Noble and good fit in the mind of the muslim armies that conquered from Pyrenees to the Indus, whatever we agree or not with their believes for them their armies were doing the work of their prophet and God, at that point christians had some centuries doing the same time to time. Hate Caliphates for do it in a more effective way are just double standars.
Hate is a bit strong of a word. I dislike the Caliphates, in part because they led to territory/people being lost by my (European Christian) civilization.
So you must realize that the absolute majority of muslim also are happy with their religion despite how their ancestors were converted.
Not sure how anyone could be happy with a religion that requires them to forgo bacon, ham, beer, cocktails, etc...requires them to wake up at odd hours to pray five times a day, requires them to spend a month fasting (not even drinking water during the day), requires them to have part of their genitalia amputated, requires them to learn Arabic regardless of where they live and whether or not it's actually useful in the wider society, requires some level of separation from the surrounding society if it isn't Islamic, etc...
Whereas, as a Christian, I can eat what I want, when I want, I don't have to get body parts cut off, I can pray in my native language when it's convenient for me, etc...
I would happily skip many of these precisely for being redundant and only appeal to the limited knowledge of the common player.
You can't really have a Civ game that omits major European nations. That would just be weird. Would you really rather have a bunch of small, uninfluential civs than Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, etc...
Sumerians are not even from the same language group than Babylonians an are way older.
However, to the vast majority of modern people, they are both just "ancient Mesopotamian peoples".
Sorry but not, this is almost like say Metis are more relevant than French. Every civ you listed is far more relevant than Boers.
But some civs in Civ V are not. The Shoshone are not more relevant than the Boers, they're a cool civ with cool uniques and a nice leaderhead, but they're not at all relevant to the greater scheme of things, they're only in there because the game developers are American, so they are presumably a familiar tribe to Americans. It would be like a South African studio making a Civ game and including the Basuto.
"Mostly negative" if you ignore both centuries of some of the best levels of development and the role of colonialism in the last few centuries. Also just Avicenna worth a lot for the history of medicine.
The parts of the erstwhile Roman Empire that stayed Christian are way better off today than the parts that became Islamic. Would you rather live in Venice or in Baghdad? Athens or the erstwhile Constantinople? Madrid or Damascus?
I left South Africa early enough that I still had schooling elsewhere in the world, and I can say with certainty that a discussion on the Afrikaans language or ethnicity was not had in any class I studied during my non-South-African schooling career, and the Boers were mentioned in passing for the Boer Wars - perhaps a sentence or two. My knowledge of these groups comes primarily from family discussions, and reading the many South African history books that we brought with us. I'd be highly confident in saying that I know more about the Boers than the vast majority of English-speaking people outside of South Africa - and even then, I didn't know the names of all of the individuals you've referenced in this thread. I do think the Boers have a very interesting history, and I do wish that the atrocities the British committed in the Boer Wars were better known - some people are uncomfortable with the concept that the modern concentration camp was popularised by the British in these wars, a fact that I think many more people should know.
I'm upvoting your comment for the last couple of sentences in this paragraph.
All that being said, there's simply far too little knowledge about the Boers in the public consciousness outside of South Africa for them to make sense as a leader in a civ game, I would say - at least on the basis of their historical appeal. It's easy to feel like everyone is aware of your group when you're in the group, but I think in this case it isn't true. I've certainly done the same thing many times - expected people to know some jargon I used, or to be considerate of an identity that they didn't even know existed.
Are the Boers really any more obscure than the Hittites, Songhai, Maori, Cree, Shoshone, Iroquois, Georgians, Mapuche, Nubians, Scythians, or Venetians?