That was a lot easier to pull off when you could use the same unit models, change some stats, slap a new name on them and call them a new civ. There would be uproar over “lazy developers” if they did that with AoE4, for not having unique models or skins.
Allow me to be more specific then, the campaign is literally the Joan of arc campaign.
Literally the 100 years war. So yes on that premise it is no surprise england is in the game.
If they called the campaign “europe campaign” and it was only england and france I would totally understand your problem with it. But it clearly isn’t.
Sure, but only considering the constraints: (i) 8 civs limit; (ii) necessity of interaction in the campaign; (iii) the fact that the majority of players prefer Europeans.
My ideal roster would be more diverse, but I also want the game to succeed, so I think the roster we have is well chosen, as a compromise in favor of the marketing strategy.
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Well than there is nothing to talk about. Of Couse if there is 100 y war campaign England must be in. I was just reacting on notion that if medieval Europe is at the centre of the game than England has to be in because they were somewhat super important in European politics in that time frame.
Oh no I wouldn’t say england should ever take the focus of all of european history.
I was just saying that the 100 years war was a conflict significant to european history and england is obviously a big player in that.
We are writing English right now. The USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are just some of the countries where the majority of the population speaks English. The team at Relic and Worlds Edge are all English speaking.
The English are not in the game because of their historic importance in the Middle Age but because of their relevance later. Maybe people know more about England just because they speak English or while learning English.
Every culture rich and complex history and it’s impossible which ones have more to offer.
There is no objective way to chose civilisations, it’s all subjective.
Population is only one way to decide who is important but those numbers might be wrong in the first place.
The estimates of the American population are very different between different studies.
And some cultures don’t have a unifying Empire but are split in a lot of smaller kingdoms.
So are the English one of the top 8 most important civilisations in the world from 1000-1500AD?
I would say no.
Are they in the like top 20?
Sure they are.
Are they in the top 8 in Europe?
Probably too.
But that’s all a subjective thing.
The English, French and the HRE are all 3 directly neighbouring each other and are all 3 Catholic.
All the other civilisations are much more spread out and more culturally diverse.
Rus are Orthodox.
Abbasids and Delhi are both Muslim but they cover a very huge area.
China and Mongols are both East Asian but very different cultures and live in very different environments.
Yes, you can’t tell Joan of Arcs story without the English but do you have to tell her story again?
But in the end there are is no right or wrong.
I would have chosen differently but the marketing would have stopped me I guess.
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So why are you opposed to english speaking people depicting english history? Also the proliferation of english at this point can’t be solely attributed to England. Arguably the US has done more in recent history to spread english usage.
You keep saying this when it is literally wrong. The game literally has a campaign about the 100 years war. What are the two main countries that fought in the 100 years war?
Yeah.
Exactly but I wouldn’t say one should be removed in the place of another for simply population numbers. If you really cared about diversity you wouldn’t be working to remove historical perspectives.
Also Relic has chosen to depict the 100 years war. Therefore england will have to be in their game. It was their creative decision to have a Joan of arc campaign.
I don’t think Relic decided on these civilizations based on your opinion of what civs are important. There are only subjective ways of determining if an entire civilization’s contributions are “important”.
Thats a creative decision on Relic’s and World’s Edge’s part. But I’m happy to see a fresh depiction of it after 20 years.
Ngl, some of the Civ suggestions in this thread have been hella interesting… but I would prefer to see them as DLC or Expansion options as opposed to replacements for the current roster.
As per every previous AoE game, they’re going to add Civs later on in one form or another… and idk, maybe I’m alone in this but I’d have a hard time getting hyped for an English DLC as opposed to … literally any other Civ.
Maybe it’s a marketing tactic? “We’ll start with the basics, and follow with our more interesting Civ options in DLCs.” Just guessing, tho. I don’t get to attend those meetings. 
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It doesnt make sense to add civs purely based on the fact that they are from differebt regions.
You want civs that interacted with eachother so that campaigns make more sense and more interresting.
I dont really see how Aztecs, Incas or Mayas would make a good swap with any of the current civs.
Same for Khmer and others you mentioned.
I rather see then DLC’s were they focus on these regions than add 1 for every region. So a African dlc with like 3 African civs, then American etc.
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With all due respect to these peoples, they are not as important as Russia, England, France, China, Germany and others.
For all the greatness of Mesaamerican civilizations, they did not have such a big impact on world history, and were for a longer time closed countries developing in a limited space.
PS
Besides, as already mentioned, the factions must somehow interact with each other in campaigns, and so far we do not have any campaign or faction that could interact with these factions.
It doesn’t make sense to add them just for the sake of variety, all factions must be connected.
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You could add several of them and I can tell you that without America, Europe wouldn’t have been able to do what it did afterwards. Solely by all the gold and silver it pumped into Europe as well as eradicating for the most part famines in Europe as well as alleviating the demographic pressures. Saying they didn’t have impact on world history is laughable.
You could skip Europe entirely in the base game you know and have Haussa, Mossi, Mali, Tarascans, Aztecs, Khmer, Burmese, Chinese, Mongols instead but I do know that for marketing reasons Africa and America are always expansion content, with Africa being usually represented the earliest in the second or third expansion of a game.
You’re looking from a modern perspective too which completely distorts everything. Of course, nowadays, Mexico doesn’t play such a huge role on a geopolitical scale but pretending that the Aztecs, Incas or Malians are not important is just laughable.
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In fact, Mesoamerican nations only make sense in themed DLC.
I know that there are people who are convinced of the great importance of the Maso-American states, but in fact this is not so, they acted as a “warehouse of resources” for Europe, while the cultural heritage did not carry anything significant for history in the seebe, these were people who before the last day of their existence, they made human sacrifices and ate the hearts of people. These were civilizations “conserved” in their world, and they did nothing for world history, they were victims of world progress.
Of course, they had some kind of culture worthy of study, but here we are talking about the most important states for the World, and these are clearly not African or American tribes.
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In order for everyone to agree on the best civs to put in the game, both (1) we would all need to agree on the factors (and their weight) that should be used to evaluate potential civs and (2) we would all need to agree on the facts as to how those factors apply to those specific historical civs.
Because I have no reason to believe that we are capable of agreeing on either of these points, much less both of them at the same time, I have no reason to believe that we are capable of agreeing on the best civs to put in the game.
For example, I see some references above to people suggesting that we should choose civs based on their “impact on world history.” That is an incredibly dense topic. Perhaps “impact on world history” means we should be measuring the impact of a civ on the modern day. (That would arguably favor civs and their progeny that are relatively powerful today.) Perhaps “impact on world history” means we should be looking at the size and power of civilizations from the stated era of AoE4 (800 to 1500 CE) (that would arguably favor a comparative analysis of the size of civilizations then). I am sure “impact on world history” could be defined any number of other ways, too.
But “impact on world history” is merely just one potential factor. There’s all sorts of others bandied about, like which civs are popular, or which civs would be popular with potential segments of new players, or which civs fit neatly into a campaign, or which civs have cool units or architecture. It’s a complex choice.
But even if we agree on this definition, we are less than halfway there. Now we all have to join hands and report to history class to all get on the same page as to the facts of these civilizations. And honey, I assure you that’s gonna be a mess, too, particularly since history is taught differently and imperfectly in different ways all over the place.
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Of course, I think many people feel that way. I sure hope that if there will be a DLC in the future, it would include the Vikings, the Byzantines, the Spanish and the Portuguese. (I would personally also welcome some more minor civs as additions, like Magyars, Basques, the Scottish, etc.)
i put there the most important and imo missing civ from the start, bizantyne empire
I don’t think the real difference between medieval England and France is greater than Chinese Three Kingdoms, different islamic states, or even major HRE states, which are in turn typically considered as one integral civilization.
Back in the release of AOK, English (Britons) and French (Franks) had a clear distinction, while the entire islamic world (non-turkic) is represented as a “Saracen” civilization.
One may immediately come up with stereotypes of “English longbowmen, French knights” etc., but it takes people much longer to design different unique traits for, say, Umayyads vs Abbasids, or Shu vs Wu in the Chinese Three Kingdoms, without using Wikipedia (and more often Wikipedia cannot help either).
Why is that? (1) Some “civilizations” or “cultures” developed their own distinct modern national identity while some merged into one. (2) Some are better represented in the modern media and entertainment, which has been mostly western-centric even till now, while some are overlooked and poorly represented.
Many of the depictions of “medieval civilization” are more of a modern construct.
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Age of Empires 4 is supposed to be an RTS based around historical medieval warfare. The selection of 8 civs to start is perfectly reasonable considering the main powers in this period. We could maybe argue that adding Spain or the Byzantine empire would make much more historical sense than adding civs that had a much lower technological level at the time. Of course, AOE has always added many fictional representations of different civs and cared more about gameplay balance than about historical accuracy (for example the Aztec civ would be unplayable if they tried to represent the historic balance). But I perfectly understand that they can take time to add all the fictional elements and the selection of the 8 civs makes sense. I love to have the main factions of the 100 years war. I love to have the Mongol empire because it was the hugest at that time. Chinese were also a very advanced and powerful civ at the time or the abassyd empire. It’s better to start with limited civ choices with interesting mechanics and well balanced than focusing on a contemporary ahistorical view about including diverse geographical areas.
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I’ve also have this discussion due to those fundamental questions about “impact on world history” for AOE2.
Your text perfectly sums it up.
Yeah that’s completely different.
Not the same as feminist icon. She was pretty not feminist. And she have been abused to serve all kind of agenda by calling her things such as feminst icons. And as I said, right wing have also used her. Everyone is trying to “claim her” for their own selfish political reasons
She’s a historical figure. She is inherently political. Her name isn’t sacred in the sense that people can’t draw attachment to her or make their own political claims.