History YMMV / AgeOfEmpiresII

** Armenian and Georgian players are unhappy on how their civilizations are represented in Tamerlane's fifth scenario, "Scourge of the Levant," where Byzantines and Persians were used as "placeholder" civilizations to represent them respectively when it is more appropriate to have a completely separate civilization to represent them. Alternatively, they could have used one of the "Eastern European" civilizations like Slavs or Magyars to represent them since medieval Armenian and Georgian architecture strongly resemble Eastern European architecture in real life. In the Georgians' case, they could've been represented by a Central European civilization such as the Goths or Huns, as the Central European Monastery is based on a Georgian cathedral.

* ArchivePanic: As of ''Return to Rome'', there're 44 ''playable'' civilizations and 40 campaigns. Each campaign is at least 5 maps long, with the ''Age of Kings'' and ''The Conquerors'' campaigns being ''6'' map long and the "William Wallace" tutorial campaign being 7 maps long. And even then, those capped at 3 or 4 maps such as the original ''The Forgotten'' campaigns compensate their lack of missions with an increased ''difficulty''. And if all of this isn't yet enough, there are two extra level packs called "Battles of the Forgotten" and "Battles of the Conquerors", which contain 8 individual maps each. And since we're talking about an RTS game, where matches tend to be several ''hours'' long, with some particular exceptions, each map might last several ''hours''. Needless to say, there's A LOT of official content to delve into. Hope you get A LOT of hours to spare...

* ArchivePanic: As of ''Return to Rome'', there're 44 ''playable'' civilizations and 38 campaigns. Each campaign is at least 5 maps long, with the ''Age of Kings'' and ''The Conquerors'' campaigns being ''6'' map long and the "William Wallace" tutorial campaign being 7 maps long. And even then, those capped at 3 or 4 maps such as the original ''The Forgotten'' campaigns compensate their lack of missions with an increased ''difficulty''. And if all of this isn't yet enough, there are two extra level packs called "Battles of the Forgotten" and "Battles of the Conquerors", which contain 8 individual maps each. And since we're talking about an RTS game, with some particular exceptions, each map might last several ''hours''. Needless to say, there's A LOT of official content to delve into.

** You know, a Dark Age barracks is just a house surrounded by a palisade[[note]]On the [[Website/{{Reddit}} subreddit r/aoe2]], a user made this exact observation -- if you look very closely, that's exactly what the Barracks in the Dark Age is. For some reason this exploded on the subreddit and other fansites, and eventually people started making joke complaints that [[ComicallyMissingThePoint they had built a house surrounded by a palisade and couldn't train any soldiers]].[[/note]]

** Historical accuracy [[note]]A recurring joke within the community on numerous historical inaccuracies in various official campaigns, scenarios, and even civilization tech trees. One infamous case is the Chinese, where the civilization do not get Block Printing (until January 2020 update in the ''Definitive Edition''), Hand Cannoneers, and Bombard Cannons; which were all Chinese inventions historically (although it is said that the Chinese don't get these for gameplay balance reasons). Likewise, the Goths have Hand Cannoneers and Bombard Cannons despite them being anachronistic to the time period when the Goths raided most of the Roman Empire.[[/note]]

** You know, a Dark Age barracks is just a house surrounded by a palisade[[note]On the [[Website/{{Reddit}} subreddit r/aoe2]], a user made this exact observation -- if you look very closely, that's exactly what the Barracks in the Dark Age is. For some reason this exploded on the subreddit and other fansites, and eventually people started making joke complaints that [[ComicallyMissingThePoint they had built a house surrounded by a palisade and couldn't train any soldiers]].[[/note]]

** In certain tournaments including 2017's ''Escape Game Masters 2'', Magyars weren't especially popular to pick either to ban or play. In spite of a mostly versatile late tech tree[[note]]For example, being one of the few civilizations to have access to Paladins and Parthian Tactics[[/note]], they lack economic bonuses early in the game[[note]]they were initially released with a free Hunting Dogs tech in the Dark Age before the bonus, then the tech altogether got patched out; now the only one close enough to an "economic bonus" is killing wolves in one hit, and that is more ideal for forward strategies than economics[[/note]], their siege is mediocre and their defenses lag behind. In ''[=EGM2=]'' alone, they were only picked twice in the whole tournament, both by the same player. Interestingly enough, they are considered one of the better ''Forgotten'' civilizations upon release, as the others performed ''even worse'' before future expansions buffed them. This eventually led to a buff in patch 5.5 where Magyars were given several buffs where they become a more solid civilization while still keeping the MagikarpPower nature of the civilization.

* CasualCompetitiveConflict: For the first few years of the HD era, competitive players tended to ignore anything beyond ''The Conquerors''. The most common reasons being performance bugs on multiplayer in the HD versions and many changes that disrupt the well-established metagame for said expansion such as several TierInducedScrappy civilizations (both high-end and low-end of the trope) introduced in ''Forgotten Empires/The Forgotten'' and ''The African Kingdoms'', as well as biased changes to the existing civilizations. Not to mention the fact that Creator/EnsembleStudios had nothing to do with the HD version and its expansions. However this became more of a BrokenBase situation around late 2017 with the release of fan patches that brought the new civilizations of the modern expansions into the ''The Conquerors'' engine. The ''Forgotten Empires'' expansions were pretty much universally accepted by the competitive scene by the time ''Definitive Edition'' came out; nowadays ''HD'' retains a dedicated following among fans who want a more purist experience, while the majority of both the casual and competitive playerbase focuses on ''DE''.

* TierInducedScrappy:
** Koreans, Saracens and Turks in open maps. All three of them have poor early-game and open maps make them susceptible to being rushed. This is inverted in closed maps (e.g. Black Forest) where they dominate due to the nature of the map itself and the fact that they have access to many [[MagikarpPower strong Imperial Age units]] and technologies.
** Infantry Unique Units mostly range between extremely situational to completely useless with a few exceptions, but among civilizations that get them, the Franks got it the worst. Despite being billed as the "Cavalry" civilization, their only relevant cavalry bonus is extra HP for Knights (which becomes insignificant when many other civilizations get Bloodlines; which affects ''all'' mounted units). Their Cavalry Archers are crippled by their unimpressive archer upgrades and, as an European civilization, they don't have Camels. Their Unique Unit, the Throwing Axeman, is regarded as one of the worst as it is easily countered, has the strength of a ''Long Swordsman'' even when fully upgraded, is short ranged and ends up slower than most infantry due to them lacking Squires. They also got overshadowed by other civilizations with better cavalry and bonuses such as the Spanish, Persians, Huns, Magyars and Berbers. ''The Forgotten'' noticed this and buffed the Franks by making their foragers work faster, gave them Squires and most importantly a Unique Tech in Castle Age that makes their Stables produce cavalry faster. However, the PowerCreep introduced by ''The African Kingdoms'' civilizations makes them fall back to this again.
** In certain tournaments including 2017's ''Escape Game Masters 2'', Magyars weren't especially popular to pick either to ban or play. In spite of a mostly versatile late tech tree[[note]]For example, being one of the few civilizations to have access to Paladins and Parthian Tactics[[/note]], they lack economic bonuses early in the game[[note]]they were initially released with a free Hunting Dogs tech in the Dark Age before the bonus, then the tech altogether got patched out; now the only one close enough to an "economic bonus" is killing wolves in one hit, and that is more ideal for forward strategies than economics[[/note]], their siege is mediocre and their defenses lag behind. In ''[=EGM2=]'' alone, they were only picked twice in the whole tournament, both by the same player. Interestingly enough, they are considered one of the better ''Forgotten'' civilizations upon release, as the others performed ''even worse'' before future expansions buffed them. This eventually led to a buff in patch 5.5 where Magyars were given several buffs where they become a more solid civilization while still keeping the MagikarpPower nature of the civilization.
** The Vietnamese are rarely played in tournaments, mainly because of the MagikarpPower nature of the civilization (having an incredibly bad early game since they don't have any strong economic bonuses across from revealing the enemy position at the start of the game, and even so, this is only useful for scouting your own base instead) and the fact that their civilization bonuses and unique tech, Paper Money, makes the civilization really team-dependent. The Vietnamese were played in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRcWu9kFook 2v2 Return of the Kings tournament]] between a Chinese team and the Vietnamese team (ironically the Chinese team picked the Vietnamese while the Vietnamese team picked the Chinese), and the Chinese team lost. But this is because the Chinese team picked civilizations that are known to have an incredibly weak early game (Magyars and Vietnamese) while the Vietnamese team picked civilizations that have a strong early game (the Mayans and the Chinese to a lesser degree). A patch update in 5.8 gave buffs to the Vietnamese by having the Archery Range HP bonus have a flat increased HP rather than scaling HP on basis of Age and increased the HP of their unique unit, the Rattan Archer, although these are meant to address the issue with the Vietnamese in 1v1 matches rather than their team support potential.
** The Khmer are considered to be one of the worst civilizations in 1v1 Arabia matches (in fact, their winning rate is at a whooping '''38%''' according to Voobly). The civilization has various strengths such as a very strong siege line, a [[JackOfAllTrades reasonably diverse tech tree]] (especially with a BalanceBuff update where they are given the Arbalest upgrade), and the ability to build any building or advance to the next age without any pre-requisite allowing for [[ConfusionFu unconventional build orders]]. So what holds the Khmer back in competetive play? [[DifficultButAwesome The civilization is incredibly too hard to play properly]]. The Khmer don't have any significant early game economic bonuses across from said ability to bypass any pre-requisites for buildings or advancing into the next age, and the bonus is too much of a double-edged sword that often backfires on the player. In addition, much of the civilization's late-game army composition of Battle Elephants and siege weapons can easily be dealt with using Monks (since the Khmer don't have Heresy or Faith, making their siege weapons and Battle Elephants easily convertible) or Huskarls (since the Khmer don't have Champions despite having Hand Cannoneers), making most of their late-game power moot.
** During the HD era, the Portuguese were considered one of the three worst 1v1 Arabia Civs alongside the aforementioned Vietnamese and Khmer, but where these two eventually received slight economic buffs to make them more feasible in ''Definitive Edition'', the Portuguese wind up still having a low win rate. Their team bonus, which reveals allied Line of Sight without needing a market, is completely useless in 1v1, and the bonuses and unique techs serve to benefit gunpowder and naval units, so it is difficult to get to a late enough time to see the Portuguese really excel. The map type that Portuguese tend to excel in is water maps (eg Islands), but they are not nearly picked as much as open maps like Arabia or defensive maps like Arena or Black Forest.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Despite chariots being phased out elsewhere by cavalry in the Iron Age, they really were used in battle in India until the 8th century. By the time of Devapala however (mid 9th century), they were already ceremonial only, or used in CombatByChampion at most.

** To a lesser degree, Romanian players aren't happy with the fact that the protagonist for the Slav campaign is UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler, who in real life was Wallachian, a non-Slavic civilization, in spite of its many Slavic influences. They felt that the Wallachians should have been given their own civilization instead, rather the the Kievan Rus-influenced Slav civilization.

** In ''Definitive Edition'', many players felt that the Persians should have been given the new Central Asian architecture set, as it specifically ''originated'' in Persia despite being imported by the Tatars, but the Persian set remains unchanged upon release, probably because the civilization is primarily based on the Sassanid Empire, which existed several centuries before the architecture in question was developed.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: In the Definitive Edition the voices in the campaigns were re dubbed. This is especially noticeable in things like the third Huns mission where in the original the Romans had a hilarious whiny voice but in the re-dub it was dulled down.

** Similarly, Indians don't like that there is a single "Indian" civilization due to India's ethnic diversity, likening the "Indians" of the game to having a single civilization called "Europeans". This is being addressed in the ''Dynasties of India'' expansion that was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRaihXDjkkw revealed in April of 2022]] with a release slated for the end of the month, which adds 4 different Indian civilizations, the Gurjaras, Hindustanis, Dravidians and Bengalis, with the Hindustanis outright replacing the existing Indian civilization.

** Some Chinese players are uncomfortable with the fact that their civilization in-game is denied Hand Cannoneers, Bombard Cannons and Block Printing, despite being rather well known for inventing ''all three of these things'' in real life. However, the game itself [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales is still popular within the Chinese playerbase]], and many Chinese players find [[GameplayAndStorySegregation this historical inaccuracy in their civilization tech tree]] to be [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality acceptable from a gameplay perspective]] due to how strong their civilization is gameplay wise. The Chinese were eventually given the Block Printing technology in a 2020 update.

* BetterThanCanon: An extensive community exists towards creating custom campaigns using the in game scenario editor, and to say that some of these have such effort and commitment put into them as to shame the official campaigns as released is an understatement. They can be found [[http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/ here]].
* BreatherLevel:
** The Le Loi campaign is brutally difficult for three straight missions but finally reaches more standard territory with the fourth scenario, "Reaching South". You aren't forced to protect an ally like the first two missions, nor is your starting level of technology at a serious disadvantage like it is in the third, so you get reasonable flexibility to establish your base, even though your two opponents still train somewhat powerful armies. The campaign's challenge soon picks up again, however, with "A Three-Pronged Attack", where you have to simultaneously manage three separate bases while preventing supplies from reaching one of your opponents, and especially "The Final Fortress", where you're pitted against two aggressive factions with diverse and absolutely massive armies and have to besiege a heavily guarded city.
** The Saladin campaign's fourth mission, 'The Siege of Jerusalem'. Unlike the prior two missions, you don't have any arbitrary restrictions on what you can build. Also, unlike the next two missions, you aren't pitted against multiple aggressive, fully-upgraded Crusader armies or fortresses; just the defense-oriented city of Jerusalem and two small Crusader camps surrounding it.
** While Tamerlane is one of the game's easier campaigns, it can be quite difficult during the third mission and the first to a smaller degree. However, mission 4, "Sultan of Hindustan", is extremely easy so long as you survive the initial staged battle. Your goal is to destroy a certain number of Castles in a fortified city in a certain period of time, but the time limit you're given is more than enough that you can still win even after making several mistakes. Additionally, your base is ''never'' raided throughout the entire mission, meaning you can easily harvest the map's plentiful resources without constructing any defenses, so you can research all upgrades and amass a huge army without any struggle.
** Tamerlane 6, "A Titan Amongst Mortals", is also a breeze considering it directly follows the rather difficult "Scourge of the Levant". You start with a massive base, plenty of warriors, and lots of resources, and have a half hour of game time to build up everything without being invaded. After completing the side-quests, your main enemy becomes a total pushover. While you'll have to grind your way through two well-defended fortresses later on, you should be so built up by that point that your enemies will never be able to overrun you.
** The Grand Dukes of the West campaign gets progressively harder, climaxing with mission 5, "The Hook and Cod Wars". However, the last scenario, "The Maid Falls", ends up being the easiest of the bunch. You play on a very open map with plenty of resources, have a buffer ally, and start in the Imperial Age. Between your two enemies, one sends rather small armies, while the other takes awhile to fully upgrade their units, lacks Fortified Walls, and does not train any [[AntiCavalry Halberdier-line]] units, making it easy to steamroll them with Paladins and Coustilliers. Even ignoring them, your main goal is just to snipe the Joan of Arc HeroUnit, who isn't even that well-guarded.

** In Water Maps, Fish Traps are rarely used by professional players despite the fact that there are lack of building space in water maps. This is because villagers gather food faster from Farms than Fishing Ship from Fish Traps. The HD expansions introduced [[http://ageofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Gillnets Gillnets]] that greatly improve the gathering rate for Fishing Ships, and in the ''Rise of the Rajas'' expansion, two of Malay's civilization bonuses not only makes Fishing Traps cheaper, but they provide unlimited food.

** The Indians' Elephant Archer unit doesn't fare much better. Since ranged units as a whole are best used when massed and able to use hit-and-run tactics, the Elephant Archer's high cost, poor movement speed, and exclusivity to the Castle makes its use situational at-best. Indians players are way better off focusing on the civilization's other unique unit, the Imperial Camel Rider.

** In ''The Conquerors'', the Franks were considered one of the worst civilizations due to effectively limiting their army to slightly beefier Paladins[[note]]the infantry line suffers from a lack of Squires, archery is poor without Bracer or Thumb Ring, Light Cavalry do not benefit from the HP bonus and lack the Hussar upgrade, and the use of Throwing Axemen is mostly situational[[/note]], as well as the economic bonus only amounting to free farming techs that hardly matter late in the game. The HD expansions addressed some shortcomings by giving the Franks Squires and a unique tech drastically speeding up stable production, giving the HP bonus to all cavalry[[note]]still slightly weaker than many other civilizations, but particularly useful mid-game[[/note]], and adding an additional civilization bonus to aid foraging speed to aid the Dark Age economy. It had gotten to the point where the Franks are now [[https://aoestats.io/ one of the better civilizations in the game]]. Even Spirit of the Law, himself not a fan of the Franks, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOR55q9d1w is rather surprised by this finding]].

** Most people try to avert this by having all players mandatory pick Random for civilization selection, [[FakeBalance but this has its own problems.]]

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Several from the release of the ''Definitive Edition''.
** While all expansions cover an area not explored previously in the game, ''The Last Khans'' seems to be tailor-made to address past complains from Eastern European players without splitting the Slavic civilization:
*** The Lithuanians bring the Baltic peoples into the game and act as an alternative to represent Poland to the Goths, Teutons, and Slavs (which are seen as too Russian), although this is not reflected in the revised campaigns, where Poland is consistently represented by the Slavs (though they are depicted as Lithuanians in the Ivaylo campaign). Similarly, Bohemia is depicted as the Slavs in the Barbarossa campaign and the Teutons in Genghis Khan, but never the Lithuanians.
*** The Bulgarians stand in for the same obviously, but are also an alternative to the Slavs and Magyars when it comes to represent Romanians and Yugoslavs.
*** The Cumans provide an Eastern European steppe alternative to the barbarian Huns, Muslim Turks, oriental Mongols, and Catholic Magyars.
*** The Tatars now represent Turkic peoples without the Ottoman janissaries and reliance on gunpowder of the Turks, while at the same time made them distinct from the Mongols due to embracing Persian culture and Islam.
*** Furthermore, all three campaigns cover the impact of the Mongol invasions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in detail, something that had been almost glossed over in the original game.
** So "your" civ is in the game, but you don't like the name, building style, or tech tree? Congratulations, you can change all in the Scenario Editor now.
** While not a part of the ''Last Khans'', the Inca campaign rework, which now depicts the rise of Pachacuti rather than split the focus between the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors as seen in ''El Dorado'', silenced criticism that the second pre-Columbian American campaign still depicted conflict between the natives and the conquistadors, something which was extensively explored in the Montezuma campaign.
** The rework of the historical battle representing the Chinese (from ''Langshan Jiang'' to Poyang Hu, aka. ''Lake Poyang'') silenced criticism that the battle was too obscure, even to players with a moderate level of knowledge of Chinese history [[note]]The battle took place in the era between the fall of the Tang and the rise of the Song dynasties.[[/note]] In contrast, Poyang was a much better known and significant battle as it helped to establish the last native Chinese dynasty (the Ming), and tied in rather nicely with Ming's naval accomplishments [[note]]Zheng He's voyages began about 40 years after Poyang, under the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang's son, Zhu Di, who usurped the throne from Yuanzhang's grandson. Ironically, Yuanzhang was an isolationist in his admonitions to his successors (compiled in ''Huang Ming Zuxun'').[[/note]], all the way to their assistance to the Koreans at the Battle of Noryang more than two centuries later.
** The original ''Age of Kings'' campaigns for Joan of Arc, Saladin, Genghis Khan, and Barbarossa were always somewhat annoying to play due to the 75 max population limit that was put on all levels that required you to base build. This made it a pain to have the villager economy going on while not being able to make that big of a military unless the player started axing off villagers, which in turn meant that the player's economy slows to a crawl while the army gets built up. The release of the ''Definitive Edition'' finally updates these campaigns to allow the player to go beyond 75 max population on many of the levels. Genghis Khan's "Into China" and Barbarossa's "The Emperor Sleeping" received the biggest max population increase being ''doubled'' to 150.
** For the longest time, it was considered a [[MemeticMutation meme]], and an easy way to poke fun at the game, that the Chinese civilization couldn't research Block Printing despite being the ones who invented it in real life. After many years, a ''Definitive Edition'' update in January 2020 finally gives it to them.
** The three campaigns in ''Lords of the West'' could be considered the more difficult, [[AntiHero gray]], historical-based, and generally "adult" versions of the old William Wallace, Joan of Arc, and Bari campaigns, but without actually replacing them. Additionally, it gave hope for fans of the earlier civilizations that were limited to either being antagonistic force or a one-shot scenario in ''Battle of the Forgotten'' or ''Battle of the Conquerors'', with the Britons (one of the first civilizations in the first game) getting their own multi-level campaign.
** Upon its initial release, the ''Definitive Edition'' was criticized for replacing the narration of classic campaigns with less charismatic voice-overs, particularly the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lijg3AJSY5o Genghis Khan]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwpnEpyCOg8 campaign]] which originally featured a [[LargeHam memorable performance]] by the late Rick May. By comparison, subsequent expansions have since featured more compelling voice acting.
** ''Dawn of the Dukes'' finally gives the Lithuanians their own campaign, and also a prominent role in the Polish campaign where Vytautas is a recurring secondary character. Even Zawisza the Black gets to appear after being a Scenario Editor unit for years. And the Battle of Grunwald, which was so often requested for a historical battle, can now be fought ''twice'': once from the Poles-Lithuanians side and again from the POV of Jan Zizka's Czech mercenaries.
** The most ambitious DLC yet, ''Dynasties of India'', extensively reworks an existing civilization for the first time: the Indians into Hindustanis, who are now openly based on the Muslim dynasties of north India only (instead of de-facto based, but with a few [[SymbologyResearchFailure questionable]] elements thrown in to disguise it). It also adds three new civilizations to reflect the cultural diversity of India, "demotes" the MemeticLoser Elephant Archer from unique unit to generic archery range unit for the Indian civilizations (except for the Hindustanis, who [[TheCobblersChildrenHaveNoShoes lose it altogether]]), gives melee elephants to all Indian factions, and changes the Prithviraj campaign's civilization from the Muslim-based Indians to the Rajput-based Gurjaras while still allowing players without the DLC to (re)play it.

* CasualCompetitiveConflict: For the first few years of the HD era, competitive players tended to ignore anything beyond ''The Conquerors''. The most common reasons being performance bugs on multiplayer in the HD versions and many changes that disrupt the well-established metagame for said expansion such as several TierInducedScrappy civilizations (both high-end and low-end of the trope) introduced in ''Forgotten Empires/The Forgotten'' and ''The African Kingdoms'', as well as biased changes to the existing civilizations. Not to mention the fact that Creator/EnsembleStudios had nothing to do with the HD version and its expansions. However this became more of a BrokenBase situation around late 2017 with the release of fan patches that brought the new civilizations of the modern expansions into the ''The Conquerors'' engine. The ''Forgotten Empires'' expansions were pretty much universally accepted by the competitive scene by the time ''Definitive Edition'' came out; nowadays the community focuses almost exclusively on ''DE''.

* AnticlimaxBoss:

** Black Forest maps are often played by newer players due to other map modes (such as Arabia and Nomad) are much faster paced that would require more micromanagement and reaction time. Unsurprisingly, two of the most popular civilizations in Black Forest maps, Celts and Britons, happen to be SkillGateCharacter civilizations that are good in Black Forest maps (with the former having good siege to create new paths in Black Forest with their Siege Onagers and the later having good archers to secure the narrow chokepoints in Black Forest maps)

* CasualCompetitiveConflict: For the first few years of the HD era, competitive players tended to ignore anything beyond ''The Conquerors''. The most common reasons being performance bugs on multiplayer in the HD versions and many changes that disrupts the well-established metagame for said expansion such as several TierInducedScrappy civilizations (both high-end and low-end of the trope) introduced in ''Forgotten Empires/The Forgotten'' and ''The African Kingdoms'', as well as biased changes to the existing civilizations. Not to mention the fact that Creator/EnsembleStudios had nothing to do with the HD version and its expansions. However this became more of a BrokenBase situation around late 2017 with the release of fan patches that brought the new civilizations of the modern expansions into the ''The Conquerors'' engine. The ''Forgotten Empires'' expansions were pretty much universally accepted by the competitive scene by the time ''Definitive Edition'' came out; nowadays the community focuses almost exclusively on ''DE''.

** Zig-Zagged with the Vietnamese. They don't like that their civilization uses the Southeast Asian architecture set, and would have preferred the East Asian set instead. The developers' reply that the Vietnamese use the SE Asian set because of the Champa kingdom triggered a worse reaction, because Champa was a historical rival of Vietnam that was conquered and assimilated by it[[note]]This would be comparable to the Spanish using the Middle Eastern set because of Al-Andalus[[/note]]. [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales This, however, didn't affect the game's massive popularity in Vietnam]]. Additionally, the Vietnamese now use the East Asian architecture set in ''Definitive Edition''.

** Also zig-zagged with the Chinese playerbase, some Chinese players are uncomfortable that their civilization in-game is denied Hand Cannoneers, Bombard Cannons and Block Printing, despite being rather well known for inventing ''all three of these things'' in real life. However, the game itself [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales is still popular within the Chinese playerbase]], and many Chinese players find [[GameplayAndStorySegregation this historical inaccuracy in their civilization tech tree]] to be [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality acceptable from a gameplay perspective]] due to how strong their civilization is gameplay wise. The Chinese were eventually given the Block Printing technology in a 2020 update.

** The Champion-line rarely sees use in competitive play due to being slow, requiring obscenely expensive upgrades that barely do anything and having many common weaknesses, namely the commonly-used archers, gunpowder units, knights and Onagers. Only civilizations with major bonuses to their Champions, such as the Aztecs (extra attack) and Malians (extra pierce armor), ever use them regularly, but almost all the time, Barracks are used to produce [[AntiCavalry Halberdier-line]] units instead.

** Ever since the vanilla version, French players have scratched their heads about the Franks' extreme AnachronismStew unique unit, Throwing Axemen, who appear long, long after they ceased to be relevant. In contrast for instance, British players get to play as the vaunted Longbowmen when using the Britons and can simulate UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar rivalry with France using those units without it feeling weird.

* ScrappyMechanic: The ''Age of Kings'' campaigns limiting the player to just 75 max population is a huge turn off for a lot of players, especially for those that like to boom up their economy first with many villagers since it leaves very little remaining population space for military numbers unless the player starts axing off their villagers. Then once the player actually has a military, there will be so few villagers left to barely keep the player's economy going. This is especially jarring if you're used to multiplayer or later released campaigns that go as high as 200 max population. Thankfully, the developers of the ''Definitive Edition'' took note of this criticism, and [[AuthorsSavingThrow updated the population limits]] so that each of the ''Age of Kings'' levels have higher and much more sensible population limits.

** The most ambitious DLC yet, ''Dynasties of India'', extensively reworks an existing civilization for the first time: the Indians into Hindustanis, who are now openly based on the Muslim dynasties of north India only (instead of de-facto based, but a few [[SymbologyResearchFailure questionable]] elements thrown in to disguise it). It also adds three new civilizations to reflect the different cultural groups within India, and even changes to Prithviraj campaign's civilization from the Muslim-based Indians to the Rajput-based Gurjaras while still allowing players without the DLC to (re)play it.