This one is just missing out on English which is fine to my eyes. There’s no reason to have English in the base game except marketing.
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No it wasn’t. The narrative you’re following is eurocentric.
There has always been literally a world of cultures beyond Europe. The fact that Europeans conquered/colonized/killed those people doesn’t make them inexistent or unimportant.
In the current roster, there already are civs that never met each other. The game is focused on a time period, not necessarily the region of Europe.
Native Americans, for instance, could be portrayed fighting amongst themselves and/or against European invaders. Fits the time frame. I can’t see a reason not to include them in future expansions.
The initial roster could be more diverse, but I’m personally fine with it the way it is. But insisting in Europe for the expansions would be sad, imho.
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They can’t depict the joan d’arc campaign without england.
Also england and france are the most iconic medieval nations.
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Yeah, wouldn’t like the first expansion pack featuring even more European civs when the base game doesn’t even feature a single American and African civ especially.
They’ve done a whole African campaign with just Mali as playable civ. Of course you can do a campaign with only Franks in the base game with a few scenario editor units.
For a European perspective. I’m European and I think of way more than just those two. Khmer e.g. are really iconic too.
But you also have very niche requirements. What you like and what the general audience expects/likes aren’t the same thing. It makes sense to include England and France, because it’s basically the most expected thing ever for a medieval game like this one. So not including them would be very weird for the general audience, and probably bring less benefit even if they manage to tailor well to some more niche players.
As @BossPaprika1647 pointed out, the 100 years war is very famous, it’s the thing that initially draws many people towards history in the first place. And yes, a lot of people do just expect to see your “standard” English/French Castles, Knights and what not.
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I changed 3 civilisations compared to AoE4 and 2 compared to yours.
For people that live in the English or French speaking part of the world maybe.
If you say Middle Ages to someone in India they won’t think of France or someone in China either.
Even Europeans. A German will think of the HRE and a Spanish or the Reconquista.
Maybe even a French wont think of England but the HRE, Burgundy or Italy when they think about the Middle Ages.
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The “middle ages” almost primarily relates to the “known world” at the time which spanned from the British isles to Iran. We could argue for the khmer and other southeast asian civs should also be included china and dehli sultanate are in the game. But to argue england and france should be omitted is a little wrong imo.
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Depends on your perspective. The known world of an Aztec is different to a Burgundian one. It’s kinda sad that we always have to wait for expansion packs to get the other perspectives.
It’s your POV vs mine. As long as you can’t prove that people want more European civs than other civs in general, both POV are valid. There’s a lot of people e.g. that are dissappointed that Aztecs are not part of the base game as the existence of this mere thread proves:
You’re the one trying to argue against the entire thread that people don’t want European civs, even though everyone’s telling you that we do. You do this in every AoE2 thread too, with about 4-5-6 piling on top of your posts disagreeing with you. I mean… how much more of this do you need? 
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I wouldn’t be so sure about that. In this thread alone there are a lot of people like @AndyPXIII and @Soldeo among others who share my opinion too.
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History is almost always just perspective. But if we have a game that has a campaign based off of european history it is fair to see that england would be included. My problem isn’t broadening our perspectives and seeing more of history. My problem was you were arguing of the omission of england. I am well aware the rest of the world has a rich history.
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That’s a fascinating question. I would think the Indians and Chinese would think of England or France if only for the fact that they still exist. Whereas if you asked Americans about the Khmer Empire there is virtually nobody there who will have any idea what you are talking about (except for history buffs, maybe).
So if you want to appeal to all those markets (Americans, Europeans, Asians), England is a very safe bet.
But I wonder what any forum members from the far east would have to say about what jumps at them as medieval European empires.
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Do you want me to start quoting you all the people across all the threads where it’s you vs 4-5 people arguing? I don’t really want to have to do that, but if you will insist…
I mean, even in this thread there are so many posts
etc… and if I would dive into AoE2 this list would probably exceed the character limit of how long a post can be.
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England is very low on that list. In both of them.
France is important and I never denied that but England definitively was not as important before 1500.
The HRE went from place 3 in 1000 to place 2 in 1500. I think that’s obviously the biggest in Europe.
Even Hungary was bigger than England in both 1000 and 1500.
England is not in the game because it was important in the Middle Ages. It’s in the game because they conquered half of the world later so half of the world identifies with Medieval England.
It’s all subjective not objective.
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Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but this discussion seems silly to me.
How were native American societies in the medieval period (450d.c - 1453 d.c)? We don’t know for sure, information is scarce.
The choices of civilizations, in my view, are right. Without Europe there would be no Western civilization that we know today and well… Microsoft is a Western company, lol.
It would be interesting to add some African empire in the future. In fact, Africans and Islamists fought a lot at that time.
We have 100 years war which was no doubt important and interesting but to say that to have medieval campaign means that England must be included is ridiculous.
If we don’t count 100 years war and Richard I Crusade England was mostly playing on their own island and didn’t interact with rest of Europe in military way so if anything its opposite of that.
You cut half my post. I’m completely against more European civs in the future of AoE4.
You can’t just slap a population number and assume one history is more significant than another. You are drowning out so many meaningful perspectives by doing that. Its a wrong way to interpret history imo. England made significant contributions to the medieval european period and so they have their place in european history.
As i’ve also mentioned a number of times, the game literally has a joan of arc campaign. Why wouldn’t england be part of that? The entire conflict is focused on england vs france.
Half the world does not identify with england. They have their own important history to care about. Colonialism has never achieved at replacing a nation’s history. Japan, China, India have all been heavily tampered with by england and yet their history remains rich and intact and relevant to the people that live there. But ask someone about European history and they will probably reference england and france.
The argument should be about adding historical perspectives. Not erasing others.
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Yes, but this discussion is about the initial 8 civs. That you said were well chosen.
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