Tbh I do think that Tonyukuk is kind of the obvious Gokturk campaign option. Theres other cool stories but Tonyukuk is prob the best one to tell
Afghans, Armenians, Georgians, Khazars, Gokturks, and Uyghurs are my first picks. If Uyghurs aren’t possible due to political reasons, then we could replace them with Sogdians.
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The Khazars followed Judaism though, not Tengrism.
Gokturks can represent early non-Muslim Turkic groups like Pecheneg, Turgesh, and early Uyghurs.
Judaism is not Islamic religion too. 
There should not be enough Jewish countries to become a civ I guess. As an early Turkic group, they also believed in Tengrism at first, but there is no clear record of the time when they converted to Judaism. But the religion is not the only standard anyway.
As the successor of the Western Turkic Khanate, it is reported that their ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the Ashina clan. Using the Gokturks to represent the Khazars is a more reasonable and efficient option than using the Khazars to represent all the Gokturk khanates and other Turkic groups in my opinion.
I choose the Gokturks since I regard that introducing them could cover the most Turkic people in the lest number of civs, used to solve the complicated problems of Turkic people at once. As the most powerful Turkic power at the time, they left records from East Asia to Europe, and they were suitable as common representatives of the early Turkic people. With them, there may be no need to have other new Turkic civs like the Khazars or the Uyghurs.
Tbh, none of these suggested civs is really necessary and most should NOT be included.
Many were rather insignificant or quite short-lived. The Göktürks had only around 300 years of significance, even if the Uygur Khanate is included. Khazars could be interesting as a Jewish civ, but also had only 300 years of existence. And these were before 1000 CE while Age 2 mostly focuses on the High and Late Middle Ages around 1000-1500.
Scythians are ancient, not medieval. Khitans belong to East Asia, not West. And “Afghans” did not exist in medieval time, even not in modern times; I would simply view the Pashtuns as Persians (due to language and medieval history). Ghaznavids and Ghurids are dynasties, not civs. They could be subsumed under Persians mixed with Turks (which basically describes the main influences on the territory which now forms Afghanistan).
The only civ with a long lifespan, quite some regional power (for some time) and a new flavor, would imho be Georgians.
So the only option for a DLC I see is a Caucasus one with Georgians perhaps plus Khazars or Armenians and a Slav / Turk / Persian campaign.
But as there are much more important civs from other parts of the world missing, this should not be the top priority for devs now.
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I really dislike how much the game gets closer and closer to being a late medieval game. And Gokturks arent shorlived if you include Qocho, and even then we have gotten Sicilians, Lithuanians and Burgundians so honestly I dont see any reason to not add them
And Ghurids are more than just another Persian civ if you include Delhi
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Yeah, too many people focus on post-Hastings medieval world, ignoring the ~500 years of history prior.
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Okay, this thread got many responses and I kind of missed my mark by publishing it right before going on holidays for almost two weeks away from my computer… I’ll try to answer a few of those posts, though.
(EDIT: I also found out too late that I forgot to put an “Other(s)” option, and now I think I can’t change the poll without losing all my results.
The Qara Khitai empire was Kitan (it was actually the direct successor of the Liao empire in Mongolia and Northern China) and it was mostly in Central Asia, so I considered the Khitans should be represented in polls for both Western and Eastern Asia.
As for the Afghans, I also thought they should be called Pashtuns, but after looking it up I found out that this name only starts being used during the Modern Era. Before that, Pashtuns are called Afghans, and this term only refers to Pashtuns rather than Dari or other inhabitants of moder-day Afghanistan. I’m far from convinced that this people can’t be represented by its very own civ (outrage caused by modern politics aside), since I don’t think the Medieval Afghans had military traditions similar to those of Persia. As for language, aside from the fact that Pashtun is an Eastern Iranian language and Persian a Western one, I don’t think it’s that relevant for deciding which factions should be represented in a strategy game.
Ghazvanids and Ghurids are not in the poll, I don’t see why you feel the need to shut down factions that were not proposed…
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I couldn’t really find a better name than West Asia to represent this whole ensemble, maybe I should have listed the different parts of the area I wanted to cover but then the title would have been incredibly long.
I feel the need to point out that Gokturks wouldn’t be the third Turkic group, as Cumans (or rather Cuman-Kipchak) were also turks, and they were also Tengrists during the time when they had their own empire. To be honest, I’m a little bit conflicted about how the Turkic people could have the best possible representation. I would love to see them split into many smaller entities, considering how diverse they are and were in this era, but I don’t think it’s a realistic expectation. However, I think the current Turk faction should be renamed as Turkomans to give them a more medieval feeling and better highlight the fact that they are only representing the Oghuz Turks. Maybe the Tatars should also be renamed as Chagatai, since I feel like they are more meant to represent the later Karluks rather than the actual Tatars who were mostly settled in the European part of Russia when Timur came to power.
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The community may not able to accept 2 or 3 new Turkic civs or another late medieval Turkic civ more.
Just choose last one, I don’t have any other option better than the Gokturks, the most powerful and vast khanate active in the early Middle Ages.
Moreover, the current Turkic civilization attaches too much importance to the West, and the Gokturks are the suitable Turkic representative on the East. Neither the Tatars, the Cumans nor the Turks can well present the role of the enemy of Tang Dynasty and Sassanid Empire in my opinion.
Huns are not a good fit?
NO.
Even if you are talking about Xiongnu, the Huns are not Xiongnu.
The European buildings make the Huns even worse than others.
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Changing buildings is easy in DE so anyone with a matching tech tree would fit anyone now.
Mods should not be assumed to be used while the new content is being discussed.
Wait, are you the kind of people who regard the nomadic people were just similar to each other?
In Chinese information websites, the Gokturks were believed to value investigate and scouting. According the record of Tang Dynasty, the Gokturk army used “Komg” a lots, who are the scout troops and regarded an important part of their warfare. For example, in 630, the Tang army “surprisingly” bumped into about thousands Gokturk scout camps at Yin Mountains. Later, Emperor Xuanzong was warned by Gentleman Attendant at the Palace Gate (黃門侍郎) Zhang Tinggui (張廷珪) that the enemy uses scouts so there must be prevention. You can check 李靖傳事狀 and New Book of Tang, volume 118 for what I stated above.
Cavalry archers were indeed the forte of the Gokurks, which was also said by Emperor Taizong. However, the Gokturk infantry also cooperated with their horsemen well at rapid aggressions. In their system, one-third were infantry and two-thirds were cavalry. For example, Kul Tigin was a prince and a general who achieved brilliant results by leading infantry fight. This means that the way the Gokturks fought did not always focus on the nomadic stereotypes of hasty raids and irregular offensives, even if they were actually good at these things too. They may place more emphasis on the formations than people think.
So they may have a hunting bonus, full champions, free heavy cavalry archer upgrade and a bonus or cheap UT to greatly increases unit’s LoS. Their heavy cavalry UU may be named “Fuli” or “bori”, mean “wolf”, who were imperial guard corps of the ruler, able to keep moving, attacking and sustaining damage for 3 seconds after HP down to zero.
After studying the relevant details and literatures, you will find the clear difference, create a different civ and no longer think they fit each other such well, otherwise we have not needed to introduce any new civ since AoFK.
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We really didnt need any of the DE civilizations,they ruined the concept of umbrella civis which the game followed.
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You mean the Goth covering the Hungarians and Russians. 11
Look like an Asian student who cannot figure out the difference among the Europeans says we do not need the Franks, Teutons, Magyars and so on since they are all covered by one European Christian Knight civs.
Obviously such kind of thread is not for you. You are no necessary to force yourself to read the thread about new civs and to leave comments.
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A civ with free upgrade to heavy cav archers would be nice, but I think one with trash cav archers could also be interesting, especially for a Central Asian faction.
The game followed this logic because it had no other choice when the number of civ that could realistically be included into the game was so limited, but personally I’d rather have as few umbrella civs as possible.
Nice idea.
I assume that the Gokturks would quickly enter to the strong period, but tend to be mediocre in the late game. The hunting bonus helps them ahead in the Feudal, and the free HCA upgrade makes them have a sharp offensive in the early Imperial.
On the other hand, I would like to set the Khitan UTs like following.
The Castle one is named Treaty, based on the Chanyuan Treaty. It would force all friendly and enemy units to cease fire for a short time, maybe 30 sec or 1 min, and then receive 1 gold per 4 sec (half relic) after the treaty ends.
The Imperial one is named Orda. Within the Liao Empire, the Orda was used to refer to the nobleman’s personal entourage specifically. It would be suitable to make cavalry archers cost lower gold or no longer cost gold. Off course that means the wood cost of CA would increase, and the Khitans may not have HCA probably. I regard a trash HCA costing at the price of 80 wood is acceptable however.
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Umbrella Civs are inherently a horrible idea and should never being included in the first place, as instead of having a Civ’s bonuses, architecture, UU, campaigns, language based on an individual group of people with a singular cohesive history. You instead have to base it on an incredibly large and vague linguistic group whom’s constituent ethnicites are completely distinct from each other and have less and less similarities overtime all so that you can represent certain groups in the most shallow way possible.
I don’t even think the actual devs adhere to the ideas of an actual umbrella Civ anyways, Slavs, Indians and Italians for instance are already predominately based on a specific subgroup that their umbrellas represent (respectively Russians, Mughals and Genoese)
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Yeah they are very diferent. Comparing them to Huns based on them being from the dark ages is a bit silly really
I mean, even Cumans would represent them better lol