Quote Originally Posted by Jolt View Post
The fact that a Chinese force reached and successfully besieged a city in Ferghana doesn't prove that China would be capable of consistently fielding armies to go across the steppes and conquering and holding "remote" (In a chinese-centered "Middle Kingdom" way) sedentary populous areas with foreign customs which differ greatly from the Chinese ones. Neither would they be able to do this, nor do I believe they would be inclined to do so.
We don't know if the Chinese would have been able to do this like we don't know if, for instance, the Dacians would have been capable of consistently fielding armies to cross most of central and northern Europe and conquering and holding settlements in Scandinavia. Neither would they have been able to do this, nor would they most likely have been inclined to do so. But EB provides the player with the ability to do so. The simple fact is that whether Dacia and Scandinavia ever interacted directly, intended to do it, or were even historically able to do it, they interacted and affected one another indirectly and there is the possibility that they could have had direct contact.

That's the entire point of a game like EB, otherwise the game would be much more restrictive in forcing the player to follow a historical path. Looking at Macedonia in the mid 4th century, no one would have imagined that Macedonians would have been inclined, nor capable, of conquering to India and creating an Indo-Greek empire in the northwest of that subcontinent in what is historically the blink of an eye. All that would be necessary would be for some sort of circumstance within a game to create the inclination for one of the Warring States to head westward. EB is more about possibilities within the historical framework of the timeline than it is with strictly historical simulation.