Zarathustra is a person, not a civ. (Misread your post--you mean Zarathustra as a leader, not civ.) Sogdia, Bactria, and Kushan are prime candidates for East Iranian Antiquity civs. I hope we don't see Sumer back; IMO if we get only two Mesopotamian civs, it should be Babylon and Assyria. Even as someone whose particular interest is the Ancient Near East and who is very fond of Sumer, I don't think we need Sumer. (I could easily differentiate the three: Sumer is the agricultural/diplomatic civ that focuses on decentralization and IP relations; Babylon is the "all capital, all the time" civ; and Assyria is the wonder-and-infrastructure civ. But there are other areas of the world and for that matter other areas of the Near East I'd prefer to see covered.)
I posted in the other thread, but I think all of Mesopotamia and the Levant is being saved for (probably one of the earlier) DLC packs. We will have thoroughly serviceable pathways at launch of Egypt -> Abassid -> Ottoman, Aksum -> Swahili -> Buganda, and Persia -> Timurid -> Safavid. And while Mesopotamia doesn't really point toward any three-act cultural/political legacies, what they all can be marketed as is "here's a pack of various cool ways you can start any pathway from antiquity." But I do agree that I
think we are definitely likely to get Assyria and Babylon united under Sargon, and then Sumeria might or might not happen.
I think odds are very good we will get an east Iranian Antiquity civ. Question remains as to whether we will get two, as Scythia's odds are fairly decent at returning simply for its efficiency. Between the three, I think Sogdia kind of wins by default, as Bactria and Kushan beg some tie back to Greece...which is in the same era. I
could see a Bactrian or Kushan leader though, connecting Sogdia (and maybe also Greece) to an exploration civ like the Hephlalites or Kabul. Which would be kinda rad, ngl.
EDIT: ALSO, I think odds of two Iranian civs aren't that far-fetched under the "leader path" theory. Since, my bae dark horse Tygyn Darkhan is the faraway best candidate to lead the "nomadic" Iranian legacy northward through Mongolia to Sakha/Russia. It follows that, instead of encouraging Scythia to overextend its plausibility, they would just create a separate origin point for Sogdia to progress into Hephlalites/Kabul (and Timurids), ultimately settling in the Durrani as preferred choice. Which would just be so, so elegant. In fact, it is so elegant that, were it not for a need to create a lot of "glue" elsewhere on the map, I could totally see Crossroads adding Scythia, Sogdia, Hephalites/Kabul, and Durrani, with Tygyn and a Kushan leader, as a pack.
