If a game is popular enough it will be a commercial success to support future development.
Diversity is perhaps an overused word in this day and age and not the best choice. By diversity I mean anything other than cookie cutter civs and gameplay.
The series has sold well in Europe so it makes sense to have European civs so players feel part of a game based on history but there are more stories to tell around the world. How many times are we going to hear about Joan of Arc?
You know what, even in terms of interesting stories to tell if you don’t have the metric of Medieval power as @AndyPXIII rightfully complains about, you could pick e.g. Swiss.
Would that make sense as addition? As a Swiss, I don’t think so. I could write a lengthy paragraph about how Swiss shaped the world of today with the Halberd, but would that make them worthy of inclusion?
Just because a faction is European doesn’t make it automatically relevant.
The English did not interact with all the civilizations in the game but yes with many. But the Americans were completely isolated and did not fight against any.
It is ridiculous to put a civilization that did not interact with any other (European, Asian or arab) above a significant number of relevant civilizations.
There were literally two continents worth of empires they were interacting with.
So tell me which civs outside of their neighbours the English interacted with?
You could have Maya, Aztec and Tarascans in the base game and there wouldn’t be that issue.
And I’m not talking about the British Empire of the 19th century.
First: the only need to interact with their neigbourds if they interacted with others. Saying they only interacted with their neighbors to downplay is a fallacy.The problem of the Americans is that they were isolated on their continent
Second: they interacted with Arabs during the crusades
No mesoamerican civilisations initially at launch isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If the game does well in terms of critical reception and depending on how well civilisation diversity is, then I could see them as some DLC content in the future.
Because to be frank, I would like more than just “no cavalry, here’s a man covered in feathers and extend the use of the wheel so they can have proper siege weaponry.” Granted I know little about their culture which is all the more reason to make them exotic instead of just being a clone with few differences, no?
The isolation argument is stupid for two reasons.
If you add civs from a region, they’re automatically not isolated. E.g. if the base game would contain only South+South East Asian civs, Franks would be isolated.
The English never fought against the Chinese but apparently having Aztecs fighting the English is too much for certain people.
Then why claim that your game is asymmetric in the first place? If it’s AOE2 with fancier graphics, it won’t captivate people for long.
Why do you think this? Just wondering, I’m not defending them 
Yes but you get more money selling crumb by crumb rather than one chunk.
I agree with both parts of this 
AoM is the best because of its diversity.
Exactly, but sadly most history taught is Western Europe. Some Eastern European history would be great. Schools only touch the bare basics, and it’s almost always Western Europe or Asia. Perhaps why many lose interest in History - they hate being taught ridiculous boring crap for 14 years.
I sum this up with a quote:
“I love learning, but hate being taught”
English never fought against Chinese but they fight against, Franks, Nords, arabs,…
Americans fiought against … another Americans who in turn fought against … Americans
If you can’t catch the interest from the community from day one it’s over. There’s no second chance at a first impression.
Yeah and one European faction fought mostly against one other European factions.
The Coat of Arm between them is so different.
That’s why I would like AoE4 to be more than just a fancier AoE2. Asymmetric design is far more interesting and allows for more creative freedom but I recognise balance is also a powerful argument.
But as I meant to imply, I’m all for more civilisations but I would prefer if they were just more than the aforementioned aspect.
I respect this opinion but it’s no excuse to not include a Precolumbian civ at launch.
English didn’t just fight Europeans. Also against Arabs.
But for you to understand, for example the English fought against the French, the French fought against the Germans, the Germans fought against the Mongols, the Mongols fought against the Chinese, etc … There you have a network … The problem of the Americans is that they only fought against Americans and were isolated.
And why should this be absolutely necessary if both ends of the chain are not connected to each other directly?
It is not a chain, it is a network. Since civilizations were not limited to fighting with just one. All the civilizations that the game will bring fought against two or more from that list.
And it is necessary because civilizations have to be related to each other for campaigns to make sense. And so that apart from making unreal confrontations you can also do historical fights.
If you were to enter Americans, there should be several together to interact with each other and, advisably, Spanish to be their link with the rest of the world.
We’re likely to see every civ utilised in one of the campaigns.
If you include a south american civ, you force yourself to include a campaign that accommodates them.
Who do you put in that campaign? Well you could have two different south american civs, but otherwise you’re basically forced to add spain or portugal because the other civs didn’t really interact much with south america (you could maybe argue France at a push).
So the question is this:
You have England, India, Mongolia, and China. You’re almost certainly going to have to include a middle-eastern civ. That leaves you with 3 civs left to pick.Who do you choose?
We don’t have India. We have the muslim invaders who occupied India for a while. But that’s a completely different bag of snakes.