Many of the new civ names are inconsistent with the originals in that way but the point remains, all the civs are named after groups of people - Saracens instead of ‘Abbasid Caliphate,’ Dravidians instead of ‘Chola Empire,’ etc
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But they spoke a different language, were ethnically a different people, and you can argue that their interaction with different cultures lead to differences in their military.
Bulgars were a Turkic group that give the name to the region. They eventually merged with the more numerous local people to form “Bulgarians”.
So they are both names of peoples groups, not political entities.
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I guess there is no such thing as the Swiss as they speak different languages and are ethnically different people.
Phoenicians and Berbers from North Africa and Celts from the British islands were not the same ethnically, too. And even though that by Theodosius times Romanization was almost complete in North Africa, there was a non insignificant minority still not speaking latin.
I’ll go even further than StoreyedPlate74 and, as DoctBacghi said, the Empire was one. Maybe too crudely, imagine a Federate State with two states, but instead of having a head of state and head of government, the glueing is not theNAtional Government, but the IDEA of Rome.
Eastern and Western Roman Empires are a modern construction
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It was arguably a noble lie to preserve the legitimacy of some institutions and idealisms. That said it is fair game to refer to the Byzantines as the Eastern Romans, so long as it is remembered that they were the Romans.
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It should be noted that at different times, cities such as Athens and later Alexandria were seen as the intellectual centers of the Empire. Not intellectual centers of conquered peoples, but of the empire as a whole.
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And how the would be made? Like there are no differences between the late antiquity WRE and ERE, as they shared everything…
The term byzantine isn’t wrong, it’s like calling the native americans indians, it’s incorrect but it have it’s reasons and made them inside the history books, so it’s still gives us informations and allows us to distinct between late antiquity and middle ages.
The point is that there isn’t a reason to add WRE in aoe2, as there wasn’t really a split, a moment when one entity become two.
It would make far more sense to split the Italians in city states as for an example, as they had way less cultural unity then the two parts of the roman empire.
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I think the main reason why I’m personally against adding the Western Romans is that, in AoE2’s timeline, they were a dying empire and long past their haydays, unlike pretty much every civ in the game (maybe bar the Cumans). Adding an empire that was way past it’s golden years and slowly collapsing in a game that is fundamentally about the formation of powerful kingdoms just doesn’t feel right…
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I called it Western because I envisioned it representing in the campaigns the portion of the empire that fell. It could be called just Romans, representing the East too, but that’s not the issue.
But as @YolkyPage166 said, Rome was falling by AOE2’s time. The timeline is just too short to have Rome and build its empire. And his comment made me realize a Roman Dark Age just doesn’t feel right 
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Well, the Kingdom of Soissons was arguably Roman Dark Age (and it didn’t go well for them).
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Goths make sense, they were around in the 8th century
However, a Historical Battle about them…yummy
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Instead of adding the Western Roman Empire, they could instead split up the Byzantines into two;
Italic Roman Empire in like with the current architecture set, inspired by Byzantine Venice and Southern Italy (Bari), with fire ship bonus, perhaps infantry focused.
The other would be an Eastern-centered Byzantine Empire, focused on the Byzantine-Arab border with light cavalry border guards, steppe mercenaries, horse archers.
AoEO would like to have a word.
I am not sure I follow what you mean. Didn’t Emperor Diocletian formally separate the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire and assign each a separate emperor in 293 CE?
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I need to fact check this post.
As I understand it, Diocletian was Emperor of the East (known as an augustus) (with Galerius his named successor, in the title of his caesar) while Maximian was Emperor of the West with Constantius I his caesar.
Regardless, I don’t understand how one would say the concept is a modern construction.
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The East and the West cooperated poorly during the fall of the western empire, but the idea of a dual Emperorship itself is not incongruent with one Rome.
When in doubt, keep a copy of History of the Byzantine State on hand by George Ostrogorsky. I could be misremembering on that prior post.