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It is both a religious and social custom that drives Muslims to be offended by it, and that is a large potential customer base that PDX would not want to alienate.

The potential Muslim market is smaller than that of Scandinavia alone, not to mention the rest of Europe and the Americas. Even assuming every Muslim on earth were to boycott paradox in response to their depiction of Muhammad the financial hit would be next to nothing. Economics is not why you don't depict Muhammad in media and you know it.
 
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The birth of Jesus makes no sense as an end date, since his significance is only apparent in hindsight.

Perhaps, but it's a decent arbitrary date to end it. Would save them having to model new religions appearing.
 
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The potential Muslim market is smaller than that of Scandinavia alone, not to mention the rest of Europe and the Americas. Even assuming every Muslim on earth were to boycott paradox in response to their depiction of Muhammad the financial hit would be next to nothing. Economics is not why you don't depict Muhammad in media and you know it.

Even with what your implying. From a good corporate point of view, what is gained by offending people? Is someone going to buy the game because he was depicted? Realistically no, or extremely unlikely for that specific reason. Now to touch on the obvious implication of physical violence resulting, that's a economic cost whether your talking property damage, or the injury or death of people.
Any decent corporation attempts to maximize revenues while minimizing costs, hence depicting him would generate the opposite response. Therefore it is a bad and wholly unnecessary option.

The Muslim market includes people living all around the world including many people in NA, Europe, and so on who do consume video games. Further it's a false notion that the Middle East, North Africa etc... don't consume video games. While it is true that they don't per capita consume nearly as many PC/Console games as other places. They do consume a large amount of mobile games, and games on other platforms. Paradox is large and appears to be expanding, by offending people in this way they would be alienating them from more then just this one product.

I am offended by NOT drawing mohammad.... defacing his image is in fact a holy rite of my religion. Why aren't my belief's being respected?

Your religion isn't followed by 1.5+ billion people now is it? To put it plainly, you just don't matter from the economic perspective.
 
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If Paradox felt there was anything to gain by including Muhammad in one of their games, I would hope they'd do it out of goddamn principle as a blow in favour of a secular society. Not that it's at all clear it would be necessary - I'm doing a game based on the Dark Ages, including the rise of Islam. Muhammad isn't in it because the Caliphate didn't begin to expand outside Arabia until after he died.

Perhaps, but it's a decent arbitrary date to end it. Would save them having to model new religions appearing.

Christianity doesn't become a significant force until the end of the first century. I think you could get away without representing it at a provincial level for at least another hundred years after that.

If an arbitrary date around the birth of Christ is required, the death of Augustus, for example, makes far more sense.
 
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Christianity doesn't become a significant force until the end of the first century. I think you could get away without representing it at a provincial level for at least another hundred years after that.

If an arbitrary date around the birth of Christ is required, the death of Augustus, for example, makes far more sense.

Fair enough, but it would allow the entire thing going into the new millennia to be a DLC to hopefully properly flush it out. Though I do understand what your saying, and considering Christ purportedly didn't start really creating a religion until post that (Augustus) period anyways. So it probably wouldn't really matter.
 
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Definitely 69AD. (Vespasiano becomes Imperator)
Seriously, form a game point of view, what is left to do from then since the mid of the III century ? Sit and develop provinces and (perhaps) fight some random barbarians along the Limes ?
 
Keep the conversation about the end date and not religion specifically please.
 
Definitely 69AD. (Vespasiano becomes Imperator)
Seriously, form a game point of view, what is left to do from then since the mid of the III century ? Sit and develop provinces and (perhaps) fight some random barbarians along the Limes ?

Paradox could also go for not having an explicit end date, or a reaaaally far away one that no one reaches, just so as to reduce constraints on the player? E.g. having a game calibrated for 280 B.C. - 100 A.D. but a game-end open to some far-ahead date such as 476 A.D. Of course, it is likely that specific events would not be scripted for the ”long haul”.
 
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Paradox could also go for not having an explicit end date, or a reaaaally far away one that no one reaches, just so as to reduce constraints on the player? E.g. having a game calibrated for 280 B.C. - 100 A.D. but a game-end open to some far-ahead date such as 476 A.D. Of course, it is likely that specific events would not be scripted for the ”long haul”.

Or do it like Civilization. Reach the end of the period whenever that is (No more events etc... after this point), and just receive the message "End Time" or "Just one more year". Wait didn't some of their old games already do that?
 
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Let's say they do make Rome II, when will the game end? 476, when the WRE was destroyed? Or 565, when Justinian died, the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as his first language. Or should it be 632, the death of Mohammed?

The Western Empire was not "destroyed", it devolved into independent states, for the most part divided up by it's own armies and generals - that just happened to be largely comprised of "barbarians" by then.

Any end date is arbitrary, but how about AD 1204, the year the Crusaders of Rome, on the 4th "Crusade", stormed Christian Constantinople and carved up the Roman Empire amongst themselves. And by doing so, they destroyed the last strength of an empire that Rome had founded over 1400 years before, bringing down the greatest Christian bastion in Eastern Europe, allowing the Muslim Turks to gain ascendancy and subsequently overrun eastern Europe. Was there ever a greater historical irony?
 
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If they do an ancients game I hope it includes ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Assyrians etc, starting around 800bc & not just when Rome is dominant, which equals boring, & no real challenge.
 
I think that September 4th, 476 CE works as an eventual end date (with the starting date being 338 BCE, the day after the Latin War ends) with everything in between being the growth, glory, stagnation, and collapse of the Roman Empire if played historically or that of another empire (Carthage would be incredibly interesting) or perhaps it becomes a period of many empires ruling the Mediterranean over this 800 or so year long period.

This is assuming they make a Dark Ages game. If they do that, then it should go from around 476 CE all of the way to 867 at the earliest or 1066 at the latest (CK2 didn't really represent that stuff that well so a bit of crossover with a dynamic converter where you just pick a day in between to convert to and it becomes that same day in CK2 would be fantastic).
 
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Let's say they do make Rome II, when will the game end? 476, when the WRE was destroyed? Or 565, when Justinian died, the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as his first language. Or should it be 632, the death of Mohammed?
Roman empire did. Not end in 476 , thats a silly date invented by some victorian historian when they " invented " the adje tive Byzantine empire .... It was also considered that the Holy Roman empire wanted to feel "official" and so named after ancient Rome conidering like a heir wich was actually not , and not even an empire .
Actually the Roman empire ended with the fall of Costantinople in 1453 . The so referred Byzantines consudered themselves Romans and called their empire Roman Empire.
The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans" (Latin: Imperium Romanum, Imperium Romanorum; Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν ῬωμαίωνBasileia tōn Rhōmaiōn).
So it makes senze to actually maje the date run up to the 1453 eventually .
No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm.[21] The name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire, that is, the Orthodox Christian community within Ottoman realms.


 
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The Western Empire was not "destroyed", it devolved into independent states, for the most part divided up by it's own armies and generals - that just happened to be largely comprised of "barbarians" by then.

Any end date is arbitrary, but how about AD 1204, the year the Crusaders of Rome, on the 4th "Crusade", stormed Christian Constantinople and carved up the Roman Empire amongst themselves. And by doing so, they destroyed the last strength of an empire that Rome had founded over 1400 years before, bringing down the greatest Christian bastion in Eastern Europe, allowing the Muslim Turks to gain ascendancy and subsequently overrun eastern Europe. Was there ever a greater historical irony?

While destruction or evolution of the Roman Empire is a real historical discussion, to say that it was divided among it's armies and generals is just plain wrong. The Vandals, the Francs, and the Suebi were never in any way part of the Roman power structure. They alone acount for the loss of North Africa, most of Hispania, and a good part of Gaul. The Visigoths had a more complicated relationship with the empire, but I would argue, that they were, from when they were settled in Gaul to the end of the Western Roman Empire, alway as a group politically distinct from the Roman Empire and it's army.
Historical quibbles aside, I think an end date some time in the 1. century AD would be best. I'm actually most interested in the rise (or rather stopping the rise more often than not) of the Roman Empire for a game and as others have said the Pax Romana would make some very different mechanics, to make that time interesting to play and the stagnation/fall/evolution whatever you want to call it, would also be very difficult to translate into mechanics. On top of that the rise of Rome wasn't a sure thing for quite a while, so it wouldn't even be certain, that those mechanics are needed for every playthrough, or whether those mechanics would also need to work e.g. for a successful Carthaginian Empire. The Roman era is best split into two games.
 
While destruction or evolution of the Roman Empire is a real historical discussion, to say that it was divided among it's armies and generals is just plain wrong. The Vandals, the Francs, and the Suebi were never in any way part of the Roman power structure. They alone acount for the loss of North Africa, most of Hispania, and a good part of Gaul. The Visigoths had a more complicated relationship with the empire, but I would argue, that they were, from when they were settled in Gaul to the end of the Western Roman Empire, alway as a group politically distinct from the Roman Empire and it's army.
Historical quibbles aside, I think an end date some time in the 1. century AD would be best. I'm actually most interested in the rise (or rather stopping the rise more often than not) of the Roman Empire for a game and as others have said the Pax Romana would make some very different mechanics, to make that time interesting to play and the stagnation/fall/evolution whatever you want to call it, would also be very difficult to translate into mechanics. On top of that the rise of Rome wasn't a sure thing for quite a while, so it wouldn't even be certain, that those mechanics are needed for every playthrough, or whether those mechanics would also need to work e.g. for a successful Carthaginian Empire. The Roman era is best split into two games.

:) I did say "for the most part" there. However, it would appear that you would be surprised just how many of the "barbarian invaders" were actually "Foederati" turning on their employers.

For instance, there were Franks who WERE Foederati - Julian the Apostate is said to have "allowed" the Salian Franks to settle in Toxandri (Belgium, Flanders region) around AD 358, so long as they protected the empire as Foederati. As Foederati they were technically meant to fight for and defend the Roman Empire. They most likely did so for a time, but it didn't take them long to get a head start on swallowing up Gaul for themselves from their prime position.

The Suebi that you mention is a very broad name - and gets complicated. What tribes were actually Suebi changes depending on what source you are reading. Do you mean the Allemanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Langobards, Marcomanni (perhaps) to name just a few? There are numerous peoples who were said to be "Suebi" by Classical authors - in fact the name "Suebi" seems almost to have been used for the word "German" at times. With the Allemani, you are correct, as a people they never seemed to served the Roman Empire, were always opposed to it - but that doesn't mean individuals or Allemanic warparties never hired themselves out to the empire. Most of the other peoples were Foederati in whole or part at some point or another, even if one does not usually think of them that way. For instance, in AD 409 a group of Marcomanni, Quadi and Buri were "allowed" to settle in Gallicia , where they served as Foederati and went on to found the Suebian kingdom of Gaellicia as the Empire lost cohesion. While this settlement might just have been an acceptance of Suebian conquest (just like most of the others probably), it is noteable that Suebian Foederati DID fight with Imperial forces soon after against the Vandals in Hispania. So Foederati the Suebians were.

As for the Vandals: Stillicho, the famous "Roman" General, was himself half Vandal. As you know, Stilicho led a "Roman" force that fought Alaric the Goth - another "Roman" general, who was actually a Goth, who led a force of Goths that had been hired originally as Foederati. The Vandals themselves, from AD 406, in alliance with Iranian Alans and Suebians, marched westward into Roman lands, defeating Frankish Foederati in Northern Gaul before storming into Hispania, where Vandals, Alans and Suebians alike were all granted lands and (officially and on paper at least) made Foederati. The Vandals very soon after turned on their allies the Alans, and then the empire, fighting several battles against Imperial-Gothic-Seubian alliances (The Gallician Suebi?) before eventually crossing to Africa. But Foederati the Vandals had been - on paper at least, however briefly.

The list goes on. In most (not all mind, but most) cases of "Barbarian invasion" the forces got so far into Roman lands and then were settled as "Foederati" - if only to appease them and dissuade them from rampaging further. How actively these peoples actually prosecuted their duties as Foederati is debatable. It is very likely that in many cases it was just a way for the Roman central authority to claim that there was no longer an enemy to deal with, a way to deceive themselves that provinces weren't gradually being lost piecemeal. But whatever the reality, officially, Foederati they were. And in their settlement regions they stayed for a time, maybe even served the empire for a time, as it was hoped they would, before expanding to carve out lands for themselves as it became clear the empire had lost it's teeth - from within the empire itself. People after people did this AFTER having been settled as "Foederati".

While this is indeed an overly simplistic overview of events, Foederati forces appear to have made up the vast majority of the Imperial forces in the 5th Century, and many of the later Commanders were of of "Barbaric" lineage too, so when I say the armies and Generals carved up the empire amongst themselves - I am not really too far from the truth. From a certain point of view. ;)
 
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From Philip of Macedon to Diocletian...
 
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