Not the United States, Mexico maybe yes, maybe not, I don’t know if they planned to add this civilization to their mod.
Source: Age of Empires III: The Napoleonic Era - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Likewise, saying that by adding a civilization they are being inspired seems a bit exaggerated to me, an age of empires should have as many civilizations as possible, or at least that’s what I think.
Well, that’s what happens with beliefs, you believe something that can be true or false. I think that the best of WOL, with Microsoft’s funding and with the modern engine, would have made a much more fun and varied game. Perhaps with a “similar” balance, thanks to the privileged information they would have due to the company’s resources and because they have direct communication with the players.
The latter could change due to Microsoft’s policies, but if they had hired them it would imply that they would have had a different approach to the game and perhaps would have had more freedom to express themselves and communicate with the community, although this is pure speculation.
Whether a change is small or big doesn’t define whether it breaks the game or not, what defines it is the knowledge that the developers have regarding how the game works and how to solve the problems.
Also, the changes have to be of the correct size, it doesn’t matter if it’s a big or small change, what matters is that it’s well thought out. That’s why communication between the community and the developers is so important, because they are not infallible machines and many times they don’t know how to approach a change, especially if they don’t have experience in a certain type of civilization.
The WOL team can afford to try crazy things because they work independently and for free, and while the first may seem like a bad thing to you, it probably allows them to try new ideas and innovate where others couldn’t.
Also, because of that, they probably know all the civilizations in the game very well and know when to give the community what it wants and when not to. Not to mention that WOL has endured and seems to maintain a large player base, I think that’s already a great demonstration that they are a competent and capable team.
I want to clarify that the WOL team is not perfect and obviously has issues, but since there is no such thing as a perfect team of developers, I think the best in WOL would have done a better job.
At best if Microsoft really cared about AOE3 they could have hired only the best in WOL and Napoleonic War and created a dedicated AOE3 team instead of hiring just one team, but apparently efficiency, transparency and communication are not words in Microsoft’s dictionary.