My guess is that in dark age the camel scout does beat the scout cavalry, but falls to the eagle scout, while being faster than the eagle scout but slower than the scout cavalry.
In feudal age it should be a reasonably strong unit given the cost, but I expect the training time will be pretty long, to prevent it from being too powerful as a general use unit while still being good for killing scout cavalry and taking map control. A long training time would also prevent the unit from being massed up too much before the upgrade in castle age. Still, the transition should be pretty good. Usually when you invest in feudal military you do some damage but go up to castle age behind your opponent, leaving you very vulnerable to a good knight rush. With some camel scouts out and an instant upgrade upon reaching castle that’s much less of a problem. On the downside camels are not the greatest offensive units to then strike out with. You might need to mix in some of that anti-archer unique cavalry to have a good castle age raiding force.
Of course, you are right… but the same for that we want more than 48 civs yes anyway the continents are more or less represented and the players play with the 5-10 most powerful…I would accept more civs if they touch almost unexplored regions of the world, say oceania or southern Africa (in America the thing is already more complicated)…
Of course, that’s what the campaigns of aoe 2 are about, to face more than one civ at a time, to play against a single civ I am going to play the campaigns of aoe 4 (except the Mongolian campaign, that yes it feels like a campaign of aoe 2) or some other generic rts…
I could see the Polynesians and Micronesians as possibilities. If the Polynesians are too broad a civ, they can split them up into the Tongans, Samoans, and Maori.
This is roughly the point where I go “umbrella or GTFO”. The present day population of Polynesia is about 700 thousand people. (I use present day because it’s easy to look up and often sort of representative for historic populations, to a degree.) That may be over three times the number of Inuit and Yupik put together, but it’s also a small enough number that if they all lived in a single city, that city would be too small for a profitable subway system. If those people can’t all fit into a single civ I’m pretty sure the civs you can assign them did not have a large enough impact on the wars of the historic world to be a viable candidate for inclusion. For comparison: The “next door” Malay represent roughly 300 million present day people, about 500 times as many as a Polynesian umbrella would.
On the plus side: The population of present day Venice is around 260 thousand people, so Polynesia is still easily ahead of them in my book.
(Yes, I know, historic city states weren’t just the city.)
Venice was a city but it was also a republic that extended across the mediterranean.
It has a bit of a different history than the other northern Italian city states.
Not advocating for a Venetian civ, just want to set things straight historically.
If there are more civs to be added, looking at the recent civs of the last couple DLCs makes me think that they want to add more unusual kinds of units.
They want to fill out civs that they’ve used in the campaigns, they don’t want to add new architectures and they want civs with broad appeal (stuff you’ve heard of essentially).
This was why before we got any real info on the “Porto” dlc, I knew it was going to be South Asia/India, because it fit that all those criteria.
Maybe people outside of South Asia might be unfamiliar with the new civs and their stories, but South Asia has like 2 billion people living within it who are likely to curious about the Dynasties of India DLC.
So even if Microsoft/FE hypothetically alienated a western audience, you’d still be appealling to a giant audience of people, so there’s little to no risk on Microsoft’s part in publishing this DLC.
I feel like if that’s part of the criteria for where they choose to go for civs, I feel like splitting up China is the most likely thing they’ll do next.
It has a deep military history that I think is quite unexplored ingame.
There are some campaigns to add new Chinese civs to as well, such as Genghis Khan and Le Loi
Slighty rework the current Chinese civ to be more archer oriented (no more camels or rocketry(yes I know that nerfs the Chu Ko Nu, that’s intentional)), a new gunpowder and rocket oriented civ and then maybe a steppe lancer Western China civ?
I know its military history involves a lot of civil wars, but I still feel like you could still make campaigns work for China.
Most importantly, it also has a giant audience to appeal to, making it another very safe option finacially for DLC.
All those reasons combine to make me think that China would be the next DLC location.
A less likely choice would be a Caucasus DLC with Armenians, Georgians and Turks campaigns.
It doesn’t fit all my criteria of using existing architecture sets or unusual units, but an Ottoman campaign where you conquer Constantinople would really grab people’s attention.
I’m not sure of the demographic numbers of who plays AoE2, but I see Turkish players ingame all the time and I’m sure they’d love to play that campaign (I would too).
Whatever the form, a DLC where you can package a Turk campaign would sell for sure.
I think they should add new architecture sets in upcoming expansions. Heck, I’d love to design them, considering my skill in architecture.
Yes, there should be a Caucasus expansion adding the Alans, Armenians, and Georgians. All three would have that new architecture set, and maybe the Bulgarians and Byzantines could too.
I think the Huns are meant to represent the Avars and Alans imo.
I don’t know how hot a take that is but I feel like it’s the only place I can interpret Huns fitting into during the medieval period.
I think we will get another DLC but the next year so we will have to wait some time for it
But my guess it’s going for an African expansion, only time will tell
