Why the "Atlanteans"? A quick guide to understanding their inclusion.

This is a response "Remove Atlanteans from AoMR they are a fictional civilization", "ES should have included x, y, z" and etcetera.

1. Ensemble were only given time and resources to make one expansion for AoM, concepts were suggested to have Lakota, Aztecs, Romans, Babylonians, Inca, etc for the xpack. Due to this one expansion limit, Ensemble decided to combine the popular ideas (Romans, Aztecs, Inca, and Babylonians) also...

2. The Atlantean civilization expands upon their initial inclusion in Fall of the Trident (where they are basically Greeks with special walls) Ensemble expanded upon their existence by having them tie into explaining the three vanilla civs, the Atlanteans have the Egyptians architectural style (with Mesoamerican influence) the Norse skin and hair colour palette (white skin, blonde/red hair) and Greeco-Roman army/gladiators. Theocrat (Krios in the Titans)

3. In 1999 during the late pre-Alpha, one of the concepts ES toyed with before settling on Age of Mythology was an RTS game cantered around the Atlanteans, their inclusion in The Titans was the realization of that concept.

4. The Atlanteans having concepts such as villagers without dropsites, as well as the inclusion of North American flora (Marsh Trees, Tundra Trees) were a demo of things to come for Age of Empires III, likely to gauge player feedback.

5. This is a mythology-fantasy game based around using History, Legends and Mythology as a colour palette for game design, Ensemble weren't interested in making a documentary game, they've always stated they wanted to make fun games, if a historical concept was too boring or dark, it'd be removed.

6. Ensemble weren't as obsessive with Age of Empires as many would like to believe, they were tiring of making similar games, especially using history as a backdrop for an RTS, Age of Mythology was so different from previous games because much of the same formula was becoming stale, and they wanted to start making games that weren't history or RTS-related. The Atlanteans and by extension AoE3's design choices were done to further push the game away from that "basic AoE formula" If you were working on essentially the same series of game with barely any change for 6-7 years you'd want to at least mix stuff up a lot too.

This has been my TED Talk.