Campaign civilisations update

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

The campaign civilisations feel outdated now.
2/3 civilisations (Malta and the USA) from the vanilla campaign were added to the game as regular civilisations now.
In half of the TWC your essentially play the USA too.

Age of Empires 3 (Vanilla)

Act I: Blood

The Malta civilisation is kinda modelled after the campaign already so not that much should be changed.

Units

  • Fire Throwers replace Hoop Throwers
  • Hospitaler replaces Rodelero

The Fire Thrower is a way more well rounded unit then the Hoop Throwers. It might also be confusing to new players that those units look the same but function differently.
The Sentinel should not be trainable because it’s a code design on this civilisation to not have a Musketeer or Dragoon unit because you are supposed to mostly use archaic units.

Home City

  • Hoop Thrower and Rodelero shipments get replaced
  • Sentinel shipments added

Other changes

Voice lines get replaced by Maltese ones.
Flag gets updated to the Maltese one (the one they use in the campaign is Medieval)
Units like Sentinels could appear as non trainable units in some missions or cutscenes.

Act II: Ice

John Black’s mercenaries are mostly resembling Germany so not much need of a change, but we have a second Mercenary civilisation with Sweden now so why not add some of their features?
Also the Haudenosaunee are a playable civilisation since TWC and they play an important role in the story.

Units

  • Carolean replaces Musketeer
  • Forest Prowler replaces Skirmisher (maybe after the “The Rescue” mission)

Home City

Some of the cards get replaced with the Swedish Contract cards that allow you to train those mercenaries in normal buildings.

Other Changes

The “The Rescue” mission could be reworked by adding a War Hut and a Corral to the Haudenosaunee village instead of a Trading Post.
The Tavern could be added to the civilisation and each of the missions could have mercenaries that make sense to be there.

Act III: Steel

You play as United States in this campaign but you aren’t really representing the US government/armed forces but more like a private company so Units like Regular or State Militia make little sense.

Units

  • Carbine Cavalry replaces Dragoon
  • Gatling Gun replaces Falconet
  • Sharp Shooter replaces Skirmisher
  • Sloop replaces Cavarel
  • Steamer replaces Galleon
  • US outlaws in the Saloon

Home City

Units get updated and the specific upgrade cards for them too.

AI factions

Mexicans are replaced by actual Mexicans.
Musketeers or Peru get replaced by Peruvian Guards.
The allies in the “Lost City of the Inca” are replaced by the actual Inca.

Other chances

Manors get replaced by normal houses.

The WarChiefs

Act I: Fire

This is a bit tricky as you play the US before it’s independence here unlike the US civilisation.

You get Revolutionaries in this campaign but unlike the normal Revolutionaries they are Skirmishers which is confusing to new players.

Units

  • Revolutionaries are turned into Musketeer type units and replace Tomahawks in the second half of the campaign
  • Revolutionary Sharpshooters (from the US Revolution) replace the Forest Prowlers in the second half

Enemies

The British can train Rangers.
The Skirmishers in all missions are replaced by Rangers.
Hessian enemies could use some of the new units from the Royal houses and Giant Grenadier Mercenaries.

Act: II: Shadow

Units like Musketeers and Skirmishers feel really outdated in this campaign and should really be replaced.
Especially the unique US outlaws should really be added.

Units

  • Regulars replace Musketeers
  • Sharpshooter replace Skirmisher
  • Carbine Cavalry replaces Dragoons
  • Gatling Gun replaces Falconet
  • Unique US outlaws replace generic ones.

Enemies

They should use US Outlwas instead of generic ones.
They US enemies should of course use US units instead of generic ones.

The Asian Dynasties

Nothing as really been added to Asia in the Definitive Edition yet so no really need for any change in the Japanese and Indian campaign.

Act II: China

This campaign is historically very strange, you are supposed to play Ming China but everything looks like Qing China. At last the flag should be changed. Everything else would be a huge effort to change because most things in the Chinese civilisation are clearly Qing and not Ming.
Also the Aztec enemies are are not real AIs because back then you could own TAD without TWC so all units and buildings that were used are copies and not the original Aztec units.
Now with the Definitive Edition everyone has access to the Aztecs so there is no reason not to use the real Aztecs in this campaign.

17 Likes
2

I proposed something similar time ago, but devs won’t spend time in that with little benefits.

Is not like AoE II, that you can change the civs in 10 seconds.

Here we have custom civs with custom cards…

3

I think it’s a little more work in AoE2 because you have to adjust the AI too.

For the playable Civilisations they would just have to replace the units and then replace the Home City cards. That is not much work.
Replacing the units in the missions too and the units of the enemies is more work because every trigger would have to be touched.

Having such big differences between the Campaign and the normal gameplay is certainly confusing for new players.
AoE4 is a lot worse in that regard though.

4

After replacing the common countries and units of all campaigns, it is to allow developers to increase the workload of the two campaigns related to the civil war in Africa and Europe

2 Likes
5

This is pretty odd to me. Germans were famous for being mercenaries (that’s why John Black mostly have German units). However Swedes (at least in the game’s depiction) is a mercenary civ for using mercenaries. I don’t think it is a good idea to put a local Swedish unit in a mercenary faction.

4 Likes
6

I don’t think they do… it would take a long time to do so and resources are scarce…

7

Of course, in addition the campaigns are designed with those personalized civs in mind … if you change them for the civs of the multiplayer, no matter how accurate they are, they would break the entire balance of the campaigns … imagine having the Maltese flamethrowers with Morgan or the gatlings in Chayton’s campaign…they would raze all enemy troops and their own mercilessly…

8

Yes, in addition to the fact that the campaigns of aoe 4 are a festival of defending bastions cof cof English and Rus campaigns…

9

It was just an idea to mix things up.
Swedes also colonised the area the campaign takes part in so it wouldn’t be too unlikely for a few of them to end up in that Mercenary army.

I don’t think it would take that long. Doing the changes could easily be done by one developer in one day. The question is how much testing would be needed.

They should at last update the Maltese voice lines to not be British anymore.

1 Like
10

They won’t… for that they would have to stop launching dlcs for aoe 2 for at least a year and it is not profitable for the small community that has aoe 3 with respect to 2…

11

Yes, also by the time of John Black’s campaign (Seven Years’ War), Sweden was a shadow of its power and also its colonies on the Delaware River had been annexed by the Dutch a century ago (in 1655)…

New Sweden (Swedish: Nya Sverige ; Finnish: Uusi Ruotsi ; Latin: Nova Svecia ) was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in America from 1638 to 1655,[1] established during the Thirty Years’ War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden formed part of the Swedish efforts to colonize the Americas. Settlements were established on both sides of the Delaware Valley in the region of Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, often in places where Swedish traders had been visiting since about 1610.[2] Fort Christina in Wilmington, Delaware, was the first settlement, named after the reigning Swedish monarch. The settlers were Swedes, Finns, and a number of Dutch. New Sweden was conquered by the Dutch Republic in 1655 during the Second Northern War and incorporated into the Dutch colony of New Netherland.

1 Like
12

Good about the Maltese voices, I don’t think it’s a bad idea… although it will feel a bit weird Morgan speaking Scottish and the Musketeers speaking Maltese xd…

13

The Maltese Explorer speaks Scottish too.
The Maltese units speak all kinds of different languages because they are representing members of the Order from different countries.

Also there are no Musketeers lol.

1 Like
14

Anyone else not surprised by how badly the AI is done? I felt the game horrible, the enemy units did not attack the enemy villagers passed by your base without caring that they die, I rec the enemy villagers collect the resources that are near your TC, the things that are supposed to be difficult are very easy , single player content was released in a very horrible way, I think that even if you play the campaign in the old game the AI will behave better, it will represent a real challenge of how the campaign should be played in a real way, also the historical battles have that error, for example in the first historical battle in the Spanish naval blockade has warships (Galeon) walking around without attacking it gets stuck in a loop of moving without leaving

That’s the other thing they should update

2 Likes
15

Yes, that sure was taken out of the campaign or the Maltese explorer is simply a reskin of Morgan xd…

1 Like
16

Yes, that too… they have to improve the AI a lot…