Let’s talk about Civ representation from Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.
There are 2 big Regions, that are for various reasons not so easy to depict in a medieval game. Where “Interactions” during medieval times were mostly between each other and technological gap compared to other regions was big. Also there is a “huge” issue with available information material.
So how could those regions be represented in AoE4?
Songhai is 15-16th century. It’s probably not the best candidate. Or they could eventually be referenced in the final age of Mali Empire, which is way more in the time-frame (8th - 14th) and could be a more fitting pick.
+1 I think AoE4 should “keep” something exotic in its sleeve for future DLCs.
Also Ghana, Mali and Songhai sounds like a good Expansion pack after America.
still, Mali is an huge name, probably the most famous subsaharian empire. And perfectly cover 8th century to 14th, so they are likely to happen at some point.
I’m not sure what franchise you all think you are playing but in the 23 years I’ve been playing this one it’s patently obvious that there’s never been a requirement that a civilization meet some political scientist’s definition of an empire to be included.
btw, cool artworks, but for the trivia, the architecture you can see in the background of the artworks are Malian, Songhai are really the “successors” of Malian accomplishments. They are a really good pick, but I see them more as last age of a Mali-Songhai civ ! Ghana Empire, pre-Mali, is interesting, but sadly we don’t have enough informations and enough remains about them. I don’t think we even know anything about their military.
Mali-Songhai and Ethiopians, are probably two solid candidates, imo
I always enjoy when actual historians wade into the bloody mess of lay people:
“The Three Age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) and its variants were created to classify the prehistoric archaeological record of Europe, and to lesser extent the Near East. It’s used with modification across much of the Old World but it isn’t a universally applicable schema. Notably it’s completely useless when it comes to the New World, so asking why Native Americans remained in the Stone Age is akin to asking why Europe never progressed past the Warring States period into the Qin dynasty.”
Have you ever heard of a little someone called Mansa Musa? The King of Bling?
Nobody is suggesting that they add ill-fitting civs to meet some PC quota, but sub-Saharan Africa had some legitimate empires that would fit well in the game. Try reading about the Mali with an open mind and you might change your mind.
Mansa musa is up there with modern billionaires in terms of richest people of all time, this was mainly caused by the abundance of gold in west Africa, certainly a cold civ choice.
