Goths for Civ7

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

What should they be? there were two Gothic peoples actually. Visigoths of the Wests, and Ostrogoths of the East, these chaps eventually became either Italians or Austrians.
Were they also horseback peoples like Huns who took Roman territory around the same time?

 

[Henri Christophe]

What should they be? there were two Gothic peoples actually. Visigoths of the Wests, and Ostrogoths of the East, these chaps eventually became either Italians or Austrians.
Were they also horseback peoples like Huns who took Roman territory around the same time?

Not just two Goths, but the Vandals, for example, was also goths and can be a cool inclusion of a gothic tribe in civilization.

But for that we should take out some power house of Europe as Germany or France because Europe is already overrepresented.

 

[pineappledan]

The visigoths and Ostrogoths were both confederations of pre-migration gothic tribes (eg the Thervingii and Groethungii), that agglomerated and reorganized into larger political groups while travelling west. The Visigoths’ formation is older, better attested, survived longer, and overall I would say their impact on history was greater, so if forced to pick between the two for a leader or UA, I would choose the Visigoths. I think you could attempt to portray both groups as a sort of lump, but it wouldn’t be precise. We also have relatively little to go on re: pre-migration Goths, just archeological evidence of their migrations south from Gothiscandza, shown by the spread of stone rings from there, a smattering of mentions in Roman and Byzantine sources, and the tyrfing cycle, a mythic origin of the Thervingi Goths which survived as a Norse legend.

The thing that is really interesting about the Goths is that their language is gone and left no descendants, but it is also the oldest Germanic language we have records of and the only example we have of an eastern branch Germanic language. We have almost completely reconstructed the language, because we have a well-preserved Bible translated from Greek into Gothic (the famous Wulfilas bible), so the Gothic language is a rather singular historic artifact.

Good leader choices would be Alaric I, Theodoric I, or Liuvigild

Their UA should manipulate either some sort of permanent policy bonus, allowing you to steal other civs’ policies if you capture their capital, or gain combat bonuses against civs with more cultural influence over you. If there is a migration mechanic, it could leverage your diasporic community for unit production or recruitment.

The one weakness with a Gothic civ is they don’t have many remarkable or singular unique unit or building choices. As a group that left their greatest mark during a time of upheaval an migration they didn’t leave much cultural or military innovations that might distinguish them, and the things that did distinguish them were more often their quick adoption and integration of conquered people and institutions. The gothic kingdoms in Spain existed for centuries, but there isn’t a single gothic loanword in Spanish, for instance.

For UUs, the Visigoth’s use of Groethungi heavy cavalry against the Romans at Adrianople, and against the Huns at the Catalaunian plains was rather remarkable. The aforementioned stone circles or stone ships from their putative homelands at the mouth of the Vistula river could be used as a unique improvement.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ What made Groethungi special as heavy cavalry compared to any Cataphracts? or were they more of 'knights' and less of 'cataphracts'?

 

[BuchiTaton]

The one weakness with a Gothic civ is they don’t have many remarkable or singular unique unit or building choices. As a group that left their greatest mark during a time of upheaval an migration they didn’t leave much cultural or military innovations that might distinguish them, and the things that did distinguish them were more often their quick adoption and integration of conquered people and institutions. The gothic kingdoms in Spain existed for centuries, but there isn’t a single gothic loanword in Spanish, for instance.

There are words in Spanish that are supposed to come from Gothic, mostly related to warfare (guerra, yelmo, bergante, ganar, bando, espía, espuela, tregua, rampa, gavilán, etc.) and authority (escarmiento, ataviar, rico, ropa, etc.) for obvious reasons.

 

[pineappledan]

^ What made Groethungi special as heavy cavalry compared to any Cataphracts? or were they more of 'knights' and less of 'cataphracts'?

Probably not much special outside of their apparent success. We don't know of any particularly brilliant weapon or training or skillset they possessed, but Gothic Cavalry was mostly drawn from the Groethungi tribe's nobility, because they were the tribes bordering to the Ukrainian steppe who had the closest contact with more established horse cultures like the Gepids, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, etc. and bred their own horses.

At Adrianople the cavalry was kept in reserve until the Roman army had engaged the main Gothic lines, and pulled off a classic hammer and anvil maneuver which resulted in a mass slaughter of the Eastern Roman army, including the emperor himself. This broke Roman control over their own borders and left them powerless to resist Gothic settlement in the Balkans.

At the Catalaunian Plains, the Goths' charge pushed so far into the Hunnic right flank, outstripping their Alan and Roman allies on the left, that they overran (and overshot) Attila's encampment.