I think the Goths fit in fine for the early medieval times, Aquitania and northern Spain. But also as an Eastern european civ or Central European civ.
The prevailing historical consensus is that these Germanic tribes never fully subsumed the local Roman populations, but rather instead ruled simply as an aristocratic elite in conjunction with some local Roman power-holders who remained behind and swore fealty to the conquerors. They were still too much of a minority to impose their culture, language, and genetics onto the population. Instead, the rulers adopted Roman ways, embracing Roman Catholicism, adopting Latin as the language of the court, and applying Roman legal codes as the law of the land.
So a Germanic takeover doesnât bear out in the DNA, the linguistics, or in the actual historical artifacts themselves.
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But unfortunately gaeseric isnât as famous as Attila⊠although itâs true that in the latter expansion they gone for more of a unknown history.
Lombards and longobards can be used interchangeably, although longobards are a bit more accurate. When I talked about lombards I meant longobards, and longobards eventually occupy all major italian cities in their kingdom (Milan, Genoa, FlorenceâŠ).
The western part had the best military, and still had cartage. Also, the only real threat perceived by the romans were the persians, while the west had access to battle hardened foderati.
No, but the longobards triggered the change into the Italians, something that the goths didnât do.
I mean destroying Rome and coining the term Vandalism is pretty dang big!
Forget not that you could make this civ way differently from a Goths or Huns as a Navy and camel/cavalry based civ. Theres more potential and fame means little
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I did this in collaboration with Robbylava channel, I think vandals would just be an awesome civ to have! Because of their history and crazy migration, kinda of âlive fast and die youngâ, you have a whole set of contingencies that are probably unique in history. You could give them both steppe lancers and genitours because of Alans and Berbers following them but Germanic units too because they were primarily Germans, the dromon because of Carthage and make them shift architecture in every age. It would be really a shame to not have such a unique civ now that Romans opened the doors for late antiquity.
Yeah I see what you mean but just look at the roots of the two civs: Italians and Lombards. You canât really put then in the same boat. Lombards came all the way from Scandinavia, they were Germans like Goths and vandals, that as you said just happened to occupy Italy like they occupied Pannonia and ####### before. Italy has been occupied by any kind of people since then (Spanish, byzantines, French, Normans, Saracens, the holy Roman empire⊠There are even traces of Avars and Slavs in some town names) but Italians are a product of late Roman culture and that mass migration. Lombards were destroyed by Charlemagne in 776, rump states surviving in south Italy in the duchy of Benevento but gradually losing their identity. The Lombard language was last attested around the X or XI century so how do you call people from north inland Italy until the end of middle ages and the reinassance? Italians is not the best term in my opinion but Lombards is just plain wrong. Does it make sense to have Sforza as a Lombard campaign? Thatâs why they changed the name but in this way Lombards are not really covered. Indeed in Bari they are depicted by Goths but still a specific civ is lacking.
It dosent but devs can always change it.
Oh I wouldnât mind having them as a civ, just analyzing why they werenât chosen.
I wouldnât give them camels. there arenât reports that they used them Instead I would give them a good cavalry and Infantry with bad range units thought, so to make a unique water civs that itâs not also an archer civ.
The question was when aoe2 should begin, not when it begins⊠And to create a cohesive well-rounded game, should not mash together random themes of history just because devs just wanted to put everything post ROR together in one game. They did a mistake and we can totally see it until today, when the issue with goths and huns led to a bullshit addition of romansâŠ
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I mean, thatâs just like, your opinion, man. Lots of people love the Romans; that much is very clear based on their pick rate and sales of the expansion since release. The vast majority of people who play this game do so because itâs fun, not because itâs historically accurate. Of course we can all be nerds and say âUM, ACKCHULLYâŠâ, but as long as they donât start introducing machine guns, lasers, dragons or spaceships etc., hardly anyone really cares about the exact time period, as long as itâs not something crazy like early primitive civs or modern weapons. Basically none of the civs in the game ever fought each other. Even your suggested time period for the game is over 500 years+. So adding civs from a few hundred years before is not the game-breaking change that you think it is.
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All those talks about Lombards and Vandals really make me wish AoE2 had been split into two games with the separation being around the 11th century (probably with some overlapping). It would make things so much cleaner and we could have an even bigger variety of civs between those two separate games.
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But you can put them inside the same boot⊠sorry, sorry, I know itâs terrible but I had to get it out of meâŠ
I wouldnât mind the vandals, I just think that they are pretty low in the priority list of potential civsâŠ
Besides, I wouldnât go for camels or genitour, the vandals were a germanic tribe and mixed very little with the roman population, even less with the nearby bordering tribes. Sometimes they fight alongside, sometimes the fought each other, so I really wouldnât pick african themed units.
I wouldnât give them steppe lancers either, as they didnât came from the steppe like the Huns of avars, but they should get a cavalry UU armed with a spear.
Joking aside, itâs true that there are theories that they camed from scandinavia, but like almost half of the germanic tribes, and the lombards themselves werenât a clearly defined population. It was an amalgamation of populations mostly germanic when they enter inside the empire, but they then proceed to mix in with the local more numerous roman population, and both started to affect each other.
For sure the roman population had a big impact on creating the Italian culture that would come, but the lombards triggered such change. And they were also the military and political power that manouvered the peninsula for centuries, before the age of the comuni.
Both names are actually correct, but lombards would actually refers to both the longobards that invaded the peninsula, and the inhabitants of the comuns of lombardy, so itâs a bit more wide and inclusive as a term, despite being a bit of stretch (which is the case for Italians too).
Some of those are a bit different, the spanish, HRE, french never completely created a culture, a sense of belonging to a certain state that can be recognized as a proto-italian state, as they just controlled the land, but a milanese under the spanish overlord still considered itself an Italian, not a spanish. The lombards instead did it, or tried at least and had a bigger impact than the other powers that invaded the peninsula. Normans too achieve it even if just on south Italy.
The goths would have achieved maybe a similar goal if they wouldnât be annihilated by giustinian, and romans, even the late romans, cannot be considered italians in a modern or even medioeval meaning.
Then the discussion could go on and on, in the end all differences are a line in the sand, as all tribes, civilizations and culture that we are discussing right now contributed to the evolution of an Italian identity, that might never came up without one of the component.
Everything itâs quite relativistic, and then arguments can come up that then itâs justifiable to add venetians, lombards, genoese and on and on⊠you donât want to open that can of worms, believe meâŠ
That was funny, didnât see it coming ahah
Camels may be a ####### ### itâs believable at least, like with Cumans sort of and maybe Chinese getting them (also Romans should get camels, maybe not heavy camels, because Africa was in the western Roman empire until 439, I mean byzantines have them). About steppe lancers I think it makes perfect sense, to address the fact that a part of the Alans joined vandals in Hispania and Alans were an Iranian steppe people, probably a part of Sarmatians.
I donât know man, this to me feels pretty factual. Lombards were not Latin or Italian people, they were Germanic. Even if not Scandinavians still they were not Italians. Italy wasnât a thing yet, they triggered the disintegration of it you say but the disintegration had already begone under the wre. The start of this process may be debatable but what is not is that Lombards were a Germanic people, not a Latin one. Their kingdom was one of the latest romano barbaric ones so until the VIII century you have (mainly) Romans (few remainings), byzantines (Greeks) and Lombards (Germans) in Italy, then very slowly you can start speaking of Italians and various little Italian duchies. It makes no sense to speak about Italians before that moment. The earliest example of very vulgar Latin resembling Italian is in the VIII century. I agree that Italians were not late Romans for the same reason they were not Germans.
Again mistaking Lombards for Italians is more or less like confounding goths with Spanish. I donât know why the latter is common knowledge while so many people donât catch up with the former⊠Itâs really the same thing.
Thatâs due to the fact that late antiquity is becoming more popular than the traditional antiquity vs middle ages periodization so you get that period between 200 and 800 ad that slowly becomes its own thing.
The fall of Rome (476) is still very popular but eventually there could be a shift of paradigm and I can see aoe2 splitting, even if personally I wouldnât want it, despite late antiquity being my favourite historical period.
I think if anything to put aoe1 into aoe2 was a mistake unless they donât change buildings size and aesthetics to fit with aoe2 terrain and constantly improve the game to make it believable in aoe2 settings.
Itâs less about the popularity of the concept that it making sense when you consider how different the roster of civs would be between two such games, and how even the civs that were there in both Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages and High/Late Middle Ages could have completely different designs from one game to the other. Take the Franks/French, for instance.
I think itâs far too late for that anyway, I donât think many player would like to not be able to mix the civs from both time periods anymore.
Lombards werenât Italians, they were a germanic tribe, as romans werenât italians, they were romans.
Being Italians wasnât really a thing until the risorgimento, but it was with the longomabards that the idea of a Kingdom based on the Italian peninsula started off.
If lombards didnât invade Italy, the inhabitants they would remain romans. Of course the invasion of the lombards wasnât the only factor that triggered the evolution of romans into Italians (passing by a dozen of smaller state identity) but they were an important factor, and alongside the native latins, they slowly evolved into Italians.
Anyway, what I say is that there is a kind of continuity between the lombard kingdom, and the italian comuni, as the first idea of an Italian identity started with them (with theodoric before we had something similar, but that was different).
Late antiquity is an underrated period in my opinion, itâs very interesting.
Yeah but vandals never really took roots in africa, they didnât stay there long enough to change their culture and military and absorbing the warfare of the place. If you look at the encounter with belisarius, youâll see that they employed the same tactics. Beyond that we go in the realm of speculation.
As for romans, I guess it makes sense, the romans had seemingly limitless resources, and most likely employed camels in one way or the other. They lack them probably for balance reasons, but romans besides gunpowder should have the full tech tree.
Especially archers, the romans had very good archery, and leaned horse archery from the huns, yeah their range is terrible to compensate for their barracks and scorps.
As for SL, one thing is having elements of a certain ethnic group ###### ### group, another is the actually employing consistently their warfare.
But I guess that SL arenât that far fetched⊠and they could have them⊠although I would prefer for another horsemen with lances more unique for them.
I think from a retrospect AOE1/2âs time span had better be split into 4 games for better consistency:
Prehsitoric - bronze age
Antiquity
Late antiquity - early middle ages
High-late middle ages (which is AOE4)
Edit: I actually do not favor the popular âfall of Romeâ split. That was followed by the massive migration of a lot of different peoples (most of which existed in antiquity). Then many of these peoples either disappeared as a concept, blended into other groups, or merged into new identities. The situation kind of âstabilizedâ in Europe around 9th century with the split of the Frankish empire. So I tend to consider it as a continuation of antiquity.
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You could even possibly split the Iron Age into two parts around the 4th century BC (fall of the Achaemenid Empire, rise of the Diadochi Kingdoms and Maurya Empire, Rome turn into a regional power in Italy, etc.), but it would probably be too much I guessâŠ
Yes thatâs my go to example for that too. But given how things are now, aoe1 encompassing aaaall history from the stone age to Constantine (?) Then itâs up to aoe2 to encompass all extended middle ages from late Romans to Korean turtle ships. Probably aoe1 would be even more ambitious than aoe2 (which itâs âjustâ 1300 years after all) if not for the fact there are way less info about early antiquity. So to me a franks and french split is actually not that absurd for aoe2 but I know Iâm in the minority in this. But itâs really no different from having Phoenicians and Carthaginians in aoe1.
I agree, thatâs why you have Romans, Italians and you should have Lombards (post Roman Germans) too.
Itâs so damn cool right? Specially if youâre into dark and grim stuff and you like decadence. Post apocalyptic dystopia with futuristic aesthetics is overvalued at this point, just look at late antiquity instead ahah!
I donât know why they gave them good siege and navy with that monster scorpion bonuses. Like you said I would have give them very good archers, cavalry and infantry but terrible siege (I think scorpions were more of an early empire thing, donât remember many important roman sieges in the late empire) and economy (the wre fell for bankruptcy). Medium monks, defenses and navy.
Yeah either the rising of Christianity or Islam was more of a watershed than Germans vs Romans wars since these two ended up mixing and living together while Arabs invasion cut in two the Mediterranean which was the centre of the ancient world and Christianity started to completely reshape western mentality way before the fall of Rome. So Iâd either put the bar in 284 / 313 or the VII and VIII century to mark the end of antiquity.
I am actually in the planning process for an entirely separate, much more historically accurate RTS, and I think Iâll have it be representing the Early Middle Ages, when conflicts in Europe were almost entirely among different fiefdoms.
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Goth GF: Youâre gonna come to the Goth costume party, right?
Me: Oh yes, of course 
LATER
My costume:
Goth GF:
Disclaimer: Iâm just joking around and having fun. I donât currently have a GF, Goth or otherwise. But yes, the period youâre talking about is very cool.
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Lol gothic rock can be cool too when it doesnât indulge in it.
I propose Siouxie Sioux as AI name for goths and a campaign about the cure.
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