/snark on

So, for his birthday, I gave the BF a shiny present: the gold edition of Age of Empires III by Ensemble Studios. It included this nifty-looking set of extension called “The War Chiefs”, and “The Asian Dynasties”, which add Native American and Asian civilisations to the game, respectively. Now, the basic principle of AoE III is that each civilisation has a home town, and a great leader: the French have Napoleon, the Ottomans have Suleiman the Magnificent…

And the Aztecs? Well, you can almost imagine the conversation that went on between the developers at Ensemble:

“Ok, we need a war leader for the Aztecs. Someone great, who changed the face of their Empire” *looking over the list of Aztec Emperors* “Darn it, everyone has names of four syllables or more. No gamer is going to have the patience to memorise those.” *looks over the list again* “How about Tizoc?”
“Er, didn’t he only reign five years?”
*dismissive hand* “I’m sure he was cut down in the prime of his glory. Like Alexander the Great. Nah, he should do fine.”

At least, that’s the only reasonable explanation of how we end up with the worst Aztec Emperor in history, the only one who lost his coronation war, barely conquered anything worth mentioning, and died in murky circumstances barely five years after ascending the throne. (poisoning by his own generals or priests was suspected)

*goes bang head against wall*

(not that the Chinese fare any better, since they’re attributed the Kangxi Emperor, who was a Manchu, not a Chinese–but at least you can make a case for his greatness. Tizoc is just… ugh)

/snark over

EDIT: ok, I stand corrected. The game effects a random choice of leader, and does so among a predefined database that includes Tizoc, Cuauhtemoc and Tenoch. It was sheer bad luck that we got Tizoc twice in a row..