Quote Originally Posted by Xipe Totec View Post
Any good reason why CA won't make Mughals and minor factions playable as standard without the need for a mod?
The reason I've heard for previous TW games, is that non-playable factions haven't been balanced and tested for use by the human player. A game company has limited resources, and this lets them focus on maximizing playability for the factions you do get, while still letting you compete against a wider group of nations in a larger game world.

It also lets them tailor minor factions to represent historical realities, without having to worry about putting them on a level playing field for world domination. For example, native Americans can only build fishing villages. If those factions were playable out of the box, then sooner or later someone would complain about how their Cherokee faction can't build ships for trade and combat. Or cannon factories... whatever. With the current setup of non-playable factions, CA can build in some "local flavor" that makes the game more interesting and realistic, without worrying about making those factions playable on the same basis as say, GB or France.

If the player community mods the game to make the minors playable, then CA doesn't have to answer for any playability issues. People who want to play the minors badly enough, can play a modded version that unlocks them. Everybody's happy.

That seems reasonable to me. I'd rather see CA spend all its effort on just the major factions, instead of being spread around to every faction in the game. Considering the current state of the campaign AI, I'd say CA has enough on their plate just to get the few playable factions working right. I don't think this would have been a better game, and it probably would have been a worse one, if every single faction was playable right out of the box.