.

My question is, even though ā€œDianā€ can refer to the region of Yunnan, ā€œDiansā€ might not an official or correct term to refer the peoples in Yunnan in English, like you cannot find results about the ethnics of Yunnan when you just search the term ā€œDiansā€ on Google.

I prefer to use a name of one of the majority ethnics in the region, for example the Nuosu, to cover the peoples of the region, than just invent a new term.

But anyway I donā€™t really want to argue the name of this civ. If you like the term, just keep liking it. I just prefer another one.

What I mean is that that is how the Malians work now, being an umbrella for the regimes that had sequentially replaced in the region (Ghana ā†’ Sosso ā†’ Mali ā†’ Songhai).
There does be possibility that the devs keep this status, and I just pointed out this whether I want Soninke or Songhai to be their own civs or not.

Well I donā€™t think the naming convention of aoe 2 civs is like that. Many civs currently in game have names that donā€™t really fit the period, for instance names like Celts and Goths. My understanding is that it doesnā€™t matter if the name itself fits the period or if the history of the people goes beyond the relevant period, as long as the people or the general group of people being referred to by that name still existed and founded kingdoms in aoe 2ā€™s period it works.

Nuosu is still a bit too specific for my taste and nothing suggests they were the ruling elite or the ethnic majority of Nanzhao, and since itā€™s a name still used by one of Chinaā€™s current ethnic groups (the Yi) thereā€™s always a risk of getting the game banned.

Itā€™s not a term I invented, if you understand Chinese you should know that an ancient kingdom of Yunnan had this name. And sometimes it can be used to refer to the people of that region as well, maybe the term ā€œDianyueā€ (껇越) is somewhat better.

Anyways, if the term Dians sounds unsuitable, then thereā€™re always other terms to choose from, terms like Baipu, Bo, and Zangke can all work, even terms like Xinanyi (č„æ南夷), Nanman (å—č›®), or Cuanman (ēˆØč›®) could work although those three terms carry a somewhat derogatory meaning.

I just donā€™t feel the term Nuosu is inclusive enough.

Then terms like Baipu, Bo, or Zangke are probably better and wonā€™t cause any harm to the game cause AFAIK no one uses those names anymore. Even terms like Xinanyi (č„æ南夷), Nanman (å—č›®), and Cuanman (ēˆØč›®) could work although they carry a somewhat derogatory meaning.

Another possible term is Liuzhao (六čƏ) or the Six Zhaos, referring to the six major tribes in Yunnan before the southernmost tribe Nanzhao or Mengshezhao unified all of them to form the Nanzhao kingdom.

This topic went from europe to aisa pretty quick.

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Not surprising since people want to see more civs outside of Europe get represented, Europe already has more than 20 civs, almost half of all civs in the game are European

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We have 5 of these Slav topics on page 1, its exhausting.

There arent even bonuses listed which means the OP didnt bother to do the civ crafting aspect

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They are legendary only by decision of the devs. I confess I donā€™t know much about the Malians in terms of campaigns, but as for Ethiopias, the devs could have placed King Kalebā€™s Aksumite expedition in Yemen, where we would have Ethiopians + Byzantines vs Saracens + Persians, for example, or the conquests of Amda-Seyon I against other Ethiopians and Somalis, or even, since I mentioned the latter, the devastating wars between Imam Ahmad Gragn and the Solomonic Dynasty, where we could even have both sides of the conflict being represented in campaigns. Thereā€™s no shortage of options.

I feel your pain, I would also like there to be more information about the African kingdoms, or at least more accessible information to the lay public like us. In my post in the other discussion (Splitting civs - #111 by SoleFrog1297715) the first link I brought (only one person accessed it; was it you?) explained why this happened. I would prefer not to have to summarize it, but as this context seems necessary now, here is the tl;dr of the factors that lead to our situation:

  • (1) Oral and often secret traditions of Africans taking precedence over written sources

  • (2) textual, visual and architectural sources, both African and foreign, mostly not surviving to our time due to various reasons

  • (3) attempt by colonial powers to erase the history of these people to justify their exploitation of them

  • (4) current instability of several former colonies and distrust of important members (holders of oral traditions, for example) towards the West

= (10) lack of knowledge/appeal to academic eyes in the recent past (archaeology, for example, is very little or almost non-existent in many areas) and especially to the eyes of the layman, whose interest generally gravitates around images.

Yet there has been progress on the part of scholars in discovering new things about these people and on the part of the media in sharing them (albeit slowly and/or accompanied by political agendas).

Well, I know youā€™re interested in the late antique period, but except for you, it doesnā€™t seem like a problem for the majority here on the forum for civs to be from after 1000 AD. At least from what Iā€™ve seen so far.

What exactly are you referring to?

I have suggested here on the forum (in addition to other commenters as well) 6 civs ā€” Kanembu/Kanuri, Nubians, Somalis, Shona, Kongo and Benin/Yoruba ā€” and only two, the Bantu, would have direct conflicts with the Portuguese (in addition to others of course: Yaka, Mbundu and perhaps Nziku/Tyo for Kongo and maravi and other Karanga for Shona). The rest would have conflicts with other peoples in the region: Benin/Yoruba against the Igbo, Ijebu, Itsekiri, Ekiti etc; Kanembu against the Sao, Bulala, Wadai, Hausa, Tubu, Tuareg etc; Nubians against Arabs and Beja; Somalis against Ethiopians (where yeah Portuguese and Turks could appear, but at most as a handful of allies.)

I think that with at least three of these six civs we will be able to represent these other African states in campaigns without much repetition, but for that to happen they need to be introduced first. Isnā€™t this what we would expect if the game was, for example, ā€œAsiocentricā€ and had only two civs (Franks and Byzantines) to represent all of Europe?

What do you mean here? Africans had their own medieval weapons (spears, javelins, axes, shields, swords, bows and arrows, armor, etc) like the rest of the world.

Are you referring to gunpowder weapons? Well, Iā€™ve read some papers arguing that gunpowder were not decisive or revolutionary in warfare in Africa during this period (these articles were written by experts from each region, not about the entire continent as a whole; and they are already on my list). That is, at first, they were useful due to the surprise factor, but they soon proved to be inferior to the bow and arrow due to the longer reload time and lower accuracy, only more or less in the 18th century replacing the bow and becoming essential to an army. So there would be no historical inaccuracy in making scenarios with few gunpowder units or even introducing African civs with little to no specific bonuses for gunpowder units.

Well, have you taken a look at the list of sources Iā€™ve put together on African history? I admit: I am not an expert, my list is not exhaustive and I recognize the cumbersome task of having to read specialized books and articles to sometimes obtain information that might already be common knowledge. But, due to the factors I explained above, there is no alternative other than falling straight into the texts. I know there are books and articles talking about these peoples warfare on the web if you look hard enough.

For example, I summarized it in this comment (Am I the only one who think African DLC won't be that good? And want the next DLC to focus East Asia? - #134 by SoleFrog1297715) some aspects of the Swahili war. Thereā€™s more in the article too if you want to check it out.

As for Shona, wasnā€™t it you I responded to these days showing some screenshots and links to a Mutapa Gatsi Rusere or Mutapa Matope campaign proposed by @Akoskaaa10? It may not be extremely detailed like other European accounts, but I think itā€™s enough for the game, having place names, specific characters and a clear script to follow.

Why do you want specifically non-Christian or non-Muslim kingdoms?


I would be more than happy to deliver everything ready here on the forum for anyone who wanted to create concepts and scenarios about these people, but Iā€™m just a guy with no training in the area searching, cataloging and gathering sources alone and for pure pleasure about an entire continent, but alas I simply wonā€™t be fast enough :confused:

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I see you are very new here. Explore the forum and you will find hundreds.
These are just 30 seconds of searching.
Screenshot 2023-11-04 225217
Screenshot 2023-11-04 225136

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I read something a user sent me about medieval Africa but I didnā€™t find what I was looking for which is detailed battles like in European history and most of all ā€œfactsā€.
I mean yeah the closer you get to Ethiopia and north Africa (because they were either Christian or Muslim hence they kept records of history) or to reigns who had links to byzantines, Sassanids etc like the episode you mentioned the more info you can find. But even in those cases itā€™s episodic, extremely sparse and you need to make a lot of assumptions, even for standard dark age European history.
The episode you told about Ethiopia invading Yemen is basically the only well recorded war in Ethiopian late antiquity and indeed I have it as a campaign project.
We donā€™t even know how Kush came to an end, just that somehow around 350 AD Aksum conquered it. A similar lack of details concern yodit and the fall of Aksum itself. Now Iā€™m being very pragmatic, because Iā€™m a custom content creator, imagine having to make a scenario about the fall of kush. How do you proceed? You make a boring bland build and destroy? Or an abstract RPG scenario with invented side quests to fill the void of historical facts?

The other project I have is a scenario about Nubia repelling Muslims in south Egypt, another famous episode often quoted around here. But you canā€™t do much more than that, a campaign is a stretch for two poorly reported battles where the only thing we know for certain is that Muslims lost to Nubians two times and signed a truce that lasted for centuries (which itā€™s impressive, thatā€™s why it caught my imagination). Lacks of detailed events leads to bland gameplay unless you invent stuff like I did for Dihya and I was still quite faithful to the few sources we have. Problem is I had to literally squeeze every single person, source or event I could find to reach 7 scenarii.
When I make European campaigns I have the opposite problem, I have so many things to put in there that I donā€™t know where to start and I donā€™t like having to make selections but Iā€™m forced to.

I know for example there are a couple of rulers from Ghana, the final ones, one was called Ghana bassi, known only because they were fighting Muslims. Itā€™s around 1000 AD so that could be another option but again I doubt you can make a full campaign unless you stretch events which itā€™s never a good thing because drama gets diluted.
This all to say that I understand African history enthusiasts but they just theorise. When you have to actually do stuff itā€™s when you need events, facts, namesā€¦ Many of them for a full campaign, not just the name of a ruler (if youā€™re lucky) and an episode.

Indeed there are basically no custom campaigns set in Africa (yeah philtydelphia kings of west Africa, indeed all scenarii before 1400 are very basic and abstract, that sadly proves my point) so it seems almost hypocritical at one point to keep repeating that the game needs Africa when itā€™s so hard to just make a decent campaign with the info you have. Again Iā€™m not saying you canā€™t theorise it but to actually make it and make it feeling interesting itā€™s another thing completely. Show me an African dark age campaign which is not kings of west Africa and then we can talk otherwise this debate honestly feels just cheesy and ideological, given I appreciate the enthusiasm and Iā€™d like to be proven wrong but againā€¦

I passed an entire year working on my last campaign which is set in Africa, yeah itā€™s Mediterranean Africa but thatā€™s where I could find some accounts (barely). Thatā€™s to say Iā€™d like to see more content from there (I made it myself since thereā€™s no African campaigns in the mod center otherwise) but since when I started asking I just had vague replies and links to archeological books or images of potteryā€¦ I mean itā€™s all interesting but this is aoe2 not an history class so you need something a bit more ā€œfleshyā€ and most of all you need stories, real events and people doing things.

This for example. Youā€™re not giving me events and facts but rather telling me why we donā€™t have them. I mean sure, colonialism and I know for certain African people didnā€™t have a written tradition but rather an oral oneā€¦ But after we acknowledge this what do we do? You need meat to make an hamburger if you know what I meanā€¦ To make a campaign is not just to namecheck a ruler.
With Europe you mostly donā€™t have this problem (unless you search for specific areas and time periods) and yeah maybe as you say colleges and Eurocentrism prevented an interest in African history but if no written sources exist I wonder what kind of history you can make if not one based on inferences derived from archeological findingsā€¦
But all of this is already going too far, again Iā€™m not Indiana Jones lol just a guy having to study, take jobs and live his real life who just love this game and wants to design campaigns for it. So if I love a particular time period I can research about it on internet but unfortunately I donā€™t have the time to become a PhD in African history to make a campaign or read 20 books to squeeze a single poorly documented event out of it. I wish I was paid to make custom campaigns, for sure that would be easier!

Iā€™ll reply to the rest in another comment.

No I know Iā€™m the minority, I love being the minority eheh.

Because many suggestions for African campaigns are set after 1400 towards aoe3 timeframe. Not a bad thing per se, itā€™s just that I would have liked to have earlier options. But better anything than nothing.

Ah donā€™t tell me, to me the more the better in terms of civs so you can theorycraft even more than just 6 civs for all Africa.

Yeah itā€™s related to the post 1400 thing where all Africa seems to be forced to fall. Of course I know they had their weapons, itā€™s just that many designs tend to go towards an early modern direction, when colonisers had the first contacts with Africa and when we have the best sources. The issue there is that European warfare normalise a bit African peculiarities, maybe too much focus on that period tend to make those civs look like ā€œpeople who found European weapons to fight backā€. But again this is not that important, just a thought.

Same argument as above. Once Christianity and Islam happen civs tend to become homogeneous. Thatā€™s why I like late antiquity, paganism, that stuffā€¦ I made Dihya a pagan in my campaign even if she probably was either a Jew or a Christian but her being a native and nomad amazigh fit better the purpose of the plot of resistance to Islam imo. And anyway since accounts are not clearā€¦

Oh now I remember I think! You showed me possible campaigns for Zimbabwe iirc. You seem to have insider info for sure lol. If I need to fill the blanks in a future African campaign of mine Iā€™ll ask you, maybe Iā€™ll create a topic to ask if you read the forum. Thanks for the info and the links!

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Slavs should be split in : Kievans, Moscovites and Novogrod

Iā€™m not joining this conversation since I know nothing about the subject, just wanted to say they can just be called Dian without the S in the end. lol

Then the name will just refer the place rather than the people.

There are already ā€œpoorly recordedā€ historical figures as campaign heroes. I agree most of Africans donā€™t have their record well preserved, but that doesnā€™t mean there couldnā€™t be campaigns made about them.
It is also an unfortunate most of African historical events are recorded past 1450 as you mentioned.

Yodit is a terrible choice for Ethiopians, Amda Seyond wouldā€™ve been the perfect choice. He is an actual Ethiopian hero and his military achievements are extremely well recorded. Thats the fault of the devs, not Ethiopian history.

Somalis are a perfect civilization candidate. A 6-mission Ahmad Gragn campaign would be easy to make since his historical sources are very rich. It would also include a decent variety of cilizations: Somalis, Turks, Saracens, Ethiopians, Portuguese and Nubians.

On the other hand Nubians have poorer records as you mentioned, but a Qalidurut campaign which includes the Nobatian conquest, Makurian-Beja Wars and Dongola Battles is doable.

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Iā€™d also say that even though historical events might be poorly recorded for a variety of reasons already mentioned in this thread, that wouldnā€™t really stop the devs from doing a campaign based on it anyway. Theyā€™ve taken artistic liberties before and they can do it again. Joan of Arc never fought or killed anyone, yet sheā€™s a military hero in the campaign anyway.

After all, the game is not meant to be a historical retelling of past events with focus on everything being accurate, but simply drawing inspiration from history to create a game. I think thatā€™s fine, and if someone then enjoys the campaign and finds whatā€™s told interesting, they tend to google for more information afterwards themselves, not rely on information presented in game.

I guess it does create a problem of receiving false information at some point - I wouldnā€™t have known Joan of Arc never fought in battle if it werenā€™t for reading the reactions to AoE4ā€™s new Joan of Arc ā€˜civā€™, up until then I thought she did because of the campaigns. But life is about constant learning and relearning anyway, Iā€™d say if the game gets people interested in histories of various cultures of the world, itā€™s doing good even if some things are romanticized.

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Qalidurut seems like the best choice for Nubia:

  1. Defending Nobatia from the Sassanids, then annexing them (Persians)
  2. Fending off Beja raids while trying to send resources to Byzantines now facing the Rashidun (mirror match and/or Saracens)
  3. First Battle of Dongola (Saracens, Berbers)
  4. Second Battle of Dongola (Saracens, Berbers)
  5. Marching upon Cairo to free the Coptic Patriarch Michael (Saracens, Berbers)

Agreed on Somalia and deprecating the Yodit campaign, either for just Amda Seyond or adding a Kaleb campaign if the Aksumites are split off from Ethiopians. If FEā€™s intent on keeping a queen, then Eleni I would be a strong choice for the high Solomon years, just avoiding the Adal-Ethiopian War which the Somali missions would cover.

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Wrong. Totally wrong.
Khazars will just be Khazars, a group of Jewish Turks living north of the Caucasus.
Gokturks will and must represent both Eastern and Western Gokturks.
Itā€™ll be strange that the Western Turkic Khanate, which controlled Transoxiana, is represented by Khazars.

If we canā€™t have both (I personally think itā€™s hard to have 2 new Turkic civs) then Iā€™d go with the Gokturks, obviously.