I know there’s no way they’ll change it this late but the fact that there’s not a single American, African, South East Asian civ representative in a very limited roster of 8 civs is dissappointing for me.
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Then don’t buy the game. Don’t join a beta.
To me it’s a good selection that encompasses knights, firearms and siege units.
Hope the game is good enough for future expansions: Japan, Sweden/Vikings, Ethiopia, Siam, etc. are potential choices.
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That’s perhaps what many fans of this series may do, but that is not a reason for them to remain silent on this forum. One of the essential functions of this forum is for fans of the series to voice concerns about the design of various games.
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I prefer to have a more focused area of civs that actually came into contact and fought each other then have expansions that focus on certain regions.
I think they had a really good selection of major powers that they will be able to make good campaigns with, plus when they do start focusing on the smaller regional powers a lot of their major opponents are already in the game.
I think the most glaring omission right now is the Byzantines but theres always going to be tough choices.
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It’s quality over quantity, I have played the beta and I think it’s very balanced. All have a core identity and fun playstyle but without making them too much unique. AOE 4 is based on real human historical nations and their military, so every nation will have armies made for killing humans. Man has never fought another enemy, other than man, so every nation will have similar military.
Most of the UU in real life was ceremonial or for very special situation and often were not effective or was expensive.
Trust me this game is gonna demolish all the RTS games out there which has release din past few years. It’s a unique game for AOE 4 players.
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That is understandable and a common point raised. Since many of the 8 civs did not interact in any meaningful way with others in the game, and since AoE has always been about playing What If games with history and bending reality to make cool game design, I fall on the other side of the discussion. It is sad that this will be the 5th Age game to fail to launch with a civ from the Americas, Central/Southern Africa, and several other giant population centers. We’ve been waiting a while, and I suppose we need to wait at least for one more generation of Age game.
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I do not trust you and do not consider any of our experiences in the beta relevant to this discussion. We know you believe AoE4’s civ design will bring you great joy. That’s terrific, and you are certainly not alone in that regard. Many of us who cannot say the same are also not alone.
It’s one thing for us to hear that players subjectively like the civ design. That’s awesome to hear. But it’s another thing entirely to hear that we are objectively wrong in our perception that the civs are not as asymmetric as those in other Age games.
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I trust you man 
The game so far appears awesome, at least to me
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I agree with you but I also don’t.
8 civilisations makes it hard to pick.
Let’s get the some choices out of the way that seem obvious:
China, the Mongols and the Abbasides (Arabs).
Important Medieval Empires.
The Delhi Sultanate, while not being native to India they were still the biggest Empire for most of the time from 1000 AD to 1500 AD.
Than we come to Europe:
France was the biggest and most influential Kingdom. Arabs even called all Europeans Franks. And we have terms like “Lingua Franka” to this day. Makes sense to add them.
Than the Rus. They wanted to add diversity and represent Eastern Europe that wasn’t really represented in the past in AoE.
Than we have the Holy Roman Empire, the biggest Empire in Late Medieval Europe. While being culturally and Historically linked to the French they are quit different and cover a huge part of Europe including most of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, parts of modern France, parts of Austria and the northern half of Italy.
I’m bias for this one though because I live there.
At the end the have the English. Not really that important during that time. But the English colonized half of the world so half of the world now identifies with medieval England to some degree. I mean we are all writing English here aren’t we.
While I think I would probably have picked 8 different civilisations, I think their choices are all good and make sense.
I think I would have added the Ethiopians in the base game but I don’t know what civilisation I would have chosen not to add.
I think the English are the least important and also least interesting but I think it was impossible for them to not add them.
Another reason why the left out some civilisations is probably because they did want to represent them more historically accurate than in AoE2 (or AoE3) but they also didn’t want to have any civilisation in the base game that doesn’t have the 6 basic unit types and also no civilisation that can’t have traditional siege units.
More exotic civilisations deserve to have more unique mechanics that need more time to explore.
But as always, you can’t make everyone happy.
I feel like 50% of the people want to see more Europeans and 50% want to see more of the other parts of the world and that’s kinda what AoE2 has too. Even if that’s definitely not representative of the world population neither then nor now. And it’s also obviously not diverse.
But they have to do what the fans want if they want to make money.
Games didn’t become more diverse in the last years because developers and publishers are better humans now, they are more diverse because players are more diverse.
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The sandbox element is a core part but you have to balance that. AOE3 did that well by having a focus on the New World with colonial powers but also bending it a little by including the Ottoman wildcard as a fun what if scenario.
The starting roster for AOE4 does have a lot of connections, The English and French of course but also links to the middle east through the crusades with Abbasids representing that area and Edward Longshanks in talks with the Mongols over the capture of Jerusalem. The Mongols connect a lot of the civs. Theres gaps of course but that is part of the comprimise.
You could go for maximum geographic diversity and have something like Aztecs, Mali, Japan, England, Khmer, Mongols, Tamil, Byzantines. I just made that up but making the campaigns would be a pain and probably end up with a lot of mirror matches.
Also with such vastly different cultures it would be very demanding to make as they would need unique assets for pretty much everything. We know English French and HRE share some building architecture and unit skins because they have similar culture which saves budget and means you can give those more unique cultures the attention they deserve in a focused DLC on that area.
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That’s what ‘expansions’ are for - see base civ rooster for 1, Age of Kings, III. Is there some obligation to have ‘tour de world one civ for every region’ design enforced by the state?
As long as game is polished and factions are well-designed I can play with 10 Pictish tribes 
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I get your point, but i hope you are just joking.
I personally have problem with Pictish Trebuchets and Crusaders…
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That doesn’t really mean anything. Dawn of War III is a unique game for Dawn of War III players, all 100 of them according to steamdb. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a unique game for Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak players, all 50 of them. Grey Goo is a very unique game for Grey Goo players, all 20 of them.
Nothing we have seen so far guarantees us that AOE4 isn’t going to join, rather than demolish, all the RTS games that have been released in the past few years that simply got abandoned after a few months by the community, the developer, or both.
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I like the civ selection. They’re basically all the most popular civs of the era. I’m sure a future DLC will bring the Spanish, the Byzantines, the Italians, etc at some point.
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which is interesting looking at STRATEGY games in general, instead of classic RTS.
I mean everything- Two Point Hospital, Civilization VI, Total War: Warhammer series, Rimworld, Oxygen not included, Cities: Skylines, Tropico 5…
Is this just about not finding good biz model, and not only change of trends, tastes of players?
Same. I like Brits, Delhi and I’m hyped for HRE and Rus.
There’s only so much you can cover with just 8 civs.
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Honestly I was impressed how different their entire design and playstyle is. It’s like taking core Euro civ and comparing to Lakota, in AoE III:DE.
And it’s even impossible to compare to changes between civs in AoEII:DE. Just now after decades we got some changes for common, core buildings (Polish folwark replacing ‘mill’). If you learn one AoE2 civ you know pretty much other ones.
Playing as Mongols is very different than English when it comes to basic building strategy, even way how and where you collect food*…
*III also have these things but more minor and among a lot of other common, core systems. Like Japs not hunting animals but building shrines-houses to attract them and gather XP.
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Strategy games in general are doing “fine”. None of them are going to beat FPS games or RPG games in popularity but that’s fine. It’s classic RTS games that are on the ropes though. Other than SC2 there really is nothing that is anywhere close to being considered mainstream, and it came out 11 years ago.
So, being a classic RTS game, AOE4 really has the deck stacked against it. Which is why I find it really strange that people say that it has no need to pull players from AOE2/3 and that it can make it all on it’s own. Like, under what rock do they think they will find all these brand new classic RTS fans? If those fans they didn’t show up for any RTS game released in the past 10 years then they won’t show up for AOE4.
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How do we even get a campaign with such spread out civs .
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A lot of them were empires at one time or the other (timespan covered might be longer than in AoE2 campaigns) and empires are bigs.
It’s not common or required in AoEs to have civs close to each other. Majority of content in missions is fighting with custom groups/civs/rebels/internal factions using the same civ class/ etc.