LogFAQs > #956081831

Knocked out the Cumans and Vietnamese. Neither civ would rank very high on my favorites but neither would rank especially low either, albeit the latter mostly because of some conveniences and ELEPHANTS (poor Malay). Also I feel like I just find the Central Asian steppe nomads interesting. I liked the Cumans and Tatars about equally which I was not really expecting. They were the two civilizations I've read up the most about since playing the game due to their inclusion in the Definitive Edition. Pretty interesting how the Cumans resided in areas as far apart as Siberia and the Balkans.

I've decided the Burmese will be the last civ I try out, even after the Franks (I feel so sorry for saying I don't find French history especially interesting, it was more in comparison to other European nations though really. I've wanted to elaborate on that for a while but keep putting it off. Maybe when I actually get around to trying out the Franks?). Part of me feels a little disappointed in the Southeast Asian civs since I liked the Khmer so much, but in fairness the four SE Asian factions included in the game were completely different beasts in real life so it's probably not fair to expect. The Khmer were known for building big cities and thus they get bonuses relating to interior development, whereas the Malay are meant to be a seafaring nation and the Vietnamese are a strange kind of defensive civ - their portrayal in AoE2 seems to take mostly after the wars they fought against Chinese and Mongol aggressors AFTER losing their major cities. The official Wiki even posits that the tactics the Vietnamese used much later in history against French and American invasions were essentially projected too far into the past. I think the problem here is that it's easy for me to lump geographically similar civilizations together in terms of the game, especially as all the SE Asian civs were introduced in the same HD expansion and are the only civs that can train Battle Elephants (separate from the Persians' unique unit War Elephant). It used to be worse since they all shared the same building style, but fan demand caused the Vietnamese to change to the same East Asian building style used by the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, and Koreans to reflect their more Sinicized nature compared to the Indianized nature of the other three SE Asian civs. Alternately maybe I just don't know much about Southeast Asia, even though I've actually been to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Noteworthy is that Southeast Asia wasn't covered in much of any capacity in Norman F. Cantor's book.

For the record, what I said earlier about Italy was due to how last time I spent my winter break there I got tired of spending all day moving around. And with France, as far as medieval history is concerned part of the issue is that what I find most interesting about the low middle ages is the way different peoples would move around and settle everywhere which is really not true for France in comparison to, say, England or Russia. However Charlemagne and his Carolingian dynasty might still be among my favorite medieval figures due to their impact on the rest of Europe. Playing as the Bulgarians and Slavs has also gotten me more interested in Eastern Europe.

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Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders?