Quote Originally Posted by Ludens View Post
I'd love to see the Chinese as well, but that doesn't make it any less of a bad idea.

The problem is that there was almost no military contact between China and the west, and for good reasons. The geographical barriers between them are very difficult to traverse for anyone who isn't a steppe nomad. Merchant caravans had a difficult time following the Silk Road, so how much harder it would have been for an army? If it did get through, they would have been so exhausted that the defenders had a field day. But even supposing that they somehow got through and managed to defeat the defenders, the attacking still would be completely isolated with limited communications and no chance of reinforcements. In one word, it's impossible. I think the team was right at putting the edge of the map where it is.

Off course, there is no real way of simulating this with the R:TW engine, so if you are going to include the Chinese, expect to see armies marching up and down the Silk Road like it was the Persian one. For these reasons, China will not be included even if there were no hardcoded limits. Incidentally, hardcoded limits cannot be changed without reverse-engineering the source code and changing the .exe file. This is illegal however, as the .exe file is essentially the game itself, and SEGA will not look kindly upon any attempt at distributing altered .exe files.
I can't understand this line of reasoning... including China in a map with the rest of the west is no more unrealistic than including the Iberians in the same game map as the Bactrians. Sure, it would be unrealistic for the Chinese to march on the Seleucids, for instance, but then again, it's just as unrealistic for the Ptolemies to march on Carthage, or the Macedonians to invade Iberia. Besides, within the game numerous mechanisms could be put in place to prevent the Chinese spreading west too easily (the sheer distance, for one).

IMO, the ultimate would be for a team like EB, if not the EB team itself, to create an engine for their own game in which they can simulate the entire old world on the scale of RTW.

Now back to the chinese and definite interactions between them and the Bactrians/IndoGreeks, well the answer is that all evidence pointing to that direction are inconclusive, but they do exist.

-IndoGreek coins that used a chinese analogy in their material.
-Many statues/artefacts in present day China which demonstrate that there was a definite connection between Bactria and Qin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampul_tapestry
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UrumqiSoldier.jpg
How does the Tuanchang bronze figurine indicate links between Bactria and Qin? Even if it were indicative of Greek influence in the Tarim basin (which it is not), these only demonstrate links between the settled peoples of the basin and the west, peoples who also had contact with the Chinese but who were not Chinese themselves.

There was also some questions as to whether there was some influence in the creation of the
Terracota army guarding First emperor Chi Huang Ti or Shi Huang Di (sorry for the incorrect spelling, not a Chinese speaker) had anything to do with Greek sculpting and its techniques. Especially so, as the army was painted in very bright colours,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...tta_colour.jpg
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...and_Detail.JPG
exactly as ancient greek statues were. The whole issue is under debate of course, unless something concrete can be found.
There had been a tradition in China for a century or so before the burial of Shi Huang Di of painting miniature terracotta figurines in bright colours. Analyses of the actual pigments used show them to be different in many ways from western varieties (Egyptian, Greek, and Near Eastern). To argue that these statues are indicative of links to the Greeks is absurd, and makes about as much sense as arguing for a link between China and the Greeks because both used swords.