My opinion is that the campaign map of Central America is poor just with “Montezuma” and “Pachacuti” options.
I would like to see how would both Mayan and Aztec civilizations would face a Viking invasion - so here it is the opportunity for having two more campaigns.
We do not have historical information about Viking raids in Central and South America, but that doesn’t those wouldn’t have been possible.
Another idea for a campaign in Central America would be a war between the Mayan and the Aztec Empire (I know they didn’t historically overlap, but most of AoE2 is actually fantasy based on real historical events).
There might even be an opportunity to add the Toltec Civlization and even the Olmec Civilization - and each one could have campaigns of conquering more territory from the other local tribes.
Just because the game is based on history rather than a history sim doesn’t mean you can take these kinds of liberties with it. All of the official campaigns are based on history to a large extent, and this is only increasing over time. If you want something like this, make it yourself in the scenario editor, but it’s not proper campaign grade content, as that is much more historically inspired, not just because something “could have happened” (spoiler: it never did, and it actually couldn’t have, the Vikings never got anywhere near that far south).
In my case I would put some Mayan campaign with Lady Six Sky (VII-VIII century) (682-728) (who is Mayan leader in CIV6) or Hunac Ceel (XII-XIII century) (1185-1204) (who was contemporary to Minamoto, Saladin, Barbarossa and Richard the Lionheart).
I’d definitely appreciate an official Mayan campaign – in fact, official campaigns for all civs that don’t have them already – but I’d much prefer something historical.
Can you give examples? I think we must have very different ideas about what counts as fantasy. At its least historical (e.g. Bari), AoE2 is historical fiction based on real events.
I don’t think that’s a good comparison. AOE2 campaigns are quite historical (with a few exceptions), even if the narrator is fictional, the main characters are still real people and the main events are real as well.
In the case of aoe 3 you from speculative fiction like chinese campaign to just pure fantasy like the vanilla campaigns, which are completely ahistorical to the point that you can’t really even try to find a year when they take place.
Regarding the original topic of the thread, I would like more campaigns in the Americas (The Incas are South American, not Central American by the way), but I want one based on real events, not this outlandish approach. What next? A Hun raid on the United States? Who doesn’t want to see the final showdown between Attila and John F. Kennedy?
Would be fun, I think, but perhaps best left for the community members to mod it. I’m not sure if it’d be received well as an official thing, even if the game itself gets into fantasy anyway. Just because you can fight the Aztecs as the Huns in the game, does not mean there has to be an official campaign about it, so to speak.
I didn’t know anything about the AoE3 campaigns, so I looked up the Chinese one. It seems to be based on a fringe theory, with no real historical evidence, that the Chinese sailed to Mexico in 1421. So historical fiction based on probably not real events. I don’t approve. AoE2 isn’t as historically accurate as I think it should be, but it seems like it’s much better than AoE3.
There is historical material to make campaigns for some Mesoamerican civs:
-Maya kingdoms fighting each other with several players and factions (Tikal, Calakmul, El Peru, Naranjo, Palenque, Yaxchilan etc.) in the years 600-900.
-Teotihuacans “conquest” of Tikal in the 400s.
-Postclassic wars Guatemalan kingdoms in 1400-1530.
-Early Postclassic wars of Yucatan peninsula around 1100-1250.
Aztecs had some relations with the Maya but few conflicts, particularly the Tzotzils of Chiapas and Mam in Soconusco. I think you would need to add more civs like the Mixtecs and Tarascans to make more campaigns, you can do it from their point of view as well. Or just make them scenario only.
Toltecs might work the problem is a lot of their lore is mixed with myth told from the Aztecs. The Olmecs had become completely different civs by aoe2’s time. Their apogee was really more 1200-600 BCE and their later period lasting to about the year 300.
the Incas though, should really be in their own Andean civs category they have nothing to do with Mesoamerica. They too could use an additional civ or 2 from that region.
Whimsical “what-if” scenarios aside, I agree. If it’s your cup of pulque, I’ve been working on a campaign for a civ design I made for the Purépecha Empire, who among several other things, were known for inflicting a catastrophic defeat on an invading Aztec army (although my campaign predates that era). I’ll be releasing the first parts of it after the new update goes live.
And let’s not forget the “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” campaign (the vampire in question being none other than Vlad Dracula).
That’s hilarious, and further cements my bias against AoE3. Oddly enough, about a decade ago I made a scenario loosely inspired by Chinese legends of the Land of Fusang, which some have interpreted as somewhere in the Americas, but it was hyper-whimsical and included fantastical elements like time travel, the fountain of youth, and movie references (made it to play with a friend group). But I would hate for anything so fringey and absurd to be an official project put out by the devs.
t I find it a bit sad the direction the went for the campaigns. The mechanics of aoe3 are awesome and extremely varied, it could have led to very fun and engaging campaigns, like in multiplayer. But they chose to do that…
Fortunately, Definitive edition has some actual historical battles for the game. I hope they continue adding more of them.
My point is that I hope they won’t dev resources and time in something like this instead of doing a proper campaign. It pains me to see that having happened in aoe3 and I don’t want to see it happen again in aoe2
True, but for something in AoE 3 show you at the beginning the year in which the campaigns are set: Blood (1565-1566), Ice (1756-1757), Steel (1817-1818) in the original game; Fire (1775-1781) and Shadow (1866-1876) in TWC;and Japan (1598-1600), China (1421-1422) and India (1857-1858) in TAD…
Yes, the campaigns of AoE 3 take more freedom when it comes to telling historical events: the campaigns of the original game are about a family that fights for 250 years against a secret order that seeks the fountain of youth, the campaigns of TWC deal with the history of the United States, first of their revolution against the British and then of their westward expansion against the Lakotas and then the three Asian campaigns of TAD deal with Japanese unification,the hypothesis of Chinese in America in 1421 and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 against the British East India Company and the end of the Mughal Empire…
I agree on these two…
Yes, the Olmecs look better for AoE 1 better…
Yes, they really liked the AoM campaign and said they wanted to get out of the typical mold of AoE 2 campaigns for AoE3, but since people didn’t like it, they went back to the historical campaigns in the expansions…
There are so many anachronisms that we can’t even pick a true date for the campaigns. And not just minor details, actual major parts of the plot.
At least in the expansion they wanted to go in a more historical way, but still too little, too late. I also don’t think the mission ever actually used the mechanisc of the game to its fullest extent, like Starcraft 2 or other games did.
My biggest hate against AOE3 was due to them cutting the fancy fireby rank formations shown in the trailers ’ it was so exciting to poentially have interesting formations in a base building RTS
Yes, but they are the dates we handle…In addition in AoE 2 TC you had the Huns of Attila with trebuchets and El Cid with Conquistadors…
Yes, that’s true…
They took out the formations because it slowed down the game and didn’t look like AoE but American Conquest…
Yes, in the year 1000 when the Vikings arrived in Vinland the great Mayan urban centers had already disappeared… although in the novel Roma AEterna by Robert Silverberg, you have the Romans arriving in Yucatan in 1108 and one of the kings of the largest city (maybe Chichen Itza) is a Viking…decades later in 1198, the Roman Empire is conquered by the Byzantines…
Yes, although at least the characters have charisma… it’s like the Assassins Creed saga made RTS…xd
