I think some persian civs like Ghaznavids, Khwarezmians and Safavids will be a variant of Delhi sultanate as they already speak Persian and has elephants
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Sigusmund of Luxembourg the founder you mentioned was the King of Hungary and Croatia. However the order itself was not really a nation and flourished in Germany/Italy until the fall of Constantinople
Jurchen Jin dynasty probably . They have to speak Chinese so I dont think its korean. New HRE is has black and gold color scheme so should be Hungarian black army. The other 2 are same as my thought.
Malians were the easiest for a long time, just collecting gold, they made Farimba with units at a lower cost, plus the Scouts were very advantageous, and yet they did not surpass the English in pick rate!
Malians are three stars for difficulty
in theory but its META was not
Yeah I hope you are right and these are just some kind of teaser (though would you tease on the selling of a product ?)
All these subfactions are named after stuff that didn’t exist for even last half of the main civs timeline.
Jeanne d’arc was a thing for less than 2 years. Originially I didn’t wanted to see a duchy of burgundy but at this point it would have been far better as it was trying really hard to become its own thing.
Sultan’s army sounds very generic indeed was it so hard to just call them mameluks especially with the horse archers they seem to get in the trailer hinting to an with more emphasis toward cavalry as far as the military is concerned. It would be great the abbassid being infantry focused in the game.
Order of the dragon only fits into age4 and I don’t think people will like the idea of this replacing Hungary.
Empire of jade seems to be completly made up. Maybe "nothern chinese’ sounded bland and also I really like the concept of a nothern chinese that you and other point out. We could have a tang–>liao–>Jin–>Yuan with a cavalry focus.
The immersiveness will take a hit for sure at least we can still expect some nice gameplay out of it.
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I’m withholding judgement here. Hopefully, they each get a completely different unique unit roster (4+ unique units each). And different landmark functionality. This could be an awesome idea, but only if they put the work into the variants and don’t do it lazy.
Im more interested in what the variant civs have to offer in terms of new units, gameplay and overall the new stuff. They’re a bonus compared to Japanese and Byzantines.
The naming isnt what is most important for me.
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Their name is Emperor Jade? Seriously?
Emperor Jade is the name of Chinese Mythology’s supreme deity, not northern Government of ancient China. I consider that this name also remains to be polished.
And by the way, where or who is the Sultan?
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Tf is Jeanne d’Arc as a civ? What kind of crappy civ names are these? Order of the Dragon, does that mean we got Wallachian as a new civ? Wat?
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I’ve wanted variant civs before they’ve been mentioned. For one, it might allow me more options as player where I might choose between variants while I still playing my main civ and two I think it makes counterplay easier if I only have to learn what makes a variant different from a main civ. I’ve never wanted AOE4 to be AOE2 with 43 civilizations. I have a job and children and it’s hard being a gold league scrub. So on the one hand I’m really excited to see variant civs.
On the other, I’m really hoping these names were placeholders. I’m particularly miffed by Jeanne d’arc. I mean the trailer was hinting hard that we’d get a crusader civ and it just seems like a weird choice on account of the being a single person and not like an empire. Empires are kinda a central conceit of this game. I feel like if they’re going to add hero units she’d make more sense for regular France. But if they wanted to avoid making a crusader civ playable for reasons they could have gone with burgundy, provence, or even a Guelph aligned Italian city state (Genoa would have age 2 arbalesters instead of knights).
I don’t love the other names either but to me they’re a bit more understandable. Like maybe you wouldn’t want to use the term Mamluk, Order of the Dragon sounds pretty badass, Empire of Jade… well it’s an empire.
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Well, hear the news that the official names of the expansion on Xbox are: Jade Empire, Joan of Arc (???), Sultan’s Army, Order of the Dragon. Listening to them reminded me of this scene from an internet meme:
Well, the same thing, just as Starbuck is not a theme, Joan of Arc I do not think it is a theme. It’s as if they told you that your party is going to have Joan of Arc as its theme.
Well, time to decipher:
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Joan of Arc: NO IDEA. I no longer even understand if the French Civ I put in the previous image was from the campaign or the real variant. Now I think it’s just campaign civ. Then the variant would have its clue in the promotional image of DLC… But the problem is that apart from the single unit, there is nothing else. The craziest idea I can think of is to invoke Joan’s companions: La Hire, Duke de Alencon, Guy, all of them. But perhaps it refers to France " after Joan" or the French army exalted by Joan’s death. I once proposed that his beatification and popular worship be a French religious technology, I did not believe that it would come to be considered for a faction. Let’s see how it turns out.
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Order of the Dragon: The Order to which Vlad’s father belonged rang in my head ###### But isn’t that in Wallachia? After reading a little, it turns out that there was a time when the HRE had a King ( Sigismund of Luxembourg) who was practically not only emperor of the HRE, but also of Hungary and Croatia. The marriages between royalty reached such a point that by the royal blood of the Hansburgs, they had blood from almost all European countries, and practically Charles V had German, Spanish, Hungarian, French, Italian blood, etc. I suppose it is the tentative name to refer to the era where the HRE began to take over half of Europe, or to some single unit or to the alliances of the HRE with Hungary to defend it from the Turks. It is supposed to have new units or mechanics. Curiously, Sigismund of Luxembourg was king during the time of the Hussite wars. Could it be related? Only time will tell.
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Sultan’s Army: Wait, it does not say army of the Caliph … the Abbasid Caliphate is supposed to have a leader to the Caliph, except consider the time of the Ayyubid dynasty, and that Saladin himself was Sultan, or the time when the Mongols besieged Baghdad, creating the Mamluk Sultanate, where the Caliph was the religious leader, but the political and military leader was the sultan. It can be one of the two (Ayyubid or the Mamluks), or both, in any case that would explain the “Islamic horse archers” seen in the trailer (they are Muslims because the barding has geometric figures on the fabric, typical of them); unless it’s just a campaign unit (although that would be a shame).
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Jade Empire: NO IDEA WITH THE NAME. I already theorized that it could be the Kitan, the northern Chinese dynasties (Liao/Jin/Yuan/Northern Yuan), does anyone have any extra ideas? The problem is that jade itself is the most valuable mineral in medieval China, at the level of gold in the West, so it is a vague term. It cannot be about the Jade Emperor, since that is the supreme Chinese God, or the conception of the creator god and father God in Christianity but in the Chinese; except is it something for Age of Mithology. Any clues given by Chinese users? Best regards.
In fact I have a doubt:
-If there are now variants, how is the original? will have a code name too? So one might wonder if the variant Civ will be decided before choosing the lobby, or while playing and ascending ages. What occurred to me is that it would be a mechanism to the “Revolution” of AoE3: Warchieft, that is activated instead of advancing in age with Landmarks in a normal way. It would make sense then what some “spoileados” said about its usefulness in multiplayer, since if the enemy does not know if one is going to activate revolution or not, obviously it is an extra challenge.
Personally, I think that the variant is chosen while you play and the game has already begun, only then do I see sense in the variant “Juana” (I do not think that the civ exists as Juana since the Dark Ages). If not, only time will tell. As long as its historical simile is respected, I have no problems.
To finish another meme:
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Tiredly predictable how half the thread has turned into complaining about the only woman mentioned in the expansion content.
I do agree the Sultan’s Army and Empire of Jade seem very generic though. I wonder if they’ll be able to update them considering the names are already in marketing copy.
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Joan of Arc doesn’t make sense as the variant civ name, is pretty obvious why they want to force it… lest called it age of heroes instead.
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I think that, instead of her name, it could be named the civ as ‘Joan/Jeanne’s France,’ it would sound better in my opinion.
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It has nothing to do with her gender. Calling a civ ‘Saladin’ or ‘Genghis Khan’ would be just as bad. Why? Because AoE is supposed to represent advancing through ages, and its kind of hard to do that when you only live to be 19. My renaming suggestions
Jeanne d’Arc → Orléans (call the hero unit Maid of Orléans)
Sultan’s Army → Ayubbids
Empire of Jade → Celestial Empire
Order of the Dragon → Order of the Dragon (it’s hard to change this one without having to change the unit aesthetics as well, and this one is the least egregious of the bunch anyway)
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You know what, I take back what I said about Jeanne d’ Arc as a name of a civ. Since they love Jeanne THAT much, might as well rename it to “Jeanne Fan Club” civ.
Since the game isn’t historically accurate anyways, might as well go ALL IN!!
Gilles would be proud, Viva le France !!! 
Your post may not. Other posters are absolutely making it about gender, or some perceived “agenda” that the devs are pursuing.
For my part, I want to know more about the variant. Why does this one have a specific name, and the others don’t? Is that significant? Or just coincidence? Impossible to tell until we know more.
Yeah, I think there are variations that make sense, but to me, Joan / Jeanne is at least more specific than “Sultan’s Army”.
The thing with 20+ civs is also that the in game decision making (which should play a major role for Real-Time-Strategy games) will most likely play a smaller and smaller role. Aren’t AoE2 players already using notebooks to write down thoughts prior to tournament matches? I think I’ve seen it in the redbull finals last year. The strategy part kind of switches to what civs and strats can be used on certain maps which is all strategy that’s not done during a match.
But well that’s how it is. Majority of the playerbase loves new civs and sees it like a birthday cake or christmas present, so the developers will go for it and create new civs. Competitive players shouldn’t expect to have strategically deep and balanced civs in the future though.
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