I was doing a run as Dahomey and I realized that EU4's image for the Great Walls of Benin does not actually show a picture of the monument in question.
The monument image actually depicts the Round City, or, Madiinat as-Salaam, the historical center of Baghdad, Iraq. If you look closely, you can even see a blue mosque standing in the middle of the clearing in the center, the iconic Great Mosque of Al-Mansur that once stood in Baghdad.
Paradox is far from the first person to make this confusion. Many pop history forums and blogs use this illustration of Round City, often mislabelling it as the Benin walls. It seems that Paradox directly based their monument image on this illustration.
Because the Benin Walls are most impressive for their scale, I can see why Paradox might have a hard time finding a suitable image that captures their "look". This is made worse because the walls fell largely into ruin due to a lack of preservation from both the British colonial and Nigerian post-colonial governments. If Paradox needs a reference image for the actual walls, though, this picture of a moat and earthen wall outside of Benin city might help. So could this one, which shows a part of the inner wall This might seem minor, but it shows that Paradox didn't put in enough effort into researching and developing flavor for Africa. Imagine if, for example, they put the wrong image of your country's most iconic monument into the game. Like if Notre Dame had a picture of an unrelated East Asian shrine, or if the White House was a random medieval European castle.
Please Paradox, fix this in a patch.
The monument image actually depicts the Round City, or, Madiinat as-Salaam, the historical center of Baghdad, Iraq. If you look closely, you can even see a blue mosque standing in the middle of the clearing in the center, the iconic Great Mosque of Al-Mansur that once stood in Baghdad.
Paradox is far from the first person to make this confusion. Many pop history forums and blogs use this illustration of Round City, often mislabelling it as the Benin walls. It seems that Paradox directly based their monument image on this illustration.
Because the Benin Walls are most impressive for their scale, I can see why Paradox might have a hard time finding a suitable image that captures their "look". This is made worse because the walls fell largely into ruin due to a lack of preservation from both the British colonial and Nigerian post-colonial governments. If Paradox needs a reference image for the actual walls, though, this picture of a moat and earthen wall outside of Benin city might help. So could this one, which shows a part of the inner wall This might seem minor, but it shows that Paradox didn't put in enough effort into researching and developing flavor for Africa. Imagine if, for example, they put the wrong image of your country's most iconic monument into the game. Like if Notre Dame had a picture of an unrelated East Asian shrine, or if the White House was a random medieval European castle.
Please Paradox, fix this in a patch.
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