Are the Slavs in "Imperator: Rome?"

[rakovsky]

The Aestian Culture in the game runs from western Latvia and Riga in the north to Warsaw (Kunegria/Korotan in the game) and Brest ("Ossioia Orientalis" in the game) in the south. The game labels it the only member of the "Veneti cultural group." Paradox Wiki labels the Veneti culture group as "Baltic," and gives the Aestians/Veneti 4 countrkes: Galindia, Venedia, Sudinoia, and Saloia.

Academics typically consider ancient Slavic and Baltic languages to have formed a single language group that eventually split into the two sets of languages before the start of Imperator Rome's timeline, such as in 1400 BC.

The Agathyrsian culture in the game runs between Brest (Belarus) in the northwest, the north side of the Dniester River (The Tyras river in the game, western Ukraine), and Uman ("Vyrketin" in the game, central Ukraine). The game says that it's part of the Scythian culture group. There are no countries or kingdoms in the Agarthyrsian culture's lands and they are sparsely populated. The game gives the Scythian culture group "Persian Traditions." Other cultures in the Scythian culture group are the Scythians, Maeotians, and Sarmatians.

The city of Tanais in the game is in the kingdom of Scythia and has the Scythian culture. It is on the Tanais River (Don River) running east from the Sea of Azov. There is a theory that Slavs, such as Croats, lived in ancient Tanais.

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Wikipedia suggests that the Aestians are Baltic (eg. Lithuanian, Latvian), or maybe Estonian:
Tacitus wrote that the Aesti collected amber that they called "glaesum". Wikipedia notes that this word "resembles the Estonian equivalent klaas and the later Latvian equivalent: glīsis or glēsa. The word is quoted of being of Germanic origin, given its similarity to the Gothic word glas... Tacitus, however, describes the language of Aestii as closer to that spoken in Britain than that spoken by other neighbouring tribes. ... The Old Prussian and modern Lithuanian names for the Vistula Lagoon, Aīstinmari and Aistmarės, respectively, appear to derive from Aesti and mari ("lagoon" or "fresh-water bay"), which suggests that the area around the lagoon had links with the Aesti. Another origin could be that of Summer sea, which in Latin translates as Aesti mari."

Wikipedia notes that there is" phonological similarity between Aestii and the modern day Estonia (Eesti)," but that "The etymologies of Aesti and Eesti remain subjects of scholarly conjecture... Also, as Cassiodorus famously writes, the amber is gathered in the innermost islands of the ocean and of the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, only Estonia has open sea islands (around 2300)."

Wikipedia notes that the center for the ancient Baltic amber trade was the Sambian peninsula, the current-day Kaliningrad region.
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Wikipedia's information implies that the Venedi were Slavic, a mix of Balts and Slavs, or a pre-Slavic non-Germanic Italo-Celtic-type people:
Wikipedia's article on the Vistula Veneti / Venedi says that the Veneti were based in the area around the Bay of Gdansk and the region east of the Vistula river. This sounds like the south half of the area that Imperator Rome gives to the "Aestia" culture. Tacitus in the 1st century AD seemed to locate them between the Germanic-speaking Peucini/Bastarnae and the Fenni, maybe meaning Finns?:
"I do not know whether to class the tribes of the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni with the Germans or with the Sarmatians. The Peucini, however, who are sometimes called Bastarnae, are like Germans in their language, manner of life, and mode of settlement and habitation. ... The Veneti have borrowed largely from Sarmatian ways; their plundering forays take them all over the wooded and mountainous country that rises between the Peucini and the Fenni... Nevertheless, they are to be classed as Germani, for they have settled houses..."

The 6th century AD Byzantine author Jordanes wrote that the Venedi were the ancestors of the Sclaveni (Slavs). The 3rd-4th century Roman road map, the Tabula Peutingeriana, puts the "Venedi" on the north bank of the Danube upstream from its mouth in eastern Romania. This map also shows the "Venadi Sarmatae" (Sarmatian Venedi) on the Baltic coast.

Wikipedia gives further circumstantial evidence for equating the Venedi with the Slavs, in that their late 4th century non-Slavic neighbors called Slavs "Venedi": "It is also clear that the Franks in later centuries (see, e.g., [Late 4th century] Life of Saint Martinus, Fredegar's Chronicle, [6th century] Gregory of Tours), Lombards (see, e.g., Paul the Deacon), and Anglo-Saxons (see Widsith's Song) referred to Slavs both in the Elbe-Saal region and in Pomerania generally, as Wenden or Winden, which was a later corruption of the word Veneti. Likewise, the Franks and Bavarians of Styria and Carinthia referred to their Slavic neighbours as Windische."

In modern FInnish languages, the word for "Russia" is similar to the Venedi and Wends: (Finnish Venäjä, Estonian: Vene [ˈve.ne], Karelian: Veneä).

Wikipedia says that archeology in the Venedi's region contains the Iron Age West Baltic Cairns/Barrow Culture, and the Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures east of the Vistula river. It associates the West Baltic Cairns Culture with the Balts (eg. Lithuanians), the Przeworsk culture with the Germanic Vandals and the Slavs, and the Zarubintsy culture with the Slavs. Scholars theorize that Slavic culture originated between the upper Dnieper river in Ukraine and the southern Bug river in western Belarus, which overlaps with the Zarubintsky culture.

Wikipedia notes that water names in the Vistula and Oder basin resemble the Italic-Celtic branch of the Indo-Europeans, similar to names in the region of the "Adriatic Veneti" (ie. the region of Venice and the Venetians), and mentions a theory that the Veneti were a non-Slavic, non-Germanic people resembling the Italic-Celtic culture.

Wikipedia's article on the Wends notes that in the 1st millenium AD, Western Slavs moved into the Elbe and Oder river region. "Their German neighbours adapted the term they had been using for peoples east of the River Elbe before to the Slavs, calling them Wends as they called the Venedi before and probably the Vandals also."

The History Files website theorizes that the original "Veneti" were a pre-Slavic group like the Celts who migrated from central Europea to Brittany in northern France:
"In this view the Veneti migration probably took place around 1000 BC, during the Urnfield period. This places it in a similar timeframe to the earliest Celtic outwards migrations from their core homeland between Switzerland and Bavaria, mostly to Britain and Iberia, from about 1200 BC." This theory would place these original "Veneti" in Central Europe long before the events of Imperator Rome, so that they were different from the "Veneti" of Poland in Imperator: Rome.

The website's article "Veneti / Venedi (Belgae)" theorizes that the word "Veneti" means white or "blonde." By comparison, the major concentration of blonds in Europe runs from western Russia to eastern UK, with the highest being in central Scandinavia. But I've seen other etymologies suggested for the word "Veneti" instead. By comparison, "Venetus" in Latin means Blue-Green.

The Slovenian website's article, "Etruscans, Veneti and Slovenians," that asserts a genetic connection between the ancient Venetians living in the Adriatic area of Slovenia and the Slavic Slovenians living there today. The article concludes:
"There is a genetic continuity between the ancient Etruscans and Veneti and the present day Slovenians. Genetic information makes it evident, that Slovenians are indigenous to their land as indicated by the mtDNA relationship with the 2,500 year old skeletal remains of the Etruscans, particularly those from Adria in Veneto.
"Genetic information supports the historic quotation from the biography of St. Columban written in 615 A.D. and cited by Toma`i~ “Termini Venetiorum qui et Sclavi dicuntur”—the land of the Veneti who are also called Slavs ([avli 1996)."

The identity of the ancient "Venetians" and their relationship to the Slavs is perhaps hidden in part because today, there is no major pre-Latin Italo-Celtic-type speaking people in the region between Venice and Belarus. However, it's commonly thought in Academia that at one time, the Celts did live on a major swathe of land from southern Germany to central Turkey (like the province of Galatia). Further, in history it's often happened that a tribe could have the same ethnicity or language as their rulers or their neighbors, or a different one, regardless of whether the name was the same. Hypothetically, the "Veneti" of the Vistula could be bear the same name as an Italo-Celtic kingdom, while also carrying a Slavic DNA or language. Another tricky factor is how much arrogant German Nationalist ideology has severely tarnished serious ethnic and genetic scholarship.

If one wishes to connect the R1A DNA Haplogroup to the Slavs, then it's notable that R1A is found highly in Russia, Poland, the Baltic countries, and only to a lesser extent to Slovenia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. One could theorize that Slavic people moved into these three latter regions and spread their language there, but that the majority of these 3 regions' people have more of a genetic code (like an Italo-Celtic one) that we don't associate with the Slavs. On the other hand, R1A DNA can be well connected to a swathe of Corded Ware Culture in 2500 BC ranging from Germany and south Scandinavia in the west, east to Russia, as this map shows:
http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/60_Genetics/MapsOfNeolithicAndBronzeAgeMigrationsEuropeAndNearEast-Eupedia.htm

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Wikipedia says that the Agathyrsi "were a people of mixed Iranian Scythic and Geto-Thracian origin whose bulk were Thracian while their aristocracy was closely related to the Scythians." It says that they lived around the sources of the Maris (Mureș) river in what is today central Romania, and around what is today Moldova. Wikipedia mentions that in Scythian mythology, "Agathyrsus was the eldest of the three ancestors of the Scythian peoples born of the union of the god Targitaos and the Anguipede Goddess... it is... likely that the original homeland of the Agathyrsi was in the region of the Sea of Azov. In the 8th to 7th centuries BC, the migration of the Scythians proper from the east into the Pontic Steppe pushed the Agathyrsi westwards, away from the steppes". Wikipedia notes that "they practised the same customs as the Thracians, although the names of their kings, such as Agathyrsus and Spargapeithes, were Iranian.[2][3] Thracian customs of the Agathyrsi included their nobles practice of tattooing themselves and dyeing their hair dark blue to distinguish themselves from the common people".

The Geto-Thracians would have been a mix of Getae and Thracian peoples. The Getae were a Dacian people and were based in Romania. The ancient Thracians were a non-Greek people who spoke a "Satem", ie. eastern Indo-European language (such as Baltic, Slavic, and Iranian.) The Thracians were based in Thrace, in what is now European Turkey.

The "Romanian History and Culture" blog notes that "Herodotus recorded the Pontic Greek myth that the Agathyrsi were named after a legendary ancestor Agathyrsus, an oldest son of Hercules and the monster Echidna (Herod. 4. 8-10). They tattooed their bodies, degrees of rank being indicated by the manner in which this was done, and colored their hair dark blue."

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Wikipedia gives several hypotheses about the origin of the Croats. In one of these theories, the Croats have an Iranian origin and were related to the Sarmatians.

An article on "Croat Identity" asserts: "Hrvat is a word of Sarmatian (Persian) origins. ... The Tanais Tablets mention three men: Horoúathos, Horoáthos, and Horóathos (Χορούαθ[ος], Χοροάθος, Χορόαθος). They are written in Greek and are from the 3rd century AD from the city of Tanais, today's Azov, Russia. At that time the region had mainly a mix of Greek - Sarmatian population."

Wikipedia's article on the Tanais Tablets notes:
"Tanais Tablet B mentions Horoathos as the son of (or from) Sandarz who was (or had been) the archon of the Tanaisians (one of theory Sandakšatru gens), which is a Scytho-Sarmatian name. Scholars use this to indicate that early Croatians may have, at the time, been Sarmatians or a mixed tribe of Alans and Crimean Goths who became Slavicized in the ensuing centuries." Tablet A also mentions Horoathos.

[rakovsky]

Duuvian,

If I was a modern or medieval Slav brought back to ancient Eastern Europe as a ruler's advisor, I would probably want my country to convert to Judaism (the "Israelite" religion in Invictus). And with the Invictus Timeline Extender Mod, I would want them to convert to Christianity, which becomes available in the Mod. This is because Christianity displaced paganism as the key religious part of Slavic cultures, with some exceptions. Some Baltic people were a long holdout of paganism, and maybe some paganism survived deep in Russia or Siberia.

Unfortunately, Imperator doesn't let you "integrate" Judaism or embrace a mixed Jewish-Pagan pantheon. So you have to convert your kingdom to the Israelite religion, or else over time your kingdom's Jews will convert to your paganism (Matrism in the vanilla version, and Balto-Slavic "Wera" in Invictus). The same issues apply to converting to Christianity in the Timeline Extender Mod.

I have just conquered the Maeotia region near Crimea at 220 BC in game time, and Crimea and Maeotia have had DIaspora Jews since the starting game date. Currently, my kingdom has 9 Hebrew Population, 3 Israelite Tribesmen and 2 Israelite Slaves.

Integrating the Hebrew Population's culture is easy, but takes a big stability cost. Converting to Judaism is tricky though.
To convert my empire, need:
- 200 political influence, 1 Jewish character, and at least 50% of my capitol's non-Slav population to be Israelite/Jewish for the conversion process.
-- I have 128 Influence Points currently. 1 year gives me about 40 Influence points.
-- I can move my Jewish pops to a single territory. 1 of them is stuck in a very disloyal province (12% loyalty).
-- To get a Jewish character in my court, I need to invite a disloyal foreign one. This part isn't too hard. I can click on the View Characters button in Egypt's Diplomacy menu and look for a disloyal Israelite to invite.
-- Moving my capitol to Maeotia requires that its culture and religion match the kingdom's official ones. In addition, it takes 80 Political Influence points if my population in the territory is about 20. With 14 pops there currently, it takes about 140 Influence points to move the capitol. I also have to use a Migration to bump the capitol's culture and religion to the official one.
-- Gorgippia at the game's start is a mostly Jewish city in the Maeotia region, so it would be an ideal place to move the capitol to. I should set the Maoetian province to a policy other than "Conversion". The big problem with making Gorgippia the capitol is that it has 1 non-Jewish noble, 2 non-Jewish citizens, and 1 Jewish Freeman. But in my whole kingdom, I only have 3 Jewish non-Slave Tribesmen to work with, and 1 Jewish Slave who can promote to a Freeman. And they need to balance out the non-Jews in Gorgippia.
-- I could pick a rural settlement like Hermonassa as my capitol instead, and move my Jewish tribesmen there, but it will be expensive for my influence points, and the longer I wait, the more likely it is that my Jewish pops will convert to my official pagan religion.
-- For all of this, it seems that I should wait until my Influence point level gets up to 340, so that I can take all of these actions at once. Otherwise, if I invite the foreign Israelite and move the Jewish pops to a single spot, and then wait for 5 years, the character could die or the Jewish Pops might more easily get targeted for conversion.

-- It seems tricky because on one hand, you need to have your official religion be the dominant one in a territory to move your capitol there, but you need to have at least as many non-slave Jewish pops as non-Jewish ones in the capitol in order to convert your empire to Judaism.
-- Normally, the easy way to do this would be to have or move your capitol near a Jewish area and then move tons of Jewish slaves or tribesmen to the capitol, and then wait for them to promote into Freemen, by importing Livestock and also Choosing the Mobility Policy. But in this case, I don't have many Jewish pops at all.
-- The easiest path would be just to stay with Balto-Slavic paganism as your religion until Christianity comes around, as the Timeline Extender Mod requires you to convert your empire's religion again if you want Christianity, even if you are Jewish at that point.
-- The Israelite religion, or Judaism, focused on a pact between Jehovah and the Israelite people. The Torah objected to worship other "gods" like the Canaanite Baal and idols. If a gentile group met the theological demands of Judaism for other nations, they would be what some refer to as "Noahides", that is, followers of Noah's relationship with Jehovah after the Great Flood's end. But it's questionable whether Noahides would be considered followers of the Israelite religion. So even if the Slavs were to worship Jehovah and abandon their pagan gods and idols, it's questionable whether they would be considered followers of Judaism.
-- Some ancient Greek gentiles like the philosopher Pythagoras were Monotheists, despite Greek mythology being Polytheistic. Based on Josephus' use of terms, it seems that a monotheistic pagan might refer to the Most High God as "the Deity", Deus, Jove, and Zeus, without necessarily personally ascribing to Polytheistic ideas about Zeus, like Zeus' relative gods. Nonetheless, even if we were to consider gentile monotheists theologically tolerable to Judaism, the game still gives us the dilemma between converting our kingdom to Judaism or else staying with paganism and converting your Jewish population over time. The Jewish population of Maetia and Crimea converts slowly, but if it stays under pagan rule for the course of the entire game, it seems likely to eventually assimilate.

[rakovsky]

Some Russian articles identify the ancient "Yukhnove Culture" of the Bryansk and Kursk regions with the Melanchlaenians. The Yukhnove culture included the Blagoveschenskaya Gora ("gora" means "mountain") archaeological site in the area of Vshchizh in the Bryansk region. This is notable because the Melanchlaenians' capitol in the Invictus Mod is Blagoveschenskaya.

A Russian article on the Blagoveschenskaya Gora is here:
http://varvar.ru/arhiv/slovo/blagoveschenskaya-gora.html

One of the cult object art associated with the Blagoveschenskaya Gora is of the Bear, which is also associated with ancient Slavic religion. The Yukhnove Culture and Melanchlaenians are associated by scholars with Early Slavic, Balt, and Iranian cultures.

[Duuvian]

I simply converted pops to the dominant culture and religion for reasons of in-game mechanics, as doing so increases the stability of the provinces and is exceptionally easy using the migration mechanics. An exception was if I was tying to unlock other culture's tech trees, where I would have integrated them temporarily instead.

That's interesting about the Blagoveschenskaya Gora and bear symbolism. That would explain why (Early Age) Rus in Dominions 5 has units related to bears, though I already figured that it was from mythology. That's a game based on mythology by the way; I think one of the few devs working on the series was/is actually a mythology professor. There are three ages in it, the nations are based on mythologies. For example there are nations such as Gath and Hinnom in it, which may be of some interest. A nation comparable thematically to Rome, though titled Ermor, is also in it through all three ages, but they change a great deal from the Early Age to the Middle and Late period settings like many of the nations do; in this case they become undead oriented after the fall of the Ermor empire in the early age.. For example the Rus nations change from humans and chudes(sp?) of the two moeity of the bear cult, to humans and chudes dominated by Vanir in the middle age, to a human society controlled by princes with powerful mystics in the Late Age. It features a lot of magic and fantastic creatures however so it's not much like this game as it does not have intentions to be based on history but instead on mythology.

[rakovsky]

RE: Chudes.
Chudovische in Russian means monster. Chudo means wonder/miracle. I saw online that the Netflix Witcher series uses Slavic mythology, although the Witcher seems to use West European art styles.

Pre-historic Indo-European mythology probably has a lot of overlapping themes and underlying denominators. Some of it might be hard to reconstruct. For instance, based on my Wikipedia, there is evidence of a "Supreme God" or an element of Monotheism or Henotheism in both medieval Slavic mythology, which also exists in pre-Christian Hinduism (eg. the Vedas). In that case, it can be hard to decide whether the Slavic Monotheistic element was an influence from Christianity, or part of the shared pre-Christian heritage, as reflected in Hinduism.

[Duuvian]

In Dom5 Chudes or Chud are portrayed as slightly stronger, smarter, beautiful, and tougher than normal humans who they otherwise resemble and live with in the same villages or cities. This results in mostly mildly better game stats though they are a bit more costly to hire than human troops. I think they are still size 2 like a normal human on a scale of 1 to 6. A unit in Late Age's Bogarus that is one of it's special event hero units, the Bogatyr, says in it's description that it may have Vanir or Chud ancestors though both those species have gone extinct in that nation by that age, so it seems from that they could be a fertile pair with the more numerous humans.

I'd guess it's probably related more to the latter definition you provided of wonder/miracle but that's just a guess.

[Myll]

Originally posted by Duuvian:

[truncated to just this paragraph] -On day one raise your capital in a migrant wave (could resettle it right afterwards to keep the county). This destroys any buildings like your starting fort, but moves the capital into the province that one of your missions has develop with cities, so you can build a city at your capital for the mission at some point. The starting capital is also in a province shared with other Aestani tribes while the new province is able to be easily claimed by migrations, with the claimed by neighbors bit takeable even in a first war with Bastarnae (+merc hire?) help. More importantly, this should give you about 5 migration pops. This mechanic is the cheesiest. You will need x+1 populations (x=number of non-culture/religion pops in the unclaimed territory) settled of your culture and religion to raise another migration (you'll have to wait for the start of month for it to register unless you move a pop with gold which changes it instantly) Once you begin a new migration from there it converts any non-culture or non-religion pops to your culture and religion. Thus, you can march these 5 migrant pops (in the form of 500 light infantry per population) to your south and grab a lot of free populations. For example there is a county (forgot the term for I:R) a bit to the south that has 4 pops. Settle the county with 4+1 (takes a tiny bit of micro as it only settles an equal number automatically) pops and it will change to being dominated by your culture and religion, allowing another migration if you have the requirements (usually stability is the limit). You can then use your 9 instead of 5 pops to target an 8 population county if you can find one; or more readily available there are several 6 and 7 population counties further south for example past the mountains. You can also settle an unclaimed elephant producing county somewhere too if you can find it. This is basically the focus of my early game, interspersed with expansion wars once Aggressive Expansion has ticked down from the last one. At the very start if you grab the high population counties to the near south I mentioned, you can return to Aestia with an additional 15k light infantry for your first war easily (or just settle them immediately to claim the Aestia culture unclaimed lands) while still having the 20 or 30 stability required (can't remember which) especially if you do a divine sacrifice on day 1. Just remember that if you settle and then migrate from a county that isn't already PRODUCING a pop of your culture and religion, if you want to keep that county by resettling it a second time that you should drop a second pop there as well as that will usually mean once the CURRENT pop production is finished the NEXT pop will be of your culture and religion, cementing that in most cases. Leaving just one pop means it will shortly be an equal number and the NEXT pop produced won't be both your culture and religion.

I need to give you credit for that specific paragraph in your well-written and strategic advice that you gave for a Saloia game start. In fact - this paragraph is a hidden gem here in I:R, because this strategy could be "a way" to totally change a game play-through for any Unsettled Tribe on the map. In fact, it may work so well, some could tag it as an "exploit" but it's an available move in the game, and you discovered that it has strategic impact if you take the risk and immediately move an Unsettled Tribe's capitol on Game Day 1 (most players would not have thought of this tactic). I'm going to experiment with this especially in a future play-through, just to see how different I can set the map by End Game compared to prior attempts with this and other Unsettled Tribe starts.

One deviation I would probably do - I wouldn't move the capitol north into unclaimed lands in that Province where the going task-quest has you build 3x cities, as there's already not just good population as-is at game start, but the Barbarians make it easy to raise cities up there as they feed Pops on a cycle (I never fight the Barb's - totally allow them to siege and move in). My going technique for Assimilation/Conversion - is to always start in with forced Governor change to Convert Religion and get the area up to at least 50% but more preferably 70% or better, then shift to Assimilate Culture the rest of the way and if my Governor doesn't change it himself, switch to a more profitable focus later. I am hyper-diligent on converting/assimilating Pops from Day 1 of taking over new lands, and never use the allowance of "accepting" another culture, as I employ more of an "all or nothing" society approach.

[rakovsky]

I have trouble finding a meaning for the root word Chud.

Chuyat in Russian is a verb that means to feel or sense.
A couple books treat the word "Chud" as a short form for Chudishche, monster, as in "Chud" as the translation for Bertrand Santini's "The Yark" book.

[Duuvian]

I looked on wikipedia and this is what it has for folklore (which is what Dominions 5 is based on rather than historical)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chudes

Chuds in folklore

In Russian folk legends, the Chudes were described as exalted and beautiful. One characteristic of the Chudes was 'white-eyed', which means lightly colored eyes.

Russian bylinas reminisce about the destruction of the Chudes when the Slavs were occupying their territories. When a Chude township was attacked, Chude women drowned themselves, along with their jewels and children, in order to avoid robbery or rape.

In the chronicles which narrate about the founding of Russia, the Chudes are mentioned as one of the founder races, with the Slav and the Varyags (Varangians).

Folk etymology derives the word from Old East Slavic language (chuzhoi, 'foreign'; or chudnoi 'odd'; or chud 'weird'), or alternatively from chudnyi, wonderful, miraculous, excellent, attractive.

Chuds or Tchuds are traditional generic villains in some Sami legends[citation needed], as well as in the Sami-language movie Pathfinder from 1987, which is loosely based on such legends.[11]

Other sources suggest that ancient Chuds spoke a Finnic language similar to the Veps language.
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It appears from the wikipedia it was also the name of a historic people, which I just learned from the wiki article that also describes non-folklore uses of the word.

[rakovsky]

Duuvian,
Now that I see the Wikipedia article, I remember that the Чудь (Chud') were a tribe or nationality in medieval Russia. The apostrophe marks a short "y" sound.

To clarify: The article is saying that the Chud' tribe were in Russian folklore.

[Menkerot]

Originally posted by priamossz:

the problem is that many paradox gamers actually played it even after they tried to fix it but never commited to it. I am also one of those. The game looks wast with the massive map but the depth is where this game dies. If they would have started with a smaller region but with more depth the game would be more interesting. At this point either you play with one of the big boys like Rome or play with a random tribe that feels the same as every other tribe and just keep waging war until you grow big enough to defeat the big boys. There is not much inbetween.

it's impossible to make everyone unique, especially since it wasn't true in real life either. Shocking, I know.

Originally posted by Koates:

scythians were early slavs and swedes and scots and swabians, eastern scythian empire the Ainu people of japan before early jomon. Samurai culture comes from the horde roots and warrior class, also why japan has highest ratio of Gingers out of asian community.

they were not. Don't write again, please, history isn't your strong suit at all.

Originally posted by rakovsky:

Duuvian,
Now that I see the Wikipedia article, I remember that the Чудь (Chud') were a tribe or nationality in medieval Russia. The apostrophe marks a short "y" sound.

To clarify: The article is saying that the Chud' tribe were in Russian folklore.

it was a nation of uralic language family and not a "tribe". And apostrophe doesn't make a short "y" sound ("y" doesn't exist, by the way). It makes a consonant soft and that's all.

as for "invictus" (it's always stupid pseudo-latin, funny), it has nothing to do with the game and isn't more historically accurate. Shocking, I know. The whole thread was fun but ultimately totally wrong.

[Finarfin]

Mucho necro.