The civs won’t be deleted even people don’t want them.
Things are happened. Don’t stop, just keep moving on.
The very first, easiest and most possible thing is to make the 3K civs more accurate and balanced.
No matter what, a civ should be accurate to what they represent and be balanced when they are in ranked, whether it is in the base game or in a separated mode. I’ve created a topic for this: Move on and make Three Kingdoms more accurate and balanced. At least the 3K fans can be more satisfied.
The second thing is to introduce new civs based on neighboring groups of medieval China.
Particularly like Bai, Tibetans, and a Khitangut split. Don’t use those groups to “rename” the 3K civs since that is making the civs neither decent to 3K nor decent to the medieval groups. Bring them as their own civs properly. Even if the 3K won’t be moved, we still can enjoy what we’ve been long for.
The last and most difficult thing is to move the 3K out from the ranked, from the base game.
This is definitely going to disappoint the 3K fans as that was promised in the promotions. But at least we would have already brought the more accurate 3K and other new multiplayer civs at the time so perhaps that could become more acceptable.