Why is Basil II separate from Rome, but Kublai rules over China?

It's made to get people who don't know Byzantine history to get a little confused and to go look something up.

Oh, I love that! I never considered weaponized confusion as a method of education, but now I know to keep it in mind.
 
Oh, I love that! I never considered weaponized confusion as a method of education, but now I know to keep it in mind.
Absolutely. You come up with a situation that destabilizes what someone thinks that they know. "This guy claims to be Rome - but Rome is something else in the game!? Mayyybe civilizations aren't discrete populations but instead overlap, change, bleed into each other."

Some other great historical ones involve court cases of Javanese minor nobles in Dutch courts. The Dutch, seeing that their case involved "a Chinese" tried to send the defendant to a Chinese court, but he protested, "I'm a noble." The confusion is that ethnicity and social status are linked, which means that maybe race is something that the Dutch have brought to the region.

Another where the British are asking the Siamese where the border is between British Burma and Siam. The Siamese absolutely don't care. "Wherever you set it, that's fine. We're friends." The British keep asking and the Siamese get increasingly nervous. Why would a friend be trying to make a border? The point is that borders are something, too, that the Europeans have brought instead of a gradually decreasing line of sovereignty.

But opening with confusion - hopefully - leads to that sense of displacement and then discovery. So much of education is having students un-learn what they think that they know.
 
So why does the Western half have a more legitimate claim to be the "Roman Empire" than the Eastern half? Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople during his reign and it was the capital of the Eastern half till it fell.

Because the western half existed first and literally had Rome as their capital? Are you serious with that question?
 
Because the western half existed first and literally had Rome as their capital?

Rome hadn't been the capital for over a century when the Western Empire fell.
 

So, even though both the Western and Eastern emperors both acknowledged each other as legitimate emperors and the political capital of the entire empire had been in the east since the reign of Diocletian the Eastern emperors lose all credibility to you as soon as the Western empire falls even though the Eastern half still stands? Am I misunderstanding something?
 
I wrote this line to show some of this ambiguity. It's not a mistake or an oversight. It's made to get people who don't know Byzantine history to get a little confused and to go look something up. I actually agree with both sides of this argument, maybe with the overall caveat that "all civilizations are cultural illusions - continuity and difference are also both illusions."

Hmmm... so why do you still have 6000 year old immutable civilizations and leaders then? Your statement sounds like you are in agreement with the innovative take on dynamic cultures that Amplitude is promoting... and that, ironically, was initiated (very superficially) by Rhye in his excellent Civ 4 mod... if I didn't see the FXS under your name, I would have thought we had an Endless visitor around here...

Even Civ 5's Policy design approached your vision more than the present iteration, which went back to immutable cultures... or did I misunderstand you?
 
Because not a history simulator. No offense but this really doesnt matter. A change isnt going to impact the game one way or another nor does the way they currently have it.

They can be more less specific on what civ the leaders *actually* rule over but who cares. Sounds more like a history flex nitpicking technicalities than meaningful concern.
 
It seems alot more resonable to split civs like India and China rather than combining civs like Rome and Byzantines. I suspect if we used Indian/China blob logic, europe should be like Rome, a germanic civ for scandinavia and much of centeral europe and a slavic civ for Russia and much of eastern Europe.

Wouldn't that be amazing? Add a Celtic civ back in and we only need four civs for all of Europe. Imagine how much of those resources could be diverted to representing Asia, Africa, and North America.
 
The same reason why Holy Roman Emperors called themselves "Emperor of the Romans" despite the fact that they were actually the emperor of the Germans.
ah but they were given that right by the pope- so they have at least SOME justification- likewise with Russians when they not only adopted Eastern Rome's religion ( Eastern Orthodoxy) but had Tsar related to Eastern Rome by marriage.
Just like how Ottomans justified their tile of "Caesar of Rome" through conquest.

It seems alot more resonable to split civs like India and China
considering how spiting China is triggering to Chinese people right now.... NOPE
 
Hmmm... so why do you still have 6000 year old immutable civilizations and leaders then? Your statement sounds like you are in agreement with the innovative take on dynamic cultures that Amplitude is promoting... and that, ironically, was initiated (very superficially) by Rhye in his excellent Civ 4 mod... if I didn't see the FXS under your name, I would have thought we had an Endless visitor around here...

Even Civ 5's Policy design approached your vision more than the present iteration, which went back to immutable cultures... or did I misunderstand you?

As Jasper has just said - different games make different choices when it comes to gameplay, flavor, simulation, etc. Europa Universalis makes one choice, Civ makes another, Humankind will make yet another. Assassin's Creed does yet another thing. I won't comment on the competition here, nor on internal discussions at Firaxis, and certainly nothing about future developments. I post here in my role as a historian. In my work, I try to make Civ a good, historically-accurate game while still being true to its own style and gameplay. What the nature of the polities that Basil and KK rule are both choices that sit on a knife's edge. While we made one choice with Basil, I tried to nod to how things might be otherwise in his lines.
 
The same old thing..

I don't understand Civ VI emphasis on leaders (why split skills & perks between civ and leader is a nonsense for me) .. but people do like it .. so it will remain

Said that thing.. Bizantium is a different entity than Rome..

When Odoacrus deposed the western emperor .. he sent the "imperial symbols" (banners & that stuff) to the Eastern emperor, and contemporaneous did see themselves as Romans... but in the following centuries Bizantium empire became a THING.. we are talking of a thousand years..

maybe it would be more obvious a medieval focus design .. but I like Basil choice ( I do like late antiquity - early Medieval period.. a timeframe rather obscure in academics .. not "dark ages" at all in the East)

Obviously , Roman Empire impact in world history was huge... and the title was considered imbued of prestige.. so we had Holy Roman Empire and even a Third Reich.. in western Europe... and a "Third Rome" in eastern Europe ... all of them pretending to be the heir of Rome
 
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The whole Byzantine/Rome debate is endlessly fascinating. How much can something change and still be what it formerly was/claims to be? Can an empire move it's center of gravity hundreds of miles away*, adopt a not only a different religion but one antithetical to it's founding beliefs, and eventually completely drop its native language and still be the same empire?

A person could do these things and still be the same person, but empires aren't discreet units in the way persons are (perceived to be in the common everyday sense. You can also debate if a changed person is the same person, but that seems outside the purview of this discussion.)

*And in moving, eventually abandon it's titular location.
 
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