You make a great point with India's leaders! I hadn't considered that. If Gandhi and Chandragupta belong to the same civilization in Civ 6, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Byzantium will not become a separate civilization. Rome could be considered as almost like a blob, incorporating both the regular Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire, and indeed less of a stretch than two entirely different nations in the Indian subcontinent. So, based on the decision the devs made with India, now I'd predict that it comes down to us either having an alternate leader for Rome to represent Byzantium, or no Byzantium at all.
Alternate leader for Rome representing Byzantium for some reason feels unacceptably wrong to me unlike Gandhi and Chandragupta sharing the same civ, and I say this as an Indophile who'd love more Indian subcontinent in this series.
There is an enormous cultural difference between Greek, Orthodox medieval Byzantine Empire and Rome-based pagan classical Roman Empire. Sure, Byzantium was born as eastern half of declining Roman empire, but for various reason it went into really,
really distinctive and different cultural direction and had enormous historical importance in
very different way from its 'ancestor empire.
Why do you think there is quite sharp distinction between "Byzantine Empire" and "Roman Empire" in the entire historical literature, with "Byzantine studies" being entirely separate field from "Classical" studies?
I mean, yeah it's true Byzantines called themselves Romans and everybody always mentions that obligatory token 'well Roman empire fell on the west but not east'... But it really doesn't matter that much, there is very powerful distinction between two in the historiography, they really were very different in all fields - language, culture, religion, intellectual life, law, internal organization, military organization etc.
In my country there is a prestigious historical magazine which recently started doing special monthly editions devoted to one particular historical region. So far they released India, China, Arabs, Turks and Byzantium. India contains all empires of Indian subcontinent, while Byzantium is firmly separated from Rome. This is not a singular case, it always works like this.
Maurya and modern India are both grounded in certain tradition of Sanskrit, Vedas, Majahanapadas, Mahabharata, certain traditions of Dharmic religions etc. Meanwhile while Rome was grounded in Italian, Classical Mediterranean culture with its polytheism, Byzantine Empire was built on Greek Orthodoxy. I doesn't matter if one is 200 years apart and another is 2000 years apart, such things are never linear. 6th century Yemen was more culturally different from 7th century Umayyad Caliphate than Umayyad Caliphate was from Ottoman Empire. Time and geography don't matter, what matters are cultural changes which can be very revolutionary in short amount of time (by 'short amount of time' in this context I mean of course for example 100 years
)
For me Byzantium always has to be separate from Rome, and not only that, I consider it as a staple civ that should always return due to its historical importance.
Although I would be fine with India getting 5 leaders or even being partially separated (for example: India civ with 3 leaders, Mughal civ and Indus Valley civ in the same civ game). I'm not entirely sure about India being completely split between for example Maurya, Gupta, Chola, Pala and Maratha civs, I think it'd really serve better if India was a singular civ but with large amount of leaders representing its different empires, and eventual split would be reserved mainly for Muslim Indian sultanates, Nepal, Sri Lanka etc.
I mean... There is a reason why India is united since 1947 and despite its federalism has powerful sense of identity and unity...
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. It's all intertwined!
