what is the point of making an history base game if you are not going to try to resemble history.
One of the corners stones of this game is the fascinating opportunity to dip in to history and learn while Playing. If you only care about balance play warcraft or any other game. Age of empires didn’t survive 20 years just because is balanced. Is the allure of civilizations.
The proof is the release of the forgotten. That’s the seed that gave this game 10 more years of life. It was so successful that they did it properly. I know there is some obvious limitations, but why the English or the many other new civ like the slave have so much debate about what should be the wonder and we left this silly mistake, so fixable, so easy just be?.
Maybe when ensemble studios 20 yeas ago did this game they didn’t realise they where doing the modern chess. So they put some things together, they meet the release date and that’s it.
If you see AOE I there was only 5 wonders that represented the architectural style of the game.
In AOE II maybe they started with that same concep but then they stretch a little and made one wonder for each civ.
Clearly the current French wonder was trying to be some kind of representative of the gothic architecture in general for many European civs.
The franks and the English are the core of the game because this game started with jean of arc’s campaign.
What I’m saying now is, with the result of the game, the size, the legacy… They should put some attention to this incomplete/lazy choices of the begining.
And another thing, is a very sad move to portrait a culture and actually not care about it. They are some obvious limitations. To portrait the incas with Mayan architecture is even a bigger mistake in terms of history.
The incas maybe never even meet the Mayas but we can not ask to a 20 years old game to have an entire new set of buildings, modeling and destrucción animation just for one civilization. Is a fair compromise. But even the Inca wonder is an exception. They’ve made a huge effort to resume an entire town like Machu pichu in a 5x5 lot with a clear resemblance result.
They even made some subtle changes, only perceptible to people trained in architecture in the Goth’s wonder
What I’m saying is… Being sooooooooo easy, why do the french have to compromise their wonder? And above all, the franks being one of the most used civilization in the game and one of the corner stones of it. The 3d models are out there, they are even free!
Maybe. But they must have had the idea quite early on, since a leaked design document from July 1998 lists different wonders for some civs, with Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen (i.e. Aachen Cathedral) listed for Franks and Westminster Abbey listed for Britons. (Also the Dome of the Rock is listed as a possible alternative for Saracens.)
I have a beta version from September 1999 has Aachen Cathedral for both Britons and Franks (and doesn’t have the Franks’ wonder for Teutons), so the change to the Franks’ wonder must have been made quite late, in the last two months of development.
I find this comment kind of funny – I think the balance in Warcraft III is really bad!
It depends on the cathedral (e.g. I think the Sicilian wonder looks great), but certainly for French and English cathedrals this is the issue. It’s part of why the Britons’ wonder looks a bit off as well. I think they did a really good job squishing Aachen Cathedral into a square, though, even though the layout is completely wrong.
I’m looking through this design doc at just the civilization section, and it’s almost like it’s a totally different game! They had a lot of ideas for mechanics that ended up not making it into the final game, like special trade items.
I don’t think AoE games necessarily have to be historically accurate, but I do want a lot of stuff changed
Especially the Organ Gun and Gbeto, they don’t belong to the civs they were assigned to
As cool as the Gbeto is, I feel like it was added for political reasons, because the Dahomey Amazons have no connection to Mali and aren’t even really medieval.
I don’t want to open up a can of worms, but that’s what I feel.
I would suggest Reims Cathedral. It’s the most important building of the Joan of Arc campaign (where the Dauphin needs to get coronated). At the very least, adding the individual cathedrals for the missions: Maid of Orleans, The Rising (Reims), Tours, where all 3 of their cathedrals need to be protected. Another thing about Notre Dame de Paris. If the devs do make a 4x4 wonder for that building, they will need to fit it onto l’Île de la Cité which itself isn’t that big on the 2 maps of Paris for both the Siege of Paris (Joan 4) & the Cleansing of Paris (Burgundians 3).
Very good point!!. Works for me!. im only worry about the availability of 3D modeling of those wich are less famous. Because if they dind’t do it in 20 years, being so easy, must be a reason of
schedule or priorities. In any case… Any other cathedral located actually in france is better that some random gothic architecture in Prage.