Bronze Age Spin-off idea

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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People keep saying they want Hittites, Egyptians, Sumerian, Akkadians, etc. in Chronicles but they predate Chronicles by more or less 1000 years.
So why not give them their own Spin-off.

About the Bronze Age

The Bronze Age was the first time humanity formed Kingdoms and Empires.
It’s the first time complex societies formed and many things only originated later in the Bronze Age, like Cavalry.
Therefor the Stable is replaced by the Charioteria.
Defences were also less complex. Cities had walls and towers but dedicated fortresses didn’t really exist so the Castle is replaces by the Academy.

Military Buildings

New units are bold.
New names are place holders, feel free to suggest something better.

Old units will get new names like in Chronicles but I keep the old names here so you know what units I’m talking about.

Barracks

  • Milita Line
  • Spearman Line
  • Eagle Scout Line

Every civilisation starts with an “Eagle Scout”. The unit will get a period appropriate reskin.
Many civilisations will not have Chariots so they need Eagle Warriors.

Archery Range

  • Archer Line
  • Skirmisher Line (With Imperial Skirmisher as a generic unit)

The Imperial Skirmisher is needed because there is no Hussar nor Onager as alternative Archer counter.

Charioteria

  • War Chariot Line (Chronicles)
  • Chariot Archer Line

Normal cavalry units only exist as unique units.
Chariot Archers are basically just a little slower but tankier Cavalry Archers.

Siege Workshop

  • Siege Tower
  • Mangonel (moved to Imperial Age, no Onager)
  • Ram Line

There are less siege units but there are also no Castles and Bombard Towers.

Academy

  • Unique unit
  • all Castle technologies (no Hoardings)
  • No other units (no Trebuchet no Petard)

Dock

  • Fishing Ship
  • Merchant Ship
  • Transport Ship
  • Galley Line

There is only 1 war ship. Naval Warfare was not very complex in the Bronze Age.
It’s the opposite of Chronicles.

Economic Buildings

Town Centre

  • Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart replaces with technologies that only crease carry capacity

Storage Pit

  • Drop of Wood, Stone, Gold and Hunt (like AoE1 and like Mule Cart)
  • Research Blacksmith upgrades
  • 3x3 size

Granary

  • Drop off all food (unlike AoE1)
  • Research all economic upgrades (also Wood, Gold, Stone)
  • 3x3 size

Market

  • No Trade Carts before Wheel

Temple

  • Replaces Monastery
  • Same technologies just renamed

Library

  • Replaces university with the same technologies
  • New technology Wheel in Bronze Age (Villagers move faster and unlocks Charioteria)

Civilisations

South America

  • Caral
  • Valdivia culture

Europe

  • Minoans
  • Mycenaean

Africa

  • Egyptians
  • Nubians

West Asia

  • Hitittes
  • Canaanites

Mesopotamia

  • Sumerians
  • Babylonians
  • Assyrians
  • Elamites

South Asia

  • Harappa Culture (Indus Valley civilisation)
  • Vedic people (Ancestors of modern Indians)

East Asia

  • Shang (China)
  • Gojoseon (Korea)

There is probably a bunch more Middle Eastern civilisations you could add but then the almost all civs would only come from that area.

Thoughts

Crossplay

Like Chronicles civs those civs would end up in their own Civilisation Set.
They are not balanced against AoE2 civs since they will be a lot weaker without Castles, the bad siege and no real cavalry.

Counters

War Chariots are really strong but expensive. They counter Infantry and are devastating vs. Archers if they can get close.
Their main weaknesses are the Spearman Line or massed Archers.

The Milita Line is a lot more important since ever civilisation is essentially an Eagle civ.

Unique and Regional units

There are a bunch of potential cool units:

  • Khopesh Warrior
  • War/Archer Elephant
  • Mycenaean Proto Hoplite
  • Hittite Heavy Chariot
  • Sumerian Siege Tower
  • Sumerian “Phalangite”
  • Camel Rider
  • and many more

Your opinion?

Did I miss something important?
It is generally a little simpler then other time period because many weapon types were not invented yet.

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Though Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians had states with native rulers in the Chronicles’ time period, the Iron Age, so they can be in Chronicles normally.

I’m in favor of another “Chronicles” with Bronze Age only civs (btw, detailed historical sources to create detailed campaigns don’t really exist).

And of course I don’t want to see ranked play between Medieval and Ancient civs.

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Chronicles civs still to some extent can compete vs base civs on land maps. But feels like this takes away too many things and makes it lot weaker than it should. In R@W, as Egyptian, you can still train Cavalry. Overall idea looks like make them weaker than Meso civs even.
Bronze Age culture never really divorced away from the idea of Cavalry. Region to region it depended.

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Yes but they wouldn’t be the version of those civilisations that the people would want to see.
Better to add rising empires instead of declining ones.

Pretty much every setting before the setting of Battle for Greece is hard to do as a campaign.
The first historian in human history happened to mostly write about the Persian Empire and their invasion of Greece.
That’s why I think this will likely be the “earliest” Chronicle DLC we get. Maybe they actually plan to simple be Chronological.

A Bronze Age spin off would need to find a new way to tell stories, that is not like base AoE2 nor like Chronicles.
Maybe more documentary style like AoE4 where they are told from a modern perspective.

Chronicles civ have a different balance.
They all have some strong early bonuses that will make very strong in “Feudal Age” but they all have major weaknesses in Imperial Age.

Chariots effectively predated Cavalry.
Horses were barely strong enough to carry a human but they were certainly not strong enough to carry a heavily armed human.
Over time that changed.

So I think it makes sense to make Chariots the generic units and cavalry unique or regional units.

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Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians were very mighty, advanced, up to biblical; late Egyptians not so much but still interesting.

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Assyria and Babylon peaked in the two centuries prior to the Grand Campaign, so they arent that out of place

I also dont mind it being focused on declining empires, I think its an interestuing thing. Hittites werent a prominent power but surived until the rise of Persia

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I like the idea, but i’m not sure i’m massively opposed to Classical and Bronze Age civs mixing to be completely honest. I get arguments for both sides, and I guess the Bronze Age civs not getting a castle would make them very difficult to balance with the classical civs with more defensive capabilities.

I do think it would be good to include Israelites as a civ for Bronze Age though. That’s about the only civ addition I would find as necessary.

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This guy for example, Necho II is very interesting; is the second Iron Age native pharaoh who ruled over a unified Egypt and the first pharaoh to cross the Euphrates river towards east since Thutmose III of the glorious Bronze Age era, battling Babylonians in support of Assyrians… among other actions, like an ambitious construction project and a great sea expedition.

We know details also about Necho II’s actions because of Herodotus.

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I wanted to make a thread to talk about Bronze Age and not about how we could justify adding certain civilisations to Chronicles.

I changed the first post and removed the mention of Babylon and Assyria.

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Well, since ‘Total War Saga: Troy’ and ‘Total War: Pharaoh’ exist, contributing to the hype… a Bronze Age “Chronicles” can also exist, with the Bronze as its fourth age, the Chalcolithic as its third age, the Neolithic as its second age, and the Paleolithic as its first age.

Medieval, Ancient (the Chronicles), and Prehistoric (that “Chronicles” that will end in Bronze Age) aoe2de civs will form their own ranked ladder each, and future RB Wololos will award the trophy to the most capable among all ladders, since all are aoe2 games actually and nobody would be able to say anything against it. Did I nail it? This way aoe2de devs open a huge pool of new civs to add, without overpopulating with minor civs the Medieval sector anymore.

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So… who wants to form a team and start making it real!?

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You think the “Bronze Age” should be the last Age?
Don’t you think Stone Ages would be a little boring unit wise?
Also that would mean that most unit types don’t even exist before the last Age.

The Bronze Age was a very long time period. It went on for over 1000 years.
Yeah I know the Neolithic was also long but nothing really happened.
The Chalcolithic was more of a transitional period.
Also those fancy Greek names are probably not very marketable and will be hard for people to learn.
Copper Age is technically wrong, since there was not real period where Copper was the dominant material for weapons and tools.

My idea was to keep it thematically similar to AoE1 and functionally similar to AoE2.

Stone Age

Practically Paloelithic or Mesolithic. There is no agriculture and domestication yet.

Copper Age

Basically Neolithic but with a better name then “Tool Age”. The Blacksmith Technologies would already have Copper in them but players usually only research them before or during Age up to Bronze Age anyway.

This would also mark the beginning of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

Bronze Age

This is the Age where most of the unit types are unlocked like in pretty much every AoE game. That includes Chariots and stuff.

This would be equivalent to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.

Imperial Age

If Chronicles ends in Imperial Age then why not this Spin off too?
It makes even more sense here then anywhere else because it’s the first time in human history when actual Empires formed.

This would be equivalent to the new Kingdom of Egypt.

Isn’t that super unpopular though?

We could try making this a mod using AoE2DE RoR and Chronicles Assets but based on AoE2 Dateset instead of AoE1 Dataset.

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Genuinely Id either probably be conceptualizer if I were to join as civ crafting is a skill Ove honed over decades pr Id have to learn another skklls much to my old dog new tricks paradox… how unfair

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If your focus is the Bronze Age (according your topic’s title) you can’t have Bronze Age as a transitional age. Bronze Age has risen its status, market wise, with all those gaming titles and YouTube videos. So, yes, I think Bronze Age should be the last age for sure.

Also, there is something they call immersion; my immersion is being jeopardized, and I find it extremely boring to have “Imperial Age” in everything (despite that the Bronze Age, truly, was the first time humanity formed empires). The ‘four ages structure’ is enough for me. If you really want to name Imperial Age the fourth age, don’t put Bronze Age, at all, as name of another age, to avoid depict it as transitional. But Imperial Age will always sound irrelevant in a group of ages named on material use.

The first two ages will have from one military unit to a few, so it will not be difficult to form a decent unit roster; as boring as aoe1’s and aoe2’s… not at all. As for the third age, we have to study archeological sources and improvise a bit I guess. I see Chalcolithic Age as a primitive Bronze Age.

If you want to make it thematically similar to aoe1, then imo you can have:

  1. Stone Age, or Old Stone Age (lit. the Paleolithic Age),
  2. Tool Age, or New Stone Age (lit. the Neolithic Age),
  3. Copper Age (almost lit. the Chalcolithic Age),
  4. Bronze Age or Imperial Age.

When I see “hard for people to learn”, I say that it depends on how we want to treat our societies, how educated we want to think the societies we live in are. I prefer to reinforce this reality:

Of course for every anglicized Greek term there is a native English equivalent term, if you prefer the latter.

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So one thing to consider. If we go the route, I was wondering if the age 1 fighting could be more dynamic.

I had always wanted more age 1 military before the sge up.

Considerations would be spearman and some early slinger (rock thrower?) as an early defensive unit in the face of potentially faster opponents who archer and cav rush you so you’re not just defenseless with a bunch of clubs… which shouldnt upgrade to axes but more logically to cudgel then maces in later ages

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Names and time periods are two different things.
I think the time periods are more important.

I don’t want the Bronze Age just to be the last Age, maybe even the last 3 Ages to be Bronze Age.
Not much happened before the Bronze Age and complex societies, larger buildings and many types of weapons like Chariots did not exist at all before the Bronze Age. It would be strange if all of those things would be introduced at the very end.

Having Ages called “Early” or “Late” doesn’t sound as nice for Ages in an RTS I think.

1st Age

Hunter gatherer life Style

2nd Age

Begins with the transition to agriculture.
Ends with Copper metallurgy.

3rd Age

Begins with Bronze metallurgy.
Ends with Chariots.

4th Age

Represents the time where the first multi national Empires existed.

Maybe certain technologies should be needed for Age up instead of buildings.
Or some buildings are unlocked via technology.
Generally I think it might be nice to slow down Aging up a little to represent the much longer time frames compared to AoE2.

The exact names are not as important. And the game is localised too, which expends this discussion to other languages.

Bow and Arrow where already invented in the Palaeolithic so those could be around from the beginning.

What this game mode certainly won’t have is a cavalry rush. Cavalry practically didn’t exist until the early Iron Age!
AoE1 having Scouts in Tool Age and Cavalry before Chariots is just completely wrong historically.

When it comes to Slingers. People using slings to throw rocks has probably been a thing for a long time, but Slings only really got popular in the early Iron Age.
Iron bullets are much better then stones. Because of the higher density and the round shape they could do a lot more damage and even outranged Archers of the them.
The reason Slingers mostly died out is because Bows got better to the point that Slings lost their range advantage.

AoE1 Tool Age combat is kinda strange.

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The idea of an already Rock paper scissors between shock infantry, sling and bow at the start would grt the combat rolling faster

Access to spear wouls mostly be to deter boom based people who rush to cavalry while you are slow booming.

We are ONTO SOMETHING! I smell big things in our future!

Edit: where is everyone? We got a future to build!

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Am I the only one who sees something in this?

We can make this bigger! Anyone in?

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You can do that by playing Age of Mythology :wink:

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I would like to see campaigns being more like CYOA story considering how scarce information is on this era. The sea people’s could bring a unique spin on the 200 at the start pop type civ where instead of the usual nomadic horse tribe, its clans of sea faring peoples using massed light infantry against chariots and the like.
One campaign could be about a Mycenaean family taking part in the Minoan invasion, then later on the family is part of the “historical” Trojan War and then the finale chapters involve the family joining with other groups as society collapses due to loss of resources, and revolts against the palace system, and so they have to raid Hittite and Egyptian settlements in order to continue their lifestyle with these other sea faring peoples forming a sort of tight knit family.

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