because devs are busy people & probably wouldn’t read discussion THAT deep. So when they see this post, all they see is "Hey, they love the stuff that we did on AoE4, let’s create a faction named Queen Catherine under the umbrella of the Russian civ folks would sure love them ".
I don’t think they’ll make a decision based off of one post. Heck, the person who made the post said they were being the devils advocate.
Yes, let’s hope that’s true. AoE 3 is my last bastion in the AoE series, I hope that cancer from AoE 4 doesn’t spread here.
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Variant civilisations make no sense in AoE3 because the differences between civilisations already vary between very small and very large.
A lot of civilisations share units, technologies, home city cards, game mechanics, etc. with certain other civilisations.
Just adding a new civilisation that uses the same architecture set is something completely normal in AoE3.
In AoE4 every civilisation has unique architecture and unit skins so any civilisation that uses an existing architecture is a variant civilisation.
I can easily foresee them reaching the stage where they exhausted all high/late medieval armour designs, so they have to use re-coloring and recombinations of existing assets.
I’m in a more mixed position. Not all civs need to look completely different in all units and buildings. Buildings are easier to do, but armours and especially medieval ones are not that unique within the same region (like Europe), and there weren’t strong “national characteristics” in armour designs like uniforms in modern periods, as most knights bought their own equipments. So you basically cannot make a “knight with English uniform” and “knight with French uniform” besides colors and emblems, but they still seem to force different armour designs on them.
If they keep adding more say European civs, it becomes more and more difficult to force different armour designs. That’s probably why they went for “variant civs”.
EDIT: I’m saying this particularly in a pre-modern setting, not a modern one.
Unlike what aoe4 is trying to, your proposal for the variant civs is fine and could work. The civ that could benefit the most from this idea is the Indians, since we could have the Mughals, the Maratha, the Sikhs, etc.
However, I’d rather have 2 new unique civs than 10 “variant” civs. I prefer quality over quantity.
Besides, we still have A LOT of good civs that could make it into the game (Persia, Korea, Siam, Kongo,Poland, Haida, Maori, etc.) before creating these new variants for the old civs we already have.
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Yea definitely shoot for more “full” civs first, but they could be a nice thing to sprinkle in between.
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Absolutely - I agree.
However I would take British - Scottish, Italian - Venetian, German - Austrians variants over the somewhat recycled Maltese civ.
I think in reality, shipments are the key, as some have mentioned. These could provide a simpler way of playing a civ offshoot.
Whilst we do have some shipments that make civs a little more unique, it would be really interesting if we have some ‘variant’ style (one shot) shipments - ones that modify that civ’s traits/bonuses/units all at once (in contrast to shipments that change single things), available from the first age - shipments grander in scale than the Prince Electors card.
These would be at the cost of permanently changing parts of the civ for the rest of the game.
The Italians could benefit from this to send in the ‘Duchy of Milan’s Governance’ or ‘Republic of Venice Governance’ shipments for example (obviously only being able to pick one) to lock in a modified Italian civ for the rest of the game.
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Yes, I think I prefer experimenting with the existing mechanics of the game. I would rather “choose” my Italian/German faction using cards, age-ups or other things (like the consultate reworking suggested in other threads) than creating these variant civs that I can help feeling they would just be used an excuse for low-effort content.
And not only that, I’d prefer a new Persian civ with new art, units and mechanics than seeing a rehash of the British, for example.
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That is true about the parts of Europe that we already covered.
But the more you go out to the borders the less true that is.
Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian or Lithuanian are not as similar as French, German and English.
A bunch of AoE2 civilisations are technically already under the HRE umbrella so they could be variant civilisations.
By AoE4 standards all AoE3 European civs are variant civs. Variant civs are just civs that share core architecture and units as another civ.
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We’re missing the nonsensical names though 
Oh yeah, we should be able to play the Kebab Sultanate, Vladimir’s army, Don Quixote and the Order of the Phoenix
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The only reason I’d want “variants” is for things that should not have to be variants. If we can bypass the bs from the devs and get Prussia and Austria by calling them German variants then that would be great. But even then, I’d want Prussia to have completely different mechanics, so it would hardly be a variant. India could get “variants” along similar lines. Everything else can be more than covered by cards, age ups, and revolutions. A single card would be the equivalent of the “Jeanne d’Arc” variant.
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Variant civ shouldn’t be a thing. Localize more the civ if you need to do it. Like aoe2 did. India → Gujaras, hindustanis etc.
This is normal.
And honestly, they went a bit overboard with each civ having completely different building sets in Aoe4. They also overestimated the popularity of the game, so they now find themselves with lower income than they originally estimated, so they have to reuse assets. marketing is just trying to pack this a little better than it really is: a common sense management decision to cut costs.
Now, naming civs after a person isn’t new either, the original revolutions of Aoe3 had the same idea, and quite frankly nobody liked that (aside from the fact that they were cloned all-ins). You would think they learned a thing or two from the past, but it seems not. They should just do what Aoe3 revolutions do: add smaller countries into the game.
Exactly! I’ve suggested this for the Italians and Germans on another thread. What if we introduced special cards (limit of 1) which would auto-send at the start of the game and determine your “variant civ”.
I don’t think it is a bad thing in itself. In aom, you select a main god with unique bonuses. In Halo wars, you select a faction leader with unique bonuses.
But it all depends on how it’s implemented, and I’m not up to date with aoe4 news, so I don’t know.
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nah
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That really a great idea.We will get many new factions and that will not break the balance.
The only matter is that the World’s Edge will do this?They only focus on 2 and 4.