What if more civilizations had followed the example of the Meso civs?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Now, please don’t make this a thread about your personal new Civ again, it’s just a thought experiment and I am not advocating for implementing it into the game.

So in AoE2 Civilizations are all very similar, all have the same buildings, and mostly the same units available, just missing a couple upgrades here and there.
Meso American Civs are the notable exception, completely missing the stable and having eagle warriors, a fast moving infantery without trash counter as an option.
What if more Civs were made after this example?

I.e. I could imagine a group of civs (maybe the East Asian ones, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) to lack the monastery (as I’m not aware they went around much converting people to their respective relgions, although I might be completely wrong here.) In the spirit of the meso civs, they could instead have a new unit at the Siege Workshop. Something like a light cannon, having similar stats to the monk and instead of converting, can one shot an enemy unit after some targeting time, and with a cool down time equal to that of a monk. Both the times could potentially be adjusted to being lower than that of a monk.
By default this unit could also one shot siege units, including rams, but cannot target buildings.
Relics could be collected by villagers after the creation of a castle, and be stored in castles and town centers. Villagers, of course are slowed down by carrying the relic, but could still be faster than monks.

So cons for these civs:
No healing, no upgrades for monks, no conversions, need castle for relics, can’t use multiple to kill a target faster.
Pros: Doesn’t need to build monestary, doesn’t need to sacrifice expensive monks to pick up relics,
doesn’t need to research redemption to counter siege, is not affected by conversion resistance (Scouts, Eagles, Teutons, Faith) Potentially: kills faster, and more frequently than a monk converts

Would this be balanced? Would this have been an interesting addition to the game, or diversify civs too much? What other examples could you think of to do this to?

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No… no… no. Villagers pick up relics be beyond broken OP.

This is really bad. This would break the game totally. Civ being somewhat similar is kind of the whole point of AOE 2. Leave this sort of thing for mods and scenarios.

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i prefer my aoe2 to be more like aoe2 and less like aoe3.

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It’s an interesting idea.
I’m not sure what would happen if a civ lacked monks but stored relics in castles. I doubt the anti-siege unit you described would be the unit the civ would need to feel complete, and I’m not even sure there would be a gap in such a civ.

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Assymetrical civilizations are a though topic and depends a lot on personal preferences.
I personally like symmetrical civs more. Meso civs nailed it with the right amount of assymetry but it could have been gone totally wrong. Well, they were the only viable option along with huns in 1v1 for almost 10 years…
I like to see AoE2 as kind of a real time chess were the pieces are the same for all players (except for tech three of course). Those “special” identities are not what I would choose for possible new civs.

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I guess monastry is a bad example because it’s not really a unit that you can replace. At least it would completely break the balance for maps where relics are important (i.e. mostly arena). Imo not having a stable only works because barracks also train melee units. I don’t see how that works for other buildings. If your suggestion is rather about adding some civ specific new units from these buildings (as a second UU) this can easily be done by just adding them (see Incas).

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