Again, I already said country, not nation. And I said multiple people consider the EU as a country, not that it was a fact.
And sure go ahead and proof why the HRE isnt a country according by the definition of country.
Also even if it wasnt the case, its still a civilization and about the same as France for French early to middel medieval history.
Man, you have every right to want the HRE to be included as a civ in the game - you’re far from being the only one in this forum by the way. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to proove that the HRE was a country or whatever, which is leading you in such dishonest arguments that you are now even claiming that “multiple people consider EU as a country” (!), which is downright delusional.
HRE was not a country and not even a proper empire but a loose supra-ethnic political organization gathering many different political entities, much of which held much independance and can be seen as actual countries or nations. HRE had no cultural unity and little political power and centralization, as such it can’t be seen as a country. Many people explain it better than I:
Was the Holy Roman Empire one country or many countries? - Quora.
Yeah, but is is just a name. They were founded nearby Akkon and then conquered territory around the baltic sea. This is just a very little part of the HRE and most territory was just gained by war in this time. So using the Deutschorden as the representation for the entire HRE would be a bad assumption. Following this logic France had to be represented by the templars.
The Teutonic knight is one of the most iconic German unit in the medieval ages. What unit else would you have given? Landsknecht is more renaissance.
Because they have teutonic knight doesnt mean they are Teutonic order. Every civ has 1 unique unit it cant always represent the entire civilization.
Okay you are just too much influenced by voltaire, first few centuries the HRE wasnt near the disunity you try to propose here. The emperor very well had power that disminised later on. Byzantium was powerful for most of its time yet we dont tell everyone Byzantium was small and only consisted of 1 city?
You can say what you want, but you can tell the not a single person beliefs the EU is a country or state to my society science teacher and to the people in favor of exiting the EU.
just to make this clear, according to the wikipedia definition HRE WOULD be considered a country:
A country is a distinct territorial body or political entity. It is often referred to as the land of an individual’s birth, residence or citizenship.
A country may be an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state,[1] as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, a physical territory with a government, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. It is not inherently sovereign.
Countries can refer both to sovereign states and to other political entities,[2] while other times it can refer only to states.[3] For example, the CIA World Factbook uses the word in its “Country name” field to refer to “a wide variety of dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, uninhabited islands, and other entities in addition to the traditional countries or independent states”.[4][note 1]
I dont see which of this boxes isnt ticked for HRE as this definition is VERY broad.
So its possible to see it as a contry. although strcitly speaking it wasnt, that definitiondesont explain why it isnt seen as one.
And regarding nations -
yes, The HRE fits Age - it fits it much much better than most other “civs” especially in the context of 4. You watch how empires were created and fell, what better place to start than the HRE?
@PalumbusRex is correct at what he says.
Confusion obviously abounds in some over the usage of the terms. Perhaps due to the current, modern notion of nation-state. In reality it was not until the late eighteenth century that the term acquired political overtones and highlighted civil bonds and allegiances over ethnic ties.
In objective terms, nations are cultural entities, i.e groups of people bound together by common language, religion, traditions and history.
If I’m not mistaken, what PalumbusRex argues is that he prefers to have nations in game, ethnic or cultural communities rather than political umbrellas. HRE does not fall under these criteria. Simple as that. Whether you guys agree or disagree is a discussion about the game’s civ design decisions. You stretched this out for no real reason.
I personally have no problem in seeing political structures that were major geopolitical players and imo that’s more accurate if we also want historical campaigns between them. For a game with limited and supposedly asymmetric civs, that’s probably a better decision.
I am more concerned by the fact that there’s no consistency in that decision, i.e we see the “Delhi Sultanate” but at the same time we see the “Chinese”, the “English” etc.
@UrbanizedGem684, absolutely true.
If they have already specialize the Indians, should they do the same with other peoples like the Chinese or the English, yes. But the difficulty with specializations is, that peoples with her certain state names then really should to coexist in the same historytime. In the current state of the game, however, this is not the case.
The development team should do still more research for the game until publication, otherwise the game will end badly. That worries me and it will resultm, that the game not going to be good in the terminal stage, if it stays that way.
Exactly, the actual disagreement is about civ design rather than historical facts, which makes this whole historical debate a bit irrelevant.
I also share your concerns regarding the inconsistency of the different civ naming (and thus design). All the more as there are strong rumors that HRE and “Abbasid Dynasty” are parts of the 4 remaining undisclosed civs, meaning we would have: English, Delhi Sultanate, Mongols, Abbasid Dynasty, Holy Roman Empire, Chinese - a terrible mix of ethnonyms, state and dynastic names. Why the hell?
Either you go for political/state names - Kingdom of England, Delhi Sultanate, Mongol Empire, Abbasid Caliphate, Holy Roman Empire, Chinese Empire - or like in AoE II you go for ethnonyms/demonyms/etc. but that would force the devs to make more precise civilisations, as for example “Holy Romans” or “Delhites” would make no sense, which means doing some historical research, something they’re obviously not into (I would go for English, Hindustanis, Mongols, Abbasids, Germans and Dutch (I’ll explain that final choice later), Chinese but whatever).
The problem with the political approach is that it inevitably leads to chronological inconsistency within the game timeframe (seemingly 5th to 16th or 17th century): the English Kingdom was born somewhere between the 9th and the 10th century, Delhi Sultanate in the early 13th century and disappeared in 1526, the Abbasid Caliphate 750-1258 (or up to 1517 under Mamluk yoke without any real power), the Mongol Empire(s) (which destroyed the latter) lasted less than two centuries (1206-1368), etc.
This is simply inconsistent, and it’s one of the reasons I prefer the cultural/ethnic approach which at least considerably reduces this chronological inconsistency. Of course the cultural approach has its flaws too but there is no perfect solution unfortunately.
Choosing civilisations all from the Middle Ages (and even antiquity) could be seen as a consistency with AoE II 
Aren’t all the new “civilisations” collective terms? All of them consisted of a broad range of cultures and principalities.
I really don’t know much about these non-european cultures but when considering that the HRE and (another) arab culture will be included, I will bet the Actecs will be next. I’m more familiar with them and they would fit perfectly in this form. They were a single city state that formed a big “country” in meso america trough a tributary system.
I am not sure if there is a real problem with the names being “Unprecise”.
The problem is rather design, because the devs want to incorporate specific CULTURAL traits into gameplay features specific to one Game Civ.
So “the Mongols” use horse archers, and therefore “the HRE” or “The Teutons” or whatever they will CALL them, will probably also have specific traits.
And I think in this case the naming is not to be as accurate as possible (although Age DID offer some historical correctness, it always made gameplay more important (see wallaces “Victory” in the campaign- For more correct info the game offered you to read about the civs etc)- the naming is there to better fit the gameplay.
So I guess if the devs will create a “Nation” of only certain traits/culture, as the main gameplay part, it will be called teutons (or similar). For example IF they decide to go with teutons, the main gameplay will porbably be focused on infantry and buffs around that section.(just using that as example from age 2, no historical knowledge here)
However IF the gameplay of the “Germanic”(which might also be possible) fits their overall traits more, they will be called like that.
And lastly, if for example you can craete something like different states within your civ as special game mechanic (for example a building you can place called “residence” which offers space for the “kings” of YOUR empire (maybe paying taxes or similar), THEN it would be called the HRE.
That is what I feel the devs are going for, and maybe you can see the reason why they interchange ethnonymes, states and dynasty names for each civ with that in mind?
Although I admit, I doubt it will be done like that, this seems the most reasonable explanation to me
I understand what you’re saying and I am aware that replacing distinct groups of people with broad political structures is a far from perfect approach. That could create an issue comparable to giving civ leaders in the Civilization series. Sooner or later you will end up with Alexander the Great or Cleopatra leading your civ in the modern era or starting with Roosevelt in antiquity.
I just think that the chronological order of progressing through the ages was never as strict or well defined in the Age of Empires series as for example in Civilization, let alone the scope difference.
For me, it has always been the same exact civ growing from weaker to stronger rather than evolving in a chronological manner. AoE hasn’t done that well in historical depictions to feel such a change. If they really decided to change this now… well we’ll see how it pans out and judge
Another possible solution would be to combine both cultural and political descriptions, similar to Crusader Kings III.
Or to design states and groups of people in a way that correspond to specific sub-parts of their history where all featured civs can at least roughly fall within the same timeframe and say that co-existed. Although, personally I would probably have no issue in seeing states that were at some point abolished while others kept on living for centuries, as long as they did even partially co-exist as major powers.
In any case, concessions have to be made from both sides and it’s up to the designers to find the golden ratio so as the civs to make the most sense and at the same time serve the needs of the game. Those rumors have only deteriorated my opinion on the matter but we’ll see. It may come out well or be a total mess.
I would guess that they will use a similar system as the chinese have. Every age you can pick from different emperors that will give you special units, structures or buffs.
I don’t see how they could implement the election of the monarch, what made the HRE so special in his time. You could think of a fiefdom system that you can convoke your vasalls time to time and then you get some extra knights.
@OneScarf5447393
On the contrary, I think that these new civs aim at being more precise than those of AoE II: English (which obviously don’t encompass Scotland and Wales) instead of Britons (who portrayed Britain as a whole, though there was some overlapping with the Celts), Delhi Sultanate (i.e. Indo-Islamic culture of Northern India) instead of Indians, etc.
As for Mongols and Chinese, both came from strong cultural nucleus and therefore can have their own civs without being necesarily “umbrellic” imo.
Regarding Aztecs, they had a quite short existence (c. 1200-1521). I’d prefer a Nahua civilisation. Nahuas are the group to which belongeg many cultures from Mesoamerica, notably Toltecs (c. 900-c. 1200) and Aztecs. That way it would be more inclusive and cover most of the game timeframe. I can see the civ being mostly Toltec in the early ages and evolving towards Aztec in later ones.
@Heinrich1996100
Thing is names are deeply related to design. I’d even go as far as saying that naming is the most important phase of design. I understand what you mean tho, although such mechanics could make the game a bit messy and clunky imo.
@UrbanizedGem684
This comparison with Civilization’s leaders is very pertinent (I had to laugh at the Roosevelt part).
Regarding chronological progression in AoE, it’s ambivalent. In AoE II, Dark Age was indeed pretty much a non-historical low technology phase (in spite of its name). But you could spot clearly historical changes through progression, for example the shields: kite shield in Feudal Age, heater shield in Castle Age and then late medieval shield in Imperial Age (Paladin). So it was a bit of both. For sure, having a merely technological progression (from weak to strong) would be much easier for the devs and won’t require as much compromises with the historical facts.
Finally, it’s indeed up to the designers… But I’m afraid we are much more qualified than them to this regard, just judging by the current civ names!
Maybe I didnt quite stick to the point I wanted to phrase-
either the devs are designing gameplay first, names second, or the other way. But since the civs gameplay according to them shallrepresent their Culture, I think the gameplay comes first with a general culture in mind, but no specific name yet.
thats how games are usually designed, mechanics first, story etc second.
But its also possible they do it the other way around here since age does focus around civs.
guess we will never know 
They do not cover Scotland but they do cover Wales
“Holy Roman Empire doesn’t fit the naming conventions of AoE” neither does the Delhi Sultanate and yet here we are. :I
Let’s add Ulm while we’re at it. Meanwhile West Africa has no civ so far confirmed. This is not Crusader Kings were every tiny entity is playable. It’s about the bigger picture, not some small feuds in my opinion.
Read the discussion.
If we can cross the civ cap in age2 maybe we get everything? Lol