I want to see Korean things in the game, so I don’t expect them to be a complete civilization.
We clearly know that AoE3 is not suitable for having a large number of civilizations, and the number of active players today is not easy to attract Microsoft’s willingness to invest in the long-term, so in my opinion it is eventually very likely not to exceed 30 civilizations.
For now, the game already has 11 Europeans, 4 Native Americans, 3 Asians, 2 Africans, and 2 Revolutionaries, for a total of 22 civilizations. However, we still have Danes, Polish-Lithuanians, Mapuches, Safavids of Persians, Omanis of Arabs, Siamese, Kongolese, Zulu, Brazilians, etc. more suitable and more popular candidates. Based on this premise, many Asian sovereign entities that were not as powerful as the surrounding countries (China, Japan, India), such as Joseon of Koreans, Ryukyu Kingdom, Vietnam, Burma and so on, are better to become mercenaries or minor civs than to compete for the meager chance of becoming a complete one.
In fact, it’s the mercenary and minor civ mechanics in the game that indeed represent the rich amount of diversity that AoE3 covers, with units from far more than 22 kingdoms, empires, tribes and organizations. To me, their presence is actually what makes the game really appealing.
It is already a very common and reasonable practice to use the mercenary mechanic to represent a unit of a country adjacent to a civilization. On the other hand, the introduction of European royals also gave those small countries a model. This is not a waste at all. On the contrary, it can save the essence and introduce the symbol that best represents the country into the game. Moreover, there’s no need to spend a lot of resources on research and development, and there’s no risk of misinterpreting the culture or making the game unbalanced.
What’s more, we could even try to introduce a new kind of minor civ. Like the trade post on the Silk Road is a variant of the trade post on the general trade route, we can also provide such variants for the small countries. What I imagine is that it will bring more content to the King of the Hill mode.
In the center of the map, there will be a landmark such as a fortress, palace or wonder of the small country (e.g. Koreans), protected by many of their units as guardians. Players need to take down those guardians in order to hold the Landmark, which is like forcing them to ally by force, and long-term alliance with the host country is equivalent to winning on the map. Additionally, once no player’s units are near the Landmark for a short period of time, they will break free from being controlled, interrupt the player’s countdown, revert to neutrality, and respawn guardians.
To go deeper, the Landmark can fire the enemy, and at the Landmark, players can train up to 6 types of their land units, research up to 8 techs and a 2x2 big button, and even provide their ship units for docks. (Here the turtle ships you are!) This makes them similar to the current minor civ mechanics, but has a completely different meaning. They’ll have richer content, be more important and determine the game. Imagine the Chinese and Japanese vying the palace of Joseon for an alliance with the host of the map Korea for getting their units and victory, and the Joseon will also try to take autonomy back once the Chinese and Japanese get too far from the palace.
The current KotH mode isn’t much fun other than fighting over a fortress named King’s Hill that can’t train units and fire. Therefore, the introduction of the landmarks of the small host countries also brought changes to it. The King’s Hill will become able to fire and train the player’s civilization’s units like a real fort, to essentially align with the landmarks. And we don’t have to worry about it being hold too early, because it will also be protected by a large number of guardians (maybe Outlaw Musketeers or even the Boneguard units) just like landmarks. Landmarks will also be available in KotH mode for any map, just like King’s Hill. For example, it is also possible that the palace of Joseon can randomly appear in the Nile Valley, Carolina or France, not just in the Korea. In this way, they don’t have to be limited by the limit of 5 maps required for a minor civ.