I would go with: Zimbabweans, Kongolese
They didn’t use Cavalry, so a regional Infantry unit would be nice Swahili, Somalis
Both were Muslims, also they ruled the Indian ocean trade Songhai, Mossi
The Songhai come with their big enemies Hausa, Kanembu
Big enemies of each other, neighbours
There are some civs left: Yoruba, Igbo, Ashanti, Senegalese, Uganda, Benin, Funj, Daju, Fulani etc.
I’d add a Yoruba civ that covers Benin, Igbo and every Yoruba state.
The Ashanti should be a aoe3 civ probably. Funj+Daju probably make sense as an umbrella civilization. Uganda and Senegalese could be good too. Fulani is more aoe3 imo.
Those aspects can be invented to fit balance. Have been made before many times.
They could be a naval + trade civ with some market mechanic and then compliment that with a generic and broad tech tree. smth like portuguese.
They have modified so many things of the game that we would have thought impossible some years ago, so I don’t think they won’t be able to overcome the civ limit cap.
The 50 total civs limit should be rather seen as a realistic cap for what we can expect in regards to new dlcs. It’s ok if someone would like to see 10 new african civs and india divided in 7 different ones, but that goes beyond a realistic discussion and steps into the territory of what if.
That said I can see a second african dlcs with somalis, kanembus and swahilis. Nubians would play similar to ethiopians and hausas similiar to kanembus.
Probably wanted to add the civ just because it is interesting. The 100 years war fascinates a lot of people, so Burgundians was basically what you would call the ‘low hanging apple’, but in a good way, imho it was a great choice.
The Sicilian Kingdom was pretty powerful for a while, able to resist pressure both from the HRE and the Byzantine Empire, so it’s not like they were a completely insignificant entity (and the Campaign turned out to be good fun imho).
Userpatch is the thing that made most of these so called impossible things a reality DE still doesn’t have all the features from it. slots 49 50 are random and team random options so it unlikely it would be moved to go beyond 48 civis.