Europe stamped a great footprint over the world history with colonialism. The European and colonial countries were lead by white male leaders. Due to early development of Writing and a lot of archaeological studies, European history is much more researched and popular than history outside Europe. Hungary, which was never in Civilization game had more historical research than Zulu and Kongo combined.
Still it's a matter of balance. These are the things we're trying to move from in the modern world. So the Civilization has more non-european civilizations, more non-white leaders, more female leaders than you could get by measuring raw historical importance (like number of scientific publications). You just can't expect the distribution to be even.
That's exactly the definition of eurocentrism. Historical importance according to whom?
I get that early versions of Civ were eurocentric as well but jeez it had a civ just called "the Vikings" for god's sake.
As civ has evolved and grown into a mainstream dependable sales game, you'd hope they'd take more risk and be more original with some choices. Instead of possibly splitting Greece in half they could have split India, they could have split China, instead of giving us a colonized Kongo they could have just given us Mali again, instead of giving us euro-obsessed Cleopatra they could have given us a different pharoah.
And it's just disappointing to classify whole continents of people as "less" important based on studies. In the grand scope of the world "Sparta" isn't more or less important than a Mississippian tribe in North America. Even for all the Viking's accomplishments, such as colonizing the new World, it isn't more or less important then the Persians,
We all know the Vikings are in because of the fascinating stories of their war lust and exploits that come from generations of stories handed down to us from the perspective of British and Western European writers. It's not about their pivotal role in world history it's about the interesting drama they stir in your imagination.
Likewise for Sparta, while the Greek culture as a whole has been a highly pivotal instrument in world affairs the role of Sparta is really studied as a foil for the largely Athenian and Macedonian Greece we know and love. Their culture and way of life is fascinating and them "standing up to the big and scary godless persians" is written about for millenia. But in the scope of World history the Spartans don't hold an outsized role.
Conversely China has only in modern times been held by one overarching Government and culture. Same for India. Yet their role and "importance" should call for no less than 3 Chinese states and at least 2 Indian states. The Middle East is almost the definition of civilization yet it contains at most 3 civs currently. There role and "importance" to world history would probably encompass at least half the roster with various distinct states.
I say all that to say we arbitrarily choose what's should be deemed important in World history. We'll spend whole books and classes studying various Roman generals and there tactics in marginal campaigns to expand the empire, we'll study the ups and downs of city state relations in Greece and study the details of Homer's stories. We'll give great deference exclusively to great individuals who stood DIRECTLY against the great western empires like Shaka or Ghandi but won't bother to dig deeper and research their ancestors with the same level of detail.
