Yeah I’m sure Relic has a handful of Starbucks drinkers on staff that would be overjoyed at the notion of filling a quota but that is irrelevant when the Mali Empire would fit regardless. I have no doubt that the Mali would’ve been chosen for a civ back in 2002 if AOE2 had enough expansions.
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If your going to try and talk about history maybe you should at least have a basic knowledge on it.
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Actually, they were already in Iron Age.
Songhai was very advanced in technology. They had canoes, protective armor and iron weapons.
Archeologist, asserts that “more and more numerous datings are pushing back the beginning of iron production in Africa to at least the middle of the second millennium BC, which would make it one of the world’s oldest metallurgies.
Some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3,000 and 2,500 BCE.
By that time Stonehenge and Great Pyramid of Giza was build, they had already Iron Age.
Why? Tuʻi Tonga Empire is very well researched.
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That’s a great post. This franchise is at its best when it explores civs from all over, especially those great civs many of us rarely have studied.
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I would be quite sad if they added any of this before the more expected civs. I would definitely expect Vikings, Italians, Spanish, Byzantines, Portuguese, Koreans, Japanese, Aztecs, Incas, etc to be added before any of this stuff.
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“I would be quite sad if they added any of this before the more expected civs”
exactly this , it would be expected tho considering the current political climate
What is it that you all have with Vikings? That is not a culture or a political entity. It is like saying that they should add pirates as a faction to the game.
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Well, it is more easily relatable than naming each of the factions per name. I would absolutely be overjoyed if they added something less generic than ‘Vikings’, but I’ll take what I can get 
(either way, most people roughly have the same idea of what is meant when one refers to Vikings, so I’d prefer not to get stuck up with semantics here)
No that’s not the same, the Vikings clearly had a shared culture, religion and language and they made a huge impact on their surroundings.
Vikings were just pirates that came from Scandinavia. There is this huge historical misconception that there was a big viking culture. That is plainly wrong. Vikings were just a small part of the people that we would nowadays call Norse.
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“just pirates”? Thats ridiculous. Maybe you need to do some research on the subject first
There was no such thing as a Viking culture.
The game should get Danes instead, which would cover the Viking Age (literally Pirate/Raider Age) and beyond.
Vikings as a civ is fantasy. Pirates are not a civilization, they are bands of international outlaws.
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The vikings ruled in England, Ireland, Scotland, Northern France, Ukraine, Russia, ruled the Baltic sea, thats pretty good for just pirates
Well, there is no thing as a Viking nation. But obviously many of these nations had similar shared traits, i.e. shared culture and similar languages, so there must be some reason why they are referred to in a collective.
But yes, Danes would be a decent addition, I think 
I personally don’t care if it will be Danes, Vikings, or something else, as long as it will be something related to a(the) civilization(s) of the Viking Age. The semantics of the subject are unimportant to me, it’s a video game afterall.
“There was no such thing as a Viking culture.”
Ofc there was, when you have a shared language and Gods you have a shared culture.
Thank you. There are ao many people believing because of pop culture that the Vikings were some kind of civilization or that they were a big part of the Scandinavian culture at that time. While historians claim today that they were actually just a very small part of the Norse culture.
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It was not the Vikings that conquered these lands but the Norse. The word “Viking” just referres to Norse pirates which is a totally different thing.
They were known as Vikings and people know them today as Vikings. Why do you have a problem with that?
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The Vikings were mostly christian, and were not united at all, they were roving boat gangs, that stole loot from coastal towns, and brought it back to their bases in Scandinavia.
Norse was a culture, Vikings was not.
Viking was a “job”. A Viking civ is the same as a Carpenter civ, or a Wagon Driver civ.
At most, the Viking could be a unit for a Danes or Norse civ.
There is also the huge misconception that they were Pagan, when most Vikings were actually Christian, and got called heathens because they targetted Churches and Monateries.
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“Viking was a “job”. A Viking civ is the same as a Carpenter civ, or a Wagon Driver civ.”
THat is how you see it that is not how I see it. This viking was a job thing is something new.
And no they were not christian during the Viking age that is the hole reason for it being a Viking age LOL. THey stopped being known as Vikings when they converted from their old Gods to the Christian God
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