Marathas?

while browsing the mod files, I noticed mentions in comments about the Maratha Empire. Is or was it planned for them to be a respawn of India?

There was originally a colonial-era respawn of India to represent the Marathas, but it messed up the Mughals and British colonization so much that it was eventually removed.

oh OK thanks

That's right, India once had a respawn similar to Iran's and Mexico's as the Marathas. The problem with a triggered spawn was that there was no way of knowing whether the colonial conquerors have already arrived or not.

If they have, the Marathas are annoying because you lose your colonies. If they haven't, the Marathas are usually doomed.

Also, if the Marathas fail, there likely won't be any modern India at all. So for the time being I have decided to have a later Indian respawn out of the British Raj or whatever its equivalent is. I still want to represent the Marathas though, as well as Vijayanagara. It's not very accurate to have only a Muslim civ in India during the early modern era.

Surely Vijayanagara are represented amply by the Tamils? They occupy much the same space and even in 3000BCs are rarely gone by 1500.

Vijayanagara is not Tamil though, and I think them sticking around is another problem in the representation of India.

The Pala Empire isn't Mauryan. Austria-Hungary didn't evolve from the Holy Roman Empire. There are plenty of nations in-game that serve as different dynasties in similar locations throughout the game - surely just changing the Chola name to Vijayanagara at a certain point (and maybe adding a new LH) is as good a fix as any? The main problem I can see is that the area around Vijaya itself is normally under Indian control rather than Tamil.

Well, the Kannadiga people of Karnataka (the Vijayanagara Empire) are ethnically close to the Tamil people (the Chola Empire), so using the same civ to represent them in game wouldn't be that farfetched.

The Vijayanagara Empire, as a playable respawn or a proper civ, would be extremely welcome, though

Vijayanagar did rule over the Tamils during its time and they are part of the same culture/ethnic group, Dravidian (which could solve the problem by renaming the civ from the Tamils to the Dravidians)