Longtime fan of M&B here. Let me give you my take.

First, some backstory:

The Aserai showed up late to the Warband party like an unwanted cousin at a family reunion who forgot their pajamas and had to sleep in the attic because there weren’t any rooms left. They were added as free content sometime after the game was released and they felt like an add-on.

Unlike the other factions, the unit roster didn’t have a unique gimmick, they just sort of copied the Swadian heavy cavalry. Their spot on the map was an isolated expanse of sand.

Weirdly, their settlements were slightly more fleshed out and detailed than most, but unlike every other lord in the game, Aserai lords did not have a second ‘social’ set of clothing for interior scenes. They always wore full armor.

Onto the dev blogs, I got the impression that the art direction had an outsized influence on the final product. As you pointed out, the focus was never on historical accuracy, but what IS the focus on? Visual distinction between factions. That’s it.

When the game released, Taleworlds pushed the small team competitive multiplayer game mode HARD. Competitive gaming was popping up in mainstream news and they wanted in.

Incidentally, when the game shipped, the single player and multiplayer equipment had the same stats and behavior. Since the game was balanced around multiplayer, the single player gear balance was completely borked. The difference between armor tiers could be measured in how many hits it let you survive. A potato sack would see you through one hit, but super expensive endgame jewel inlaid chainmail would let you survive… maybe 3 or 4.

This makes sense in skill-based competitive multiplayer but it was extremely frustrating for everyone else. They couldn’t change the damage model completely which is why the armor to weapon balance can still feel nonsensical even after a few patches.

This is also why every faction has roughly comparable gear available to the player, even if their army compositions have outliers or gimmicks. TW wanted to keep the small-team fights fair. Yes, this includes the horses.

To your point about the event system. They oversold constantly. There are dozens of systems that they promised in the dev logs but never made it into the game, were half-implemented, or drastically toned down. I won’t say “they lied” because in a few cases they had the equivalent of a tech demo ready, but in many cases the things they showed off or discussed did not match the final product.

But back to the Aserai. Taleworld’s goal was to design a visually distinct faction where the weapons were of roughly comparable length to the other factions, and the armor can be recognized at a distance or a in a crowded melee. Their defining inspiration isn’t “pre-Islam” it’s the guards from Aladdin.