Men or female doesn’t matter. I never said anywhere that it’s an issue. If I see any, besides mentioned plain/unimaginative ‘settler’ skin which again is more like a wasted potential, especially for an iconic civ like Spanish Empire in that age, is just ‘out of place factor’ for some of the choices, like here a flamenco dancer.
History is one of the pillars for the entire series and straying from it works against the essence of this game. Vast majority of people don’t play multiplayer just stick to solo content, and for them tone, atmosphere and content is very important.
Somebody can not care about that, I do and there’s no reason to explain or defend this position, especially since historical accuracy seemed to be a driving factor during the creation of all these games.
Diluting that playful but grounded essence doesn’t make an RTS game more widely appealing. If anything it might hurt the tone and atmosphere that care about these things.
There’s a lot of fun in history especially during that crazy period. It’s possible to create something believable and not out of place, without going to bizarre obscurities.
Having a dancer in dress as a fighting explorer doesn’t make any sense on any level. It might be interesting, it’s part of Spanish culture, it’s a real historical thing that still exists but it leaves just a weird feeling.
Just because that dancer is a lady is just a cherry on top. I’d say the same thing if that was a torero - matador skin.
You can squeeze some clan leaders, warrior priests, frontierme- ups ‘frontier humans’ (I don’t want to be sexist 
) into that role. But artistic performers? It’s ok but it would be perfect in a game like idk… Tropico, where hero is more like a celebrity and a manager.
Here explorers reflect very specific roles in a game that is 80% focused on combat and 20% focused on the economy.
If a hero explorer doesn’t have to be related to anything in the subject and nature of that role, just be loosely attached to a certain civ/culture group… Half-jokingly we could ask how many steps afar we are from adding Batman US hero.
Hey maybe William Wallace AoE2 campaign could use Pickle Rick pet 
I guess kids like it, so why not? It’s fun. You don’t have to use it.
AoE IV paid less attention to giving its historical coating and tone of the game more character, uniqueness, and refinements than it shows. To be very gentle- people are not getting historical tattoos after being blown away by the presentation of that story and historical figures.
History is great and there are extremely few RTS games out there that utilize it in any semi-interesting way. Games are also teaching tools and having new heroes would be a great way to introduce people to some great historical figures, that are worth remembering and celebrating.
Interesting historical skin and few lines of bio text could do miracles and convince someone to read more about a certain person.
Well… somebody can start learning flamenco too, I guess.
