If you say that fans are based on Europe and America, they could just ignore Pooh Bear and his regime and add Tibetans etc. The other 5 are not even controversial.
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I wish you were right, but China has the largest foreign playerbase of the game, so the devs simply canât risk the game being banned there.
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I think the main thing is that Westerns simply do not learn about non-Western cultures in school because they arenât relevant to them. The devs are, as far as I know, all Western, so they approach the game with the Western historical bias that was taught to them. And thatâs perfectly fine, since most of the audience is also Western.
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But you were implying Western community matters the most. Suddenly Eastern and other communities matter too?
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Itâs 2023. Finding information on the internet is easy. Doesnât matter if the designs of the âunfamiliarâ regions are more of popular tropes than actual history (they already added the Dravidian unique ship based on a fake wiki) because the series has always been like that. But thatâs better than nothing.
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I would say thatâs more of a bias formed by modern nationalism and media.
If one really wants to, designing more âdiverseâ factions is easy whatever your scope is. Take Total War for example:
Medieval 2 is the classic âmedieval Europe and Middle Eastâ scope and it has the typical archer faction, cavalry faction, etc. just like in AOE2.
Then you have Shogun 2 with a much smaller scope (sengoku Japan, which is usually represented as one faction) but it still has the typical archer faction, cavalry faction, etc.
Britannia is a even smaller scope (Anglo Saxon England) but has the typical archer faction, cavalry faction, etc.
Three Kingdoms is set in ancient China which is presumably âless diverseâ(usually represented as one faction) yet has the typical archer faction, cavalry faction, etc.
So itâs very easy to construct âuniquenessâ or âdiversityâ as long as you want to.
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If the game was centered on China yes you could make distinct civs, but weighing against all other civs, how would you split the Chinese to make several civs that have a different enough gameplay ? They already have a very broad tech tree so they can already adapt to many options.
Looking at a map, for example in 1300
China was indeed much less divided than Europe was. Even looking at a time when China was divided, for example between the northern Jin and the southern Song :
You could use a new Jurchen civ for the Song as they were a Jurchen conquest dynasty, but how would you draw the line to split the Chinese civ proper ?
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Both of those statements can be true. Theyâre not mutually exclusive. The Western audience does matter the most, but that doesnât mean the Eastern audience never mattered; on the contrary, it matters quite a lot.
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Indeed, the 2 times civs were blatantly added to court a market were the Koreans (The Conquerors) and the Lac Viet (ROR), both in East Asia.
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Just leave Chinese as-is and add Jurchens, Tanguts & Khitans. Basically the surrounding area that get lumped in as other civs right now in campaigns.
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Thatâs what I had in mind.
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China got split into several small states multiple times in this period, and the Northern/Southern âbarbarianâ peoples were very different from the typical âChineseâ image.
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The suggestions from the OP are fine, the Jurchens, Khitans and Tanguts formed their own dynasties, so I think that would be the best way to split them (the current Chinese civ itself wouldnât have to be altered). And maybe add another civ to represent the Southern China cultures (The Nanzhao could fulfil that role).
If the Tibetans could ever be added, they could go with other Central Asian civs like the Gokturks or the Sogdians, for example.
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No one who wants to split Chinese should be taken seriously. Jurchens, Khitans, Tibetans, Tanguts, Nanzhao and Gokturks werenât Chinese people.
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It seems we have a agreement then 
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Not that Iâm an avid supporter of west and central Europe but my main issue is to see some people here on the forums who are against adding European middle ages civs overall but at the same time Theyâre okay with Romans being added and are defending their addition actively.
Whatâs the difference between adding letâs say for an example: Swiss which is a European civ to adding Romans? I see no difference which is why I donât understand this strong support for them.
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How so? Everyone had crenellations! Not just everyone in medieval Europe, but the Chinese, Assyrians, ancient Egyptians, etc. As for Ironclad, Iâm pretty sure thatâs a made up tech. Did the Teutonic Order really cover their siege weapons in iron armour?
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I think heâs using sarcasm to make the point that people tend to exaggerate differences between groups and ideas they are familiar with, in this case, how a mostly western audience sees itself as more diverse than other 3 continents even though thatâs most likely their bias only.
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Oh, how embarrassing that I didnât notice the (in hindsight obvious) sarcasm!
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Germany has the highest amount of castles in Europe, more than France, hence the bonus.
As for saying itâs only the Teutonic Order⊠the real name of the Teutonic Order is The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem. Teuton is cognate with âDeutschâ, itâs another word to say âGermanâ, making the Teutons the german-speaking core of the HRE. So the HRE minus the french/dutch speaking parts (Burgundians), the czech-speaking parts (Bohemians) and the troublesome italian-speaking parts (Italians).
So I wouldnât split the Teutonic Order from the Regnum Teutonicum (latin for âkingdom of Germanyâ) thatâs the core of the HRE, just like I wouldnât make a new Crusaders civs that are already represented mainly by the Franks.
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