Considering that the alternative would be an empty Europe, that's the best we can do. Maybe in addition to the inertia rule we need something like the "convergence rule" to refer to this design paradigm. In short, since only real life history exists to provide us with plausible entities to exist in the game, certain events will always happen with the consequence that in game history converges towards real life history.
Overall though your post is needlessly negative and does not contribute to this thread at all. There are better threads to articulate this kind of opinion without detracting from the brainstorming that is happening here.
I don't understand why you've so often take any disagreement as insults, if people didn't value your work, they wouldn't be posting here. All I was saying is introducing hypothetical civilisations based on pre-European contact rather than artificial states like Nigeria would give more freedom to play around and be more interesting. Goals like Aztecs and Congo aren't historical anyway so I don't see the issue.
As for a game where Rome fails to dominate Europe, there's plenty of material to work with. Celts, Basques, "The Gallic Empire" of the 3rd century, Etruscans, Osroene, Berbers, Palmyra, Dacians, Scythians etc.
I'm one of those people who loves most new civ ideas. I'm just a champion for North America because it's so tragically devoid of native cultures at this point
Toltecs and a pre-Incan Andean culture would be fantastic. If only we knew more about pre-European Amazonian cultures as well, instead of having them be lost to history and only noted in one dubious account...
Regarding hypothetical north American civs, what about a conditional mechanic of Iroquois/Lakota spawning if colonial-Civs in the NE region lose 1-2 cities to barbarians in their respective regions?
I'm not sure how codable this is, but you could even have an 'arm the natives' Spy-ability where spies could upgrade barbarian units on a tile.
Outside of North America, Tartars have a lot of room, and could make early-Russian play more interesting, and give some variety to spamming settlers. Having them represent both the Kazan khaganate and Crimea would give a real early feel for Russia's 'fight for the warm-waters'.
Yeah, African civs should at least be optional like Moors/Poland. Also, haven’t heard much about people wanting an Israeli civ.
A limited but potentially viable way to handle this might be a few prescripted “alternate history scenarios” as a submod. For example, in your scenario where Persia conquers Greece a special scenario would begin where Rome has a high chance to go Zoroastrian and then its successor states would as well. Another one could be if as Byzantium/Arabia/Persia you wipe out the Seljuks the Turks never spawn. Little changes, but they’d help with the immersion sometimes.
You could have 1-city Armenia trade/espionage/culture challenge in the area instead? Maybe a human-only civ that spawns around the time of the Arscacid Dynasty and works as Byzantium's little helper.
Conditional religions are another thing I floated around a while ago, like 'Mithraism' spawns on Rome making a Zoroastrian Temple, or the Aztecs getting a state religion if they manage to build 10 pagan temples or something.
