Do you think if we sacrifice a pig a lightning storm will hit World’s Edge HQ and wipe out all their infrastructure and destroy all traces of this DLC? Worth a shot? 
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We also need to find a real Thirisadai and burn it
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I mostly agree with the original post, especially about Three Kingdoms and Heroes.
I would not talk about AoE IV as I don’t play it, but I find the idea of “variant civilisation” quite ridiculous. Representing different duchies or dynasties within one civilisation sounds very interesting, and I’d definitely like it if Chronicles could explore that even more, with choices in “policies” and UT!
I also understand people want to see the whole world represented in AoE II. I really like learning about different civilisations in my own life, including very remote and different ones, but I don’t think all medieval period civilisations would fit into AoE II. For American civs, it’s already quite a twist to make them fit. I still think some other non-European and non-Asian civilisations should be added (mostly from Africa), but I don’t think it’s insulting a civilisation to not put them in the game if their military, traditions or history are not documented enough for instance. Moreover, we’re at 50 civs now, so I don’t think it’s necessary to have dozens more, and would prefer the devs to focus on more ways to make new content exciting, without erasing what already exists.
A note on Burgundians: I understand the criticism, and indeed didn’t think they were a necessary civ when they were added (especially given gimmicky one-time effect UT). But there were historical duchy and county of Burgundy, which had quite a high level of autonomy, and there was also a Germanic Burgundian people in Dark Ages. Moreover, Burgundians also represent modern-day Belgium. Again, maybe it was unnecessary, but I’d argue a lot more AoE II relevant than the Three Kingdoms!
Overall, yes, AoE II should go back to its roots, at least for the main game. So I want to give devs this advice: for the main game, if you cannot think of civilisations to add, then just don’t add any. That’s fine, just take care of making the game balanced, flavourful and fix pathing. Add new campaigns and scenario units, and allow the community’s creativity to thrive like during HD. If you do have civilisations to add to the main game, forego gimmicks. One-time techs, charged attacks and heroes have nothing to do out of campaigns! And on the side, make Return of Rome easy to play for all the AoE I community, make it the official game, develop the campaigns! And more importantly, keep exploring Chronicles! I personally loved it, and would happily play more of it.
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Well that’s just ridiculous.
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Also they used camels which they probably started to integrate when they interacted with Berbers and Libyans and took over Carthage
Anyway I want more from the units we got…. Like more use for Eagles
You mean returning to its roots like Joan of Arc, Attila the Hun, and William Wallace campaigns isn’t actually returning to its roots? Even though they’ve been in the game for decades?
Rather than pigeon hole the game and hand-tie it into some preconceived notion of, “We must only play huge civilizations that lasted hundreds or thousands of years, and anything else is a travesty,” I guess I’m more open. The sky is the limit. Many upon many stories have been told in Earth’s history. If some are interesting, let’s see them come to light and life in the game.
I’m more worried about all the cartoony avatars and themes, without balance to more serious-toned stuff. I feel that does more damage to the game and should return to its .ore serious roots:
Speaking specifically on Eagle civs, I’m holding out for a Mesoamerican expansion to add the Purepecha and either/or/both the Mixtecs and Zapotecs to add bonuses to Eagle civs. That way, we have all the main players in Mesoamerica to spread them through. I really think Eagle Warriors need to stay near Mesoamerica since it was mainly the Aztecs and their neighbors who used them.
That’s not the argument. He must be referring to the variant civs in AoE4, one of which is Joan of Arc’s army. That’s not a civilization or a culture, but an army, so it wouldn’t fit this game and I wouldn’t like stuff like that in AoE2. And the game doesn’t need to have exclusively big empires, as it released with the Celts civilization, who were not great conquerors, at least not in the Middle Ages. In contrast the 3 Kingdoms are more akin to armies than civilizations, they are factions in a civil war. Or to be even more specific, they are the retinues and armies of specific warlords. You can rename Wei to “Cao Cao’s army” and nothing would change.
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Can we have one or two who just…. Have eagles but dont have any sort of blnus to promote them over the rest of their army? Hell one without Elite to make it interesting
I’m fine with that, it’s not like I’m hardlocked into any specific design.
Ahh, I see. Yeah, I misunderstood
No, I’ve thought of that idea. That’s what I’m saying.
It was rather vague. Sorry about that; I just didn’t want to ruin the joke. I don’t think I’ve ever posted a Confederates post, but it is something I’ve thought about.
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I’m not that knowledgable on modern history, but I mean… In some aspects, yes. It’s a country that split into multiple parts, generally the same culture, and at the end of the conflict the country just became one State again.
But I see a big difference between the two: the wars of the Three Kingdoms initially had dozens of warlords fighting each other, and eventually the last three who survived, declared themselves emperors. And from what I know the USA’s division into north and south wasn’t gradual like that and wasn’t based on individual warlords competing for power.
I like to compare 3K more to the Crisis of the Third Century, instead.
If each state had it’s own “caudillo” (I dunno what the equivalent term for Americans would be), and at some point the remaining ones declared they were the one true president, then that’d be much more similar.
The more I think about it the more different I feel they are… Ultimately the Three Kingdoms exist because of warlords and the Union and Confederacy for reasons we can’t discuss without the thread being locked xd
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Thanks to WC3 and AoM, since then we have to have civs with many mechanics in the series…
AoE 4 did that in the previous expansion (TSA), this expansion (KoCaR) they did like AoE 3 and added historical battles for the new civs and in theory in the next DLC they will make a new campaign or add 8 new historical battles for the civs that don’t have campaigns yet (Delhi, Chinese, Malians, Ottomans, Byzantines and Japanese)…
Historical continuity with AoE 1 and the Yamato campaign (you know, Yamato and Shang fighting each other over Choson) and the Genghis Khan campaign (and Japan to sell more there)…
Yes, I had read that the next European DLC could be around there… a Nordic DLC (Danes, Swedes and rename Vikings to Norwegians), a German/Alpine DLC (Swiss, Saxons and Austrians) or a Balkan DLC (Serbs, Croats, Vlachs and rename Slavs to Rus)…
Yes, exactly…
Yes, the Tang Dynasty, the Jin-Song Wars (which we will see with the Jurchen campaign) and the rise of the Ming Dynasty after Poyang Lake… in AoE 3 they should have included the rise of the Qinq Dynasty instead of the 1421 hypothesis which was fictitious throughout…but no way, we have to wait for AoE 5 for that…
Yes, it should have been set in the 20th century (and although they compare it to CoH 2 and the cancelled CnC Generals 2, at least it would be a game in itself within the saga)… by making it medieval, the comparisons with AoE 2 multiply and also people say they’re playing it safe and not taking risks…
That’s due to a lack of management… they recruit more people and distribute the games to more groups within FE, and it’s not just team A in charge of AoE 2 and team B in charge of AoE 3, Retold and 4)…
Originally it was going to be like this… in fact AoE Online was known internally as AoE 4, but then they saw that it was straying too far from the AoE core because it was an MMO, so they decided to call it “AoE Online” so as not to make the same mistake as AoE 3… what screwed that game up was that it was very freemium… but if they released a DE version like this now in 2026, it would do much better… interestingly, the first major expansion for AoE Online is called “The Fertile Crescent” (since it included Babylon as a playable civ)…
I don’t think they’ll back down… they’ll release more campaigns, but they’re determined that AoE 2 will be modernized and become an AoE 4 2.0… but I fully support it… we want more DLCs for Return of Rome and Chronicles and let AoE 2 rest with the issue of adding civs (adding campaigns for Romans and the East Asian civs is fine)…
They didn’t even have the nerve to do that in AoE 3 (for the United States they could have included a Confederate Revolution in Industrial Age)…
Of course, the 3K era was literally for China what the crisis of the 3rd century was for Rome (also divided into three kingdoms: Gaul, Palmyra and Rome itself, later giving rise to the tetrarchy with Diocletian)…
Sounds like the Roman empire situation
So unless you want to explicitly portrait the Roman Gaul part (like eg in New Custom Campaign "Aegidius" is released!) - i really don’t see enough justification to have them in aoe2 either, going by that argument. 89 years (or 74 if you count until 550 when Rome was Roman again) vs 60 years
Imo, if Rome gets to stay in the game, so do the 3K - simple as.
Aoe had choson as a civi but aok did not.
Regardless of what people feel its now a part of the base game similar to romans.
To be crystal clear, I wasn’t and am not asking or advocating for that. So I hope you are just engaging in your own thought experiment with that. Would appreciate stop quoting and mischaracterizing the words, even if accidentally
Funny that you mention the Aegidius campaign, because it also depicts the kingdom of Syagrius at the end, which was conquered in 486 AD, so it’d still be “medieval”. But since the game already covers Late Antiquity too, then it’s fine for Romans to be present.
However 3K are neither medieval nor from Late Antiquity, they existed entirely in the Classical era. You must take into account the Western Roman empire endured long after the 3K period ended. And their total duration doesn’t matter that much since the 3K civs already don’t fit the game because they break many conventions other civs respect:
They don’t fit the timeline, don’t represent people groups like other civs, they are not culturally distinct from the Chinese civilization, and their designs were based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, instead of using the real historical versions for inspiration. And now that we can see campaign footage, turns out there’s wizards that can summon storms using magic.
At least the Roman legionary’s appearance is based on that of 5th century Roman soldiers, meanwhile the Shu ““civilization”” has a unique unit, which is a giant crossbow machinegun thing mounted on a chariot, in an era where war chariots were already out of use, and it even counts as a siege weapon that can mow down soldiers with ease, when in reality repeating crossbows had very little firepower. Not to mention that the hero, Liu Bei, dual wields gigantic machetes and even does spin attacks like he’s a MOBA hero or something.
Romans have many less issues in comparison, and I find them more acceptable than magicians in a historical videogame, or Liu Bei dual wielding swords bigger than his torso despite being a mere sandalmaker and not a legendary soldier, at least that’s how he’s introduced in the campaign.
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don’t fit into late antiquity
approximately between 250 and 750 CE,
By the oxford definition they do: https://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/
they don’t fit the timeline
Total duration doesn’t matter that much
So what is it? Double standards.
Don’t represent people groups
Now that’s an inhonest take. By the literal definition , Romans and Byzantines represent cities with a vastly diverse population, an umbrella. Otherwise make it Wu ren, Shu ren, Wei ren. Better?
moba wizards
That’s a valid criticism and I’m not arguing against it.