What Civ Would you Cut?

[Evie]

I don't dispute that ; I'm certainly not saying tundra should be treated the same as other lands.

I'm just saying that reducing the in-game tundra (which include tundra-forest) to the ecological tundra (one of the major defining point of which is that trees *don't* grow large or numerous there) is nonsense, as is the idea that civilization cannot grow in what the game call tundra - at least with appropriate adaptation. Despite Krajzen's repeated attempts to claim otherwise.

In an ideal world those adaptation would include efficient food movement from regions more likely to have a food surplus, but as the franchise is (really, really, really, really) bad at handlign the idea of transfering output of any kind between cities, and equally bad at handlign smaller settlement having high productivity (since productivity is derived from population), certain civilization either starting (if we stick with deterministic historical bonuses) or developing (if we allow bonuses to grow naturally from the actions of players) with an ability to get sufficent bonuses for tundra so that they can profitably settle that region is a perfectly reasonable compromise to represent the fact that, yes, the boreal zones have seen profitable civilization and development, unlike what Krajzen claims.

Of course that all could be otherwise resolved by simply adopting the terrain categorization that Buchi Taton and I worked out in the other thread where terrains are divided in cold, temperate and warm, and barren, open or wooded, so the cold terrain rather than all being lumped into tundra are divided in Tundra (barren, cold), Steppes (open, cold) and Taiga (wooded, cold). Then tundra can work like Krjazen wants it, and taiga and steppes can be used for the civilization that need a bonus to settling cold lands.

 

[Patine]

The agricultural system in much of the central Russian 'forest zone' (the southern boundary line of which runs about 150 - 200 km south of Moscow, for example) is very different from what prevails further south or in western Europe. The German Wehrmacht found this out the hard way in 1941: preliminary German planning had assumed that their forces could 'live off the land' for most of their rations and horse fodder and thus save shipping space for their stretched logistical apparatus by not shipping either types of food to the front. Came the end of September, and they started their last great offensive on Moscow only to discover that the only crops/foodstuffs left anywhere in the Moscow area were potatoes, turnips and a bit of cabbage: grains were conspicuously not planted in the area, so there were no oats which their heavy draft horses required, no wheat, rye or anything else to make bread out of. By the end of October the average German infantry division had lost up to half of their heavy horses to starvation and could no longer move their artillery forward, and a large percentage of the men in each division were spending a percentage of their time scouring local farms for largely non-existent food. The German officers blamed 'mud' for stopping their Moscow offensive: in fact, it was their own amateurish supply planning and ignorance of the terrain they were invading.

Logistics was always the Achilles' Heel of the Wehrmacht. It was also clearly seen in North Africa, and why Sealowe never launched. I've often been a proponent that in historical scenario for Civ and Civ-like games that recreate the Invasion of Poland 1939, the Norwegian Campaign 1940, the Fall of France 1940, the Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece 1941, etc., the Allied victory conditions should be to survive, holding onto certain key objectives, just for a specific number of turns...

 

[BuchiTaton]

For me the role of a civ that can thrive in cold environment should be reserved for cultures with really old adaptations to live in those biomes, not some one like Canada that most northen settlements are the recent outcome of modern technological advance and global trade networks. Canada is not a civ built by snow dwellers, it is just the part of modern western civilization with a lot of avaible land in the far North.

Now most people think in something like Inuit for a "snow" civ, but I am of the idea that in a game about built urban, centralized and expansive powers the Inuit are not the best to fit that role without turn them in just that "a civ that can built cities in the snow". For me Jurchen are the best candidates to cover both the reindeer herding (an actual productive way of life in cold enviroments) but still have a civ with a history as empire builders.

 

[Patine]

Now most people think in something like Inuit for a "snow" civ, but I am of the idea that in a game about built urban, centralized and expansive powers the Inuit are not the best to fit that role without turn them in just that "a civ that can built cities in the snow". For me Jurchen are the best candidates to cover both the reindeer herding (an actual productive way of life in cold enviroments) but still have a civ with a history as empire builders.

The Jurchen were not really THAT far north, or in THAT tundrid of an environment, compared to some other Tungusic, or even some Mongolic, Turkic, or Paleo-Siberian peoples in Central and Eastern Siberia or the Far North of North America. Plus, the Jurchen were not truly urban prior to the establishment of the Jin or Qing Dynasties anymore than the Mongols were prior to the Empire created by Genghis Khan. A Jurchen Civ would also solidly rule out any Jin- or Qing-Dynasty Chinese leaders, as well. I find the choice to be dubious for these reasons.

 

[Krajzen]

Babylon has so much more grandeur, and more popular culture appeal, than Assyria.

There has never really been a distinct and separate Ukrainian nation and civilization outside of some Cossack hosts until the end years of WW1, to be honest.

I stand by EVERYTHING I said on the Constantinople/Istanbul in Civ7 thread about the distinct and separate nature, completely, of the Romans and Byzantines from each other, and the great majority of historical consensus actually stands with me.

Those "some Cossack hosts" were semi - autonomous, autonomous or de facto independent for two centuries, while having a culture very distinctive and separate from Poles and Russians (with the idea of "Ukraine" itself being alive at this point), which is clearly more than enough to include Ukraine in a series which has famously incredibly strict standards of the notion "civilization" such as small tribal groupings, even smaller hunter-gatherer tribes, steppe nomads, Huns lmao one man horde lasting like two decades before his death and collapse, Zulu state lasting whole few decades on a very small area, "Scythians" umbrella term for countless Iranian nomadic peoples, "Gauls" umbrella term for countless separate Celtic tribal peoples, four Anglo-Saxons countries in the same game (three colonial ones and all of them covering broadly the same historical period), Venice city state, Greece and Macedonia in the same game, but suddenly Ukraine is where we put the limit of defining civilizations and historical relevance? If some minor Native American tribes nobody outside North America has ever heard about are in then everybody is in, even God forbin 40 million big nations with few centuries of literature and identity. I'm fairly confident we'll see Australian Aborigines in civ7, which does make me feel awkward due to the game's original focus, but on the other hand Sioux were present in civ2 already, so the series have clearly never seriously cared about any criteria of inclusion besides "that culture is cool". While I'd agree (as an ethnic Pole) that Ukraine has been less succesful at state building than Poland, its culture has been very alive and very distinctive for a long time.

As for Byzantium, it should be in because its fabulous and purple and that's what I care about - it's fake claimant and pretender of so called "roman empire" has never existed anyways and was a great conspiracy designed to overshadow one true Constantinople. A lie invented by damn Latin invaders in 1204 who wanted to pretend there was some so called "empire" in the western mediterranean before the founding of an insignificant and fairly ugly village of rome by our great Basileus Constantine in 306 AD. How could those Italic heavens build as great empire as us properly Christian Byzantines anyway - a ludicrous notion! We Byzantine nationalists will never stop to fight this pseudohistory. Byzantium is true and rome is fake

Babylon having "more grandeur" than Assyria is purely subjective opinion, and I'm honestly not sure if it has any more popcultural relevance, I think not many people would care if these two (plus Sumer and maybe Akkad) appeared in series interchangeably, if not for this silly "factions present in civ1 should be present in every game" idea - I mean I agree that China, India, Greece, Rome, major Euro powers etc should be mainstays every time, but I wouldn't die from sudden shock if Babylon or especially Zulu wouldn't be present in one iteration for once, since they do have just as accomplished neighbors from their broad cultural areas.

@BuchiTaton pre - Qing Manchu peoples were agriculturalists with their population going well above 1m modern Chinese Manchuria (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilogjan) is inhabited by over 90m people after Han migration (there are 10 million Manchu) and it iirc has a population density higher than Spain

 

[BuchiTaton]

The Jurchen were not really THAT far north, or in THAT tundrid of an environment, compared to some other Tungusic, or even some Mongolic, Turkic, or Paleo-Siberian peoples in Central and Eastern Siberia or the Far North of North America. Plus, the Jurchen were not truly urban prior to the establishment of the Jin or Qing Dynasties anymore than the Mongols were prior to the Empire created by Genghis Khan. A Jurchen Civ would also solidly rule out any Jin- or Qing-Dynasty Chinese leaders, as well. I find the choice to be dubious for these reasons.

Outer Manchuria is covered in Taiga and their people were reindeer herders known as "Wild Jurchens", the whole Tungusic peoples have their origins in that region, for a game starting in 4000BC it would be a proper representation to actually cover that part of their history with a bonus usable since early game that covers also their early history in those lands. Wild Jurchen under later Jin dynasties are also as valid as Berber under Morocco, Oromo under Ethiopia or things like Comanche for Shoshone. Paleo Siberians were displaced by Tungusic people, and Mongolic and Turkic peoples already have representation in game. The other Tungusic peoples in game would be destined to turn in another "native" civ like the regular from NA, Mapuche, Maori, etc.

Truly urban? At least more urban than Cree, Shoshone, Sioux, Mapuche, Maori, Zulu and Iroquois and by the way more than Mongols since southern Jurchen were completely sedentary.

Also I wonder why we should care now about the use of Qing leaders for Chinese civ when there are >2000 years of others dynasties to have two, three or ten chinese leaders and even worse why you see the this as a problem after CIV6 Kublai Khan?

 

[Krajzen]

Outer Manchuria is covered in Taiga and their people were reindeer herders known as "Wild Jurchens", the whole Tungusic peoples have their origins in that region, for a game starting in 4000BC it would be a proper representation to actually cover that part of their history with a bonus usable since early game that covers also their early history in those lands.

I'm not sure I understand the logic here. So we should always focus on the earliest possible history and earliest identifiable homeland of all nations in the game by the virtue of the game beginning in 4000 BC? Countless nations have migrated or were forced out of their most ancient homelands and changed their culture and way of living. Should we feel the imperative to design India around Indo - Aryan migrations, Vedas, soma and cattle herders, or Siam around ancient tribal peoples living in mountains of sw China, or Persia around Indo-Iranian migrations, or Germany about ancient Scandinavia, or Goths and Bulgarians around Eurasian steppes they were forced to leave?

I'm not saying it's not a viable argument, I'm just not sure it's so overvhelming and what about its consistency in wider context.

 

[pineappledan]

What he is saying is that if you want a northern civ, then you're better off picking one that actually has a culture fully adapted to a northern economy and did actual pastoralism, agriculture and trade than picking hunter-gatherers. And so that probably means reindeer herders. It is thought that reindeer were first domesticated by ancient Tungusic-speaking. That gives you some options for who would be a good "tundra" civ with real tundra bonuses:
- Jurchens, a somewhat amorphous label that captures fully sedentary, China-conquering people and Siberian reindeer herders. This group has a recorded history of participating in kingdom and empire building as far back as the 7th century with the kingdom of Balhae, and a few powerful empires under their belt like the Jin and Qing
- non-Jurchen Tungus, who are a much smaller group and never built an empire of their own, but are still reindeer herders to this day. Eg. the Evenks
- non-Tungusic people who adapted similarly, either independently or by copying local Tungus, but who also never had a real empire. eg. the Chukchi, the Sami, or the Yakuts
- non-Tungusic empires who came into the far northern regions fairly late, claimed the land as an extension of a larger empire that included warmer places. Never really adapted their culture, materials, or methods to the cold climate, and either imported their basic needs from somewhere else in the empire, employed sophisticated methods of manufacturing goods to trade for what they needed off the land from real indigenous clients, or just taxed it off them. eg. Russians, Canadians, the Khanate of Sibir

Of those 4 options, the Jurchens are the one that both has a history of full adaptation of their material culture to a tundra bias AND spent time at the helm of a fully-fledged empire.

 

[Patine]

What he is saying is that if you want a northern civ, then you're better off picking one that actually has a culture fully adapted to a northern economy and did actual pastoralism, agriculture and trade than picking hunter-gatherers. And so that probably means reindeer herders. It is thought that reindeer were first domesticated by ancient Tungusic-speaking. That gives you some options for who would be a good "tundra" civ with real tundra bonuses:
- Jurchens, a somewhat amorphous label that captures fully sedentary, China-conquering people and Siberian reindeer herders. This group has a recorded history of participating in kingdom and empire building as far back as the 7th century with the kingdom of Balhae, and a few powerful empires under their belt like the Jin and Qing
- non-Jurchen Tungus, who are a much smaller group and never built an empire of their own, but are still reindeer herders to this day. Eg. the Evenks
- non-Tungusic people who adapted similarly, either independently or by copying local Tungus, but who also never had a real empire. eg. the Chukchi, the Sami, or the Yakuts
- non-Tungusic empires who came into the far northern regions fairly late, claimed the land as an extension of a larger empire that included warmer places. Never really adapted their culture, materials, or methods to the cold climate, and either imported their basic needs from somewhere else in the empire, employed sophisticated methods of manufacturing goods to trade for what they needed off the land from real indigenous clients, or just taxed it off them. eg. Russians, Canadians, the Khanate of Sibir

Of those 4 options, the Jurchens are the one that both has a history of full adaptation of their material culture to a tundra bias AND spent time at the helm of a fully-fledged empire.

The Kingdom of Balhae being the same people who became the Jurchens is a popular conjecture, but not full academic consensus. It's not clear what language was spoken for sure in Balhae, as all records about it are made in Chinese and Korean, and there are a fair number of Koreans who claim Balhae is proto-Goryeo, and thus, merges into Korean nationhood. Although we know Balhae was there, in the middle of what is now Manchuria, and some of what they did, and an incomplete king list (written in Korean and Chinese with altered characters used for foreign words - but whose foreign words are not clear), but who they were, what language they spoke, and what culture they had is not clear. The ancestors of the Jurchen are believed to have just as likely arrived from the north as Goryeo receded its borders and area southward. The only records of them were, as usual for those times in that part of the world, Chinese and Korean, who were wont, at that time, to use generic, "regional grouping terms," for large numbers of, "frontier barbarian peoples," in the same area to be given the same - or a similar - label.

And, very few players of Civ, who are, whatever certain people, here on this forum, who describe their average level of historical education as being the same as the, "average person on the street," and should marketed as such, definitely notably higher, on average, in such knowledge, still strongly see the Jurchen/Manchu people, in a historical way, as being the founders of two Chinese dynasties and NOT more sophisticated and warlike Evenk, Nenets, or Saami. This applies in the West AND China. It would be a VERY hard sell to change that viewpoint for marketing.

 

[pineappledan]

My point in mentioning Balhae — if I had one at all — is that the Jurchens were settled in a region that was politically organized to create a socially stratified kingdom, something that is not true of their Evenki cousins. I was not trying to imply they controlled Balhae, but the idea that proto-Koreans and Jurchens we’re co-mingled to some degree in that kingdom is not controversial. There is no need to speculate on the ethnicity of the Balhae kingship beyond that.

 

[Patine]

My point in mentioning Balhae — if I had one at all — is that the Jurchens were settled in a region that was politically organized to create a socially stratified kingdom, something that is not true of their Evenki cousins. I was not trying to imply they controlled Balhae, but the idea that proto-Koreans and Jurchens we’re co-mingled to some degree in that kingdom is not controversial. There is no need to speculate on the ethnicity of the Balhae kingship beyond that.

But my bigger point is that it would be a VERY hard sell, marketwise, in BOTH the West AND China to intrinsically separate the Jurchen/Manchu and Chinese, especially in a way that the Jurchen/Manchu are not commonly viewed in anymore in the mainstream. Even the image of Nurchaci has, to very many, been thoroughly Sinocized, far more than Kublai Khan ever came close to. I'm not saying it's wrong or incorrect - just that it would be a VERY hard sell. It would be easier to sell the Evenk or Nenets in such a role, basically.

 

[pineappledan]

I disagree. If western audiences don't know who the Jurchens are, well good for them. They get to be part of today's 10,000. Lots of people hadn't heard of the Shoshone or the Mapuche when they were added either, and I haven't heard of anyone voicing disapproval about them being included.
For Chinese and Eastern audiences who know more about the history of Manchuria, it would be more representation from the history of their part of the world without detracting from an ethnic Han civ.

Doesn't sound like a particularly hard sell.

 

[Patine]

I disagree. If western audiences don't know who the Jurchens are, well good for them. They get to be part of today's 10,000. Lots of people hadn't heard of the Shoshone or the Mapuche when they were added either, and I haven't heard of anyone voicing disapproval about them being included.
For Chinese and Eastern audiences who know more about the history of Manchuria, it would be more representation from the history of their part of the world without detracting from an ethnic Han civ.

Doesn't sound like a particularly hard sell.

My point was missed. I'm not saying people don't WHO the Jurchen/Manchu, or have never heard of them. It is just that few view them as a semi-nomadic, Sub-Arctic-dwelling, subsistence-level, small-clan society as their most iconic and marketable form. Even living people who are ethnically Manchu don't seem to capitalize on that as their greatest days. That is why I say a Siberian culture, or the Saami, who still are very close to that space in their history, and still have people living in that lifestyle, more or less, would be a better choice for such a slot, to be honest. Besides, the Jurchen/Manchu were not THAT far up north, compared to some of those. In fact, since sedentary city-builders don't seem to be STRICTLY necessarily in many considerations, the Inuit could even be brought back onto the table, or one of the Athabaskan-speaking cultures.

 

[pineappledan]

If you go with a different ethnic group and turn them into a civ then you will end up with a worse problem, in my opinion: Having to make stuff up.

The Evenks, Sami, Chukchi, Inuit, etc. have never cohered into a single political unit with a stratified society. to give them a leader and civilization the designers would have to assign them one from a famous person of that ethnicity, but who doesn't really have a legitimate claim to represent that people as a leader. That's bad history. The Jurchens have that history of being a northern culture, but they also have a catalogue of singular political leaders to represent them dating back to the 1st millennium. The one exception might be the Yakuts with a figure like Tygyn Darkhan. The devs have done this in the past, like Pocatello leading the Shoshone in civ 5 when in real life he was the leader of a small band not exceeding 200 people. Poundmaker in civ 6 is arguably an example of this too, though I think his claim to legitimate leadership of at least a large portion of the Cree is defensible.

The other problem is impact. The Jurchens/Qing had a large impact on world history while the Evenks, who never coalesced into a political unit that could act on the world to the same degree. More is written about them and by them as a result, there is more material to work with for them.

Lastly, the Jurchens being found historically in other places, like conquering the Tarim Basin, and fighting the French in the Vietnam jungles can be seen as a plus. They aren't so anchored to a specific ecology that they are a civ that feels totally defined by their start bias. Any kit you can come up with for the Inuit would no doubt result in them playing like a naked civ outside tundra or snow. This would make them too inconsistent, and dependent on good map rolls for their terrain.

It is just that few view them as a semi-nomadic, Sub-Arctic-dwelling, subsistence-level, small-clan society as their most iconic and marketable form. Even living people who are ethnically Manchu don't seem to capitalize on that as their greatest days.

And what I am saying is that's why you don't do that. Make the reindeer herding part of the UA, and then the Jin/Manchu part the LUA, and then the UU can be from the Jin era, and the UB from the Qing. Because picking the Jurchens as the civ gives you the degrees of freedom to spread out and buffer the civ against just being "the tundra civ".

This is precisely what @Krajzen criticized with the Zulu: they weren't a large enough, or long-lived enough political entity to do more than take all their component slots give the same bonus, use the same leader, and act the same way. If you pick a group like the Inuit, everything about them will be tundra/snow-related, because that's all there is.

 

[Patine]

If you go with a different ethnic group and turn them into a civ then you will end up with a worse problem, in my opinion: Having to make stuff up.

The Evenks, Sami, Chukchi, Inuit, etc. have never cohered into a single political unit with a stratified society. to give them a leader and civilization the designers would have to assign them one from a famous person of that ethnicity, but who doesn't really have a legitimate claim to represent that people as a leader. That's bad history. The Jurchens have that history of being a northern culture, but they also have a catalogue of singular political leaders to represent them dating back to the 1st millennium. The one exception might be the Yakuts with a figure like Tygyn Darkhan. The devs have done this in the past, like Pocatello leading the Shoshone in civ 5 when in real life he was the leader of a small band not exceeding 200 people. Poundmaker in civ 6 is arguably an example of this too, though I think his claim to legitimate leadership of at least a large portion of the Cree is defensible.

The other problem is impact. The Jurchens/Qing had a large impact on world history while the Evenks, who never coalesced into a political unit that could act on the world to the same degree. More is written about them and by them as a result, there is more material to work with for them.

Lastly, the Jurchens being found historically in other places, like conquering the Tarim Basin, and fighting the French in the Vietnam jungles can be seen as a plus. They aren't so anchored to a specific ecology that they are a civ that feels totally defined by their start bias. Any kit you can come up with for the Inuit would no doubt result in them playing like a naked civ outside tundra or snow. This would make them too inconsistent, and dependent on good map rolls for their terrain.

And what I am saying is that's why you don't do that. Make the reindeer herding part of the UA, and then the Jin/Manchu part the LUA, and then the UU can be from the Jin era, and the UB from the Qing. Because picking the Jurchens as the civ gives you the degrees of freedom to spread out like that.

This is precisely what @Krajzen criticized with the Zulu: they weren't a large enough, or long-lived enough political entity to do more than take all their component slots give the same bonus, use the same leader, and act the same way. If you pick a group like the Inuit, everything about them will be tundra/snow-related, because that's all there is.

Now, here is the problem. Conflating the Jurchen, on their own, with the Qing Dynasty of the Chinese Empire. One does NOT feed several hundred million used to eating rice on reindeer meat. The great majority of the Manchus moved down into China proper after the conquest to live the good life - a number were kept in the north to guard against the Russians, Koreans, and Kazakhs and keep the Uigyurs, Mongols, and Dzungars loyal and in line, but they were a small minority. In fact, though not EXACTLY the same thing, the Manchu rule of China was reminiscent, if you strip specific race and context away, of Apartheid Era South Africa, Rhodesia, or the British Raj, with the definite sharp social divisions and status between the Northern Horse Culture minority and the Han Majority - which led to Sun Yat-sen, Yuan Shikai (himself of partial Manchu heritage), Chiang Kai-shek, and other founders of the Republic of China (the same Government in exile in Taiwan since 1949), as well as many Cliques and Warlords in the 1910's and 1920's to enact a process that some Western historians have termed, "De-Manchuization," or, "Han Reclamation." The Japanese Puppet State of Machukuo from 1931-1945, obstensibly headed by Piyu, the last Qing Dynasty Emperor, after his abdication, only exacerbated things. There are indeed 10 million people who consider themselves ethnically Manchu, today, but many of them live as modern Chinese, Russians, or (if they've immigrated abroad) Westerners, and only about a dozen or so very elderly speak the Manchu language fluently. I don't think the conflation works quite as seamlessly as you envision, it.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, congratulations on being able to read some wikipedia articles. Do you have a point?

Let's see if I can try to untangle that mess:

I don't think the conflation works quite as seamlessly as you envision, it.

There is no conflation. The Manchus are direct descendants of the Jurchens. They're the same people in a different time and place. Germans fighting off Roman invasions in Teutoberg forest and Germans trading along the coast of the Baltic are not a conflation, they are both Germans in different times and places. The term "Jurchen" contains multitudes.

In contrast, the Inuit is a smaller group with less historic and political diversity. It contains fewer multitudes, so few in fact that it arguably doesn't even possess the constituent parts to make a decent video game faction.

 

[Patine]

Yes, congratulations on being able to read some wikipedia articles. Do you have a point?

Let's see if I can try to untangle that mess:

There is no conflation. The Manchus are direct descendants of the Jurchens. They're the same people in a different time and place. Germans fighting off Roman invasions in Teutoberg forest and Germans trading along the coast of the Baltic are not a conflation, they are both Germans in different times and places. The term "Jurchen" contains multitudes.

In contrast, the Inuit is a smaller group with less historic and political diversity. It contains fewer multitudes, so few in fact that it arguably doesn't even possess the constituent parts to make a decent video game faction.

Please, dispense with the condensing attitude. It makes things unnecessarily unpleasant. This is not the MSN Comment boards, Reddit, or, I guess now, Twitter. Let's keep things civil.

The conflation I referred to was China becoming one with Jurchens as a civ and merging bonuses in an awkward juxtoposition, as opposed to what really happened - China came under the rulership of a Jurchen/Manchu ruling class, most of whom left their traditional way of life after that to live the good life in China proper. That was the conflation I was referring to. In terms of being a CIV - Qing Dynasty China was more Han than Manchu, by far, in defining features that make a civ in a Civ iteration stand-out. The Kangxi Emperor (as a good example) may have an Eight Banner UU instead of a Chu-ko-no or what have you, and different agenda and personality, but that would be all that could truly be justified. I remain dubious of the Jurchen as a separate civ, but my comment here is in regard to the conflation I have clarified, here.

 

[BuchiTaton]

I'm not sure I understand the logic here. So we should always focus on the earliest possible history and earliest identifiable homeland of all nations in the game by the virtue of the game beginning in 4000 BC? Countless nations have migrated or were forced out of their most ancient homelands and changed their culture and way of living. Should we feel the imperative to design India around Indo - Aryan migrations, Vedas, soma and cattle herders, or Siam around ancient tribal peoples living in mountains of sw China, or Persia around Indo-Iranian migrations, or Germany about ancient Scandinavia, or Goths and Bulgarians around Eurasian steppes they were forced to leave?

I'm not saying it's not a viable argument, I'm just not sure it's so overvhelming and what about its consistency in wider context.

Dont take things out of context...
1- I never said "should always focus on the earliest possible history" I pointed to use of one bonus to cover that part of their history, did not say that the whole civ design is about it.
2- The bonus is specifically a justified version of Canada's farms in tundra, Jurchen have history as reindeer herders turning this in a good way to exploit Taiga (or Tundra) since early game. The niche of the bonus in game was first, the use of Tungusic history is a way to justify it, not the other way.
3- Again there are not "imperative", a chance to have a civ that cover with an early bonus their early history is just a nice paring for a civ that can justify it.
4- Others civs:

• India is a civ with too many things to work with, included potential split-offs. But you know, between all those options Ratha as UU would be a nice change to the redundant Indian Elephant, anyway War Elephants should be an unique/strategic resource since a lot of civs used them historically. By the way the rest of the design do NOT need to be also from their early history.
• Siam, the same the bonus was first, then you say me what bonus are we looking to fit in Tai people? By the way talking about mountains in SW China a Miao/Hmong civ could be also sweet for an anti-imperialistic civ.
• Germany and Goths are another example of the missed point. We have a LOT of germanic civs its obvious that not all of them could use the same bonus about their early history. Meanwhile if we have the luck of have a Tungusic civ it would be one at most, so there are not problem for Jurchen to cover the common Reindeer Herding of Tungusic peoples, they would be the only Tungusic ones in game, their representative. This is the same case of Maori in CIV6, Maori did not were building an oceanic empire Tonga did (and in a lesser degree Hawaii), Maori are just borrowing a whole design that clearly fit way better for Tonga, but it is OK since Maori=Polynesian representative, so Jurchen=Tungusic representative in the same way.
• Bulgarians would likely have a medieval horse UU like the Bagaturi in Humankind or the Konnik in AoE2 and these kind of elements come from Bulgars homeland's horse riding tradition, so there you have the early history-homeland element.

5- Mention early Jurchen's history was also to add to the fact that when Juchen built their empires part of them still lived that ancient way of life, their common original way. So that bonus would be just the start for others elements of their whole design.

The conflation I referred to was China becoming one with Jurchens as a civ and merging bonuses in an awkward juxtoposition, as opposed to what really happened - China came under the rulership of a Jurchen/Manchu ruling class, most of whom left their traditional way of life after that to live the good life in China proper. That was the conflation I was referring to. In terms of being a CIV - Qing Dynasty China was more Han than Manchu, by far, in defining features that make a civ in a Civ iteration stand-out. The Kangxi Emperor (as a good example) may have an Eight Banner UU instead of a Chu-ko-no or what have you, and different agenda and personality, but that would be all that could truly be justified. I remain dubious of the Jurchen as a separate civ, but my comment here is in regard to the conflation I have clarified, here.

Kangxi is a great leader option, but Nurhaci is good enough to justify the whole design included the Eight Banners UU, and as valid as Kublai Khan to be a dual leader, there is not need to deny a whole civ for the sake of one leader.

 

[Patine]

Kangxi is a great leader option, but Nurhaci is good enough to justify the whole design included the Eight Banners UU, and as valid as Kublai Khan to be a dual leader, there is not need to deny a whole civ for the sake of one leader.

Nurhaci, himself, didn't ever actually rule China. Thus, he would NOT be a valid leader for that role. And I, myself, dislike the dual leader mechanic, and hope it gets phased out in future iterations.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Nurhaci, himself, didn't ever actually rule China. Thus, he would NOT be a valid leader for that role. And I, myself, dislike the dual leader mechanic, and hope it gets phased out in future iterations.

Perfect, everybody win. They can have or not dual leaders, not even need to talk about overlap with China in the first place.