When people think about Mesoamerica they almost exclusively think of two civilizations, the Aztec and the Maya, and they do it in a rather simplistic way, as if they were both natio-states in an eternal rivalry over Mesoamerica (or if you are a programmer of AOE, over Texas too)

But the truth is, that the Maya never a unified state, and the Aztec only dominated Mesoamerica for less than a century, so there's a lot of Mesoamerican history denied and obscured by the simplistic misconceptions I pointed earlier

So, in order to help you visualize the complexity of Mesoamerica across it's history, I made this map, which portray the evolution of the región before the rise of the Aztec, from the Olmec city-states to the conquests of Eight Deer Jaguar Claw.

Enjoy them! https://www.deviantart.com/aztlanhistorian/gallery/65659173/Real-History-Mesoamerica-before-the-Aztecs