No, I just have an interest in the area (it actually began with ancient Egypt in second grade, lol).
Cool bro, can’t wait to see more of your ideas and inspirations here. It’s exciting to think of what could be done in Age of Empires 4 with the Turks or Mali, so much potential.
I’m gonna try to devise some specific Wonder-specific mechanism to try and diversify AoE’s victory conditions once more, I feel it’s been nonexistant in gameplay for 20 years.
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Big Suggestion - Bring Back the WONDER VICTORY CONDITION after 20 Years!
All strategy begins with victory in mind; we all know an RTS needs different victory conditions. The idea of Wonder as a victory condition was central to the original concept of AoE 1 and AoE 2, and awesome for its architectural marvel (this is the Architecture Topic). But unfortunately the Wonder was never viable in AoE 1 or 2 actual gameplay, reducing the number of victory conditions from 3 to 2, and narrowing strategic possibilities dramatically.
Twenty years later, it’s 2021 and lots of people are requesting that the first AoE 4 DLC be Byzantines and the Turks /Ottoman Empire, the “Clash of Superpowers and End of Middle Age DLC”. Being the most powerful and sophisticated medieval civs, this is the ultimate opportunity to bring back the Wonder.
Some civs have cavalry bonus, some priest bonus, it’s time to give the Byzantines and the Ottoman Empire Wonder bonuses, to restore Age of Empires to a 3-victory-conditions strategy game.
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Byzantine Empire: the ultimate “Wonder Civ” with Hagia Sophia, the utterly gigantic 8th Wonder of the World that was the world’s largest basilica for 1,000 years, the Byzantines can build a Wonder in Age 3. With unique technology Colossus, the Byzantine Wonder can cost 50% less (besides benefitting from Byz all-buildings HP bonus). This will bring the Wonder victory condition possibility back to life in Age of Empires, at least whenever the Byzantines are in the match.
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Ottoman Empire: the Eternal City Constantinople / Istanbul is the only metropolis on planet Earth that’s half in Europe, half in Asia. With more architectural marvels than any other civ in AoE4 time, the Ottoman Empire can build two wonders, the titanic Blue Mosque and the universal masterpiece Selimiye Mosque, and the second one only costs villager time to build. Having two Wonders instead of one can lead to far more interesting strategic situations, especially in team games.
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The wonder victory condition is the worst of all victory modes, so all this jingoism for the Byzantines is a moot exercise. It is futile.
Personally I really don’t think so. Plus, from a more realist, historical perspective, a Wonder victory is the only genuine victory. Anyone can win some battles, but ONLY a mighty Wonder authenticates your Civ had a lasting domination in history and amassed enough wealth to do so and go into ETERNITY.
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If one has amassed enough wealth, they can spend it on a mighty army and win the war. In the real world civilisations win against others by fighting wars. No army in the real world gives up and admits defeat if an opposing civ builds some fancy building.
Your argument is not missed on me, bro. But you’re missing an even bigger point, decreasing marginal relative gains. Let me explain. When you already possess the metropolis on the supremely beautiful and strategic spot on Earth, right where Europe ends and Asia begins, and you also already won countless battles and wars for centuries and stood the all-important test of time, such as the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires for example, winning yet another battle, routing yet another small nation for a negligible increase in population, economy or territory, becomes trivial. Even boring right? (that’s why all great empires eventually become complacent, lazy and start to decline) Building a kickass world-beating Wonder of the world to make a BADASS statement for ETERNITY is waaaaaaay cooler.
The Wonder victory is already in the game.
And I don’t mind it being an enduring AoE tradition. There are always those players who would prefer to take a “peaceful” route to win the game instead of destroying all the enemy bases.
Technically yes, you’re right, it’s a feature of AoE 1, 2 and 4.
But actually it never happens, it’s not very viable. So AoE has been a 2-victory-condition game for a looong time, which is quite poor for a classic RTS. It should be a 3-victory-condition game again in reality, not only on paper.
That’s the reason I came up the Byzantine and Ottoman Empire Wonder bonus /unique tech, and right here in this Topic, since it’s about the pinnacle of architecture in the game.
It’s about time Age of Empires becomes what it was always supposed to be, a 3-victory-condition RTS.
I watched a 2v2 pvp automatch yesterday where one side built a wonder, lost it to the attackers, then the other side built a wonder and won.
My heart soars to hear that. Hey, what do you think of my buffed Wonder concept for Byzantines (Wonder in Age 3) and Ottoman Empire (2 Wonders at 2 locations)? Would add a unique strategic dimension huh?
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Discounted wonders and multiple wonders could be a nifty idea, another idea could be adding medieval Egypt and have a pyramid spawn near the town center which will automatically start a 40min or 1 hour count down to victory, but cannot build another wonder if it is destroyed.
It’s not about winning just another useless or boring battle. It’s about winning the battle that ends all battles. The battle that completely annihilates your enemy, subjugates their allies, and finishes the game. The Byzantines and Ottomans were not close to achieving that. All they have now is a country with a city on a strait that affects only one major country negatively - Russia. The rest of the world don’t care that you have that city. The rest of the world will send tourists to admire the architecture, but none of the tourists have the delusion that Turkey achieved any sort of wonder victory based off of those buildings.
The USA winning the war with a nuke over Japan that cemented their place as the dominant civilisation on the planet is impressive. It was the move to finish all moves in a world war. It was the move that, until the year 2001, cemented their place as the foremost power on the planet. And they did that through technology and military breakthroughs. Not by building wonders.
The basic premise of a wonder victory is that (a) you have a wonder, and (b) you can defend it from destruction through your own strength (and that of your allies).
Turkey satisfies (a), but not (b).
They don’t have (b) because the world, out of benevolence, allows them to hold those buildings. It would be trivial for the rest of the world to destroy those buildings if they really wanted to. Hence why Turkey has to behave itself and not over extend itself. That is not what a victor is. So long as Turkey understands that it’s buildings are now a mere tourist attraction, they are allowed to keep those buildings.
Without (b), they only have a wonder, but not the victory.
@karthikriyer I swear I try hard to find a little bit of merit in your logic my friend, but this is the “Age of Empires IV - Discussion” forum. The starting year is 750 and the ending year is 1650. There’s an overabundance of WW2 games out there, if you prefer.
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I think the pyramids will have to wait until AoE 5 man… 
Except maybe as desert map/scenario element which would be magnificent.
Well, from my personal experience, Wonder victories are never peaceful; if anything, they force all-out war, and are often very close, quite exciting victories (or defeats, when it’s wrecked).
I’m waiting more of your discoveries and contributions about Mail architecture. It’s one of the civs I can’t wait to see, also the African biomes.
Here are a few more pictures, this time of smaller Malian dwellings. I think they could be used as references for Dark Age structures.
If you want more examples of the kind of architecture you would find in medieval Mali, I suggest you look up “Sudano-Sahelian architecture”, which is the name of their style.
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Cool man, it’s as unique as it gets. Do you still have your Mali civ concept and design? I’m thinking about starting a Topic with full-fledged civ concepts for DLCs, you can add your Mali civ there.
I will need to refine my concept a bit now that I have a better understanding of how AoE IV and its existing civs work. But I will post in your thread when I am ready, hopefully sometime soon.
Awesome, can’t wait for the Mali civ Topic updates. Keep me posted.
I did create a Topic to collect all rich, detailed civ concepts about major civs (including Mali, Byzantines, Japan, Inca, etc) yesterday…
But it was locked only because the first post was about Turks.