Headscratchers / Age of Empires III

• Basically the entire China campaign in AOEIII. Let's see...
  • Ming Dynasty using the flag of Qing Dynasty, although this ties in more with the devs wanting to use something which at least existed in real life, instead of conjuring a fictional flag out of thin air. Heraldry as it existed in the West was non-existent in China; even the Qing flag used was created after the Qing Empire's contact with the West.
  • Zheng He's fleet discovered America. Yes, some do claim it in Real Life, but going to America through Africa and Atlantic Ocean is pushing it quite a bit.
  • After the aforementioned discoveries, the evil eunuch allied with the native Americans and tried to build his own empire. Communication problems aside, the idea of a eunuch building an Empire is just over the top.
    • You got that wrong. The bad guy was an evil prince. No one was identified as a eunuch, but if there was one it was probably the Zheng-He expy main character, Captain Jian Huang.
  • At the end of the campaign, Zheng's men somehow managed to erase their existence on America. Technical problems, like how exactly is it possible, aside, why would they do so? I know the Chinese are not into the colony business, but... why?
    • The Chinese didn't want to accidentally tip the balance of things in Latin America. And can you imagine what will happen if the Europeans reaching the New World finds Chinese Artifacts? History in that timeline will be proven that if one just keeps going east, you will find China. Look on the bright side, at least spices can be cultivated...
    • Except... it is the early 15th century, Latin America doesn't exist, and the Chinese can't care less about Europe even if they knew more about it than the fact that it exists. The likely explanation is that it was some twisted way to deny the traitor prince a legacy.
  • The Indian campaign made a big deal of the soldiers not wanting to use the pork/beef fat loaded cartridges for the Enfield rifles. The protagonist also refuses to use the rifle. Until he is ordered to by his British commander. Whom he then attempts to shoot. And the sepoys all pick up their rifles and fire on the British with the same rifles they refused to use moments earlier. What?
    • The best explanation is that they figured it would be ironic revenge.
    • People are weird like that. They were more mad about the fact that the British were being assholes about their objections than about the reason of their objections.
• All the Far East civilizations in AOEIII need to build particular building to advance to the next age. No big deal, but the idea that the Confucius academy produce siege engines makes no sense.
  • It's an abstraction of your civilization gaining the general level of knowledge and organised scholarship needed to sustain a complex siegeworks industry.

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