These civs are kinda off , both from a historical/time line* and gameplay wise. First off, malta is just a faction duct taped together with assets from the first campaign so no new content here, aside from the sentinel, explorer model and the cards/bonus. This is a big no no when this is part of a DLC. Further more, the island and it’s, while governed by the hospitalers, they were in fact subjects of the crown of aragon and therefore under spanish influence which segways into my next point, the “tongues” cards as the majority of knights and grand masters were either french/spaniards/ italians. Now you could argue that the maltese and italians civilizations, as the game depicts, but in my opinion the deves should have scraped malta and divided the italians into 2 civs, one keeping the design of the current italians and the other being the sicilians/ neapolitans and being overall similar to malta but with some spanish/french cards and some italian/ croatians mercs.
- I know that the kingdom of Italy was established in the 1800’s and mexico also gained it’s independence in the same century and i consider these, much like the usa, the exceptions to the norm since I’ve always considered the standard timeline of the game to be since the italian-wars and to end with the conclusion to the Napoleonic wars. Therefore I think it would have been more sensible to have 2 italian civs , one to turtle and boom and the other more flexible but still defensive since that is the Italian way.