AoE 2 DE Campaigns suggestions - Feedback DLC: Return of Rome

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Dear Age of Empires Developer Team,

First of all, thank you for the recently released DLC for Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Return of Rome. I had some fun with playing all 3 campaigns. I have accomplish all the Roman missions successfully completed, 4 of the Macedonian missions and 3 of the Sumerian missions out of 5 each. However, I also noticed some negative things about both the DLC and the main game, which should surely be improved, if the game is to be reasonably reasonable. Bugs to the game I have posted into the bug theme.

AoE 2 DE: DLC: Return of Rome: New Suggestions for the AoE 2 Definitive Edition:
-Give the new civ of the “Romans” in Age of Empires 2 a new, more appropriate name for the “age of antiquity” I am thinking of “Late Romans” or “New Romans” to be historically correct, since from around 250 AD can no longer speak of the classic “Roman Empire” of the “Iron Age”, but of the above-mentioned designations. You should also use the new name so that there is no confusion with the civs of Age of Empires 1, which depict the “Roman Republic” and the classic “Roman Empire”.
-Give the Late Romans or New Romans a “new campaign” in the near future in order to do justice to the whole scope of this DLC, including a new leader (a Late Roman emperor) for the campaign.

AoE 2 DE: Further DLCs: New Suggestions “relating campaigns”:
-We have already a European campaign with the Vlachs, although we do not play with the Vlachs at all, but we play with the Slavs, Turks and Hungarians. It would be good, if you recreated this civ and give thema as a leader “Vlad Draculea” for a later DLC. It is now very hard to see, how you have to compete as “Slavs, Turks or Hungarian” instead of historically correct “Vlachs”. Give the players a playable civ called “Vlachs”.
-Give the “Vikings” civ and the “Slavs” civ a “new campaign”, which is missing so far. With the Vikings you can draw a connection from Denmark to Sweden in the individual missions. With the Slavs you can draw a connection from Kiev to Novgorod for the individual missions.
-The designation “Burgundy” as a civ is inappropriate with regard to the Lords of the West DLC. Just take the “French” as historically correct. The Flemish militia, on the other hand, could then be given a different name, since it has “Dutch” connections.
-Rename the “Brits” to “Anglo-Saxons” because that is the historically correct name for their special unit the “Longbowmen” as well as their campaign leader “Eddward Longshanks”.
-Baptize the “Celts” in “Britans”, because that is the historically correct term for the historically set period of the game from 250 AD (the beginning of the antiquity) to the beginning of the early modern period until 1500 AD. The Celts as a civ and language have long since died out in Europe and are only present on the British Isles (Britans).
-The designation “Slavs” as a civ is very general and for the period of the game from 250 AD to around 1500 AD, that is the early modern period, one can no longer speak of pure “Slavs” but in the full sense of “Eastern Slavs” or “Kievan Rus”.
-Divide all campaigns overview maps into “cultural areas” for the sake of a better view and historically more correct overview map.
-Divide Europe graphically better into Western Europe (Portugal, Spain, France=Burgundians), Island Europe (Britain=Celts, Anglo-Saxons=British), Central Europe (Franks, Bohemians, Hungary) and Northern Europe (Vikings, Teutons, Goths). A further subdivision into Southern Europe (Byzantium, Sicilians, Italians and late Romans or New Romans) and Eastern Europe (Lithuania, Slavs, Poles and Bulgarians) is also appropriate. Now Europe is far too compressed and does not look pretty.
-The campaign overview maps for Asia should also be revised. Enter new maps for the Near East (Saracens), the Middle East (Turks, Persians), Central Asia (Huns, Cumans, Tatars, Mongols), for India (Hindustanis, Bengals, Gurjaras, Dravidians), for South Asia (Burmans, Khmers, Vietnam) and for East Asia (Japan, Korea, China).
-For Oceania (Malay) please create a new campaign overview map as it shows the Indo-Pacific region, who has not been represented at all so far.
-Furthermore, I also see the campaign overview maps for America and Africa as being much too general, especially for future DLCs in the game. Divide America into Latin America (Aztecs, Mayans and Incas) and North America (no civ yet) and Africa into North Africa (Berbers, Malians, Ethiopians) and Sub-Saharan Africa (no civ yet).
-Give all civs specific architecture sets, especially for the “Dark Age” they should allocate previous architecture sets or, in the best case, new architecture sets to all civs. The current buildings just look awful for all civs because all civs use the same architecture set for it and it looks quite ugly.
-The special units of the Bohemians, Persians, Khmer and Koreans look horrible, although the “Bohemian” Hussite wagon or wagon castle should be operated by a group of soldiers on the wagon itself in terms of graphics, that would be an enormous upgrade. Give the “Persians”, “Khmer” and “Koreans” historically correct Human special units as they never fought with War Elephants or huge armored wagons as their main force because it is historically completely incorrect. In addition, a larger group of war elephants is very difficult to defeat in the game and the Persians act historically incorrectly with a massive superiority. Even in the Indian areas (Hindustanis, Bengals, Gurjaras and Dravidians), where they are known, war elephants were mainly used by natives and not for state warfare.
-Make graphical adjustments for the respective architecture sets of all civs especially for the units, which is long overdue. It is just horrid to see a Saracen swordsman look the same as a Teutonic swordsman. Finally give the Saracen a saber.
-The units on the ships and boats should be graphically visible on the water, not like now they are just cooped up on the lower deck like slaves, which also looks very unrealistic.

Best regards and I hope that the points mentioned will be implemented.

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They actually used mainly straight swords during the Crusades, sabers were mainly adopted after turkish and mongol influences. Armour would be much more different, however.

If I had to guess, as sabers are typically better against unarmoured foes and on horseback (slide better on target) while straight swords are better for piercing, the utter destruction of the Middle East made metal armour less common so using better slasher weapons was preferable to armour-piercing ones (few could afford metal armour anymore), while tactics switched toward cavalry which was favoured by Turks and Mongols. Hence the switch to curved scimitars after 1258.

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Alright, rapid fire response :

Burgundians : the name is fine. They cover the Burgundians from the invasions period, Lotharingia, and Burgundy who expanded into the Low Countries, so they are fine.

Celts. An umbrella civ mainly covering the Scots and Irish, celtic languages still exist to this day.

Romans
 it’s understood they are the WRE but they still call themselves Romans. The Byzantines also called themselves Romans. No one called the Romans “Late Romans” at this time.

The campaign map is fine as it is. It’s not hard to intuitively find campaigns, Saladin may feel more asian but his center of power was in Egypt. DLCs have their own separate maps because it’s optional content.

The Dark Age is fine, in practice very few campaign missions start there anyway, it’s when civilisation collapsed so a fancy architecture was on no-one’s priority list.

I agree some UUs need a redesign. The frankish throwing axeman is quite awful when zoomed in (and seems to throw dwarven double battleaxes instead of franciscas).

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Simply not, the Byzantines just called themselves Byzantians, otherwise they would have been called Romans, you contradict themselves.

They were inofficially called late Romans. But at least from the division of the roman empire can no longer be said to be the Roman empire, so the term in the game for 1 time roman is simply “wrong” an improvement would be reasonable


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“Western Romans” maybe though you’d need renaming the Byzantines “Eastern Romans” if that was done, I’d be okay with that change.

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If the developer could do that, yes, I would agree, although Late Romans or New Romans suit me better.

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“New Romans” would imply it’s a roman colony on another continent (and I don’t mean in North Africa or West Asia, beyond the oceans), no no no no nope, that’s alt-history with Rome surviving in America :laughing:

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So Late Romans would also certainly fit.

When it comes to New Romans I can partly agree with your argumentation. But the developers themselves recently announced that you should find out what is it like to play against the Aztecs with the Romans, so the name New Romans would not even have been chosen incorrectly, but would still make sense :smiley:

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“Neuro” as in “related to nerves” ? That sounds like cybernetics, I know the Romans were quite advanced but that’s the territory of Cyberpunk

(Yes yes I’m nitpicking, you meant Neo-Romans :wink: )

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Of course yes, i mean New romans. Just wait until I have done the correct English translation at the post :sweat_smile:

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Anyway the term “late roman” was only coined by historians much later who looked back at the history of Rome and said “this is the later phase of their empire”. But that’s not a civ name. Romans at the time surely knew their empire was not as great as it had been but did not know it would end, until it did. The fall of the Empire in 476 was not even seen as that significant, compared to the sacks of Rome in 410 and 455.

Either keep Romans & Byzantines, or rename both to Western/Eastern Romans.

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I agree with them. It is better to use West romans and East romans than the previous names Romans and Byzantines, because in the case of the Romans, it is just confusing with the Romans from Age of empires 1 and the name West romans would better separate the Romans as a new civ from the first part.

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We also have the Persians in both games, both included in the vanilla CD version, it’s not confusing as both cannot play in the same game.

For forums if you want to be extra sure, say AOE1/ROR Romans and AOE2 Romans.

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It is more confusing than not at least for me. The Persians in Age of empires 2 are also not appropriate either, the name of the Sassanids would be better for the second part.

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It cannot be done as the Sassanids are named after a dynasty, not a people (at least an exonym). The Persians also cover later Persian dynasties.

And where can it be confusing ? If we’re debating how good of a cav civ the Persians are compared to the Franks and Huns, you won’t think about AOE1.

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False then the Romans would also be a dynasty, which they were. It was a dynasty that did spread all over Italy and the Mediterranean area hence the name of Sassanids would be much more appropriate than Persians for antiquity.

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I agree about regional graphics for units (provided it’s done very carefully and is optional), but the rest of these suggestions seem quite arbitrary and weird to me.

The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ usually only refers to the English before the Norman Conquest. It certainly isn’t synonymous with ‘Longbowman’. The Britons’ civ design is based almost entirely on the period from Longshanks’s conquest of Wales onwards, well after the Anglo-Saxon period. ‘English’ might be a better name, but has the downside of excluding the Welsh.

Celts includes the Irish – in fact, it’s primarily based on the Irish (as much as it’s based on anything except fantasy). The Irish were definitely not Britons.

This seems like quite a weird way to divide things up to me. For example, were Burgundian buildings really more similar to Spanish and Portuguese ones than to Frankish ones? How would ‘Island Europe’ be different from the current western European architecture? Why is central European architecture not appropriate for Teutons? etc.

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Last I checked the Romans are named after the city of Rome since the city was founded by Romulus, they didn’t call themselved the Caesareans between Augustus and Nero for example. It’s not a dynasty, they changed their political system several times, monarchy then republic then military dictatorship with some republican remants (principate) then back to monarchy that looked increasingly feudal (dominate), and their emperors was not a dynasty either.

The Persians cover Iranian people, for a longer time period than just the Sassanids. Just like the Saracens (yes, a medieval exonym) are not called the Abassids or Umayyads.

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The Romans were a political system, not a civ like the Sassanids were, as you themselves say they were a political system. So the name of the Sassanids would be more appropriate for the second part of the game :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Not even that, there are huge differences between the monarchy, republic, principate and dominate.

The Romans is the civ, its people.

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