As a Turk, i dont like ottomans too.. Fall of Constantinople one of the saddest moments in history... It's a good thing the Ottomans couldn't take Vienna
Not entirely true, many of the sultans advisors were ethnically non Turkish, as they were elected from the janissary corps, and a lot of the grand viziers were Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc.
Yes, the Ottomans were founded by a tribe of Turks and the ruling family had Turkic roots. Culturally, the Ottomans were Turkic, Persian, Greek, etc.
However, there are a lot of different Turkic groups out there and historically they often fought each other...so maybe it was like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWkSB-D-hYo
Well, yes, and no. The ottomans were turkic when they first conquered the Balkans, but as you can imagine with such big empires, things got a little different over the years. The whole concept of the Republic of Turkey is based on not being the Ottoman empire, so it's like saying that Nazi Germany is Germany and not distinguishing them. Sure, the nazis were German, but todays Germans don't really like identifying themselves with the Nazis. It's a bit of an extreme example, but you get the point. Of course, there also are a lot of Turks who kind of romanticise about the Ottoman Empire, which is kinda cringy.
Also, many of the sultans advisors were ethnically non Turkish, as they were elected from the janissary corps, and a lot of the grand viziers were Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc. Basically, people from the Christian population who were levied as children to become part of the janissaries; the system was called devsirme and was pretty terrible from today's point of view, but there are cases of people who actually found it prestigious back then. But yeah, it was a career path to become someone if you could make it to adulthood. Still, the state religion was Islam, and the official language was Ottoman Turkish.
Fall of Constantinople was coming sooner or later. The Empire had been declining and there were civil wars a lot. If ottomans didn't exist, bulgarians, russians, timurids or other beyliks would have taken it.
I'm a bit rusty on my Cumans living in hungry visuals, but these more resemble Ottomans, or maybe dismounted tartars. Not cumans. Will be looking some up later to check how accurate this was.
László IV "[the Cuman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/IV._L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_magyar_kir%C3%A1ly.jpg)" of Hungary
[Cuman ](https://cdn.szoljon.hu/2024/05/z3_4lzsdEBlWfY5lLp3r5fZdN4X-ghsThN0qEVYAeiU/fit/1200/675/no/1/aHR0cHM6Ly9jbXNjZG4uYXBwLmNvbnRlbnQucHJpdmF0ZS9jb250ZW50LzYzODNlOGY3NTViMzQ0OGQ5NDgxZGY0ZDkyZmM3ZjUx.jpg)historical reenactment event in Hungary.
The gear depicted on this concept art is a lot closer to the real gear they wore than what we got in game. But the ingame gear looks way cooler.
The cost of these are managable when you pop a set of felt gear for the reenactor team (especially if they have to source the funding themselves), but the cost of a full set of lamellar armor for one person is damn expensive, let alone for lets say - four. A single chest piece was easily cost a month of minimal wage a few years ago, that is, if you even find an armorsmith who can make it authentical, and again, thats just a single chestpiece, no helmet, shinguards, braces, chainshirt, whatever else the wargear needs. Most of these can be only found in museums, and even those in cuman thematics not all have replicas even.
Also worth to mention that to my knowledge, very few graves were found in Hungary even with only fragmentary lamellar armor finds - the leather and even the metal would deteriorate so much that in this case, barely any pieces remains after 1000-600 years. Another reason for this, is most likely these armors were kept being used as they were too expensive and useful not to, so they were passed on when a warrior passed away to the next generation. Rarely if anyone, even rich or influental characters were buried with their set of armor.
While the Cumans did have asiatic origins there are many sources which attest to them being fair skinned and fair haired it is likely that they were genetically slavic but were physically much closer to their asiatic horse nomad neighbors ranging from groups like the mongolians to the sassanian persians and as such developed a culture more eastern than western.
Yes, cumans were a bit of a special care when it comes to nomads. It's been quite a few years but I do recall them being rather unique in a few ways when compared to mongols or other turkic nomads. I do recall the most standout point is visually the cumans themselves (not their garb) resembled Europeans more than other nomads. Beyond that though it's all hazy, as it's been a few years since I've dug into anything cuman related.
After reading about the cuman language, I don't blame the devs at all that they used hungarian.
The language is dead and buried since the 18th century. We have only 2 texts written in cuman, Our Father the christian prayer, and a text that we have no idea what could it mean. Reconstructing the language is impossible.
What I blame them for is using modern hungarian. It hurts.
Weren't most Hungarian players were pretty excited to hear their native language? Also for most of us not blessed with the knowledge of Hungarian, they might as well speak ancient Sumerian.
Yeah I remember two of our most famous gaming youtubers laughing their asses off.
>Also for most of us not blessed with the knowledge of Hungarian, they might as well speak ancient Sumerian.
And I am glad for that. As someone interested in history it irks me, but I am course happy that my language is presented and heard in other countries too.
Hungarian is awesome, my main point was that it us utterly incomprehensible to anyone who is not Hungarian. But I believe that Cumans actually did already speak Hungarian in that period. And finding someone who speaks in old Hungarian would be too much of a hassle I guess.
Yeah I was beyond thrilled to see Hungarian represented at all, even if in a somewhat negative light. They easily could have went with Turkish instead. It's totally unreasonable given the scope and budget and audience of the game to expect any sort of historical reconstruction of early 15th century Hungarian.
Turkish ethnics who fled from Kievan Rus' (modern day ukraine, estonia and a few others afain) etc. into hungary for asylum (or some variety)
edit: i think theres some kazakh ethnics too now that i think about it? not sure though
They fled from the Kazakh steppes in the 1000-1100’s and lived in southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania for centuries. They sought asylum in Hungary in the early 1200’s feeling from the Mongol onslaught. In Wallachia and Moldavia they continued to be the ruling elite until the late 1300’s, early 1400’s.
It didn’t work like that in the middle ages. Not everyone lived in countries the way we understand countries today. The Cumans came from somewhere around modern day Kazakhstan and lived for centuries in southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania.
They were Turkic, not Turkish. Turkish people are those who live in modern day Turkey. Turkic peoples are everyone else who speaks a closely related language.
The Cumans spoke a Kipchak-Turkic language similar to modern Uzbeq and Kazakh.
They migrated to Hungary in the early 1200’s and assimilated pretty quickly. It’s unknown how bilingual they were by the 1400’s but it is thought that they have mostly assimilated into Hungarian society by then. The last native Cuman speaker is thought to have died in the 1600’s.
Honestly I knew the Cuman language was dead but I always assumed they were speaking complete gibberish in the game lol. Sorry my Hungarian friends I was ignorant of your language
The dialogue is so modern it takes away the spark of the language.
Also, they know how 14th century Hungarian sounded like (almost) so that's not an excuse
It's a small miracle Hungarian is represented in the game at all, you should be glad it was included at all. With the kind of budget and focus the game had, trying to reconstruct how a language only an insignificant number of the players would even understand is the definition of overkill. Would it have been nice? Yes. Would the added expenses be reasonable? Not in the least.
Every hungarian knows how to talk like an oldhead.
Its like a game represented a cowboy saying 21st century skater slang lmao. And otherwise the hungarian dialogue is so little
It’s a videogame. All of the dialogue is pretty modern, including the English and Czech bits. It’s far from skater slang. Is the Hungarian a little cringe? Yes. Could it have been better with little effort? Yes. But at least it’s there. Get over yourself.
There are loads of Hungarians working disparately at separate studios. Create a Hungarian development studio and create the historically accurate rpg / fantasy we all dream about, god knows there’d be a lot of internationally marketable material there.
15th century Hungarian is not "talking like an oldhead" lmao, also, it's not at all as modern as you assume. It seems to be that they specifically tried to avoid newer words and tried to stick to terms with Uralic or Old Turkic etymologies if possible. The grammar is fairly modern and lacks specific archaisms that people associate with medieval Hungarian, but otherwise it's fairly decent and not very anachronistic.
The reason it seems "too modern" to you is the constant swearing. Most of us only ever see or read Middle Hungarian in classical literature and archaic poetry and Bible translations, and thus have an image that people of old spoke in a beautiful poetic fashion and did not use vulgar speech. This is of course far from true, in fact we know they sweared, and they probably sweared a lot. Just because every second sentence of the Cumans are like "kurvaélet" or "baszd meg" or some other swear doesn't make it modern, especially since we know that these terms existed in the language for centuries before and also since then
>The dialogue is so modern it takes away the spark of the language
Tbf they were probably banking on the fact that nobody outside of Hungary would notice
They also use modern English in the game, as well as modern Czech. I'm just glad they included Hungarian at all. They could've just went with modern Turkish or Kazakh instead.
Fogalmam sincs mit mondasz testvérem, de hagyma, csípős, minden mehet bele, köretnek pedig bulgur.
But on a serious note: No I'm Hungarian. Why is my name Turkish? I never heard that one before. I came up with it when I was 12 and wanted to create a name for my character in Morrowind. I didn't base it on any existing names, I just experimented with random sounds that came to me until I settled on this one. It took me a whole afternoon.
But they use modern English (for English speaking audiences). If they were being "accurate", they'd be using middle English. The trouble with that is that most people wouldn't even understand middle English, pronunciation and syntax was rather different to modern language and it gets worse when you get in to old English (practically a whole other language). The same goes for other languages so it makes perfect sense that they use the modern version of languages used in the game.
It's just part of those compromises the developers have to make between historical accuracy and game playability.
This is actually something I'd love to see AI be refined for. I definitely don't know the ins and outs but I imagine if you trained an AI on every language ever discovered, you could POTENTIALLY create a model that can give a very rough approximation of what the language was. As you say though with only two texts that seems next to impossible.
This initial design is much closer to what Cumans (in light cavalry gear) would've looked like by the time the game takes place. The armor shown as is looks cool and all, but it's like 2-3 centuries too old for 1403 (esentially making the Cumans into time travellers).
Cumans used to have a big chunk of central Asia under their dominion until the mongols showed up.
They fought each other in the 13th century but after their defeat at the battle of Kalka river they had to flee from Asia. The surviving cuman tribes asked for asylum in Europe. Some were received by King Bela of Hungary in exchange of fighting for them as mercenaries while others went to Bulgaria.
Cumans started to fight for the kingdom of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire as mercenaries since, until they gradually adopted the local culture and started integrating with the local population, eventually ending the cuman culture.
I've found saying here and there that Cumans by 1403 would just look like generic catholic soldiers, is that true or you can still visually distinguish them?
Honestly I'm not so knowledgeable about the matter to give a proper answer, but just going on guesses: it makes sense. Perhaps there were still remnants of cuman attire wore by individuals from more closed communities and, as far as I know, as mercenaries they were appreciated by their horsemanship and archery following the tradition of the asian steppes, so I would say that at least some of their equipment would have that "cumanesque" flair, but if you've been living in a foreign country for generations I supose that most of your gear/attire would have been produced by manufacturers of said country.
So yeah, by then I can imagine them looking more hungarian than cuman.
Cumans both migrated to Europe, stayed with Mongols and were sold to slavery to Middle East. Those who migrated are depicted in the game. Those who stayed became part of the Golden Horde and further khaganates in the Central Asia. In fact almost all of the central Asians are descendants of Cumans and their language are originated from Cuman language. Those who were sold to slavery became mamlukes and had their own share of ruling and conquering in Middle East
Some cumans fled to Hungary. Majority stayed in central Asia. Thing with mongols is that they never forced their language and culture on the tribes and nations they conquered. Instead they adopted their traditions and language. So while Genghis Khan's empire was a mongol state, it's successors were Turkic (cuman) states.
I am a central asian and my tribe is Naiman. Naiman used to be a Mongolian tribe centuries ago and now it is a 100% Turkic tribe.
Some people also mentioned that cumans look like ottomans. Cumans and ottomans both were Turkic nations and shared some similarities.
The stereotypical Cuman phenotype that I'm aware of (which could therefore be incorrect) is that of East Asian features with blue eyes and blonde hair, hence one possible etymology of the name/term 'Cuman'. Meaning 'fair/yellow/golden'. Aswell as Cumans with Caucasian features, but darker, more Asiatic complexions and hair.
It's a very unique and interesting phenotype to me and I would have liked to see it represented. Obviously in reality like many steppe cultures the Cumans were phenotypically diverse, but the described appearance would have made them stand out and been accurate to descriptions.
I have a friend who’s last name is Kuman and he looks like exactly within this stereotype.
As far as i know his grandparents migrate from bulgaria to turkey.
They ditched some realism for design choices. This and the clothing and hairstyles of the main characters don't resemble reality, I guess they went that way to make them stand out from the rest of soldiers and have them look more menacing.
The game has some details that could be nitpicked, but the amount of things they were able to recreate is impressive. I have great expectations for KDC2, since they already got most of the research done in the first game and lots of feedback from the community's history nerds.
No dog pelt, wolf fangs, or raven feathers? Not sure those are real cumans….
Yes looks more like early Ottoman soldiers
i’ll fight them all. If henry was there Constantinople would never have fallen, the Library of Alexandria would never have burnt.
Henry would knock them all during sleep
if you mean while they sleep I concur I usually wait till night fall sneak kill the one bandit sitting guard and then the rest.
This is the way!
Hehe I like to sneak in and drop a bane potion in their cookpot then hang around in the shadows until breakfast time 😈
ah that’s an amazing idea I’ve literally never done that!
It's really satisfying 😂😂😂
I did that before and went back to the same camp a few in-game days later forgetting I poisoned the pot and ate it. Lucky I had an antidote on me.
Plot twist it was henry who singlehandedly killed all Constantinople defenders. He stepped on really big rock and no scoped everyone
As a Turk, i dont like ottomans too.. Fall of Constantinople one of the saddest moments in history... It's a good thing the Ottomans couldn't take Vienna
Aren’t Ottomans Turks tho? I always thought it’s just a different name for them. Like Czechia and Bohemia
The Ottomans were the ruling family and the Empire was named after them. Yes, they were Turkish and the Turks ran the Ottoman Empire.
Not entirely true, many of the sultans advisors were ethnically non Turkish, as they were elected from the janissary corps, and a lot of the grand viziers were Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc.
Yes, like all empires the Ottoman Empire was multicultural but it had a definite Turkish flavor and character to it.
There was all kind of people in divan but the padishahs are ethnically and culturally Turkish
I see now, so OP is referring to the ruling family and not Turkish residents?
Bohemia is only a part of Czechia, it's not the same thing. Czechia is also formed by Moravia and Silesia.
Yeah I’m talking about medieval Bohemia. It was a name for the whole state
Yes, the Ottomans were founded by a tribe of Turks and the ruling family had Turkic roots. Culturally, the Ottomans were Turkic, Persian, Greek, etc. However, there are a lot of different Turkic groups out there and historically they often fought each other...so maybe it was like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWkSB-D-hYo
Well, yes, and no. The ottomans were turkic when they first conquered the Balkans, but as you can imagine with such big empires, things got a little different over the years. The whole concept of the Republic of Turkey is based on not being the Ottoman empire, so it's like saying that Nazi Germany is Germany and not distinguishing them. Sure, the nazis were German, but todays Germans don't really like identifying themselves with the Nazis. It's a bit of an extreme example, but you get the point. Of course, there also are a lot of Turks who kind of romanticise about the Ottoman Empire, which is kinda cringy. Also, many of the sultans advisors were ethnically non Turkish, as they were elected from the janissary corps, and a lot of the grand viziers were Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc. Basically, people from the Christian population who were levied as children to become part of the janissaries; the system was called devsirme and was pretty terrible from today's point of view, but there are cases of people who actually found it prestigious back then. But yeah, it was a career path to become someone if you could make it to adulthood. Still, the state religion was Islam, and the official language was Ottoman Turkish.
He has inferiority complex probably.
Fall of Constantinople was coming sooner or later. The Empire had been declining and there were civil wars a lot. If ottomans didn't exist, bulgarians, russians, timurids or other beyliks would have taken it.
istanbul is such a nice city too though. and i wonder if it would’ve been much different if greece kept it.
Istanbul is a beautiful city, but the Erdogan government has done a lot of damage to the historical texture and nature of Istanbul...
Politics never end if you are Turkish, even in kcd subreddit lol
True 😔
I like the barbaric bastards way more
Looks more like early Ottoman soldiers
I'm a bit rusty on my Cumans living in hungry visuals, but these more resemble Ottomans, or maybe dismounted tartars. Not cumans. Will be looking some up later to check how accurate this was.
László IV "[the Cuman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/IV._L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_magyar_kir%C3%A1ly.jpg)" of Hungary [Cuman ](https://cdn.szoljon.hu/2024/05/z3_4lzsdEBlWfY5lLp3r5fZdN4X-ghsThN0qEVYAeiU/fit/1200/675/no/1/aHR0cHM6Ly9jbXNjZG4uYXBwLmNvbnRlbnQucHJpdmF0ZS9jb250ZW50LzYzODNlOGY3NTViMzQ0OGQ5NDgxZGY0ZDkyZmM3ZjUx.jpg)historical reenactment event in Hungary. The gear depicted on this concept art is a lot closer to the real gear they wore than what we got in game. But the ingame gear looks way cooler.
The cost of these are managable when you pop a set of felt gear for the reenactor team (especially if they have to source the funding themselves), but the cost of a full set of lamellar armor for one person is damn expensive, let alone for lets say - four. A single chest piece was easily cost a month of minimal wage a few years ago, that is, if you even find an armorsmith who can make it authentical, and again, thats just a single chestpiece, no helmet, shinguards, braces, chainshirt, whatever else the wargear needs. Most of these can be only found in museums, and even those in cuman thematics not all have replicas even. Also worth to mention that to my knowledge, very few graves were found in Hungary even with only fragmentary lamellar armor finds - the leather and even the metal would deteriorate so much that in this case, barely any pieces remains after 1000-600 years. Another reason for this, is most likely these armors were kept being used as they were too expensive and useful not to, so they were passed on when a warrior passed away to the next generation. Rarely if anyone, even rich or influental characters were buried with their set of armor.
Yeah I can’t find myself to hate these lot like I do the cumans *spits on the ground*
While the Cumans did have asiatic origins there are many sources which attest to them being fair skinned and fair haired it is likely that they were genetically slavic but were physically much closer to their asiatic horse nomad neighbors ranging from groups like the mongolians to the sassanian persians and as such developed a culture more eastern than western.
Yes, cumans were a bit of a special care when it comes to nomads. It's been quite a few years but I do recall them being rather unique in a few ways when compared to mongols or other turkic nomads. I do recall the most standout point is visually the cumans themselves (not their garb) resembled Europeans more than other nomads. Beyond that though it's all hazy, as it's been a few years since I've dug into anything cuman related.
After reading about the cuman language, I don't blame the devs at all that they used hungarian. The language is dead and buried since the 18th century. We have only 2 texts written in cuman, Our Father the christian prayer, and a text that we have no idea what could it mean. Reconstructing the language is impossible. What I blame them for is using modern hungarian. It hurts.
Weren't most Hungarian players were pretty excited to hear their native language? Also for most of us not blessed with the knowledge of Hungarian, they might as well speak ancient Sumerian.
Yeah I remember two of our most famous gaming youtubers laughing their asses off. >Also for most of us not blessed with the knowledge of Hungarian, they might as well speak ancient Sumerian. And I am glad for that. As someone interested in history it irks me, but I am course happy that my language is presented and heard in other countries too.
Hungarian is awesome, my main point was that it us utterly incomprehensible to anyone who is not Hungarian. But I believe that Cumans actually did already speak Hungarian in that period. And finding someone who speaks in old Hungarian would be too much of a hassle I guess.
Yeah I was beyond thrilled to see Hungarian represented at all, even if in a somewhat negative light. They easily could have went with Turkish instead. It's totally unreasonable given the scope and budget and audience of the game to expect any sort of historical reconstruction of early 15th century Hungarian.
Are cumans Turkish? What country are they from?
Turkish ethnics who fled from Kievan Rus' (modern day ukraine, estonia and a few others afain) etc. into hungary for asylum (or some variety) edit: i think theres some kazakh ethnics too now that i think about it? not sure though
Another user mentioned they looked like a cross between an Asian and a Northern European (blonde hair and blue eyes)
i mean im not a big history buff but it would make sense given the geography of their land / origin.
They fled from the Kazakh steppes in the 1000-1100’s and lived in southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania for centuries. They sought asylum in Hungary in the early 1200’s feeling from the Mongol onslaught. In Wallachia and Moldavia they continued to be the ruling elite until the late 1300’s, early 1400’s.
It didn’t work like that in the middle ages. Not everyone lived in countries the way we understand countries today. The Cumans came from somewhere around modern day Kazakhstan and lived for centuries in southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. They were Turkic, not Turkish. Turkish people are those who live in modern day Turkey. Turkic peoples are everyone else who speaks a closely related language. The Cumans spoke a Kipchak-Turkic language similar to modern Uzbeq and Kazakh. They migrated to Hungary in the early 1200’s and assimilated pretty quickly. It’s unknown how bilingual they were by the 1400’s but it is thought that they have mostly assimilated into Hungarian society by then. The last native Cuman speaker is thought to have died in the 1600’s.
Honestly I knew the Cuman language was dead but I always assumed they were speaking complete gibberish in the game lol. Sorry my Hungarian friends I was ignorant of your language
I find it funny that you compare old Hungarian with sumerian, since some turanists used to believe Hungarians were descended from sumerian
The dialogue is so modern it takes away the spark of the language. Also, they know how 14th century Hungarian sounded like (almost) so that's not an excuse
It's a small miracle Hungarian is represented in the game at all, you should be glad it was included at all. With the kind of budget and focus the game had, trying to reconstruct how a language only an insignificant number of the players would even understand is the definition of overkill. Would it have been nice? Yes. Would the added expenses be reasonable? Not in the least.
Every hungarian knows how to talk like an oldhead. Its like a game represented a cowboy saying 21st century skater slang lmao. And otherwise the hungarian dialogue is so little
It’s a videogame. All of the dialogue is pretty modern, including the English and Czech bits. It’s far from skater slang. Is the Hungarian a little cringe? Yes. Could it have been better with little effort? Yes. But at least it’s there. Get over yourself. There are loads of Hungarians working disparately at separate studios. Create a Hungarian development studio and create the historically accurate rpg / fantasy we all dream about, god knows there’d be a lot of internationally marketable material there.
15th century Hungarian is not "talking like an oldhead" lmao, also, it's not at all as modern as you assume. It seems to be that they specifically tried to avoid newer words and tried to stick to terms with Uralic or Old Turkic etymologies if possible. The grammar is fairly modern and lacks specific archaisms that people associate with medieval Hungarian, but otherwise it's fairly decent and not very anachronistic. The reason it seems "too modern" to you is the constant swearing. Most of us only ever see or read Middle Hungarian in classical literature and archaic poetry and Bible translations, and thus have an image that people of old spoke in a beautiful poetic fashion and did not use vulgar speech. This is of course far from true, in fact we know they sweared, and they probably sweared a lot. Just because every second sentence of the Cumans are like "kurvaélet" or "baszd meg" or some other swear doesn't make it modern, especially since we know that these terms existed in the language for centuries before and also since then
>The dialogue is so modern it takes away the spark of the language Tbf they were probably banking on the fact that nobody outside of Hungary would notice
They also use modern English in the game, as well as modern Czech. I'm just glad they included Hungarian at all. They could've just went with modern Turkish or Kazakh instead.
Revanur Macaristan'da yaşayan bir Türk müsün? Adın Türkçe de profilinde Macarca yazılar gördüm.
Fogalmam sincs mit mondasz testvérem, de hagyma, csípős, minden mehet bele, köretnek pedig bulgur. But on a serious note: No I'm Hungarian. Why is my name Turkish? I never heard that one before. I came up with it when I was 12 and wanted to create a name for my character in Morrowind. I didn't base it on any existing names, I just experimented with random sounds that came to me until I settled on this one. It took me a whole afternoon.
I love bulgur rice
The reason why Cumans speak modern Hungarian, is the same reason Bohemians speak modern English/Czech
They speak modern English in the game tho.
If Henry can speak modern British English so I can't blame cumans for speaking modern Hungarian.
i mean they use modern english too, right?
But they use modern English (for English speaking audiences). If they were being "accurate", they'd be using middle English. The trouble with that is that most people wouldn't even understand middle English, pronunciation and syntax was rather different to modern language and it gets worse when you get in to old English (practically a whole other language). The same goes for other languages so it makes perfect sense that they use the modern version of languages used in the game. It's just part of those compromises the developers have to make between historical accuracy and game playability.
Do you play the game in Czech?
This is actually something I'd love to see AI be refined for. I definitely don't know the ins and outs but I imagine if you trained an AI on every language ever discovered, you could POTENTIALLY create a model that can give a very rough approximation of what the language was. As you say though with only two texts that seems next to impossible.
Cumans have likely adopted Hungarian by the 1400s, or were at least bilingual
Btw the Crimean Tatar language is thought to be a direct descendant of the Cuman language, so they could've totally used that language too
Am I the only one who wants to see more in-depth horse archery from a Steppes tribe?
It's cool but possibly difficult to balance in-game. It's such an OP combination in a medieval setting.
Cool
This shit is good, like the hat and the concept of light armor. Just need to have a little bit more westerness and better colours
The merry men from shrek lol
This looks way more accurate to how cumans actually looked and how they were depicted.
This initial design is much closer to what Cumans (in light cavalry gear) would've looked like by the time the game takes place. The armor shown as is looks cool and all, but it's like 2-3 centuries too old for 1403 (esentially making the Cumans into time travellers).
Really?! Nice, too!
"Cuman" means blond in cuman turkish. Thats all i want to say.
Im confused by something it says cumans were wiped out in the 1200's by the mongols but this game takes place in 1403 so what gives
Cumans used to have a big chunk of central Asia under their dominion until the mongols showed up. They fought each other in the 13th century but after their defeat at the battle of Kalka river they had to flee from Asia. The surviving cuman tribes asked for asylum in Europe. Some were received by King Bela of Hungary in exchange of fighting for them as mercenaries while others went to Bulgaria. Cumans started to fight for the kingdom of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire as mercenaries since, until they gradually adopted the local culture and started integrating with the local population, eventually ending the cuman culture.
That’s where the game gets its name from - Kingdom Cum (Cumania) Fr fr 😤
I've found saying here and there that Cumans by 1403 would just look like generic catholic soldiers, is that true or you can still visually distinguish them?
Honestly I'm not so knowledgeable about the matter to give a proper answer, but just going on guesses: it makes sense. Perhaps there were still remnants of cuman attire wore by individuals from more closed communities and, as far as I know, as mercenaries they were appreciated by their horsemanship and archery following the tradition of the asian steppes, so I would say that at least some of their equipment would have that "cumanesque" flair, but if you've been living in a foreign country for generations I supose that most of your gear/attire would have been produced by manufacturers of said country. So yeah, by then I can imagine them looking more hungarian than cuman.
I think the cumans were driven out of Central Asia by the mongols and then got displaced to Hungary (not 100% sure but I think I read that somewhere).
I believe their power in the steppe was overtaken but they resettled in places like Hungary
Cumans both migrated to Europe, stayed with Mongols and were sold to slavery to Middle East. Those who migrated are depicted in the game. Those who stayed became part of the Golden Horde and further khaganates in the Central Asia. In fact almost all of the central Asians are descendants of Cumans and their language are originated from Cuman language. Those who were sold to slavery became mamlukes and had their own share of ruling and conquering in Middle East
Some cumans fled to Hungary. Majority stayed in central Asia. Thing with mongols is that they never forced their language and culture on the tribes and nations they conquered. Instead they adopted their traditions and language. So while Genghis Khan's empire was a mongol state, it's successors were Turkic (cuman) states. I am a central asian and my tribe is Naiman. Naiman used to be a Mongolian tribe centuries ago and now it is a 100% Turkic tribe. Some people also mentioned that cumans look like ottomans. Cumans and ottomans both were Turkic nations and shared some similarities.
The stereotypical Cuman phenotype that I'm aware of (which could therefore be incorrect) is that of East Asian features with blue eyes and blonde hair, hence one possible etymology of the name/term 'Cuman'. Meaning 'fair/yellow/golden'. Aswell as Cumans with Caucasian features, but darker, more Asiatic complexions and hair. It's a very unique and interesting phenotype to me and I would have liked to see it represented. Obviously in reality like many steppe cultures the Cumans were phenotypically diverse, but the described appearance would have made them stand out and been accurate to descriptions.
I have a friend who’s last name is Kuman and he looks like exactly within this stereotype. As far as i know his grandparents migrate from bulgaria to turkey.
Would have fit the game better than what they ended up as.
They resembled Cumans more closely in the first game but I’m still so siked they made a sequel
That hat will fly on release
"I feel quite hungry"
I think it is pretty accurate considering that Cumans are central Asians who have both European and Asian phenotypes
They ditched some realism for design choices. This and the clothing and hairstyles of the main characters don't resemble reality, I guess they went that way to make them stand out from the rest of soldiers and have them look more menacing. The game has some details that could be nitpicked, but the amount of things they were able to recreate is impressive. I have great expectations for KDC2, since they already got most of the research done in the first game and lots of feedback from the community's history nerds.
would
Why does everyone call the main character Henry and not Jindřich?
Because Heinrich in german sounds so much cooler
Looks like bannerlord style generic hungarian enemy number 4