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The destructiveness of Tamerlane's conquests was widely recorded. Yes, yes, he was a patron of the arts and a cultured man who built many fine buildings - but these were limited to his powerbase in Central Asia, in particular Samarkand. Elsewhere, in war, he was utterly brutal, and Persia was left a ruin by the end of his reign.



I'm not disputing the severity of the wars, or the numbers of people killed. I'm saying that the nature of William's and Timur's conquests were very different. William ended up ruling England - rather harshly, yes, but that makes him more like a Stalin or a Mao Zedong rather than a Tamerlane. During Tamerlane's reign, Persia is treated more like a colony that was plundered and whose resources were siphoned off to enrich a far away land (alright, so Tranoxiana isn't really that far away, but still).



Tamerlane is only justifiable if the only criterion for justification is that he ruled Persia. He did rule Persia, but it's like Victoria ruling India, and Victoria's government did much more for India than Tamerlane for Persia. Timur ruled Persia, but he was not a Persian leader.

Timur claimed descent from Mongols, but also from Ali the Caliph. A point to note.

Anyway, he ruled Persia from a Persian city (Samarkand was a Persian city), spoke Persian (and had a Persian nickname), was a practising Muslim who patronised Muslim cults in different parts of his empire... basically the picture you're painting is a spurious pastiche of cliches about Turkic barbarians which is all very fun but is about as true as the movie that encapsulates it, Conan the Barbarian. Now while William was Christian and patronised English saints, he didn't speak English and he destroyed English cities, he didn't build them (though he built plenty of castles).
 
Timur claimed descent from Mongols, but also from Ali the Caliph. A point to note.

Your point?

Anyway, he ruled Persia from a Persian city (Samarkand was a Persian city),

I'll give you that, though it was a mixed Turkic-Mongol-Persian city at best.

spoke Persian (and had a Persian nickname),

As did most merchants, politicians and scholars in the region.

was a practising Muslim who patronised Muslim cults in different parts of his empire...

and mass slaughtered fellow Muslims during his various conquests. Actually, IIRC almost all of his opponents were Muslim states - the Ottoman Empire, the Golden Horde, the Mamelukes, the various Persian states, the Sultanate of Delhi. The major exceptions were Georgia and the Knight Hospitallers.

basically the picture you're painting is a spurious pastiche of cliches about Turkic barbarians which is all very fun but is about as true as the movie that encapsulates it, Conan the Barbarian.

If I was careful to perpetuate the stereotype I would describe Tamerlane as a drunken debouched warlord living in a filthy tent interested in nothing more than killing and raping and plundering.

Timur rule was good for Transoxiana. For the rest of Persia and the rest of the Muslim world it was a disaster.

Now while William was Christian and patronised English saints, he didn't speak English

England seemed to have a lot of non-English-speaking Kings throughout its history anyway.

and he destroyed English cities, he didn't build them (though he built plenty of castles).

And Tamerlane destroyed Persian cities.
 
Your point?

The point is that that Iranian Islamic heritage was as important to him as his alleged Mongol origin.

I'll give you that, though it was a mixed Turkic-Mongol-Persian city at best.

Mongols and Turks didn't inhabit cities (though some lived in cities of course) ... not at this stage.

As did most merchants, politicians and scholars in the region.

The region being Greater Persia.

Listen, you can't have it both ways. Either being Persian is relevant or it isn't.

and mass slaughtered fellow Muslims during his various conquests. Actually, IIRC almost all of his opponents were Muslim states - the Ottoman Empire, the Golden Horde, the Mamelukes, the various Persian states, the Sultanate of Delhi. The major exceptions were Georgia and the Knight Hospitallers.

Most opponents of most rulers share the religion. So what?

If I was careful to perpetuate the stereotype I would describe Tamerlane as a drunken debouched warlord living in a filthy tent interested in nothing more than killing and raping and plundering.

I wouldn't have said you were perpetuating the stereotype consciously. That's just what happens ...

Timur rule was good for Transoxiana. For the rest of Persia and the rest of the Muslim world it was a disaster.

Again, of marginal relevance even if true. Justinian's rule benefitted Constantinople more than the provinces, most of his opponents were Christian, so on and so forth, but he's a leader in the game.

England seemed to have a lot of non-English-speaking Kings throughout its history anyway.
.

And Persia has had a lot of rulers of foreign origin too ... Tamerlane being one of them.

BOTTOM LINE: He is one of the most famous and successful rulers of Persia. That makes him a good candidate. The rest we can agree and disagree on.
 
Again, of marginal relevance even if true. Justinian's rule benefitted Constantinople more than the provinces, most of his opponents were Christian, so on and so forth, but he's a leader in the game.

Justinian didn't plunder and raze Alexandria, unlike Timur who massacred Isfahan after it revolted against terrible taxes and then construct 28 towers made out of the heads of persians.
 
Justinian didn't plunder and raze Alexandria, unlike Timur who massacred Isfahan after it revolted against terrible taxes and then construct 28 towers made out of the heads of persians.

But if he did, would it have any effect on his inclusion in the game? Stalin's in Civ4 after all. ;)
 
The point is that that Iranian Islamic heritage was as important to him as his alleged Mongol origin.

Ali is Iranian now?

Mongols and Turks didn't inhabit cities (though some lived in cities of course) ... not at this stage.

Turks and Mongols in Transoxiana (and Persia and Mesopotamia and Egypt) were pretty well urbanized by the 1300s, Timur being one of them.

The region being Greater Persia.

Listen, you can't have it both ways. Either being Persian is relevant or it isn't.

It is. Timur isn't Persian. I speak English but I'm not English.

Most opponents of most rulers share the religion. So what?

And what does being a Muslim has anything to do with this anyway?

I wouldn't have said you were perpetuating the stereotype consciously. That's just what happens ...

But I wasn't perpetuating the stereotype was I?

Again, of marginal relevance even if true. Justinian's rule benefitted Constantinople more than the provinces, most of his opponents were Christian, so on and so forth, but he's a leader in the game.

The difference being as a ruler of Persia Tamerlane was a regionalist who favored Tranoxiana to the detriment of the rest of the region. The provinces did not benefited less than the capital - they hardly benefited, if at all; most went into decline. And there's the difference in scale...

BOTTOM LINE: He is one of the most famous and successful rulers of Persia.

I agree this much, anyway.
 
One thing that should be considered is whether his inclusion as a Persian leader would have an effect on the sales in Iran. I have no idea whether he is liked or disliked in Iran, but I can hardly imagine him being accepted as an Persian leader by the Persians themselves. If there are Iranians over here they should comment on what position Timur occupies in Persian history.
 
Frankly, I think the situation in Iran right now will have a far greater effect on sales than merely including Tamerlane.
 
@ calgacus

samarkand is a turkish city.

greater persia means a region of enlarged persia, it shows the lands ruled by ancient persia. some regions of today's turkmenestan and uzbekhstan may also be within ancient greater persia maps. so what is drawn about greater persia is very different than who inhabited samarkand later.
the time of ancient persia (cyrus etc. ) is much earlier (1000s of years) than what we talk abot. during the time of timur, samarkand was turkish.

you look at the map of Achaemenid Empire, and then when you see that it is very similar to Timur's empire, and that land is called persia geographically, so you consider Timur persian. With your aproach we could consider Spanish colonists leader of Aztecs.

However, you can consider Bolivar a leader of Bolivia but not a leader of Inca's. This is the difference.

As I told earlier, as Turks ruled Persia in mid age, after Achaemenid Empire and before Iran, some Turkish cultural values are confused to be Persian.
 
Quote from here:


So this can either mean some new civs too or simple new leaders for the 'usual' civs. Guess we can only wait till more info leaks to us.

Ijust hope that doesn't mean they have decided to go without Elizabeth or Isabella or Montezuma. On the other hand, the incompetent tyrant Mao really should be retired.
 
Öjevind Lång;8935347 said:
Ijust hope that doesn't mean they have decided to go without Elizabeth or Isabella or Montezuma. On the other hand, the incompetent tyrant Mao really should be retired.
i can understand why leaders like Mao and/or Stalin is disliked so much in the western world. At least, SM doesn't hate them as much as you do.
I can see you don't like them politically. But yet, it is really weird to see that you can easily ignore how they developed their country.
 
Well, there wasn't actually a really cohesive state when Islam was founded. Islam unified them, then they turned against the west. There's a chance I'm just in it for the Ottomans 'cause I'm a Byzantine nerd and they figure largely in Byzantine history (read: took the Byzantines out). Though Islam can't really be defined as a state - and even if you could define a religion by its founding nation, that would be a point for the inclusion of Israel that someone was arguing for in another thread, 'cause Abrahamic religions account for a whopping 3.5 billion people today.

The Arabs also had a culture which was superior to anything the Euroepans had until the Late Middle Ages.
 
You are just trying to ignore a simple truth. Timur invaded Persia. He is not Persian. When he settled with his tribe in Persia, also Persians were living there. But that doesn't make him Persian.

I agree. One could just as well call Alexander the Great a Persian since he conquered the entire Persian empire.
 
Well, there wasn't actually a really cohesive state when Islam was founded. Islam unified them, then they turned against the west. There's a chance I'm just in it for the Ottomans 'cause I'm a Byzantine nerd and they figure largely in Byzantine history (read: took the Byzantines out). Though Islam can't really be defined as a state - and even if you could define a religion by its founding nation, that would be a point for the inclusion of Israel that someone was arguing for in another thread, 'cause Abrahamic religions account for a whopping 3.5 billion people today.

Öjevind Lång;8935369 said:
The Arabs also had a culture which was superior to anything the Euroepans had until the Late Middle Ages.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't care about people's religion much. I just like history.

Well, unification islam under Ottoman rule didn't happen so hard. Arabs had a sympathy to Turks anyway.

Some holy war raids were thru Anatolia so Seljuks were on the border. So it can be said that Seljuks defended the islamic border, talking about holy wars.

i don't know which one (of the holy wars, 1 of the later ones), but some time later european knights started to bypass anatolia and just landed to the levant (east mediterrenean coast). So they attacked the Arabs directly. That was when Saladdin was known by the western world.
 
i can understand why leaders like Mao and/or Stalin is disliked so much in the western world. At least, SM doesn't hate them as much as you do.
I can see you don't like them politically. But yet, it is really weird to see that you can easily ignore how they developed their country.

Basically, the collected all the power in their own hands and butchered millions of their own people. They are in the game only because they are well known, not because they were outstandingly good rulers. They were not.
 
Öjevind Lång;8935401 said:
Basically, the collected all the power in their own hands and butchered millions of their own people. They are in the game only because they are well known, not because they were outstandingly good rulers. They were not.

butchers :)

the west generally detracts all the leaders that they can't beat politically. hard conditions after world war 2 were much different than the day we know. so just consider history this way.

they just called CCCP an "evil empire" just a similar way. haha let them be evils. no problem what they call.
anyway, this is politics, off the topic.
 
Öjevind Lång;8935401 said:
Basically, the collected all the power in their own hands and butchered millions of their own people. They are in the game only because they are well known, not because they were outstandingly good rulers. They were not.

I don't want to sound like a Stalin supporter but he did modernize Russia greatly. At the end of the Tsarist regime Russia was a backward country with nearly no industry and it was living from selling bread and wood to western Europe. The Russian army was destroyed by the Japanese in 1905 and by the Germans in 1914. During Stalins time Russia was modernized and was capable of defeating Germany and later Japan. Russia was able to develop nuclear weaponry and after Stalins death Russia was superior to USA when it came to space exploration and space flights. I know that Stalin was a murderer but saying he had no lasting positive effect on Russia is like saying Augustus had no lasting effect on Rome.
 
I would like that the expansions of Civ V were about periods or areas, like CivV: Ancient Times or CivV:Far East. They could include many civilizations and many scenarios. The programmers can do many expansions of Civ V and no more parts of the Civ saga, that is, I don’t want CivVI and CivVII. Besides, I would like less European civilizations and more civilizations of all the world, mainly Africans, that were important in History although we don’t know.

Anyway, my next 18 civilizations and each 3 leaders for the expansions are:

19) Mongolia (CivI-IV)
-Genghis Khan (CivI-IV)
-Kublai Khan (CivIV)
-Ögodei Khan. As sucessor of Genghis, he conquered huge territories in China, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

20) Assyria. It was an Empire of the area of Syria, Irak, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel during the 19th-7th centuries, destroyed by Babylonians and Persians.
-Ashurbanipal, also known as Sardanapalus. He developed the Assyrian art and literature and conquered the Empire of Elam.
-Tiglath-Pileser III. He founded the Neo-Assyrian Empire and conquered Hatti territory, Persian territory, Philistia and Israel.
-Sargon II. He conquered Samaria and Babylon and defeated the armies of Urartu, Elam, Egypt and Philistia.

21) Carthage (CivII-IV)
-Hannibal (CivII-IV)
-Hanno the Great. He conquered territories in Africa, was enemy of the Barcid family, which Hannibal was member of, and so belonged to the pro-Roman faction of the Carthaginian Senate.
-Mago I. He was the King of Carthage and, in his time, this phoenician colony became preeminent in Western Mediterranean economically and politically.

22) Sioux (CivII and more or less CivIV)
-Sitting Bull, also known as Tatanka Iyotanke (CivIII-IV)
-Tecumseh. He leaded a tribal confederacy against the US and helped the Bristish in the War of 1812.
-Crazy Horse, also known as Tasunka Witko. He was leader of the tribal alliance with Sitting Bull and Red Cloud and participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

23) Khmer Empire (CivIV)
-Suryavarman II (CivIV)
-Jayavarman II. He was the founder of the Khmer Empire.
-Indravarman I. He was a builder ruler: irrigation systems, shrines, moats, etc.

24) Mali (CivIV)
-Kankan Musa I (CivIV)
-Sundiata Keita. He founded the Mali Empire and conquered the Ghanan Empire.
-Uli I, also known as Ouli or Ali. He conquered Gambia and lands of gold minery between Senegal and Mali.

25) Songhai Empire. It was an Empire of the area of Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Fasso and Senegal during the 7th-16th centuries destroyed by the armies of Morocco Sultanate, which were leaded by a Muslim Spaniard.
-Askia Muhammad I, also known as Muhammad Toure. He set up a developed bureaucracy and made his Empire strong in trade and economy.
-Sunni Ali Ber. He conquered the most of the territory of Mali.
-Askia Daoud. He expanded the Empire and defeated the Mossi in battles.

26) Turkey (CivIII-IV)
-Suleiman the Magnificent (CivIV)
-Osman I (CivIII)
-Mehmed II (CivIV)

27) Hatti (CivIII)
-Suppiluliuma I. He conquered the Mittani Kingdom and conquered Egyptian cities.
-Mursili II (CivIII)
-Hattusili I. He united all the Hittite Kingdoms in an Empire.

28) Maya Kingdoms (CivIII-IV)
-Pacal II, also known as K’inich J’anaab Pakal (CivIV)
-Ah Mekat Tutul Xiu. He founded the Mayapan Alliance, which joined the Itza, the Tutul Xiu and the Cocom from 10th century to 12th century.
-K’inich Yak K’uk’ Mo’, also known as Green Quetzal Macaw. He was the first King of Copan and the founder of Yax Kuk Mo dinasty, in which time (5th-9th centuries) knowlodge of maths and astronomy, writing and art was developed.

29) Iroquois Confederacy (CivIII)
-Hiawatha (CivIII)
-The Great Peacemaker, also known as Deganawida. He was a prophet and spiritual leader who founded the Iroquois Confederacy.
-Red Jacket, also known as Sagoyewatha. He negotiated the independence of the Six Nations with G. Washington.

30) Celts (CivII-IV)
-Vercingetorix. Member of the Arverni, he united the Gaul peoples to fight Caesar.
-Viriathus. Member of the Celtici, he leaded the Lusitani and the Celtici to resist against the Romans, who were defeated several times, in Hispania (Spain).
-Boudica (CivII&IV)

31) Vikings (CivII-IV)
-Ragnar Lodbrok (CivII-IV)
-Cnut the Great, also known as Canute, Knut or Cnut Sweynsson (CivII)
-Erik the Red, also known as Eric Thorvaldssen. He colonized Groenland.

32) Majapahit. It was an Empire in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and East Timor during 13th-16th centuries, destroyed by a Indonesian Sultanate.
-Hayam Wuruk, also known as Rajasanagara. His reign was the golden age of Majapahit because conquered territories and the Javanese culture was developed.
-Raden Wijaya, also known as Kertarajasa Jayawardhana. He founded the Majapahit Kingdom.
-Tribhuwana Wijayatunggadewi. She conquered neighbour kingdoms in a great expansion.

33) Korea (CivIII-IV)
-Wang Kon (CivIII-IV)
-Sejong the Great. He created the Korean alphabet and developed the Korean science and culture making inventions and writing books.
-Taejo, also known as Yi Seong-gye or Yi Dan. He was the first Korean King of the Joseon Dinasty (14th-20th centuries) and established the capital in Seoul.

34) Kongo. It was a Kingdom of the area of R.Congo, D.R.Congo, and Angola during the 14th-19th centuries, destroyed by Belgium, Portugal and France.
-Nzinga Mbemba, also known as Mbemba a Nzinga Ndo Funsu or Afonso I. He converted his Kingdom to Christianism and estableshed the Catholic Church of Kongo in order to create a unique society. He expanded the Kingdom with Portuguese mercenaries.
-Nkuwu Nzinga, also known as Nzinga a Nkuwu or Joâo I. He developed his economical relations with the Portuguese and adopted the Christianism.
-Lukeni Iua Nimi, also known as Ntinu Nimi a Lukeni. He founded the Kingdom of Kongo.

35) Zimbabwe, also known as Great Zimbabwe and, later, Mutapa or Munhumutapa. It was in the area of Zimbabwe and Mozambique during 13th-18th centuries, ruled by the Shona and destroyed by the Portuguese. This is the real civilization whose capital was Zimbabwe, not the Zulus, whose capital was Ulundi in South Africa.
-Matope. He extended the Mutapa Kingdom into Empire conquering lands of other peoples and developed the trade of minerals and ivory.
-Mututa. He conquered Great Zimbabwe and founded the Mutapa Kingdom.
-Rusvingo. He founded the Kingdom of Zimbabwe.

36) Ghana, also known as Wagadu. It was an Empire of the area of Mauritania, Mali and Senegal during the 8th-13th centuries, annexed into the Mali Empire.
-Dinga Cisse, also known as Majan Dyabe Cisse. He founded this Empire in a political centralization.
-Bassi. He resisted the Berber attacks of the Almoravids.
-Tunka Manin. He was defeated by the Almoravids.

My next civilization would be the Zulu Kingdom, not Zululand because this was the name of the Zulu territory under British rule. I don’t choose the Zulu Kingdom in my 36 civilizations because its duration was so short (1818-1897) and it was so small (30,000 km2 around Ulundi). My 3 leaders would be Shaka, Cethswayo, and Dinizulu.
 
1 United States
2 Germany
3 Norway
4 Canada
5 Russia
6 South Korea
7 Austria
8 France
9 Switzerland
10 China
10 Sweden
12 Netherlands
13 Czech Republic
14 Poland
15 Italy
16 Australia
17 Slovakia
18 Japan

Obviously it should be based on Olympic medals this year, because that is the true test of a civilization.
 
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