Of Mongols and Slavs

[Crayton]

The Mongols and Slavs are the last of the nomadic tribes of Central Asia to become civilized. Most all of the civilizations on the Eurasian continent descended from the steppes of Russia until the Mongols and Slavs brought civilization to the largest home of nomads in the world.

Why the Mongols and the Slavs? They sure do fill a big hole on the World Map and of course it would be daft to fill this hole, the size of the Soviet Union, with only one civilization.

The Slavs, obviously, represent west-central Asia and most modern Slavic countries such as Serbia and Poland.

The Mongols represent east-central Asia, the perennial threat to the northern half of China, and one of the few East Asian cultures that was not ‘Sinified’

Okay. Most people would say ‘Wow, who cares’ but I know there are some of you who think I am taking a few too many liberties when defining these 2 Civilizations or that my perception of history is way off base. I’m here to learn. Educate me about the Mongols and Slavs.

 

[Xen]

the Russians are th epremire Slavic power, and happen to occupy the said area; however, the area; the great EUrasian steppe, as tradionally been home to three peoples who certinally merit inclusion in civ; The Russians (Slavs), Mongols, and the Turks (who, despite the country named after them, originated in the steppes)

 

[Savage Discipil]

WOW WHO CARES!

 

[Xen]

WOW WHO CARES!

funny part is, more then a few people do care about the subject; either for game play reasons (central asia is a big place, after all) or historical reasons; if you dont care, thats fine, but take your stupidity else where, as here its a persion with a real question, look for a real answer, not soem brat who dosent give a damn.

 

[SonicX]

Slavics or Slavs are restriced to the countries where a Slavic language is spoken.
The following countries are to be considered Slavic : Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia & Montenegro, half of Bosnia Herçegovina and Macedonia.

Romania is part of the Romanic culture, Hungary or the Magyars have never been slavic but have been their own entity for a long time, while the Lithuanians and Latvians aren't really Slavics, but they've been sucked up into that culture by having Russia as their big neighbour.

But a Slavic culture is hard to define. The Balkan slavic countries don't really compare with Russia, or Poland or the Czech Republic...

In the Kaukasus, there's a mixture of the Slavo-Russian culture and the Mid Eastern culture, while over there Georgia takes a special place with a unique culture and language (including the Georgian alphabet which isn't cyrillic or latin)

The "-stan" countries are not to be considered slavic however. They have a mixture of Persian influences (Iran), Russian domination (USSR) and Mongol influences.

 

[Che Guava]

WOW WHO CARES!

Sadly enough, I agree. Do we really need to have another discussion about who is in and who is out? I think the ones they have in there are fine for starters, and you can easily change your leader's name, cities and call yourself whatever you want.

Play first, and mod later.

 

[Xen]

Sadly enough, I agree. Do we really need to have another discussion about who is in and who is out? I think the ones they have in there are fine for starters, and you can easily change your leader's name, cities and call yourself whatever you want.

Play first, and mod later.

I agree in principle; personally, I'm quite happy with the civs so far chosen (though, I dont see whay they couldnt have just bumbed it up to an even 20 for the prime release, and then have 10 civs per x-pack, creating a MASSIVE 30-40 civ game if thier are two x-packs)

that said, its importan tbecause officially made leader heads units and what not tend to be of a better quality then what is made by modders, which si why people fight so hard over having thier particuler favorite represented in the game

 

[QuoVadisNation]

edited for another reason

 

[Ghafhi]

The Mongols and Slavs are the last of the nomadic tribes of Central Asia to become civilized. Most all of the civilizations on the Eurasian continent descended from the steppes of Russia until the Mongols and Slavs brought civilization to the largest home of nomads in the world.

Why the Mongols and the Slavs? They sure do fill a big hole on the World Map and of course it would be daft to fill this hole, the size of the Soviet Union, with only one civilization.

The Slavs, obviously, represent west-central Asia and most modern Slavic countries such as Serbia and Poland.

The Mongols represent east-central Asia, the perennial threat to the northern half of China, and one of the few East Asian cultures that was not ‘Sinified’

Okay. Most people would say ‘Wow, who cares’ but I know there are some of you who think I am taking a few too many liberties when defining these 2 Civilizations or that my perception of history is way off base. I’m here to learn. Educate me about the Mongols and Slavs.

From my understanding alot if not most of the slavic empire was contained inside of russia and the soviet union. As for Mongols I thought they where already in the game but I would vigourously debate what you considered to be civilized. If killing friendly envoys is civlized then yes the mongols where very civilized.

 

[Robi D]

The slavs can be placed into three groups, west slavic, which includes poland, czech rep, slovakia etc, south slavic, which includes serbia, croatia, bulgaria etc and east slavic which is russia, ukraine etc. While they are all slavic, each group is different and it is a shame there isn't more representaion of them in the game, but the same goes for other groups like african cultures, because it would add more colour to the game.

 

[frekk]

As for Mongols I thought they where already in the game but I would vigourously debate what you considered to be civilized. If killing friendly envoys is civlized then yes the mongols where very civilized.

Marco Polo certainly thought they were quite civilized when he visited Kublai Khan (and it was his book that introduced the West to the idea of paper currency, among other things). All depends on what definition of civilized we're going on here - civilized as in technologically sophisticated with advanced social institutions, or civilized in the Victorian sense of notions of behaviour and propriety?

 

[Ded Moroz]

There is still much unclear about ancient Mongols. Who they were?
What we know about them is full of contradictions.
Some sources say that ethnically and linguistically they were mongoloids and originally lived in close ties with Chinese. But that does not explain why their chieftains long before Chingizkhan were called khans or khagans, which is clearly a turkic title. Chingizkhan is often described as a man with light hair and blue eyes. Reconstruction of Tamerlaine’s appearance made after studying of his skull showed that most probably he was red-haired. Both not very typical mongol types, are they.
There is a much common point of view that major mongol tribes: cereits and naimans - were turkic tribes and practiced nestorian Christianity(!).
Mongols didn’t leave any writing artifacts (meaning they didn’t know how to write) and didn’t develop mathematics (why would nomadic tribe have any interest to learn how to count?), but allegedly 2 years after they conquered Rusj (ancient Russia), they arranged there a census of population
Allegedly they built cities (like Saray-batu on Volga), but their remnants have never been found.
They had no knowledge in metallurgy (as all other nomads), but somehow managed to get a supply of weapons and armor, which was enough to arm an enormously large army (according to some estimates up to 1 mio people), to make that gigantic army march within some 30 years from shores of Yellow sea to Adriatic (don’t ask me how they manage to feed 2 mio horses) and to seize more then a half of the known at that time world defeating such strong military powers as China, Khoresm and Rusj.

Nevertheless official point of view regardless all those contradictions is that Mongols under Chingizkhan managed to create a Golden Horde empire, which was incomparably larger then any state that had been created before. This fact alone is enough reason to include Mongols as a separate civilization in Civ4.

As for Slavs, they originate from a region somewhere near Oder river in today’s Germany (far enough from Onon river in Baikal region where Mongols original land is believed to be). Later they migrated to south and east and divided into 3 main groups (see this thread above). An idea to unite Slavs and Mongols in Civ4 seems too odd to me. Its the same like uniting Slavs with Vikings (on a reason that Vikings became first ‘knyaz’s in Rusj), or with Turks (on a reason that Gouses, who are better known as Osman Turks, served for several centuries before the fall of Byzantine empire as main russian horse troops), or with Armenians (on the same reason as Mongols).

 

[Superkrest]

From my understanding alot if not most of the slavic empire was contained inside of russia and the soviet union. As for Mongols I thought they where already in the game but I would vigourously debate what you considered to be civilized. If killing friendly envoys is civlized then yes the mongols where very civilized.

the statement about the russians is mostly true.. but untill the spread of moscovich(?)(the original russian kingdom) the empire was relitively small compared the area of the slavs. south east europe also has a massive slavic population..but i think for civ reasons repersenting the russians as the slavs i think is sufficient.

 

[Xen]

the statement about the russians is mostly true.. but untill the spread of moscovich(?)(the original russian kingdom) the empire was relitively small compared the area of the slavs. south east europe also has a massive slavic population..but i think for civ reasons repersenting the russians as the slavs i think is sufficient.

I'm skepticle about just how massive the slavic cpopulation is, actually; during the time of the slavic incurisions, the world was still going through an agricultureal depression that had decimated a great deal of the worlds agriculture; famine was wide spread, particurlaey in the Northern Hemisphere, and, obviouslly, that includes the center land for the slvic burst, western Russia (indeed, it was this that caused the huge migrations in the first place)

Your asking what that has to do with anything now, and I'll explain; with the exception of the Bantu burst in Africa, where the classic "Africans" spread out of west-central africa and clear down into the south and east (at the expense of the Capoid ethnicity) thier really hasnt been any "huge populations transfers" and this woudl include the salvs- I really dont think thier were enough of them migrateing to make a real, long lasting dent in the ethnic population of countires in sothern, and a good deal of eastern europe (which makes so many of the ethnicty based wars in the region ironic- particualry because more thena few of them are, apperentlly, made up)

 

[North King]

As for Mongols I thought they where already in the game but I would vigourously debate what you considered to be civilized. If killing friendly envoys is civlized then yes the mongols where very civilized.

Foreign envoys were usually killed when they gave insult to or attacked Mongols. For the most part, the Mongols' casus belli for every war seems to actually be the *other* side killing *Mongol* emmisaries.

 

[Ghafhi]

From my undertsanding Ghangis Khan killed envoys simply because he didn't believe in negoations and that he could take everything by force; and to a certain extent he was right, he took massive areas by killing raiding and pillaging people. Great military but I don't consider the mongols or any nation that kills envoys civilized. When the french envoy pisses of america they don't shoot them out a cannon. This is not civilized behaviour.

 

[HourlyDaily]

AFAIK - the Slavs didn't rule Russia until relatively late on in the piece. It was Steppe Riders and then Vikings who used the rivers as trading network, there was powerful influence from Poland as well.

But the story is very different over the last handful of centuries of course...
There will be some Slavs who don't want Russia to represent them.

 

[Ded Moroz]

AFAIK - the Slavs didn't rule Russia until relatively late on in the piece. It was Steppe Riders and then Vikings who used the rivers as trading network, there was powerful influence from Poland as well.

But the story is very different over the last handful of centuries of course...
There will be some Slavs who don't want Russia to represent them.

Slavs settled on the current russian european territory at least in VIIth century AD and ruled this territory. What do you call 'late' then. In IXth century they called for viking konung Rurik to come and be their knyaz in order to settle collisions between different tribes. Rurik is considered to be a founder of russian state (by the way this theory of norman rule in Russia was and is reasonably considered by many scientists as fake one), but his successor Oleg, who became russian knyaz 20 years later, did not associate himself with vikings any more.
As for Steppe riders like pechenegs, polovets, khazars were nomadic and later settled neighbouring tribes to eastern slavs, but they never ruled them.

and for sure

There will be some Britons who don't want England to represent them (but it was England to build most powerful Briton empire)
There will be some Latin languages speaking people who don't want Rome or France to represent them (but it were Rome to build most powerful ancient empire and France to become most advanced modern Latin country)
There will be some Gothic languages speaking people who don't want Germany to represent them (but it was germany to become most powerful germanic state)
There will be some North American people who don't want America to represent them (but it was America to become most powerful North American country)
There will be some Slavs who don't want Russia to represent them (shall I say anything more?)

 

[Afgnwrlrd]

WOW WHO CARES!

rightly said. Civ is in a major need of a fix on nomads, but unitl they have it, no good speculating.

 

[Crayton]

My understanding of history is that nomadic peoples of Central Asia (along with North America, Arabia, and other places) constantly put pressure on the founded, sedentary civilizations. This is why the Medes, Persians (Darius, Xerxes, Cyrus, and that gang), Seleucids, Parthians, Sassanids, and Safavids are all represented by one civ. From the Sea Peoples and Hittites (don't bother proving there were some earlier, I'd agree) to the Slavs and Mongols peoples have been coming out of Central Asia and settling on or near existent civilization, only to create their own civilization.

I agree, this aspect of human history has been poorly recreated by the 'Barbarians' in Civ. The point I am asserting is that the constant pressure from Central Asia ended after the Slavs and Mongols. The Turks did continue to pressure SW Asia until the 16th century (see this thread). Also note that I am in no way proposing that all Central Asian civs (particularly the Slavs and Mongols) be lumped together into one civ.

The Slavs established kingdoms in Crimea and Kiev before the Mongols came and thereafter established Russia (Ivan the Terrible, I think) and eventually fought the Ottomans for control in the Balkans.

The Mongols consisted of many tribes until they were unified in the 13th century. Before then, the Mongols always disrupted the Chinese Dynasties and often ruled Northern China (not more than a generation). Genghis Khan sent his hordes all across Asia and built kingdoms that included all but the most northern parts of the continent. I'll assert he brought civilization to Central Asia and will blame the lack of metropoli on geography.

EDIT: Thanks for all the info