Nubians would fit it well. Archer/Monk civ? Or Archer/Cav civ?
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Could be either to make interesting gameplay.One main problem is the uu unit is a hero already so need to find an alternative uu.
There could be another version for the regular game.
Middle Age Egyptian is not equal to Bronze Age Egyptian. Egypt that we know got heavily Arabized at 10th century.
They still formed unique culture out of it. Similar to how Sicilians is in AOE2. However they represent more European centric than Arab/Berber one. I still canāt find noticeable difference in Egypt and Arab as much as there is with Andalusia. Andalusia was like super different than Middle Eastern counterpart. Even military system worked much different than Middle Eastern counterpart. Their architecture has to be heavily influenced by in game Mediterranean Architecture than Middle Eastern. Even unique Castle/Mosque. Otherwise no need for Iraqis, Syrians, etc. mentioned above. Donāt know much about Somali history yet. Gotta look up.
Yeah, but after the crumble of the Abbassid Empire and until the Ottoman conquest, there was always an independant state centered around Egypt, either with an Arab, Kurdish or mameluke dynasty, which you could call Egypt even though they were usually named after the ruling dynasty. Even before that, Egypt was a governorate inside the Umayyad Caliphate (just like Syria and Iraq, by the way). And if the Saracens were ever to be split rather than renamed, Egyptians would be an obvious choice, since they have a long and tumultuous history in the Middle Ages as their own independant state, their own military traditions (no other Arab country used mamelukes as extensively as them, I think) and contrary to what you seem to think the Medieval Arab world was far from a monolithic cultural group without any regional variations.
This being said, the Saracen split is far from being one of my priorities and Iām not even sure it should ever be done, but it should at least be considered.
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Yes Egypt seems like a good extra Middle Eastern faction.
Interesting also is that for a big part of the Middle Ages, Egypt was still majority Christian with an Arab Muslim ruling class. Itās still 15-20% Christian today iirc. Egypt once had the densest concentration of Christian monasteries in the world, including after the Arab conquests.
So Egypt could be a mixed faction, not just a Muslim one but one that includes the original Coptic/Ancient Egyptian inhabitants.
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Egyptian getting split would be extremely odd choice. I mean Saracen UU is a direct reference to Mamluke dynasty. What alternate UU you can make it out even? You still need enough cultural and military reference to work with. Compare this with my suggestion with Andalusia concept. Andalusia itself had its own unique European and Arabic culture to work with. Even military to a big extent to talk about. About Egypt? Their military system was as similar as it was in Arab Peninsula/Iraq where Baghdad is. Even architecture is same. I can still give tons of references how Andalusia and Berbers/Arabs are culturally different to a big extent. They definitely werenāt Bedouin(Nomadic) tribal society like Berbers/Arabs. They had once big cities like Cordoba which compete with Baghdad of Abbasids at its peak.
Again there is like absolutely nothing worth mentioning about Copt/Christian Empires of Egypt ever since Arab conquest. We can have unique Coptic Churches for scenario editor but military? Like nothing? You have to work with Ethiopia/Sudan concepts to work around. Also you have to remember what time period it is. Game in general works around from 5th to 15th century. In that period you have 300 period of Roman Egypt and rest are Arabic Egypt. As someone who studied in this itāll very odd to make a medieval civilization out of it. However itāll be a huge crime to not include Egyptian in a game which worked around pre-Medieval age.
Well, split is a poor choice of words for the Egyptians, in case of Saracen split the Egyptians would probably be the equivalent of the Hindustani for DoI (with probably huge changes to their tech tree).
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Hindustanis is representing modern day Pakistan(if you donāt know yet Sindh is located at Pakistan and thatās where the term Hindu/India came from. Not the actual India. In Hindi its called Vaarat), Afghanistan, part of North and West India, Still a very big place and culture to work around with. It already had its own Indo-Persian-Islamic culture when Babur came. Architecture design still shows Hindu temples despite ruler is a Muslim. Gurjaras is more on the Hindu side of Indian culture. Seems like modern day Rajasthan, parts of Punjab and other sides of India. In that way it still makes much more sense. India is like very diverse to work with and very big. Itās nearly as big as all of Europe. Current India DLC pretty much fixes the problem. I think anybody has much issues with Indian civs other than few balancing. I think everybody knows how the community complained about India for ages.
True, even after this DLC, India is still not fully covered. None of the 4 Indian civs that we got can represent these regions properly:
Deccan, Karnataka, Orissa, Nepal, Ceylon, Assam, Tibet
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Hindustanis have been reworked to represent the Afghans/Mughal origin Islamic groups and the Delhi Sultanate not just those āoutsideā India proper which in the medieval period covered what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh.
One thing I wished they had added would have been the Kannadigas as a civilisation, and the Dravidians being called the Tamils. Kannadigas were strong elephant and cavalry civilisation and they would better represent the Deccan polities better (Rashtrakutas, Chalukyas and Hoysalas) than the maritime focussed Dravidian civlisation which is closer to Tamil Nadu/Kerala based polities. But Iām happy with the DLC.
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You are right, my bad! I had a brain fart there
Maybe if we get more than 48 civs, Kannadigas will be released somewhere down the line together with Deccani so we could have the rivalry between Vijayanagara and Bahmani/Bijapur represented in game?
Besides what @PeakHornet46539 pointed out, I fail to see how this is relevant to the conversation.
mainly pointed out how Hindustanis can be different split culturally unlike Egyptians if we are talking a Saracens split. Andalusia can be the only major relevant split that is possible from Saracens/Berbers.
Another thing to mention many in the forums talked about Vandals civs. I think they are one of the Germanic/Gothic people. Personally I will say just let them stay with Goths or they mostly belong to AOE1 period than AOE2. Andalusia is the Arabized word for Vandals(Al-Andalus literally means āThe Vandalsā). A Gothic-Arab theme can be applied for developing this civ. I think I even mentioned they were not famous for cavalry like ME counterpart the way they are with infantry.
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Yemeni were quite different from the other Arab cultures even before Islam, and Iām pretty sure the Bedouins could from Najd and Hejaz could also stand on their own (though they may be too close from the Berbers, in a sense). Maybe Egyptians and Levantines were too close during their whole Medieval existence to be split from each other (though it surprises me), but thereās far more than just Andalusians that could break apart from Saracens, and if the entire civ was to be split the original Saracen civ could still remain to represent Egyptians and maybe Levantines. Thatās why I said they would fill the same role as the Hindustani, from a gameplay perspective.
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Would love a Chinese civ or dynasty like the Ming or Yuan that is gunpowder focused
I notice we now have West and East Europe, and South Asia as campaign titles. So if devs are committed, they might go for a final DLC āNorth somethingā, with 3 last new civs weāre gonna have 45 fitted in 5 rows.
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I think Saracenes right now is the most āumbrellaā and nonsensical civ, it really needs to be split at least into 3 different civs, Ayubids, which will hopefully get a new language, perhaps Kurdish for the villagers and maybe a mix of Kurdish and Arabic for the military and Arabic for the monks? Kinda like how the Britons have a latin speaking monk and English speaking villagers. Then we can have the Fatamids, which would be a good addition again because they were a rival to the Ayubids and would be good to have them in there, and also they are already in some of the campaign missions (as āEgyptā). And Finally Abbasids, this can be a remaking of the current Saracenes civ.
Chinese also as well, I would imagine could get a similar treatment, but I am not an expert so Iāll let someone else advocate for that.
Also Slavs are already pretty well represented, just change the name of the current Slavs civ to Rus or Kyiv. Or maybe split it into those 2?
Turks could arguably be split, have the current Turks rebranded as the Ottomans and maybe add at least Saljuks?
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No, please, no dynasties as civsā¦
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