The Aztecs did not invent farming, that is what all farmers do everywhere.
The Romans, The Greeks and the Chinese all built sewer systems, before the Aztecs.
This is so cool, because I can tell you are super new to this area of history.
The Inca controlled perhaps 10 million people, speaking a hundred different tongues. It was the largest empire on earth at the time. They controlled insanely disparate regions, from the Andes mountains, the coastline deserts, and the Amazon jungle.
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Wait, no one said that they invented agriculture, I just said that the Aztecs and Incas improved through artificial selection and through soil use (in the case of the Incas they experimented with altitude and humidity) the corn that you know today, without them, modern corn would never have existed, including popcorn.
They also developed the technique of its preparation, nixtamalization, unknown throughout the old world (which is why even after being introduced in Europe it was not consumed by humans until recent times) and that is used by the large production chains of corn-based foods, such as doritos.
Inca platforms where altitude was experimented
If nixtamalization were not used, the corn would be toxic and impossible to eat, my grandmother made it using lime, obviously taught by her ancestors
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Yes, but it’s still an interesting thing because most of europe did not have it.
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Did I say they did not have a big empire or that they are not worthy being in the game, all I am saying is that saying they are more worthy to be in the game then the English is silly.
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Genuine naïveté about the importance of the American empires is proof itself of how AoE has failed its fans.
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England sucked until they built a navy. We aren’t speaking English because of the Middle Ages. England was relatively minor then.
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Here’s England’s population in 1000 CE – tied for 18th, and this is even after we heavily discount civs in the Americas for lack of a surviving historical record. But see the Toltec dwarfing them with almost four times the size.
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Europeans in history are better represented in the modern media because of their cultural significance in the modern age.
People can immediately come up with several distinct cultural icons when talking about medieval Engalnd, France, Iberia, etc. not because they are really more diverse than the rest of the world like say, different parts of feudal China, or central Asia, or the Americas, but because they are better represented in modern media. Not to mention many of these icons are constructs of modern entertainment.
For example, one stereotype of medieval France is “they have better heavy cavalry than other Europeans”. Is that entirely true? That might be the first impression many people come up with when talking about medieval France because almost every single video game says so.
On the other hand, which part of ancient China had better cavalry than other the parts? One needs to really dig into literature to find out.
In the Genghis Khan campaign of AOE2, Song (Han people), Liao (Khitan people) and Jin (Jurchen people) are all represented as “Chinese”, with the same traits and bonuses, but each of these states are larger than several feudal European states combined. However people still have the feeling they are the same. Is the difference between medieval England and France really larger than that between Song and Liao, or even within the Song dynasty itself?
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Extremely well said.
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French have good cavalry and English archer is because of some legend for example:
when the French capture an English archer they cut off his fingers, it make sense too because of how the territory of England is
Cavalry for French is same as english for territory purpose and the conquest and probably because it come many time in French story. First Frank people was horseback rider too
Who gives a flying pug?
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I know all these, and they are popularized by modern media.
I believe you can dig into say Chinese history and find one province or feudal state of ancient China having better cavalry and another having better archers. Same with Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, or the Americas (they had no cavalry though, but you can replace it with anything else).
But there have not been many modern legends or entertainment tropes that popularize them and turn them into cultural icons. For example Total War Three Kingdom had almost the same unit set throughout China. That’s partly because the Romance of Three Kingdoms itself was more character based and didn’t pay a lot of attention to the military practices in different states and regions, etc. (because it was a legend written by someone more than 1000 years later), and modern games, TV series and movies did not make much effort to differentiate most of them either.
As another example, a lot of movies about ancient Rome in mid 20th century had soldiers wearing the iconic lorica segmentata, whatever period it portrays. Then in Rome Total War they intentionally differentiate late republican/early imperial and late imperial legions, but the portrayal of Egypt was still a mess. Then ~10 years later in Rome 2 there was a more accurate Hellenistic Egypt of that period. Without those games I would consider the entire ancient Rome or ancient Egypt as “the same”, with icons like legions with lorica segmentata or chariot riders with striped headcloth. These cultural or historical tropes can be constructed or reconstructed, if entertainment business really have the intention and the ability to sell them.
When modern entertainment explore deeper into these areas, cultural icons similar to “English longbowmen vs French knights” would emerge for these parts of history as well.
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We don’t need a token European civ to appreciate non-European empires.
In some way, saying we need Spain with Maya is saying they only got relevant/did important stuff when they entered in contact which is stupid.
I have the exact same debates on how lame the recent AOE2 DLCs are but apparently some people have a very narrow view on the history of the Middle Ages.
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Each European state was diverse from another 
We can finish the rest over time 
Now this is a straw man. Which dev refused?
We do Medieval Europe + Asia, then Africa, then America.
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I can understand why there are no American Civilisations in the base game.
All civilisations that were revealed so far have the same core units, including the Mongols:
Infantry:
- Spearman (I)
- Heavy Infantry (III)
Ranged:
- Archer (II)
- Crossbow (III)
- Hand Cannon (IV)
Cavalry:
- Scout (I)
- Horseman (II)
- Knight (III)
Siege:
- Ram (II)
- Siege Tower (II)
- Mangonel (III)
- Trebuchet (IV)
- Cannon (IV)
There seem to be a few more variations like maybe multiple cannons for some civilisations and maybe a second type of Castle Age siege weapon like a Scorpion.
In AoE2 the American civilisations loose access to cavalry and gunpowder units but can still build crossbows and siege units.
In AoE3 the Aztecs and Inca get a very unique set of units to make up for not having cavalry and cannons.
I think in AoE4 they won’t do something completely unhistorical like giving the Aztecs or Mayans catapults.
I assume they want to come up with a new set of generic units that can be shared between multiple American civilisations, like the Aztecs, Mayan and Zapotec. (Inca are a bit far away)
They could have units like slingers and javelin throwers to replace the Crossbow and Hand cannon in some way without just being a reskin.
Cavalry can be replaced by shock infantry like Eagle Warriors or Coyote runners. But also in this case they shouldn’t just be a resking.
Maybe thy come up with a more unique system.
Siege is harder to replace, because how do they get on top of walls without siege towers, how are they going to get though walls without rams and how are they going to destroy castles without trebuchets.
I can see why they decided to no directly add them in the base game. They had to choose and they left out a lot of fan favourite civilisations like the Byzantines too.
This is why I’m more disappointed that they didn’t add an African civilisations like the Ethiopians.
They could have easily gotten all the generic units.
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You are right. And btw, the abasids are an african civ. Northern african. They are just furious no aouth american civ is in the game…dela with it
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I can’t understand why people comment if they didn’t read what is being talked about. It’s not that hard to first acknowledge what’s the matter of this post
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