AoE II: DE Building Set Feedback (Non Insider Discussion)

True. On that note, shouldn’t the Slavs get an Orthodox church as their monastery as well?

Slavs need to get an Orthodox church as their monastery as well the Byzantines. Furthermore, the name ‘Byzantines’ is a historical misnomer. This civilisation should be renamed to the Greeks - which is what they really were.

Yes, the Slavs should have an Orthodox church, but Byzantines is fine as a civilization name.

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The Church of Orthodox and Catholics are different. The Orthodox have dome.

I personally see the new central Asian architecture that has been developed for the Tatars and Cumans as PERFECT for the Persians… I think if others agree, we should attract attention to it so it can be changed. If you disagree, I guess I’ll just wait for a mod to do that job I suppose

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Then again, we don’t know what the new Persian architecture will actually look like when the game is finally released. Maybe, just maybe, it will be even more “perfect”?

Notice how different the new Persian War Elephants look in the E3 trailer. They now have heavily armoured heads for instance and look totally badass, IMO. If there’s one thing I’d like to see changed, it would be having a mahout (rider) on the Persian elephants. This would make logical sense whenever a Persian elephant unit is converted - since monks converting riderless elephants makes no sense, whatsoever.

That is unless medieval ‘holy men’ had a secret ability that allowed them to converse with animals - in which case, they should have no trouble converting zebras, lions, wolves, crocodiles, and GAIA elephants too.

Back to your query regarding Persian architecture; remember that the Persians in this game are supposed to correspond to not only medieval-era Persians, but also classical-era (the same era as the Roman Empire, the Hunnic Empire, etc.) Persians - the big difference (in terms of culture) between the two being: the former were an Islamic civilisation, while the latter were not. I’m not sure if this would’ve had a significant difference on their architecture - but I’d wager that there’s a distinct possibility that it might have.

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I love your comments about the ‘holy’ conversations with animals, that’s probably the next news to come. :smile:

And about the Persian architecture, while they are supposed to represent both a pre-Islamic and an Islamic state, that is not what the architecture quite proposes as it stands and has been in AoE II previously. In the trailer (obviously this is not final but it shows that that is how it is at the moment) The Persian wonder is shown to collapse at around the 51st second. It is surrounded by the previous “middle eastern” architecture that the Saracens, Turks, and Berbers also use.


The middle eastern architecture that is currently used by the Persians features a mosque of some sort as the monastery (as does the new Central Asian set) so I personally don’t see that as a reason why not to use the new set.
The new Central Asian architecture set (developed for the Cumans and Tatars it seems) features a lot of light blue highlights and domes with its Islamic style (still somewhat similar to the Middle Eastern set just perhaps more Central Asian rather than Mediterranean).
A quick google search for Persian architecture shows that the Persians built many blue-colored buildings and it seems to me just like it fits better:
https://images.app.goo.gl/97nbJg5fz2ZD8Ni68
https://images.app.goo.gl/GWingb7FZZzC3GH5A
https://images.app.goo.gl/iswdudX6d7e6xYoF7
Now I am not an expert on Persian Architecture or saying that I know best, but personally I think it fits better. An example of how this could work can be seen with an AoE II HD mod that replaces the Persian architecture with more blue themed buildings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1607540963
I know that the Byzantine architecture style has already been switched from the Middle Eastern set to the “Mediterranean” architecture of the Italians and others, so I see this as an opportunity to fix other civilizations whose architecture sets were not tailor-made for them in the original game, but just have been kept because they were close enough.
Perhaps I’m thinking way too much about this, but I just hope others can see this and either tell me I’m crazy, or that some of the people working on the game can see the history and other reasons why their new Central Asian architecture set would work well with the Persians, which right now have a Middle Eastern set as we saw in the trailer.
If anyone reads all of this, thank you :laughing: that was a lot of info, probably half of which was jabbering on about nothing.

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Thanks for your reply, and your argument seems very sound in light of the fact that the Persians are using a middle eastern architectural style anyway. In that case, yes, the new Central Asian style would probably suit them better! A lot of Central Asian civilisations like the Timurids, the Uzbeks, as well as the Mughals, would have used a similar architectural style in the past. Furthermore, many of these civilisations were often Persianised over the course of history (both the Timurids and the Mughals made extensive use of the Persian language as part of their governance).

The Shah-i-Zinda necropolis in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

The Cuman architecture in-game.

I’d love to see the Persians use this new style. The blue domes look absolutely gorgeous don’t they!

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Yes, it seriously just looks so good. I don’t want it limited to only the two new civs haha.

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I’m also disappoint at that. Old civs have too many wired design and got too few flavors. I mean civs already exist in Conqueror Expansion. Most new civs have got 2 unique units and sometimes a unique building, while old ones have only 1 unique unit(except Koreans and Vikings, they at least have a unique ship unit). What’s more, their buildings looks cruder than new ones. Tartars and Cumans are steppes, but have a better architecture design than nearby Persians and Saracens, which are more civilized in this game’s timeline. Southeastern Asians got heavily decorated buildings, while east Asian civs, which are know for their rich and artistic, are still use straw made roofs in castle and imperial age as if they are still in feudal age. That my biggest complain about DE version. May later development of this game can correct it.


(I have already made a mod to represent Persians architecture like this)

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The Byzantine architecture will be updated in AoE2DE, but there are still other civilizations that also need to be fixed.

The Vietnamese are using the same architecture as the Burmese and Khmers. Does not make sense. The Vietnamese use an architecture similar to the Chinese.

Anyone know if this will be fixed in this new version of DE.

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Totally agreed, while Chinese itself still use Japanese style buildings.
We need a new design for Chinese/ Vietnam architecture.

Like this.

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My word is simple, the current design for east Asian buildings are based on Shinto shrines in Japan.
They fit not for Korean, Chinese, and even Japanese itself since Shinto Shrines in Japan are different from common buildings in Japan.

I am glad that I don’t tend to notice such things and can simply enjoy the game :smiley:

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Though you are right, they are the only ones that use straw roofs in castle and imperial age. Isn’t that odd?

I have created a mod for Chinese buildings, just look at this:


(some parts are from other’s mod)

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I don’t say that changing building appearance for asian civs is a bad idea. I just wondered that I never notice these things.
Maybe those details become apparent when player is interested in architecture, especially its history? :smiley:

Did I notice it because I live in China? Maybe. The first time when I’m 10 years old I played aoe2, feeling so strange when playing as Chinese. Chinese and Japanese use Shinto style building maybe not that apparent problem in most western players’ eyes since they have the origin of Shinto , while Vietnam use Burmese architecture is really a problem.
The old civs really need to be remastered.

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A general restyle in architecture is needed for almost all civs: the best way to do this would be to implement Indipendent Architectures for all civs like the mods on the Steam Workshop…I may only be dreaming, but… :wink:

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Since we are making suggestions about the wrong buildings of the game, I think the Huns take the first place.
I think I had already mentioned it before the game was announced, that both Hunos and Mongols should have a different and unique model of buildings, composed of tents, as they are nomads.

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I would agree, as it would seem that certain AoE II HD modders did as well.
There have been a hunnic architecture set and a Mongol set made by certain modders.
Here is the Hunnic set for certain buildings:


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1647935550&searchtext=hun+architecture
So it certainly can be done, and I personally think this looks really good. They combined tents with wagons to make a whole set that still resembles the original game’s architecture sets by ways of shapes.
Or perhaps a better idea would be if they created a set in which only the feudal age architecture looks nomadic, like the Mongol mod did. Then they improve their buildings into an upgraded version of East Asian looking buildings

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1397456606&searchtext=mongol
So a nomadic set can definitely be done, but I hope the devs are interested enough to do something about it, considering the new building destruction animations I am guessing it will be much harder to mod. Perhaps the animations can be borrowed from other civilization’s buildings, but then it would not be quite as immersive, but I guess that is not a big deal.
I am totally with you! Let’s get some sort of nomadic buildings for the Huns and Mongols.
But perhaps that will not work as they just created a new building set for two clearly nomadic civilizations, and that new set is VERY civilized and based on real buildings, I am guessing this won’t happen because of what they just did, perhaps it is just a way they decided to do it.

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