Lets say you are porting another game into your game. It is a huge effort and also a huge gamble. Your original fanbase might be unhappy that your game is being neglected, they might complain or lose interest in your game as it is no longer changing. People with no interest in this other game aren’t going to pay to try it out.
But being a savvy game designer, you have an idea. With your release of this other game, you will also put out some new content, a new playable character, one that has been teased for a while. You cannot put too much time into it, but you have a couple passionate developers willing to do it, maybe they even suggested it.
The testers, coders and artists are busy on your other game, but you can reuse a bunch of art assets already in the game, a few bonuses from some other characters and you won’t release them for multiplayer, so the lack of testing won’t matter.
This is the Romans, they are not new, bold or interesting, but people hear the name and they stop thinking of the civ.
If you stop to think for a second, they don’t fit the Romans historically at all. Centurions weren’t cavalry soldiers, they were infantry, they were used to replace knights in the Goth campaign because knights aren’t very Roman (these Romans get good knights).
Roman tactics involved a lot of throwing spears and big shields. Often they set up in defensive positions and harassed their opponent and then tried to withstand their charge with their shields. So in the game this is represented by them getting awful skirmishers, amazing armour and a charge bonus with decent cav support.
We have Huns, Mayans and Turtle ships, I don’t mind having Romans, but this is not a good design for a civ. It is a stand-in for not getting an expansion and if it is going to be added to the game in full, it needs to change in a lot of ways.