Expansion idea: Religious Wars

AOE2 has covered a lot of possible civs but I think there are still some interesting civs left.

The Religious Wars expansion could be a good umbrella term to fit some of them in. I won't go into details as to what particular units and bonuses these civs should have, I think there are people here who are much better and more creative at understanding how the balance between civs should be done, I just have a good idea of new possible civs that could be added from a historic perspective.

Balts

Another Eastern Euro civ with the same architecture as Slavs and Russians, would cover the cultures that were important for medieval times like Old Prussians, Lithuanians and of course the Baltic crusades would be a great campaign edition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Prussians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades

Occitans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Aquitaine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Toulouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

Nowadays they're considered French but they have a separate language and in the middle ages this part of Europe had a very lively history with the Cathar heretics and Albisengian crusade which would be another great campaign:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

That part of Europe is also full of castles built in remote locations that would be hard to conquer.

http://media.routard.com/image/54/5/peyrepertuse-2.1490545.w740.jpg http://www.survoldefrance.fr/photos/highdef/1/1013.jpg

Since we don't have French in the game but Franks, Occitans are a viable option since they're a different ethno-linguistic group and are only considered French now due to modern post-French revolutionary nationalism, but back in the middle ages they were a distinct culture only loosely connected to other modern French territories. The architecture should be the same as with Italians.

I think this would be a good chance to create a defensive civ with unique monastery bonuses like maybe free heresy (due to historic cathar heresy).

Georgians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Georgia

They would fit in well in the whole religious theme due to being such an important culture in the Christian East. Very important kingdom that isn't covered in the AOE2 yet.

Tibetans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Empire

Again, fits well with the whole religious theme and covers another part of the world.

And one of these two:

Armenians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagratid_Armenia

They could have the same architecture style with the Georgians. Just another civ from that area of the world.

Swiss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy

Could add some fun units with this civ like Swiss pikemen. Swiss mercenaries were very important in what is late-imperial age in AOE2, it's a shame we don't have any of these units in the game yet. Also good for adding the campaign about Zwingli and Swiss reformation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation_in_Switzerland

There could also be new campaigns like the Hussite Wars and campaigns with Tibetans and Georgians/Armenians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars