History TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot / AgeOfEmpiresII

* Despite Alexander Nevsky appearing as a hero unit in the editor since ''The Conquerors'' and the introduction of the Slavs in ''The Forgotten'', there has never been a scenario based on the Battle on the Ice (where Alexander defeated a combined Teutonic and Danish ("Viking") army, halting the Teutonic Order's eastern expansion and effectively ending the Northern Crusades). Furthermore, the official "Slavic" campaign Dracula only has the player commanding the Slavs in a couple of scenarios, it's Magyars and Turks in others. And the historical subject was not Slavic to begin with.

*** For that matter, in Torus Charles Martel is depicted as a Throwing Axeman, rather than a swordsman.

* A campaign following the Britons under Alfred the Great, beginning with the Vikings taking over his capital in the opening cutscene and the player having to go from a king and a few villagers hiding on an island and gradually expanding and reclaiming Wessex and then England. Talk about an underdog story.

** When ''The Forgotten'' finally introduced an Inca civ, they found that because of the ''fictional'' reverse-engineering of cavalry and gunpowder in Montezuma, they now couldn't make a ''historically accurate'' campaign about Spanish-Inca contact without coming across as a retread of the Aztec campaign. They first passed a RPG-style campaign about UsefulNotes/FranciscoDeOrellana's search for El Dorado for an Inca campaign, which was poorly received, before the ''Definitive Edition'' substitued it for a conventional campaign about the rise and growth of the Inca Empire before the Spanish came. This is great in showing the Incas had a history besides being conquered by Europeans, but also consists entirely of Inca {{mirror match}}es (not even using Aztecs and Mayans as stand-ins for non-Inca peoples), and because of the lack of enemy cavalry, players never have a reason to train the Incas' powerful Halberdiers and Kamayuks.[[/folder]]

* In addition to the Vandals, a lot of people were disappointed that there wasn't a Bantu civilization in ''The African Kingdoms'' (i.e., the Kongolese, Zimbabweans, or Swahili). Instead, the Bantu are given the Malians, Ethiopians, and Saracens as placeholder civilizations in the Francisco de Almeida campaign, which centers around a civilization not even based in Africa aside from its colonies.

* Despite Alexander Nevsky appearing as a hero unit in the editor since ''The Conquerors'' and the introduction of the Slavs in ''The Forgotten'', there has never been a scenario based on The Battle of the Frozen Lake (where Nevsky defeated a combined Teutonic and Danish ("Viking") army, halting the Teutonic Order's eastern expansion and effectively ending the Northern Crusades).
** Furthermore, the official "Slavic" campaign Dracula only has the player commanding the Slavs in a couple of scenarios, it's Magyars and Turks in others. And the historical subject was not Slavic to begin with.

* Speaking of Joan of Arc, the decision to make her campaign the one following the learning one in ''Age of Kings'' kind of forced devs to make it easier and limit the most advanced weapons like gunpowder to the last scenarios, despite taking place in the Renaissance when they were commonplace. A more accurate version of the battle of Orleans would also have English castles to the west, making getting the supplies in the city more of a challenge, and have both sides using cannons. And regarding call forwards, ''[[EnsembleDarkHorse La Hire]]'' was in charge of Orléans when Joan got there; it would have been hilarious to have him be the one calling the player for help, instead of a nameless Villager.

* There were many battles in the 14 and 15th centuries where Slavic nations defeated the Mongols and The Golden Horde, and eventually forced them out of Europe. Surely one of those could have made for an interesting one-off scenario in ''The Last Khans''.

** When ''The Forgotten'' finally introduced an Inca civ, they found that because of the ''fictional'' reverse-engineering of cavalry and gunpowder in Montezuma, they now couldn't make a ''historically accurate'' campaign about Spanish-Inca contact without coming across as a retread of the Aztec campaign. They first passed a RPG-style campaign about UsefulNotes/FranciscoDeOrellana's search for El Dorado for an Inca campaign, which was poorly received, before the ''Definitive Edition'' substitued it for a conventional campaign about the rise and growth of the Inca Empire before the Spanish came. Which is great in showing the Incas had a history besides being conquered by Europeans, but also consists entirely of Inca {{mirror match}}es (not even using Aztecs and Mayans as stand-ins for non-Inca peoples), and because of the lack of enemy cavalry, players never have a reason to train the Incas' powerful halberdiers and Kamayuks.[[/folder]]

* ''The Last Khans'' would have been the perfect opportunity to finally introduce the long-requested Armenians and Georgians as playable civilizations. Not only do both kingdoms fit the expansion's Eurasian theme, but both make an appearance in the Tamerlane campaign (with Byzantines and Persians used as placeholder civilizations for the Armenians and Georgians respectively). Both civilizations were also notable victims of the Mongol invasions, which is the primary focus of the expansion, while the Georgians in particular also had a lot of contact with the Cumans. Furthermore, the devs have stated that a primary factor for conceiving ''The Last Khans'' was that the post-''Conquerors'' expansions introduced very few cavalry-oriented civilizations (only ''one'' had access to the Paladin), and both medieval Armenia and Georgia were famous for their use of heavy cavalry, making them perfect candidates for new Paladin civs. It's possible they were left out because the developers didn't want 6 civilizations sharing the Eastern European architecture set, especially with the Bulgarians and Lithuanians being introduced already, but many people feel that the Slavs already cover the Bulgarians (even their tech trees are similar), while the Cumans and Tatars should have just been a single Turkic Eurasian Steppe civilization so that a more distinct civ could've been introduced alongside them instead. For now, they will have to wait for a Caucasus-themed expansion.
** Which finally happened in 2023, with ''The Mountain Royals'' adding both Georgia & Armenia to the game.

* For the ''Definitive Edition'', several campaigns were updated to feature civilizations introduced in later expansions, that fit better with the players featured historically (for example, the Battle of Mohi scenario, which historically pitched Mongolians and Magyars, was originally between Mongolians and Teutons, but the Teutons are changed to Magyars in ''DE''). However, this didn't happen in some cases:

** Attila 6 features several Italian cities as enemies, which are portrayed by other European civilizations. In ''DE'', only Rome was changed to Italians; unfortunately, Rome is just a decorative, completely inactive allied player in this scenario, so the Huns never fight the Italians in the campaign. Italians could have been a formidable final enemy, due to their strong navy and archers with anti-cavalry bonus that the Huns would have trouble countering due to their cavalry-based armies and lackluster navy and siege weapons.

* The Montezuma campaign allowed the game to feature the Spanish conquest of the Americas without coming across [[UnacceptableTargets like they were supporting it]] or implying that Native Americans didn't fight back. However this came at the cost of excising legitimately epic moments of the Spanish conquest of Mexico that could have been great to (re)play, like war and alliance with Tlaxcala, defeating the Narváez expedition, escaping the ''Noche Triste'', or defeating the much larger pursuing Aztec army at Otumba.