[cauch]

If you have "several hundred hours", maybe you approached the article a bit too defensively. When I read it, I did not see any "combative approach", it seems even to be tongue-in-cheek (the misnomer is qualified as "amusing silliness", this is not at all what you would expect from someone who is combative).

[hatthew]

The article has a good point and is correct. But it gets too far down into the weeds. For example, the paragraph about how priest conversions don't count as empire-building seems like the sort of argument one makes when desperately clutching at straws—a position that's entirely unnecessary given how reasonable the premise of the article is. It's building a straw man for a nonexistent opponent.

[throwaway676712]

The blog's name is "a collection of unmitigated pedantry" and the host is known for playing scores of video games including AOE2 itself. The explicitly avowed purpose of the blog is to talk about pop culture products as a gentle way to introduce the general public to deeper historical knowledge and concepts.

I think you may have missed the point.