I know it’s early to speculate on a new DLC without even having gotten the already announced one, but could we please get some love for Africa after 10 years of waiting and America after 12 years of waiting?
The DLC, from the campaign changes I could see, focus mostly on Asia and an American/African civ in the bunch would surprise me. Asking for more love for those places is really not being a choosing beggar if you consider that there are 1 year gaps between DLCs about Europe and at most 3 year gaps for Asian DLC. We’ve gotten a single DLC about Africa in 25 years of this amazing game’s life time and 2 about America (where most of the civs actually weren’t from there either).
Both Americas and Africa have 3 civs each, with those huge areas with big population and a lot of history being solely represented by 12% of the civs (under the assumption that none of the new DLC civs is going to be from Africa/America).
It’s sad being a fan of the history and culture of those places and getting the feeling to be completely ignored all those years.
I am excited we’re getting all those new graphics, unique monks and cultural variety, but I’d love it if they’d truly be diversifying the game with civs from places which usually don’t get to shine even though they have all the merits to do so.
I’m hoping for the best, but I think at the latest after this Chinese DLC, they should get some love for this places.
I’d be excited like the biggest enthusiasts of this Chinese DLC if we’d finally get Tibetans, but I also really want finally those regional DLCs for Africa and America as well. The unique castles make me hope that they’d be willing to add new architecture sets as well again, which would be great.
I’m hoping for the best and wish to see many more civ DLCs for the main game for AOE2.
I’m still waiting for my Tai which would’ve been great for the Rise of Raja and this new dlc. The Tai fought against the Burmese, Khmer, Mon, Malays, Chinese.
The concept behind this model (a shared monk between West African Islamic Malians and East African Christian Ethiopians) is not good.
Its design is half-heartedly based on Ethiopian priests, but changed around to de-Abyssinize it (removing the top branch of the cross to make it not-Christian, what kinda idea is that?), making it a nonexistent fantasy.
If there are ever to be more African civs, having distinct monks would be better.
Africans are not as rigid on Islam and Christianity as you think it is. They are treated as very similar religions blending with their native folk religions.
Also there is nothing wrong in a little creative liberty to make the model ubiquitous for both the civs.
Not sure if an African DLC would sell that well. The most popular 2 African civs are already in the game.
Similar issue for an American DLC unless it’s a North American one (since that is a region that doesn’t exist in the game at all yet).
Maybe it would be the best to make a mixed DLC like The Conquerors or the Forgotten.
They seem to be wanting to make less frequent but bigger DLC now with the upcoming one having 5 civs.
Also a AoE4 successfully did a mixed DLC too.
A mixed DLC could have 2 North American, 2 African and 1 random other European or Asian civ.
Later DLC could add 1-2 more civs to Africa or America too of course.
My humble opinion is we shouldn’t add more civ for 2 years. 5 civs at once is already hard to master. And with 50 civs, we really need to slow down a bit. They already slowed down after TMR.
I think I also prefer that approach, but for a different reason. I’d rather have more spaced-out DLC but bigger and more polished. That way we can have either DLCs that flesh out better a particular region (like this China DLC) or major expansions that can bring content from multiple continents (like the Conquerors or Forgotten)
Yeah, I’m pretty sure we will get new Chronicles dlc in the meantime anyway and if the Chinese dlc is the new standard set for AoE2 I’m okay to wait longer.
Honestly for Africa I could be ok with it if we just got Swahilis and Kongo and nothing else. Of course there is more to explore in Africa than that, and i’d love more civs than that, but with those two at least we touch on eastern sub-saharan Africa and western sub-saharan Africa, and at least get some representation for it.
For the Americas, somewhat similarly I could be ok with Mississippians, Purepecha, Tlaxcalans, and maybe Chimu. Again there’s more to explore, but I think those are the ones that are of utmost importance to see.
That might be a bit excessive, but I think that this Chinese DLC isn’t exactly going to be the standard going forward. I have a hunch that future-state what we’ll see is one “multiplayer” DLC with…say 3 new civs, campaigns, and maybe a new V&V-style scenerio or two for it, in the Spring, and an antiquity-era Chronicles DLC in the fall each year. That’s my hypothesis.
German GDP: 4.7 Trillion USD
African GDP: 2.8 Trillion USD
South American GDP: 4.4 Trillion USD
Technically Antarctica and Australia are also continents with a lot less inhabitants especially in the AoE2 time frame.
In 1500 the HRE was >5% of the world population and about 10x the population of Ethiopia.
Though it’s already represented by 2-4 civs when we consider Teutons, Bohemians, Burgundians and Italians.
Using modern GDP could yield entirely different arguments. The USA is massive today (comparable to all of Europe) while it wasn’t even the most developped part of the Americas in the times of AOE, this would be Mexico and secondarily Peru. It would be ridiculous to add 15-20 civs from the US’ territory to match the ones from Europe.
But indeed at the time most of Africa and the Americas were underdevelopped and stateless, with Mali & Ethiopia and Mexico & Peru as the most developped hotspots. It still looks like there is some room for nearby civs, but I hardly see civs from southern Africa or the USA to have any relevance to the time period.
(for the USA we know there was an urban civ around the Mississippi that got entirely wiped out but we know even less about them than we know about early bronze age Mesopotamia, not a lot to work with…)
So a most a small DLC (2-3 civs) per continent, and there still would be the challenge of making them feel unique alongside them. The Bohemians probably wouldn’t have been added if it wasn’t for the Hussites offering a very unique gameplay, after all.
