Age of Empires 4: The Sultans Ascend chose really weird Variant Civilization names

The expansion is looking great aside from this one thing

In case you missed it, Age of Empires 4 has a very solid looking expansion pack called The Sultans Ascend coming up, which will be released on November 14, 2023. It’ll add a whole bunch of great content for singleplayer and multiplayer to the real-time strategy game, ticking boxes from many fans’ wishlists with the introduction of the Japanese and Byzanties as new civilizations.

In addition to that, it will add four Variant Civilizations, which are essentially going to be alternative versions of existing factions. This is a fantastic idea to expand the pool of playable civilizations – there is just one stinking detail about this whole deal: the naming of these Variant Civilizations.

Check this out:

• Chinese: Empire of Jade
• Holy Roman Empire: Order of the Dragon
• French: Jeanne d’Arc
• Abbasid Dynasty: The Sultan’s Army

Some of these names are not like the others / Microsoft

I mean, really? Those sound like the titles of skin packs at best, but don’t fit into the game as faction names. Empire of Jade is about the most generic name for a Chinese faction you could come up with – name it after a dynasty, perhaps? There are a lot to choose from. The same goes for The Sultan’s Army. Which sultan are we talking about, exactly? Which dynasty or sultanate does he belong to? It just sounds lazy, super generic, and a little confusing, especially when you’ve already got the Sultanate of Delhi and the Abbasid Dynasty in the game – the naming scheme is right there.

The French and the Holy Roman Empire at least got historically inspired names for their Variant Civilizations, but those aren’t exactly fantastic either. I guess they chose Jeanne d’Arc due to her being one of the few names the general populace will have heard about from medieval times and it’s nice to be inclusive, but there is no precedent of naming a faction after a single person. It’d make a bit more sense if Jeanne was on the field as a permanent hero unit for this faction, but not really a fan of this choice. Jeanne d’Arc wasn’t the leader of a country or civilization.

The HRE’s Order of the Dragon is the best of the bunch, a knightly order founded by Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary and Croatia and Holy Roman Emperor. Fun fact: Vlad Dracul, the Wallachian inspiration for Dracula, actually took his name from this order. Members of the order did participate in the Crusades, so it does fit the expansion’s theme, and it is a very cool name, but it’s the same as with Jeanne: A chivalric order is not a civilization, empire, or ruling house – which is what the other faction names are all based on. It just gets confusing otherwise.

What would be better, then? That’s hard to say without any context as to what these variants are actually based on and can do mechanically, but for the Chinese a specific dynasty or region may be good – Southern Song or whatever dynasty/region is most appropriate, historically. Since we’re talking about the Crusades, The Sultan’s Army probably references the Ayyubids, so we’d have the Ayyubid Dynasty here. Jeanne d’Arc’s most famous battle happened in Orléans, a powerful duchy inside France, so the Duchy of Orléans would be a solid compromise. The HRE’s faction could be named after the House of Luxembourg, the Order of the Dragon’s founder’s family.

These names, at least, would conform to the established naming conventions already found in the game, hopefully leading to less confusion overall. I would understand them wanting to have a different naming scheme for Variant Civilizations, if it weren't for the fact that they seem to be listed as their own factions on par with all the others. In that case, I'd still prefer a more uniform approach instead of what we're getting now.

Again, this isn’t a deal breaker (it's a luxury problem, really) and The Sultans Ascend looks really good in every other aspect, but these are some really random choices.