Imagine this reader, you’re an Serbian/Croatian vaguely familiar with some basic medieval history and modern geopoliticals that has recently being introduced to this strange old classic RTS game called “Age of Empires 2”, you open the Civ selection menu up and seeing how you’re unfamiliar with what civs are good or not, you try to find the civ that is most similar to your own nationality, after scrolling through the menu and finding the cool looking ones based upon Slavic peoples called “Bulgarians, Poles and Bohemians” you stumble upon one just bluntly named “Slavs”.
“Well surely this is just blanket for all the other Slavic civs that have yet to be added into the game”, but then you look at the coat of arms which is the same one used for modern Ukraine, the names of the unique techs, one of them referencing the eastern orthodox church that mainly Southern and Eastern Slavic peoples followed (The Poles and Bohemians were Catholic for instance), the other one referencing a kind of retinue exclusively employed by the Rus states, you then look at the unique unit and it’s clearly referencing the feudal ranking common to Eastern Slavs, but not Western Slavs like the Poles and Bohemians.
Then you play an game with the Civ, and they’re clearly speaking Russian (A language that has very few differences with Ukranian and Belarusian) with a few archaic words. The bonuses reference the fertile lands of Ukraine, the wonder is an Medieval Russian Church and the tech tree of the Civ is clearly referencing the focus on heavily armoured Cavalry and Infantry that the Medieval Kievan Rus armies had, but not the gunpowder usage of the Serbians, or the naval prowess of the Croats (Both slavs). It’s a Civ that is clearly Kievan Rus in every concievable way except the history section and its naming, yet it’s still called “Slavs”.
Overwhelmed with curiosity you then open up the AOE2 wikia and read through all the Slavic civs articles, you find that out that the reason why “Slavs” are named as such was due to them being the only civ being based on an Slavic people back in Age of Empires 2 HD, but it’s being years since then and there are now civs based upon Bulgarians, Poles and Czechs which are all Slavic people, yet still this name remains that which promises Slavs overall, but only gives Eastern Slavs in reality.
Of course this is an fantastical telling, but it summarises why the Slavs name should be changed to “Rus, Ruthenians, Kievan Rus, Ukranians, East Slavs” whatever. Not because it’s historically inaccurate (it technically is accurate), but because it communicates outright incorrect information about the game and the civ, due to the existence of the Bulgarians, Bohemians and Polish Civs. It wouldn’t take much effort on the part of the devs, because the only change required would be an name change due to the previously mentioned reasons. Some people disagree and think it would result in having all civs being requiring to be renamed, but that isn’t the case and you know why?
Because Italians, Indians, Teutons, etc are the only representations of what their name specifically refers to, using Indians as an example there is no seperate “Mughals, Tamils, Rajputs, etc” civ that also exists alongside the pre-existing Indians. Indians are the only civ that represents Indians therefore it’s fine for them to be named as such historical representation memery asides, This is not the case with the Slavs and it results in unnecessary confusion that however slight does result in an very real issue with this game’s presentation and should be fixed because of that.
Also for those wondering about the Dracula Campaign Romanians/Wallachians are not Slavs, they speak a language that belongs to an fundamentally different group (Romance Language), they are distinct ethnically from Slavs (descendant from Native Dacians and Romans hence Romanian) and are about as closely related to them as Magyars/Hungarians are to them. Slavs were used in the Dracula Campaign because there wasn’t a great option to represent Romanians, they’re geographically closest to Romania, and they couldn’t use Magyars or Turks for the whole campaign due to Story reasons