It's still an insanely eurocentric game, like Aztec Warriors going almost completely naked while fighting the spaniards... like uh, they didn't fight naked lmao. Just pure orientalism, cool concept but filled with eurocentrism. It's kinda wild how their focus is completely on human sacrifices, like that was the entire Aztec culture or something? Just sacrifices? I'm sure they were into other things like building gigantic cities that made european cities look like complete shit.
Human sacrifices were observed by the spanish yes, but that wasn't the reason why they decided to conquer the Aztecs, in fact, I'd say that was barely taken into consideration. The spanish also genocided almost the entire Inca Empire and human sacrifices there were barely happening when they arrived. Either way, while the Aztecs and Inca were indeed doing terrible things, the europeans were burning people alive because "witchcraft"...
Still, there's always EUIV where you can play as the Inca and destroy whatever european sets foot on the continent, it's yet another eurocentric game but you can reverse-colonize europe, super difficult but worth a try.
Human sacrifices were observed by the spanish yes, but that wasn’t the reason why they decided to conquer the Aztecs, in fact, I’d say that was barely taken into consideration.
I'm not an expert but it probably never factored in. The conquista was actually a lengthy process of forging alliances and subterfuge between the spaniards and the indigenous peoples who felt animosity towards the dominant aztecs. The brunt of the conquistador army was comprised of native conquistadores, which are exactly what you think they are. Some even enacted campaigns independently of the spaniards. And once the process was consumated, native conquistadores were offered a portion of the spoils and some positions of power, they become caciques and collected tribute to the spaniards. Slowly but surely indigenous peoples adapted to the now dominant european power and became assimilated. The process is infinitely more interesting than the boring eurocentric version of "the spaniards were venerated as gods and absolutely crushed the aztecs with their mighty steel" where the spaniards were motivated by fixing these goddamn backwards people.
It's still an insanely eurocentric game, like Aztec Warriors going almost completely naked while fighting the spaniards... like uh, they didn't fight naked lmao. Just pure orientalism, cool concept but filled with eurocentrism. It's kinda wild how their focus is completely on human sacrifices, like that was the entire Aztec culture or something? Just sacrifices? I'm sure they were into other things like building gigantic cities that made european cities look like complete shit.
Human sacrifices were observed by the spanish yes, but that wasn't the reason why they decided to conquer the Aztecs, in fact, I'd say that was barely taken into consideration. The spanish also genocided almost the entire Inca Empire and human sacrifices there were barely happening when they arrived. Either way, while the Aztecs and Inca were indeed doing terrible things, the europeans were burning people alive because "witchcraft"...
Still, there's always EUIV where you can play as the Inca and destroy whatever european sets foot on the continent, it's yet another eurocentric game but you can reverse-colonize europe, super difficult but worth a try.
My high school US history textbook’s illustrations would beg to differ
I'm not an expert but it probably never factored in. The conquista was actually a lengthy process of forging alliances and subterfuge between the spaniards and the indigenous peoples who felt animosity towards the dominant aztecs. The brunt of the conquistador army was comprised of native conquistadores, which are exactly what you think they are. Some even enacted campaigns independently of the spaniards. And once the process was consumated, native conquistadores were offered a portion of the spoils and some positions of power, they become caciques and collected tribute to the spaniards. Slowly but surely indigenous peoples adapted to the now dominant european power and became assimilated. The process is infinitely more interesting than the boring eurocentric version of "the spaniards were venerated as gods and absolutely crushed the aztecs with their mighty steel" where the spaniards were motivated by fixing these goddamn backwards people.