Split the Saracens?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
62

Not Middle Eastern, no, but it was made up of Arabs.

63

IIRC, the Jin Dynasty was Jurchen.

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64

That’s it. Thank you.

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65

It’s a terms used by crusaders to refer to all Arabs and Muslims. It was never used to self identify by the people it is an imposed name and shouldn’t be used. Most importantly it doesn’t refer to any specific empire, Kingdom, dynasty or political or cultural entity and therefore is problematic as an in game civilisation. It’s like as if instead of Incas, Mayans and Aztecs in game you had one civilisation called American Indians. Or if instead of the various European civs you had one civ called Franks (because a lot of medieval Arabs did refer to all Europeans as Franks) and so on


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66

The article you shared seems to be extremely biased. I recommend something more academic like Wikipedia.

It wasn’t a term exclusive to Crusaders, but to the majority of Christian and Jewish writers of the time. It was used to refer to Arab Muslims, which the civilization definitely represents. So it’s an appropriate name.

Even if it’s imprecise, the civ has been in the game since 1999, so I wouldn’t want it to be changed now.

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67

Those would be the umayyads.

68

Wikipedia is not “academic”. It literally just references other content. I could go and put a reference to that article in Wikipedia and then it would be there but it still wouldn’t be anymore academic.

If you actually want academic content I suggest you start by reading Orientalism by Edward Said and then the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of The Crusades.

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69

Still, as an aggregate of other sources, if the term was generally considered to be offensive, it would be mentioned. It’s not mentioned, so I’m inclined to think it’s not a common viewpoint.

In any case, I’m not a fan of dynasty-based civs. I prefer naming civs after people groups. The more modern version of “Saracens” would be “Arabs.” I don’t think it should be named after any specific dynasty.

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70

Man I’m not a fan of easily offended people as well but he’s right that Saracens was like saying “them” when Europeans refers to Arabic Muslims. Like all Europe was Romans or Franks for them.
So I wouldn’t put it as being offensive or not (who cares that’s up to you), it’s just that you could find something better specially now that civs are being splitted etc.

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71

Let me put it this way.

If the Saracens were being added today, I’d probably have a problem with their broadness. But they’re an original game civilization. They’ve been extremely broad for over 20 years. I think we should just keep them the way they are as a reminder of how weird the base game used to be.

72

You can think whatever you like I didn’t say what I said because I wanted to convince you or anyone one way or another. You asked for sources, I gave sources. It is up to you what you want to believe or don’t believe as it is up to me to think and believe what I think.

73

I was hoping for good sources, but the ones I got weren’t convincing. Like I said, if the term was actually offensive to a large number of people, Wikipedia would’ve mentioned it.

74

The idea of keeping a civ broad just because they were broad to begin with is also problematic because it doesn’t consider the cultural context where Europeans have historically downplayed nuances and differences in non-European cultures which is why the original game even had “Saracens” and “Chinese” and then later “Indians” when they had much more nuances representation of European civs for example. So basically just because they did a shitty job with a civ 30 years ago is no argument for keeping it that way. This game has changed so much since then that it’s barely the same game anymore. As far as I’m concerned any change that is for the better is welcome.

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75

Get outta here, I’m blocking you as I find conversing with you tedious. I literally mentioned 2 academic sources and you didn’t even bother.

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76

Fine then add Egyptians and Iraqis (Were they called Iraqis back then?).

77

I like the broad design of Saracens – if they were split into several more specialised civs, we would very much have lost the current Saracens, even if all the individual parts of the design still existed somewhere. Better to add new civs than destroy a perfectly good existing civ, in my opinion.

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78

That’s one if the reasons I suggested adding civs from the “Saracen periphery”, like the Bedouins, Kurds or Yemeni. They would be more distinct and leave the Saracens intact.

However, I agree with those who think this civ should have its name changed to Arabs. The Byzantines also have a similar problem, but since another Roman civ has been added, they will have to keep that name anyway.

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79

I don’t see a problem with the current name. It’s iconic, and accurate to the time period.

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80

Honestly I don’t get people’s obsession with keeping Ensemble’s work untouched, whether because it’s “iconic” or to “show their mistakes”.

You can change that stuff and still keep a record of what it used to be like. Like how the AoE wiki added back the pre-split Indians’ article.

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81

Accurate to the time period from the perception of western kingdom but I don’t think it is the case of the rest of the world.

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