Is it necessary to have consistent naming system ? The condition for what gets to be considierd a civilisation is arbitrary in the first place .
Europe goes brrrrrrr
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It helps to identify who is who at a glance.when you have delhi sultanate and english in the same game people would scratch their heads.
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In AoE 4, one “Spanish” civ would be more than enough.
I think that it could be combined in a neat and elegant way into one civ - the Polish-Lithuanian Union (1386-1569) or Jagiellonian Dynasty (1386 - 1572).
This is a great choice, but I know more important civs in the Middle Ages that you haven’t mentioned, e.g. Byzantine Empire, Japanese, Morocco, Songhai and potentially Tsardom of Bulgaria.
I don’t understand why peaple asking that much for some tiny european kingdoms. We have already
england who represent “no empire and small country with small population with not a big influence in this time frame” civ in age of EMPIRE game.
Maybe the next age of game should be called “age of small european nation” 
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Some people are Eurocentrists on this forum, you just have to learn to accept it
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“Some” the entire game is. It needs to be lessened. I’m hoping Age4 has less European civs than any other, but it seems unlikely.
Personally, I want 6 American civs, but my hopes are not high.
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I think one aspect of this naming convention is that the HRE, Dehli Sultanate, and Abbasid Dynasty
Are all short lived entities in history compared to the others.
Whereas England, France, Mongols(Mongolia?), Chinese, etc refer to identities that have endured until now.
Nobody refers to themselves as Abbasids in the middle east, neither do I think did people at the time.
The Abbasid dynasty only represents the ruling state for the empire/Caliphate.
Within its borders we have people that very much had their own identities before the Abbasids showed up, and continue to have one when the dynasty ended. Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, and Armenia all have very unique medieval/ancient history.
Hell Persia deserves their own civ.
Same goes for the Dehli Sultanate, but that’s already been discussed and Relic said they’d revisit India again sometime.
I think Relic is being ultra specific so that they have a bit of freedom to make expansions based on already existing regions.
All “civs” in the game have a specific vignette in time they want to refer to. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume we might revisit regions.
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The only point OP has is that the naming isn’t really consistent.
You got English. French. Chinese and then you have the “Delhi Sultanate” or “Holy Roman Empire”
Either lean into one side or the other.
Why not Delhi India or Germans?
Maybe it is a little nitpicky but still I get where the OP is coming from.
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The HRE was bigger than anything close to “germany”.
The nation of germany doesn’t exist until much later.
It would be very wrong to refer to it as that.
Do we mean the city?
Dehli india also just doesn’t make sense. It was an islamic sultanate ruling over parts of India.
And as has already been previously discussed, india is not properly represented by the dehli sultanate.
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Just as wrong as referring to the french as French or england as English
Relic is generalizing some civilizations with one common modern name while others they address by their historical accurate name.
Like I said. Lean into one or the other naming scheme. Don’t do it half way.
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It isn’t. Both England and France had people referring to themselves as part of those identities.
HRE covered such a large space of europe, many of which didn’t even speak “proto-german”
or have a collective identity.
Notice how they didn’t call it the “british empire” as that would be way later in history and cover a ton of territory that wasn’t even british.
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So just as OP says to be consitent they are better off calling English Civ as “Kingdom of England” and French Civ “Kingdom of France”
And the Chinese would be “Insert Dynasty here” Empire and on we go.
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Well the problem is every time we age up we get a new dynasty as the chinese, kind of impractical.
As for the Kingdom of France and England I honestly don’t mind. But I also think its fine to refer to them as “France and England” as they were that at the time of the game and have lived on with an intact identity.
Nobody in Germany, Italy, or France refer to themselves as “Romans”. Hell I honestly don’t know what people referred to themselves as during the HRE. Perhaps their local areas.
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Which is the point people have been discussing until now:
A) Do we give easily recognizable names like English, French, Chinese, Persian, Viking for players to enjoy.
or
B) Do we go full historical and hope that whoever wants to play Persia knows that Khwarazmian Empire is indeed Persia within those 200 to 300 year period they existed before the mongols rolled over them.
Whatever the case don’t do both A and B at the same time. Just pick one and fully commit to it.
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Oh wow I hope they don’t do this. So unnecessarily cumbersome for no reason.
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Slapping on “kingdom” to England and France isn’t really going “full historical”.
Im mainly of choice B and I think Relic has mostly sided with that.
I don’t really think a lot of people see this as a binary choice anyway.
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I don’t think they have and its why we have this mismash of names you are trying to justify by trying to argue the faction names are based on how people during those periods self identified.
For me personally is jarring and I hope they become more consistent in their naming. But whatever I won’t lose sleep over this.
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hahaha, I think 6 is an exaggeration, I’ll settle for one, whatever, but god! give me something that is different, anyway it’s something that many of us asked since the first trailer came out, so I’m doubting that they will even add them in a DLC. F for american empires
Well yes.
Im very apposed to referring to all the people governed by the Abbasid Dynasty as “Abbasids”.
Unless proven otherwise.
Yeah I don’t have to work much for this as im fine with the way things currently are.
I have a friend in this community whose PhD thesis is “about germanic and roman identity” during the time period of the HRE. He is essentially a world class expert on precisely this arcane question of what to call the HRE in AoE4. His position is that the “Germans” are probably the best fit for a few reasons.
I asked him about the name and wondered if the “Teutons” would be better. His response [which is long but thorough]:
"Well [the Teutons] would be better as in it would fit the previous series more, but Teutons themselves is a really controversial term i would say. I think in aoe2 they used the name Teutons to refer to both the tribes (presumabely a germanic tribe, but ancient roman authors assumed it was even a celtic tribe, it’s still topic of debate actually) and the Teutonic Order. Because later, when the Teutonic Order came up, these “Germans” in the HRE used that name in order to make a connection to the tribes that were mentioned by the roman authors. It’s really important to realize that the order themselves were using the Latin names to refer to this tribe. But this does not mean that the people of the tribe named themselves anything close to “Teutons”. I think in AoE2 they used the name Teutons to refer to a lot of “German” speaking inhabitants of areas of present day Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and perhaps Austria and the DR/parts of Belgium. But in no way is this logical, they probably named it Teutons because of the Frederik Barbarossa campaign. Then the question remains how could we refer to the HRE in AoE4, I think they should just go for “Germans”. Because the origins of the word “Germans” in English (as it is used nowadays) is really related to the Holy Roman Empire itself.
“Originally in Latin they were refering to “Sacrum Imperium Romanum” in law texts and such. Then when large portions of Italy were lost (the original Roman territory and origins of the whole “civilization” that the Germans believed they shared, in addition to Sacrum Imperium Romanum, the phrase “Nationis Germanicae” was added, to refer to the original tribes that were already described by tons of Roman authors. The English language borrowed this term, this is why nowadays we can refer to the country of “Germany”. But in other languages, such as Dutch and German itself, this is not visible at all because the word refer to the people of the territory that was used was “Deutsch” (which the English funny enough used originally themselves, but when the seperation came between Deutsch / German, Deutsch was being used for the cheeseheads in the north-western part of Europe (“Dutch”). If they are refering to “Chinese” and “French” for these same time period, then “Germans” would make just as much sense. The question then only remains what is actually represented here by “Germans”, would it be everyone in the HRE? Only those who spoke Germanic languages? They have to make choices there. But “Holy Roman Empire” is just not the way to go, because obviously it does not fit the previous formatting. Germans would make the most sense in my opinion, even though it is a more modern term, the assocations with the Germanic languages spoken in the HRE, the “German” dialects themselves and after all they refered in Latin to themselvs with the Germanicae thing.”
Due to his obvious expertise in this area, I adopt his recommendations wholesale and would advocate that AoE4 change the HRE to the Germans. It’s not perfect, but it is less imperfect than anything else.
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