Do you think Devs should rework the “Slavs” faction to Kievan Rus in the future?
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They indeed should be remaned to the Rus or Ruthenians, as they clearly only cover the Kievan Rus (and successor states : Novgorod Muscovy…) instead of the wide umbrella that covers half of Europe. The only missing group are Southern Slavs/Yugoslavs/Serbo-Croatians, and the Bulgarians (also speaking a south slavic language) would be closer from them than the Slavs/Ruthenians (east slavic). Just like the former Indians are now effectively renamed Hindustani, as new Indian civs were added.
The Slavs need to be split into Muscovites, Ruthenians, and Serbo-Croats.
Moscow was a remote backwater of the Kievan Rus before the Mongols arrived. It mainly grew in power as the Golden Horde outsourced them the tribute collection from other russian principalities, and overall on the timeframe of AOE2, Novgorod was more significant (notably with Alexander Nevsky). I don’t think it should be split.
Even if no more Slavic civs get added, I think the current Slavs should be renamed.
Rus’ (or Kievan Rus’, now that we have the two worded “Lac Viet” - but Kievan Rus’ is regarded as the state name) from the ethnonym Роусь (Rusĭ); Medieval Greek: Ῥῶς (Rhos); Arabic: الروس (ar-Rūs).
Rus’ is how they were known during their existence, and Kievan Rus’ is their historiographical name:
And the life of Sviatoslav I for their campaign, maybe:
Renaming them to Ruthenians makes sense, although the only reasonabhle new slavic civ I can see is Serbs because Croats were hugely irrelevant and Rus’ principalities had the same culture.
Even Romans is added instead of Venetians, so why not?
Ruthenia is an exonym of latin origin; it appeared very late to their existance (12th century). Doesn’t make much sense for a slavic nation.
It makes, the game already has latin names like Teutons. “Rus” sounds super lame, compared to “Ruthenians”.
“Serbo-Croats” is also a super lame name.
Rus’ is how Byzantines, and Arabs, knew them and interacted with them. The sources providing everything you know about their prime days refer to them as such. Ruthenia term was also used after Kievan Rus’ collapse, to describe east slavic and eastern orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, making it unsuitable, as well as almost anachronistic. So it doesn’t make much sense otherwise.
This sounds like it is based on absolutely nothing.
The Venetians are already quite well covered by the Italians who have some bonuses to trade and ships.
The Yugoslavs are still missing as an only major group of the Slavs in the game.
We have already the Bulgarians, the eastern branch of the southern Slavs, as civilization in the game.
Which makes them a better placeholder for the Serbo-Croats (good luck for finding a name that won’t pour the entire greek fire reserve on the Balkans 
) than the Slavs are.
I agree. There are four Slavic civs now in game and “Slavs” should be renamed IMO. I prefer naming them simply Rus (representing numerous Rus states like Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, Pskov, Vladimir-Suzdal, Polotsk, Smolensk etc.). Also, second reason renaming to Rus would be correct representation of AoE4 Rus.
AOE4 is inconsistant, half the civs are named after the people and the other half after a political entity. Choose one !
That is true but choosing Slavs as a civ name is grossly to general and any other mentioned name here would be better. Fits the best are Eastern Slavs, Rus or Kievan Rus.
Rus was loose confederation of East Slavic states, that I mentioned in my original reply. Similar to ancient Greece, they were described as people, or as Latin speakers called them - Rutheni. It makes more sense them being named as Rus or alternatively East Slavs.
One of the reasons I don’t see a Balkan DLC happening anytime. Which civs would you even pick ? Imagine this, the often mentioned possible Balkan civs are:
The DE DLC added at best 3 civs, but usually more on the range of 2. So which two do you pick. You pick two Slavic civs, there’s one which is going to be left out. Not to mention that the unit dialogue is going to be 90% identical. They can’t share the same monastery because they all have different ones.
So you pick Vlachs instead because you want to “fix” the Dracula campaign. Which other civ do you pick? If you pick a Slavic civ, you’re going to have the situation of before but in worse because you have not picked the two other ones. Or if you’re going with a three civs DLC you’re still going to miss out on one which is going to be heavily offended. If you add Moldavians you’re going to have yet again a civ with very similar dialogue lines.
So you add Albanians? Will probably make some Serbians angry because they’re going to mention how their country was an empire and Albania just a principality in their eyes
Other issues:
Which architecture set do you put them on? Mediterranean, Eastern European? Already full with 6 civs each.
Are you going to add a new architecture set if you couldn’t even be bothered to add unique castles for the other civs? Probably not. So you’re going to get two architecture sets used by 6+ civs. Great indeed…
And the audience argument I see sometimes mentioned in relation to those civs is pretty weak for any of the civs except maybe Romanians.
Romania has 20 Million, Serbia 7 Million, Croatia 3.8 Million, Bosnia 3.2 Million, Albania 2.8 million inhabitants, some of those countries with a rather weak currency too.
It’s not very surprising that those countries are rarely represented in any games.
Renaming Slavs to Rus yes, but no new civs from there for at least a while. Would much prefer seeing some more for Africa and the Americas and dare I dream Oceania first.