Which Civ5 civilisation had the biggest impact on history?

adwcta said:

The mongols never directly controlled Malaysia/Indonesia. They sent several expeditions, and essentially faught to a stalemate, whereupon Indonesia agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols and send ambassadors regularly to the Mongol capital with lavish gifts. In return, the Mongols withdrew. This lasted a couple hundred years before the Mongol Empire became too weak/disorganized to enforce this.

Indonesia/Malay was the Mongols' only successful sea invasion, and it was not a complete success. This is why Indonesia/Malaysia are never be in the boundaries of the Mongol empire on maps you see. Same with a number of places in East Europe (Bulgaria and Croatia) and Southeast Asia (Siam and Indo).

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See here, this is familiar. I found something similar to this in civilization 5 brave new world civilopedia about mongolia.

adwcta said:

The mongols never directly controlled Malaysia/Indonesia. They sent several expeditions, and essentially faught to a stalemate, whereupon Indonesia agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols and send ambassadors regularly to the Mongol capital with lavish gifts. In return, the Mongols withdrew. This lasted a couple hundred years before the Mongol Empire became too weak/disorganized to enforce this.

Indonesia/Malay was the Mongols' only successful sea invasion, and it was not a complete success. This is why Indonesia/Malaysia are never be in the boundaries of the Mongol empire on maps you see. Same with a number of places in East Europe (Bulgaria and Croatia) and Southeast Asia (Siam and Indo).

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well, if the tribute is by performing a plastic surgery to the envoy, then yes, the javanese is paying one.
Kublai sent a minister to ask for submission, but then what he got is a free ear removal surgery, i don't know if the minister love his new look or not, but kublai is certainly not. Thus he sent an army to java. On the way, they do get submission from many malay and sumateran city states through gunboat diplomacy, but thats it. Its not enough to say that they ever got indonesia under their feet.

Syailendra said:

well, if the tribute is by performing a plastic surgery to the envoy, then yes, the javanese is paying one.
Kublai sent a minister to ask for submission, but then what he got is a free ear removal surgery, i don't know if the minister love his new look or not, but kublai is certainly not. Thus he sent an army to java. On the way, they do get submission from many malay and sumateran city states through gunboat diplomacy, but thats it. Its not enough to say that they ever got indonesia under their feet.

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Ah, fair enough. I thought at that time Sumarta was ruled by Indonesia, but they were in fact separate states at the time the mongols invaded. So, the Malay and the state which controlled most of Indonesia's current largest island were tributary states to the Mongols. But at that time, the Singhasari were not in control of that island. So, it is true that the predecessors of the current Indonesia state did not pay tribute to the Mongols.... But the mongols did receive tribute from a large area of what is now Indonesia (at that time other smaller empires).

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adwcta said:

Ah, fair enough. I thought at that time Sumarta was ruled by Indonesia, but they were in fact separate states at the time the mongols invaded. So, the Malay and the state which controlled most of Indonesia's current largest island were tributary states to the Mongols. But at that time, the Singhasari were not in control of that island. So, it is true that the predecessors of the current Indonesia state did not pay tribute to the Mongols.... But the mongols did receive tribute from a large area of what is now Indonesia (at that time other smaller empires).

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at that time, no one kingdom is large enough to be considered as indonesia as a whole. The Srivijayan just received a fatal blow from and breaks into many small city states. So they chose to not fight the mongols navy, but this situation is very short lived, as the mongols only last about one season (maximum 6 months) in indonesian water, the regent of maja forest, Raden Wijaya, sets a plot to conquer java for himself while destroying the mongols as well. Later Wijaya named his kingdom Majapahit.
It almost like when xerxes got Athens, but then losing at Salamis. Nobody can say that Greece is subdued by Xerxes, right?

Greece and China I would say.

China is a given.

The ideas and philosophies Greece popularized, as well as the traditions they managed to validate, made Rome what it was. Which in turn made pretty much every other western civilization what it was/is. So, it would be a bit silly to pick America before any European power, any European power before Byzantium, Byzantium before Rome, or Rome before Greece.
Start with the seed because if there was no Greece, probably the rest of them would not have come to be.

Probably the Phoenicians would have conquered the Mediterranean turning Europe into a Semitic empire. With their center of power then being in the Sea, it's possible they would have left northern Europe to it's own devices. Sharing better relations with Asia minor, and not wanting to extend too far from their ships, as well as their general culture and philosophy, It's likely they would have traded goods between inland Europe and the Islamic powers, distributing their resources all throughout the costs of the Mediterranean. This would have have stimulated northern Europe rather than oppress and exploit it, as Rome did. So we possibly could have seen the emergence of civilization coming up earlier in northern Europe (though that's debatable).
It's difficult to say whether they could have withstood the Hunnic invasion, and that's all of course assuming they didn't self-destruct somewhere along the way. Already 6th century Europe is unrecognizable though, and any nation coming after... in a totally different dimension I guess.

Edit: The Celts could qualify as well, but as an ancient culture group which inhabited all of Europe, they were and are a part of every European nation, so it's a bit hard to quantify their influence against actual Nations/Empires.

While I wouldn't exactly put them as the "most influential" or impacting, I don't think a lot of you realize the impact France has had on the world. Before France become relatively rotten before the rise of Napoleon, France was a decent medieval power. Decent enough to beat the British vikings.

In 1066, the French beat the English barbarians at Hastings. This made a huge impact on the British, and thus the world. The British would have likely remained as the Northern European vikings they originally were if it wasn't for the French gaining victory over them and then reforming their culture.

All of history's English accomplishments and feats would never have happened, most likely. The USA would never have been founded, as well as other less-influential but yet significant modern nations such as Canada and Australia. Multiple regions would not have been invaded or conquered by the English, such as India and Burma, and thus they could have possibly grown their own culture. As well as countless other British achievements that affected the modern world so dramatically.

All this still obviously doesn't compete with such defining feats from older civilizations such as China making paper and Rome/Greece basically forming the basis of western society, but still something to consider.

Mongolia.

I normally dislike talking about history in terms of great people or culture, because those are shaped by history, not the other way around. But that's a debate for another time.

What the Mongols did do however, was create the trade that necessary to facilitate the eventual western takeoff. The opening of the steppe highway allowed the transfer of ideas from East to West, and in no small part helped jump-start the west in it's desire to trade and expand. Remember, even in the middle ages, everyone wanted to get to the riches of the East.

Also, the failure of the Mongols to stampede through western Europe while obliterating the Middle East and China set back their social development far enough to allow the West, which I'm sure we can agree was behind at that point in time, to be able to catch up. Had the Mongols managed to obliterate the social development the West had managed to achieve since the fall of Rome, I imagine that the western world might have sunk into the same morass of conservatism that plagued even the strongest of "Asian" Empires at the time. A mindset that could be blamed in part, I believe, on the concept of being a culture on the defensive, especially after the Mongolian ravages.

Athens and China as number one. England as a number three.

I specifically wrote Athens and not Greece because the two cities had a completely different culture and while the spartan influence has been reduced to nearly nothing, the athenian influence has shaped the politics, philosophy, science, ..., of many countries in the modern world, far beyond the western world. Even the christian religion has been deeply influenced by the athenian philosophy.

China and England, no need to explain why.

I discard America (it is way to early to say they had a big influence in history) and Mongolia. Even if Mongolia had the biggest empire ever, it soon crumbled and it had no significant influence on later civs.

Rome.

Rome is probably the most obvious to me due to how much time it spans and the impact it had during its time and even after.

Arabia and China are also up there. Then probably Mongolia Spain and England.

Some of those civs are hard to really judge, like America which is a child of England after all. Or byzantium a descendant of Rome.

the french didnt win at hastings the normans (norsemen) did. they were french speaking vikings lol

If we go by leaders instead of civilization, probably Genghis Khan.

America. Oh you like freedom? Your welcome. MURICA although Rome's pretty up there

Voted America, Babylon, England, Greece and Rome. America for recent history, England for largest empire Rome for obvious reasons (didn't read the thread, but it has the most votes, so I'm sure that's been covered), Greece for its ancient culture influencing both the ancient and modern world and Babylonia for...civilization.
I didn't vote for China, though it definitely had more influence on the eastern world than almost any of the others, but England and America have influenced them, too.

You cant really do a poll like this because the empires weren't contemporary. Some "empires" haven't had long enough to assess the impact.

For instance if this were 1850 I's say England. However if it were today I would definitely say America.

It's of course not a simple question at all, but the west is still living in a world basically created by Rome, and the east is increasingly following that lead in many ways. China's influence is massive and their empire so long-lasting as to make a strong claim, of course, but I still go with Rome here.