I think so too, but it’s still a very unpopular take.
Pretty sure India alone had a gdp that was greater than most of europe combined during middle ages. China was technologically superior. Heck, they invented gunpowder.
Till enlightment, europe didn’t have a whole lot going for them over anybody else. What you are saying is eurocentric nonsense with very little historical truth.
You are comparing now vs dark/middle ages. Also, to be clear, the most popular languages are indo-european.
Around and after enlightment, europe made a historical leap in almost every area. Prior to that, they were just one of many. Almost every notable invention, whether it be in maths, science, or whatever else before ~1400 was in the middle east, or asia.
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Maybe so, but the idea that Europe was basically totally incapable of going toe-to-toe with anyone else is also nonsense not backed up by history. It’s popular because it’s popular to hate Europe.
You’ve given a good starting point for the design of the Vikings civilization. Your post must have time-traveled way way back into the past 
Longboats
Represented by free weelbarrow
Vikings 
Vikings lack halbs
Represented by the stronger Champions, extra hp (chainmail) bonus damage vs cav after UT (spears)
Vikings often go archers and now they have an archer UT too
Longboats
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Just to be clear, I don’t hate europe whatsover. I have great respect for europe because the foundations of the modern liberal society we live in were laid by the period of enlightment in europe.
However, as I said, europe didn’t have much going on before like 1400-1600.
Gunpowder? Printing press? Paper? Compass? That was china
Early astronomy? Mathematics? Chemistry? Middle east and India
Early metallurgy? There’s a reason wootz steel is in the game. But also, the middle east.
Urbanization/Irrigation/Social development? Starting from mesopotamia, Egypt, Sumeria, and Indus valley.
Concrete and large scale buildings? Again, middle east, Egypt, and even asia
I could go on and on and on. Greece and Rome were cultural centres, they didn’t make any huge contributions to pure science/technology. Not to say they did nothing. Archemedies was a big deal afterall. But the contributions by other parts of the world were much greater.
Yeah, I get it. A lot of technological developments were made elsewhere. However, despite that, Europe was able to consistently dominate other cultures that it clashed with, even with strictly inferior technology. That’s quite notable, and it’s why I don’t mind so many European civs.
I’m glad you’re not one of those who thinks Europe was completely useless in the Middle Ages, because that couldn’t be further from the truth.
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Europe’s heavy knights were the heaviest, best armoured fighters though, weren’t they? Wootz steel was a thing, but the state of European armour shows that european metallurgy was not to be scoffed at.
My recollection of the Crusades is that the Arabs usually had to avoid straight confrontations. They did beat the Crusaders back repeatedly, but it was usually with finesse and mobility rather than shear brawling power.
Horse archers from the steppe gave Europeans a lot of problems, but they were stopped. The Berber invasion of Spain was also driven back.
I wouldn’t characterize any of this as ‘domination’. We were approximately evenly matched with our neighbors.
My understanding is that we would have dominated Japan, Korea and America, but that’s pretty irrelevant to actual history.
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Never said that they were bad. One of the things europe was really good at, was taking someone else’s invention and popularizing it, thereby allowing more growth.
Europeans didn’t create or discover the older metallurgical processes, they just took it from middle east. They might’ve had a few independant ones, but the main processes were copied from other places.
Gutenberg is known for the printing press, but chinese had printing presses much earlier than that.
In both these cases, europeans took them, popularized, and worked on them.
Most likely, but I didn’t include those civs in my list 
Historical trend has been this; countries do well when there’s trade and conflict. If your country is isolated, or live in peaceful environment for too long, you stop developing as quickly.
The middle-east europe conflict did wonders for europe’s growth. Middle east also traded with both India and China, and brought over their technology and innovations, which was good for both of them.
And most African kings GDP greater than all of them combined
For those who say that vikings = swedes
I don’t actually argue with this fact. But the whole problem with the Vikings in the game is that they existed in the wrong time period. Most of the game’s civilizations existed in the period most covered in the game, 1000 - 1650. But some civilizations (Huns, Goths, Vikings) date back to the period of approximately 400-800 AD. As far as I know, the Scythians were not included in the game precisely because they are quite ancient and would look out of place next to medieval civilizations. But the Vikings were taken for their popularity. As a result, they even go into the imperial age, although the real Vikings had no empire, no kings, no guns… They got all this when they transformed into more modern countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc.) You want to put an equal sign between the Vikings and the Swedes, but that would not be truly correct.
Personally, I would suggest changing the name from Viking to Norwegians. Or you could make it so that the Vikings couldn’t enter the Empires Age at all, but would still have the competitive strength to win even without it. But I really think that Swedes must exist separately. At least for the fact the Russians were making friends with Vikings (calling them “variags”) but having wars against Swedes.
It kinda does beacuse imo we should not have 150 civs…
I’m sure America and Africa had the same amount of history as Europe and Asia since, well, time happens anywhere.
The problem is another, historical accounts.
I wanted to imagine a campaign for early Ghana empire and searched for info. I couldn’t find anything before 700 AD and only one king with a name (mostly legendary). Then I searched for kanem bornu and it was even worse.
Search during the same timeframe in Europe or Asia and you have just so many options… And it’s NOT a matter of superiority, culture, technologies etc. It’s just that in Africa and America written history before European contact is scarce.
I’m sure a lot of things happened there but you just need to make up almost everything like in Yodit because all history is somehow made of guesses and inferences being mostly orally transmitted.
Japan had the same problem in aoe1 being Japanese written history beginning around 500 AD and indeed they had to go for Yamato who are out of sync with other civs in game. That doesn’t mean Japan was inferior or that nothing happened there for 5000 years. It’s just that we know objectively less than other areas of the world…
I trust the fact everyone will just push whatever they like, being whatever area or timeframe they’re interested in. For me it’s late antiquity but I don’t use my time to hate on other tastes or priorities. Or to remind every person I meet that there is only one scenario to represent the 6th and 7th century (and they’re not even in Europe), even when they’re talking of adding meso civs or late medieval or whatever they’re discussing.
If I can’t say anything about that argument I just listen instead of making passive aggressive comments about Europe having more civs than others. Everyone has its own ideas and opinions and you have no power on others’ tastes or priorities.
Eurocentrism exists but it’s ill intentioned and I don’t think the majority of people is actively against American or African civs. At least me myself I’d love them. And if there are people against more of these civs on principle for me they’re just plain wrong.
That doesn’t prevent me from talking about splitting vikings, Slavs, Saracens etc. One thing doesn’t exclude the other unless you don’t want too many civs in the game. In that case it’s kinda useless to discuss since you probably already have in mind which civs you want and the rest is out… (Talk about “excluding” lol)
I would have to lie to say that nothing happened in Scandinavia and vikings are ok to represent all of it or that Britons is a good umbrella for Saxons who are goths anyway or Celts making sense and so on…
One truth doesn’t exclude another truth otherwise one of the two is a lie.
It would be cool if a new civ had a technology to use military ships as transport (maybe in Castle or Imperial Age). It would fit with the naval invasion theme.
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My Polynesians concept has their secondary UU be a warship that’s basically a hybrid between a Galley and a Transport Ship, firing one arrow by default, but firing more if units are inside like a tower. However, it isn’t affected by techs that improve Transport Ship carry capacity, and so only has a carry capacity of 5.
Europe was more advanced than many African and Mesoamerican empires…Asia has 5 large civs (Persia, India, Mongolia, China and Japan) and then exotic empires in South and Southeast Asia…
Of course, the issue is that there are almost no written records of those civs, because they used oral legends to spread their culture… in AoE 3, since there are fewer European civs and those with colonial empires, it is easier to globalize everything and get to know more exotic civs…
Almost everywhere in Asia has written traditions that are way, way, waaaay older than anything that was going on in Europe. People just have dumb biases because they legitimately believe Europe is superior to the rest of the world.
Hell, Mesoamerica alone had dozens of written languages, we very much do have the Mayan script decyphered and we possess a good amount of their written history because of that. Yet we don’t see people campaigning for Teotihuacano campaigns.
You can create a hundred thousand excuses but at the end of the day it’s just people thinking Europe is superior to the rest of the world and bending over themselves to justify themselves through very weak arguments.
Like my bud just in the post before me actively labelled states in South Asia as “exotic”.
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Yeah I’m secretly trying to make Europe conquer the world and enslave all people through aoe2. You spotted me.
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