What do you think of the difference in appearance of units for Aztecs between the two games?
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Both are cool! It looks to me like they did a pretty decent job of letting them be unique without forcing it. I kind of wish the jaguar riders were sitting closer to the shoulders but that’s a nitpick.
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AOEIII DE: Too furry, AOMR: Not furry enough 
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The Jaguar Riders I don’t like at all. They shouldn’t have any mounted units just faster foot soldiers. Outside of that I like what they did with their units they look cool they just need to get the balancing in a better spot.
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One looks super cartoony with giant heads. The other looks dope.
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I remember reading somewhere about how the old devs wanted to avoid having “Fantasy” elements in the game. That’s why they scrapped the idea of Griffin riders for the Greeks from the original release, stating “Myth, not Fantasy”.
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I’d really like to add a one-time Xolotl Warrior card for the Aztecs that pays gold, similar to the Industrial Hussars, and link it to the Aztec campaign in Age of Empires II.
In both cases there are fantastical or erroneous elements, but the AOE III DE is closer to what the real units would have been, while the AOM Retold is more of a carnival-esque version of the Aztecs. In terms of architecture, the AOE3 DE is more accurate, but it falters in replacing some original Aztec symbols, such as skulls, which are replaced by rhombuses and club-heads in the definitive edition. If they wanted less violent symbols, but more appropriate for the Aztecs, perhaps the Nahui-Ollin could have replaced the skulls on the gates of the walls, and some symbols on the buildings and even circles could have been more realistic than rhombuses. Houses were mandatorily whitewashed in Tenochtitlan and kept white, as were the temples, so these bare stones do not accurately symbolize Aztec architecture. Houses with white facades, perhaps with some simple paintings in other colors that did not offend the laws of whitewashed houses, and mostly whitewashed roofs for better waterproofing, were common. The temples would be more colorful, but they were also whitewashed and didn’t have that stone texture. In AOM Retold, there are so many colors and designs, some Aztec, some reminiscent of various North American indigenous cultures, and the warriors are so carnival-like that it’s pure imagination. Even so, they look really cool and it’s fun to play AOM Retold. As a more realistic civilization, the Aztecs of AOE 3 win by far, but each of the two has its strengths. If we were to disqualify AOM Retold for realism, we should start with the Norse. Instead of making Hersir look more like a Norse hero from the sagas, like Egil Skalagrimson, Ulfr, or Sigurd, which would be very interesting to see, they kept the old man look with a hammer, tank top, and horns, and instead of removing the damn horns, they added horns even to units that didn’t have horns in the original version! So that’s it, it’s mythology imagined by an audience born between 1980 and 1990, it’s not meant to be realistic. It’s a beautiful fantasy that I love to play, although I hate the horns and wish the Aztecs were more realistic, I love to play it.
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Exactly, the Aztecs in AoE 3 are a more realistic version, while those in AoM are more fantastical (especially the Jaguar Riders)… I’m happy with it because I expected the Aztecs in AoM to be like those in AoE 3, but more fantastical; after all, AoM is about mythology…
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Mythology, but not fantasy, look Greeks, Norse or Egiptians.
Yeah nothing fantastical about anything in any games at all whatsoever the devs would never do that only realism and mythology are present in any of the games at all period end of sentence over out.
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Yes, that’s true… we have to find a balance between real, current mythology and mythological fantasy…
I mean, they have jaguar riders as standard unit instead lf myth one as example
It’s fine as long as they’re not dancing around a fire.
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