I was only replying to someone else’s reference to it as a reply to my comment. I believe that’s fair on my end. Or perhaps I am not allowed to respond at all in that case?
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No, it is fair but if you’re so worried about going off-topic, why did you enter a debate that has nothing to do with mesoamerican civs?
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In my view it kind of ties into the topic of civ slots, which is precisely what meso civs lack right now because we can expect to get 4 European civs. I believe that this should not be the case, hence my arguments against over-emphasis on European civs’ contribution to medieval history.
Lol, glad you edited that, I was gonna say something about it, XD
Fair enough. If you would like, I would enjoy continued arguing semantics in a private conversation, because I completely do not understand why your definition of a battle is the way it is…
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The devs themselves have referred to the game has taking place during the “middle ages”. As in AOE1, 2, and 3, civs are given time frames that slightly extended into another historical era for the sake of accommodating existing civs. It might be silly to deny the French a technology was invented in 1501 simply on the basis that the middles age in many definitions ended at 1500 AD, an end date that is already arbitrary. This “periphery view” of the margins of the game’s setting is supported by the dev team via the lack of harquebusiers in the game.
However adding a civ that barely existed within the game’s primary setting (note I said “primary” in my first post) is on another level altogether. The choice of the US civ in AOE3 was widely panned for the same reason that I wouldn’t think Aztecs to be a good for the game.
I love the Mesoamerican civs as much as anyone, and I hope to see them in the game in an expansion pack or two - but the fact is is that they’re all located on not just another continent, but another landmass entirely from the rest of the civilizations in the game.
If they had been in the base roster, Relic would either have had to include either Spain (who, let’s be honest, is largely superseded by France and the HRE in this period) or a couple of those civs at once to make sure they actually had a playable campaign. And honestly, to make a good campaign you’d probably want 3 or 4 of those civs for variety - and I’m sorry, but there aren’t that many slots open when you need to represent the big players in Europe and Eurasia first (even if you leave out the English).
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This is a fallacy. You don’t need a full civ to do a great campaign, that’s why custom units exist - or units we think are custom until a later DLC arrives.
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I dont care about the campaigns at all. If I play them, I play them once and forget them. I care about well made, unique, and interesting civs that I can fall in love with. The historical connective tissue among the civs is barely a factor to me. Age of Empires is a fantasy set in the real world with real units. It feels really eurocentric to ignore entire continents at launch.
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You’re right, you can use custom units to add some flavor to a campaign without necessarily requiring a full civ. But remember, these campaigns are going to be longer than the ones from AoE2 - with 35 missions promised over 4 campaigns, that’s around 7-9 missions per campaign. Do you REALLY want a campaign that long made up entirely of mirror matches between various Aztec players (assuming they’re first), even with custom units involved?
And if you go with the more expected route of having both Aztecs and Spanish, then which two civs do you replace? The English I’ll give you, since I think they were somewhat isolated and pretty similar to the French, but everyone else on the roster ranks as among the more important empires in the Medieval world (heck, we’re even missing some like the Byzantines that really should be there).
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Yes, I don’t mind 7-9 missions around one civ and its custom counterparts if it’s well written.
I’d take out English and Chinese in favor of an american and an african civ. Or maybe I’d take out Mongols and do a “The Chinese & The Customs” campaign about chinese history to elaborate its dynasty system 
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no meso civs…so dissapointed , why why
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The center of the world in the Middle Ages was East Asia. Europe in the Middle Ages was in a dark period. It was neither powerful nor advanced. An Ottoman Turkish Empire could block the land links between Europeans and Asia for hundreds of years. The Europeans had to go to the sea and unexpectedly ushered in the success of the later industrial age. In the middle ages, the most advanced things were all in East Asia. Chinese cities were much more advanced than European cities. Why compare them with European cities…
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Nope.
Also nope. The center was the Mediterranean, just like in Antiquity. East Asia was isolated, the only thing that came out of it, that affected the rest of the world directly, was the Mongols and the Turks they brought.
Which backfired spectacularly.
Nope. Industrial Age came after the Modern Age, which came after the Age of Discovery. You are skipping 2 whole Ages, before the Industrial Age, and you can even subdivide the Modern Age into the Early Modern and Enlightenment Ages.
Nope. In the 1300s, Gunpowder, ship building, blacksmithing and map making, were more advanced in Europe and the Middle East, than in China. Guns in Europe evolved faster in 100 years, than in 500 in East Asia.
Larger, yes. More advanced?
The Mongols ended up ruling China, but the Hungarians broke them.
When Subotai got to Germany, he saw so many well defended Castles, that he went back because it would take decades to get through them all, and it would break the Horde through starvation.
European cities were so well defended, and had such innovative defenses, that even the Mongols hated besieging them, and just chose to raid villages.
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Medieval Europe was not all that wonder pop culture likes to print, nor was in 10, 100 or even 1000 years of Dark Age. The deconstruction of the Dark Age conception is something you can get in any book about that time. Really any book.
Yep. The only thing Dark, and about the “Dark Ages”, was that Europe was broken up into several small kingdoms which were constantly battling each other for survival and hegemony,
If that is a “Dark Age” then China, renown for massive civil wars and constantly breaking up into small states, spent more than half of it’s entire History in several Dark Ages.
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Well we got Abbasid Caliphate which is African also.
What!? They are africans as much as the inca are meso-americans and russians are mediterraneans
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It is not African, it is Asian. Is Spain American because it conquered most of it?
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Are Egypt and Libya not African countries?
Do you consider Russian Federation European country? Or Eurasian?
European. Their culture, religion, language and founding pople, are all European.
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