Hot take:AOE3 died because it tried to copy starcraft
I heard multiple times AOE dev Sandy saying that they wanted to do a starcraft like game whit civs that were 100% different from each other and that's why age of mythology had civs that did not shared units.
Age 3 vanilla was great because it continued the phylosophy of age 2,and the most popular civs still being the euro civs to this day. But when the warchiefs arrived, they were not only 100% different from the euro, but also between each other. IDK why the cetan bow and aenna have to be different units, neither the axe rider and kanya horseman. Also here is when we started to get weirdo units whitout intuitive counters, like thr tomahawk countering cavalry and the coyote runner artillery.
Whit the asian dinasties theh doubled down, theycould had make a glaive lancer shared between the 3 civs, or an arquebusier as a musketeer shared by asians, orshared artillery, but they opted for 100% civs because "starcraft did it".
The problem whit all of this is that releasing a new civ that is not european is waaaaay more expensive to develop than an entire age4 expansion. If you want to make koreans for example, you need cavalry, infantry, artillery AND EVEN SHIPS made 100% original.
The system is already broken and cannot be fixed at this point, the devs teased an expansion that was cancelled that was made of another set of euro civs, because they are the only ones whit good design in the entire game.
And don't get me start ranting on the USA and Mexico🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ absolute abominations of feature creep