They did not just appear in Sicily! The Sicilians appeared in Britain in the Longshanks campaign, renamed as Normans by trigger, and same goes for the renamed “Normans” in Bari and Hautesvilles.
Sicilian-speaking Normans in Normandy and Britain would be so weird, and scenario triggers alone doesn’t change the fact that the Normans is still Sicilians.
The Normans were descended from Vikings and they explored much of Europe, not just Sicily, so they should be names Normans instead. The Normans also invaded Britain as in Hastings. At least should change the dialogue language to Franks or Vikings and architecture to west European set. Other characteristics is as fine as it is.
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I’m no Norman expert so this is a genuine question. What timeframe of Norman history does the Sicilian civ best represent?
If it’s pre-Sicily then yeah, probably should be called Norman’s and just have a few riggers to call them Sicilians when relevant.
If it’s post migration to Sicily then it’s probably fine how it is.
Yes, Sicily is a place name, Norman is a civilized name, and it is more representative
I’ve felt for a long time now that the Sicilians should be renamed the Normans. The architecture would have to change, which would mean changing the Donjon design, Castle, and Wonder, but that’s no biggie, especially since the Wonder can be the Tower of London already in-game.
The unique unit and techs and general theme are already Norman in origin. Apart from the architecture, I see nothing about the civ currently that is uniquely Sicilian, so nothing would have to change. We could even change the Hastings scenario from the less-accurate Franks to Normans.
Using the Sicilians to represent something distinctly Norman is like having the Empire of Trebizond in-game, but everything is distinctly Georgian. It’s a massive cop-out and makes the game less interesting by having such an iconic faction represented by something significantly less notable.
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Sicily was the most importante Norman kingdom, I SEE no need for any change
Wasn’t the previous name Normans?
I thought I was the only one… I guess Sicily as a civ makes sense if you give them something of Muslim origin like Camels - which is actually done in one of the scenarios.
So I had an idea once that I assumed was toooo stupid and that there was way too little interest in general to get any attention but hey, it seems perhaps I’m wrong at least on that second point.
Call the civ Norman’s until castle/imperial/research a UT. Then the civ name switches to Sicilians.
If it was a UT it’d have its normal effect, but otherwise nothing but the civ name would change.
If you wanna change architecture sets as well when the name changes I have no qualms. It’s certainly not any more stupid than my idea lol.
What annoys me the most is that developers decided to included a civ that clearly represents the Normans (that, I think, were already reasonably represented by Franks or Vikings depending on the timeframe), but giving them a more “umbrella” name to kind of gaslight the fact that it’s just Normans (even having the audacity to say on the civ description that they are meant to represent the “multicultural kingdom of Sicily”, of which I see none, not even camels lol), instead of choosing literally any other kingdom from elsewhere. Asia, Africa and America also exist you know?
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Camels? In southern Italy?
If they want or wanted to represent the multicultural heritage of medieval Sicily, they should have added a UT, not camels
I said that in order to represent, in the most stereotypical way, admittedly, the fact that Sicily was in hands of Muslim caliphates (and hence Arab warriors, camel raiders, horse archers and what not). I agree it’s not necessarily the best way, but at least it would be an obvious reference to this supposed multicultural flavor of the civ (which by the way, I’m not the one imposing, the devs themselves stated it on the civ description).
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There was no previous name. I think they were called Normans during development, but were changed to Sicilians at the last minute for unknown reasons.
Probably to avoid having 3 overtly French civs.
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So now we have 3 overtly Italian civs.
Not much of an improvement, is it?
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Wait for Venice and the Papacy
I highly doubt we’ll get those civs, in my opinion.
The pope is too much… but I think Venice has a lot of chances
Rename sicilians to normans
Rename dravidians to tamils
Rename italians to genoese
Rename turks to ottomans
Rename slavs to rus
Endless possibilities.
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If there was a civilization based on the Papacy, it definitely could not be called that. It’d have to be called Vaticanos. That’s an unofficial demonym, but it fits more in the style of AoE2 than Papacy does.