Thomas F. Madden,
Crusades: The Illustrated History doesn't actually discuss the Crusader's army composition at Hattin:
That's it. The entire battle is covered in two pages of the book and the word "turcopole" doesn't appear anywhere in that short chapter. Or, indeed, anywhere else in the book at all. Regardless of that,
somehow "numerous light cavalry," a non-specific claim in both number and origin, becomes the very specific "500 Turcopoles" on Wikipedia.
Okay so you've attacked one source nicely but haven't actually answered my question, what percentages are we talking about? My (non-Wikipedia) source you didn't respond to says many Turcopoles were Christian, as opposed to your original statement of the opposite.
What percentage of Crusader armies were Turcopoles - bearing in mind that "light cavalry" and "Turcopole" are not synonyms - and then out of the Turcopole element, how many were native Muslims and not native Christians or even Europeans?
On a more humorous note, on the very same page of Madden's book there is this sidebar:
Definitely were some multicultural medieval armies.
I have already agreed some degree of native Muslim element occurred in Crusader armies, just not to a large extent, and I was not addressing
all mediaeval armies - I was addressing Turcopoles in Crusader armies specifically. Additionally, that source apparently pertains to mercenaries, not members of a standing army.
My position is that there should be some degree of troop culture mixing in armies, so long as the game is heavily biased for native troops, but I don't know enough about the current formula one way or another to have an opinion on the game's current state there (from what I've seen most parties are largely monocultural, though minor factions have a serious issue with not recruiting their own troops). I only jumped into this argument because you were talking about Turcopoles/making erroneous statements about the in-game setting.
They are blended in gameplay mechanics though? Every faction operates the exact. same. way.
Wrong - they have different starting policies. They also have different economic output focuses in villages,
they have different culture bonuses/maluses eg Battanian forest speed or Aserai trade bonus, as already made clear there is a hefty cultural penalty for installing the wrong culture governor, and:
Troops have no issue burning down anyone else's ****, even their "native" culture.
On that topic, don't
lords display reluctance to burn down fiefs of the same culture?
I played a game (an actual RPG) as far back as the nineties where language was treated more or less realistically, Twilight 2000. If you didn't have someone in your party who spoke the local language, you were **** outta luck.
And there you go, that's why it isn't in the game.
None of this is reflected in the conversations you have with the various clan leaders. In the case of the Khuzaits, Tulag of the Arkits says his clan is loyal to the Urkhunait dynasty. Mesui says she likes a strong khan because they keeps the clans in line.
It doesn't need to be indirectly reflected in the conversations, because it's explicitly stated in the encyclopaedia that the clans are held together by threat of force, not some kind of legal arrangement like the Northern Empire relies on, or a popular agreement like in Aserai. What you just said about Mesui actually backs that up.
This is the same game where it simultaneously jumps through hoops to say that slavery is defintely, most assuredly illegal in most of Calradia but then not only gives you a companion with a slave background (She-wolf) but also a repeatable mission where you're enslaving people.
It's inconsistent in that unrelated thing for sure, but you are looking at minor inconsistencies on unrelated things to justify a totally wrong statement that the game as a whole doesn't have very different cultures. It does and both multiple game mechanics and the setting support this. Sure not
every game mechanic reflects it but that doesn't matter. We can keep arguing over the minor quibbles for ten more posts, but that won't change.