I don't think it's necessarily surprising that a so-called "uninspired" civilization performs well in such polls when that civilization has one key advantage over Scythia that Scythia can never replace: they are actually well-known, and the average person can be expected to have at least some vague idea of who Attila or the Huns are. This board presents something of an echo chamber (in the most positive sense) where people can become more informed of world history and the relevant figures it entails, but with Civilization V having sold millions of copies and VI presumably selling adequately on its own, it stands to reason that the average person playing Civilization V will not have encyclopedic knowledge of which empires and individuals are the most Inspired and Deserving. You need only look at the Steam forums for a few moments to see just how little many of the people who play these games actually know; take a drink every time someone massacres the spelling of the Indian leader's name.
To these people, there may still perhaps be
some value in whether or not a civilization brings some mythical element of diversity to the game's cast, or if it makes TSL games more interesting to arrange, or even whether a civilization has never been playable in previous games (that many, likely, have never played and will never play.) But I sincerely doubt that any of these things are the biggest draw to what makes them interested in a potential civilization. I believe that people are primarily interested in playing as, with, or against civilizations or leaders that they have some level of familiarity with. There are probably more people interested in leading America or Rome to glory than there are in creating a world dominated by the Shoshone. There are probably more people interested in kicking the rear-end of Napoleon or Genghis Khan than there are who bear a grudge against Gorgo. Consider: civilizations like Poland and Australia were among the first added to the game with DLC, but can it really be said that these are among the thirty greatest empires ever formed? I doubt even their residents would argue that. They are both, however, very
familiar to the average player. I'm pretty sure almost everyone playing the game knows what Australia is; never mind semi-obscure civilizations like the Hittites, I can't even say that with confidence about
Austria,
a nontrivial country which still very much exists. Poland is much the same way -- perhaps not to the same extent, but the average person probably knows of their existence for some reason, be it the role thrust upon them in the last century, the fairly large amount of space they take up in a map of Europe, or, hell, due to something as mindless as
Polandball. Which was the basis for their unique achievement in Civ V. Yeah.
What makes this relevant is that to many people, Attila or the Huns represent something familiar that they can latch onto. To some, they are villains they can feel no remorse in destroying. To some, they represent a force of pure destruction ordained by the developers to do nothing besides razing everything in sight. Most people don't know
very much about them, but these people also likely know very little about any civilization in the game barring perhaps at best their own -- and given this, it says something that they are even slightly familiar with at least one of those two names.
Scythia can only
completely obsolete the Huns if we reach a point where Scythia becomes better known than the Huns. And until the day comes where all written history is destroyed and we are left with nothing but copies of Civilization VI to teach from, this is probably not going to happen. Let's just make a quick comparison here with Google to illustrate the difference.
- Search: "the huns"
Recommended searches: "the huns mulan", "the huns ww1", "the huns definition", "the huns and rome"
"huns -civ -mulan" turns up 561,000 results.
"attila -civ" turns up 42,700,000 results. This increases to 43,100,000 if results containing "civ" are allowed; roughly 1% of Attila queries involve Civilization. (He has been in only one game, out for half a decade.)
- Search: "scythia"
Recommended searches: "scythia civ 6", "scythia tomyris", "scythia map", "scythia empire"
"scythia -civ" turns up 473,000 results.
"tomyris -civ" turns up 115,000 results. This increases to 137,000 if results containing "civ" are allowed; roughly 17% of Tomyris queries involve Civilization. (She has been in only one game, out for about a year.)
While it should indeed be more than a little depressing that the most overwhelming legacy of the Huns as a group is a catchy song from the 1998 Disney film
Mulan, which involves a struggle against a group that may or may not even be related to the Huns, that is still more than can be said about Scythia -- whose greatest legacy in the modern world is apparently appearing in Civilization VI. The other results for both groups are fairly generic, but those of the Huns are at least a little more interesting, containing insight on their legacy (comparisons made during WW1) and their historic role (i.e. closing in on Rome.)
To make a long story short, it may be very much true that the developers intend on replacing the Huns with Scythia, and it may be equally true that the Huns do not warrant inclusion in Civilization, but it takes a little bit more than that to stop a fire that's already been lit with their previous inclusion. It should come as no surprise that demand still exists for the Huns, regardless of their previous implementation; perhaps people want to give them another chance to be interesting, perhaps people simply enjoyed fighting as/with/against them, or perhaps people simply voted for whoever they knew the best between the Huns and a group of even more obscure civilizations.
Personally I hold surprisingly little investment in them for someone who spent an hour typing this garbage out of some bizarre act of self-pleasure, but I'd just be happy they're not another Greece. Which Africa and Southeast Asia would also provide. Neither of which being regions where the Huns are relevant, so.
).
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