True that just like they went with the Abbasid Dynasty instead of the Saracens because the developers of AoE4 wanted to divide the AoE2 civs that are ethnic into more than one civ in order to be more realistic with the civs.
I don’t know much about Italian history, but why not have all of them and label as the Italian states, then player can choose which state to go by picking the landmark, sth like this:
Lombard can be chosen in feudal, Venetian is available in castle, the last two in imperial. But to get to choose the late game routes you need to pick the general landmark(s) in the early age which are significantly weaker than its counterpart (e.g. Torre dei Conti would be a typical castle). You cannot reroute once you choose which state to go, each state has its own strength like
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Lombards route (Military focus, strong only in feudal) will grant u access to some feudal buff and unique units like Lombard warrior, Lombard lancer, or early xbowman.
The feudal landmark will be significantly better than its counterpart like come with unique tech to improve units and allows the cost reduction (-/15%/20%/25%) of training military units nearby (8 buildings max), but will have very weak castle and imp landmark(s). -
Venitian route (Trading and navy focus, strong only in Castle), …
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Papal route (religious focus, strong only in Imperial), building next to monastery will double the effect (train units twice faster, villager train 5 sec. faster, house capacity to 20, etc) Unique unit: cardinal? xD
The landmark will also be significantly better than its counterpart, may be sth like giving a global skill buff (damage/defense/ Healing/ movement, or atk speed/gathering rate, etc.) that can activate with the cost of point. Point generates by counting the number of monks garrisoning in this landmark every minute. -
Florentine route (culture or military focus, strong only in Imperial) will be a late game routes, with a much OP landmark to compensate for the two shitty landmarks before …
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If we have this be the case, we just simply called them ‘Italians’ because this hypothetical civ you thought of would be representing all the Italian city states.
Lombards represents the lombard kingdom born a bit after their immigration in the ERE controlled peninsula.
From that state, originated a lot of the most famous city states, like Milan, Florence, Pisa and so on.
The genoese did submit willingly into French and then Spanish control, but they were indipendent for many centuries before that.
What is commonly called genoese crossbowmen were actually pavisiers crossbowmen, in that aoe3 did the best represention of the unit among all age games.
It was also most importantly the most indipendent and the one that was conquered/dependent by foreign power most later on.
Also, Venice is actually one of the few medioeval city in Italy, since almost all of the famous city states during the middle ages were actually already roman or even pre-roman cities.
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