Lol I surely don’t 
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I personally think it’s ok when the game has a strong focus on Europe but a strong focus shouldn’t be 50% or even more in my opinion.
If we look at the world population which in a pre industrial society was usually nearly equivalent to the relative economic power we can see how important some areas of the world were.
List of countries by population in 1000
List of countries by population in 1500
Estimates of historical world population
From 1000-1500 China made up nearly 1/4 of the world population and probably an even larger part of the world economy. Which was about twice that of all of Europe.
But we also see that the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Kingdom of France where also important on a global scale.
But I think also need to account for area. A high population density area like China made a surprisingly homogeneous culture. (There were and are a lot of Minorities in China but they are Minorities)
So having multiple Chinese civilisations wouldn’t make much sense.
Mongols had a very small population but they conquered a lot of land.
Rus also had a relatively small population compared the the area they controlled.
For the Americas the estimations for population are widely different and still up for debate ranging from less than 50 million to over 100 million before Columbus.
Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas
I think it’s totally ok to have smaller European Civilisations like the English in the game. I wish it wasn’t always the English though.
I want to see the Byzantines, Poles, Hungarians and Danes too.
But Europeans are culturally and militarily similar. People from England to Poland thought with similar weapons in a similar style while they used similar tools on their farms and followed the same religion.
That means in a game with 50% Europeans you either have 50% civilisations that are very similar or you have chose having unrealistic differences between or way to little differences between different none Europeans.
In AoE2 every civilisation look European. Mayas run around with Crossbows, Aztec Champions have plate armour while Chinese knights have Kite Shields.
Oh yeah and all Ethiopian units are white skinned too.
AoE4 allows for bigger differences between civilisations, as seen with the Mongols for example. It also gives all civilisations at last correctly looking units even when a HRE knight has the same states as a Chinese Lancer.
AoE4 has:
Western European archer civilisation → English
Western European infantry civilisation → Holy Roman Empire
Western European cavalry civilisation → French
The French and English in particular seem to be the most boring civilisations in the game by design, made for beginners. The HRE is still less unique than all the others.
The Abbadies, Delhi and China have a strong unique mechanic each and also more unique unique units.
So when we get the Danes we will have a second European Infantry civilisation and the Poles will be a second European cavalry civilisation.
The Japanese, Turks, Vietnamese, Koreans or Ethiopians have to potential to be a lot more interesting.
If the game would have started with the the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese as 4 out of 8 civilisations everyone would probably have complained about the game being Asia centric.
And I’m not even talking about Aztecs or Inca yet.
Knights were overrated for a long long time already, even back to when they still existed.
In the 19th century many monarchs build giant castles because they loved the Middle Ages so much. They were mostly unrealistic but they warped the modern view on the Middle Ages.
One of the most famous castles Neuschwanstein was build from 1869 till 1886 (but never fully completed) and is very far way from what was possible or even sensible in the Middle Ages.
Yes but I don’t think you would lose many customers if only 1/4 - 1/3 of the civilisations were European but you would probably win more customers if you would add more civilisations from other parts of the world.
We are not talking about completely removing Europeans from the game.
A lot of people also expected Samurai but they haven’t added Japan yet.
Hungarians were very important in the Middle Ages. I think it was a silly decision to add the Huns instead of the Hungarians to AoE2 back than.
Hungary was for sure more important than England during the complete Middle Ages.
If you count the Byzantines as European the Hungarians would be priority 2 of European civilisations before Sprain/Castile.
The Swizz are already in the game as HRE. The Swizz only become their own culture much later and even that is debatable, I mean most of them speak German, French or Italian. As someone from Southern Germany I relate more to people form Switzerland than from Northern Germany and our culture and dialect are much more similar.
Danes will likely come. The developers replied to the question of if they will add “Vikings” that the “Danes” won’t be he first civilisation to be added.
That implies 2 things:
- they want to add the Danes instead of the “Vikings”
- they already know what civilisations will be added first (they likely already started working on them)
The rules are:
All civilisations need to exist in the time period from 1000-1500.
For the period they didn’t exist they need to have a predecessor of successor.
For example the Mamluks are officially referenced in the description of the Abbasides.
I think that also makes a Turkish civilisation possible. They would represent the Rum, Seljuks and Ottomans.
But isn’t that also somewhat true for other Civilisations.
Did Chinese melee weapons and armour improve from 1000-1500 AD?
Europeans really went hard into armour during that time but they were essentially in a “Dark Age” till 1000 AD while Chine surely wasn’t.
China was at a much higher technological level at 1000 AD so their progression already makes less sense.
It already broke the promise of being Historical in the base game.
There a few silly decisions already like the HRE unlocking Knight and Landsknecht at the same time.
I think that depends on where they are from.
A lot of countries have very “patriotic” or even “nationalistic” education. Through schools, books and movies they learn all the awesome things their ancestors did but don’t learn much about others, especially not those that didn’t interact with their nation.
But I feel like Asians are less affected by this. Maybe because they have enough of their own games and media.
If someone from Japan wants to play a strategy game about Japan they’ll pick a domestic game over a Western one. If they want to play with castles and knights they are more likely to want to pick a Western game.
But a lot of other countries don’t have a strong video game industry yet or just a growing one. Poland just got big in the gaming industry in recent years for example.
This exactly is my main problem.
Those 3 civilisations feel like different versions of the same thing.
I hope they stay the only ones like this and are just there to make the game easier to learn as a new player.
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Hungarians would be cool. They used massed firearms quite early. One in four professional soldiers in Hungary in 1440 had a gun. (arquebuse)
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Its fun to be represented.
I think a lot of people just play civs they like though.
Or else people would be picking something other than Franks more often.
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Of course. Just like yourself.
I am European yes, but how exactly am I Eurocentric?
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I never read anything like that around here… that one osman-cannon enthusiast aside
As europeans (+ anglo bros on islands and other continents) we simply are not exposed to a lot of detailed African or Asian history round the middle ages, so naturally there is less knowledge and interest build up.
If the game designers want to carry the flame of education into my grey cells, all power to them. If they want to play it more save and let me play the BRRRRitish longbows again, also understandable.
And who cares about the distribution in numbers (X african vs. Y european) ???.. I just want interesting factions -.-
If that slightly bloats some historically insignificant tribes or shrinks massive empires into their main aspects, who cares? A lot of “gameplay-first” yelling people around here seem to switch up their principles really fast to root for getting their favourite faction added. 
All in all this is kind of a non issue and will have more to do with their DLC strategy: What sells and what can be packaged in bundles that make sense.
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My point is that the majority of people on this forum and people who will buy the game and have bought other AOE4 games will be from North America or Europe so of course it’s going to be eurocentric. This is also true of the developers.
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But how does that make me a eurocentrist…?
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[mod hat on] It’s fine to label things as being Eurocentric, but I don’t know how on earth you expect us to moderate a forum where you all are calling each other personally Eurocentric. Kindly knock it off.
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Poll is going as expected. 70 percent of people want at least 50 percent of civilisations to be European.
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yeah the people who use this forum are disproportionately from Europe and its progeny.
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“Eurocentric” is an ad hominem.
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“The game could/should have >50% European civs because it is fun/Europeans are going to buy the game more” is not Eurocentric.
“The game could/should have >50% European civs because Europeans are indeed more important than other parts of the world in the middle ages” IS Eurocentric.
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It would be ridiculous to ask for the same number of civs from Rome II, so I don’t get your point?
That’s not the point.
The point is you can have fun and unique experiences with civs despite them not being the “most influential”
Interestingly, the territory of the four Asian civilizations in aoe4 is dozens of times that of the four European civilizations… Very asymmetric…
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I think most people would agree that Europe is a region that is rich in culture and history, and deserve to have the highest number of civs in the game compared to other regions. But how high it should be? I think more than 50% is way too much, if you think about it, it means there are more European civs than all other regions in the world combine! It would totally be a disrespect to other civilizations.
I think 33-40% is a reasonable range, at worse 50% as in the starting civs should be the maximum. At that level, Europe would already easily be the most represented among all regions in the world. It should never exceed 50%, it would be ridiculous and unreasonable.
P/S: this comment was meant to be posted in here but I posted in the wrong thread, so I reposted in here
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I do think that nearly no one would have complained if only 1/3 or even 1/4 of the civilisations were European.
Yes some people would have complaint that certain civilisations are not in the game as they do now with for example the Byzantines.
After the fan preview we knew 4 civilisations and only 1 of them was European. It wasn’t to be expected that 3/4 missing civilisations where European too.
I saw no thready about people crying that not half of the civilisations are European.
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The game is about military history and yes, European nations were powerhouses. Even in comparison to larger empires outside of Europe. You smuggled the word ‘important’ in there, which I did not use in any of my posts.
“Eurocentric” is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is a personal attack used by people who do not have any arguments.
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