Talk:Italians/@comment-106.105.136.18-20160702133451/@comment-147.46.159.239-20161123101325

No and no. In the medieval era, they gradually became "un-Roman."- in fact the hegemony within the empire had already passed to Eastern Europe in 3th century- and the empire lost its last territory in Italy roughly in 11th century. Of course, Rome was first founded in Italy but you should remember that Roman empire was a "universal, multi-cultural empire". Damn Nationalist movements in recent centuries quite a lot distorted the historic view upon Roman empire. Anyways, in this game Byzantines are much more "Roman" than Italians(in fact, there was neither an official separation of "two Roman empires" nor "transition into Byzantine from Rome" everything just changed slowly, like any other countries)

So it is quite strange that Romans use Genoese Crossbowmen and Condottieri as their own units - to them, there were just some "non-Roman Latins" who became mixed "Gothic thieves".