Let me know what you guys think. I can’t be alone in this.
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I’m on the verge of giving up giving feedback. In my mind, there was no world where the developers manage to disappoint me through design alone. I was expecting to be disappointed by the name, and thats about it.
Yet, the name is bad, the design is bad, the whole civilization feels off, and it more reminds me of some custom game civilization by a fan than an actual product by a professional. The most important problem here is that there is no thematics. I really dislike JdA for what that civilization has done to this game’s basic fantasy. And despite that, ZXL manages to make an even weaker thematic impression.
It isn’t a variant. It’s literally Chinese 2.0. Not that it is better than Chinese, but it is quite literally just a redesign of the same civilization. And what are you suppoused to be playing exactly? Are you the “legacy”? What is this civilization meant to represent? The thematics are entirely whacky, like makers weren’t familiar with AoE.
And then we have the fact that you can retroactively inspect the Empire of Jade name and compare it to the actual civilization features. There is nothing there. You have some green tinted roofs, which hurts my soul. Did they actually think they could get away with making some ahistorical bullshit like this? Calling it Zhu Xi’s Legacy to hide the fact that the civilization is a shallow orientalist interpretation of an east asian civilization is just awful. It does not give it more legitimacy, and slapping onto it ZXL just because he was a historical figure just shows how bad the decision making is here.
There is a post I’ve been holding off, as it might be entirely too negative, and I want to know how I’ll feel in a weeks time. But, right now, I honestly feel hopeless about whats to come.
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True… I see you man. I really dont see the point of theses “variants”. Better to introduce new mechanincs, key point on the map, villages to conquer i dunno…
Focus on existing civ, adding new landmarks options?? But for all the civs. I dont see the point to pick up 4 random civs and make these variants, which actually to me they look quite awful.
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Yeah it’s a huge miss to create a civ that thematically is indistinct from the vanilla Chinese. Variants have the potential to be done right and add a lot of additional flavor, but so far these civ variants have all been misses - like…huge, what are they even thinking, misses.
And it’s crazy to me that the other content creators are largely silent on this.
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Possibly because they’re fine with it? I dunno. A breadth of opinion is a good thing, and we definitely have that here.
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Only Chilly is not silent. And those who did not sign the NDA. Perhaps the devs specifically tried to gag content makers with NDA. Because they understood that there would be a lot of critics.
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Public content is by definition not NDA’d. Conspiracy theories are, uh, probably not the first thing you should resort to though eh?
To me, there are two main camps when it comes to criticism of the variants specifically. I understand one, but I generally don’t understand the other (with some caveats):
- “I don’t like the mechanics” - entirely fair, moving on. If people don’t like the Journey of the Hero, that’s entirely understandable. If people don’t like whatever is happening with Dynasties in Zhu Xi’s Legacy? Absolutely fine. If people are worried the variants are going to overshadow their original counterparts? I get it.
- “It’s not historical” - this is what I don’t get, specifically for the variant civilisations. Because they’re not historical. Let’s quote the original developer note on variants.
We start with historical inspiration from some element in the history of the classic civilization and then build gameplay from that theme. These elements can be a single individual (like Jeanne d’Arc), a philosophy (like the neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi), or a particular historical group within the broader culture (like the Order of the Dragon). Although these seeds are often small moments, we explore the ‘what if’ of keeping that focus throughout the journey through the four Ages. Historically, Jeanne d’Arc lived at what would be the early part of the Imperial Age (just as France was adopting firearms at large scale), but we feature her across all four Ages in the variant that bears her name.
As you can see, the intent here isn’t to mirror history. So “it’s not historical” is always going to be true, because they’re taking increasing liberties for the sake of gameplay. Much like how they point out:
This builds on some of the “historical extensions” of the classic civilizations, such as the Abbasid Dynasty and Delhi Sultanate having full gunpowder units even through those particular groups never adopted gunpowder en masse (or were succeeded by those who did, such as the Ottomans).
Now, this doesn’t mean they couldn’t improve something, or that the variants are immune from all criticism. That’s not what I mean at all.
I just don’t think the “it’s not historical” style of argument doesn’t recognise that the developers have basically admitted that upfront. And I think on the subject of historical accuracy, this article is a great read (I hadn’t actually come across it before now):
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No one says that Age of Empires 4 should be historically reliable, but it should be a reliable part of Age of Empires.
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What does that mean, though? Age of Empires includes, under the AoE brand specifically, II, III and Online (and others). These are all pretty different games! So what are you trying to say?
I’m not disappointed (yet?); but I am very afraid of China 2 capitalizing on all the community fixes that SHOULD have been for China 1… and China 1 keeps getting left behind.
examples:
starting imperial official
PG in feudal
grenadiers NOT being locked behind a super expensive and niche dynasty.
IMO, they could have included all of these chinese variant ideas into the the original china via a few clicks and landmark options.
example:
start china off with an Imperial official ALWAYS. THEN in the dynasty tab have it glowing to focus the player on selecting the direction of dynasty buff for the remainder of the game; and no that’s not too much to ask since vizor points literally is a dynasty like menu.
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I think Zhu Xi’s Legacy is just really off… It lacks in game consistency to have the same dynasties give different bonuses.
Couldn’t base Chinese benefit from more unique techs for imperial officials maybe unlocking a new unique tech for each dynasty at the imperial academy similar to the buildings and units. Like for example the Tang Dynasty unique tech could be the Imperial Examinations, the Song Dynasty unique tech could make landmarks not used for advancing cost 50% less, the Yuan Dynasty unique tech could increase imperial official movement speed and hp, the Ming Dynasty unique tech could allow imperial officials to supervise all buildings including markets, town centers, and the Astronomical Clocktower.
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By the way this is better than ayyubids they dont have unique landmarks.Also instead going for china 2 they could have made jin or some other dynasty you mentioned in the video
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What’s wrong with “China 2”? That’s the whole point of a variant.
Each civ will have its own advantages.
And the new variant has 6 new landmarks so it will play quite differently, not just an improved version of china 1.
The civ concept is really cool i think. China 2 more focused on infantry and cavalry. While china 1 more on siege units and defense. Warrior monk in china 2 will be interesting.
I think the name zhu xi isn’t the best name but in terms of gameplay i really like the variant.
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If you say so … then they could just implement a new landmark for each existing civilization and add more variety, with new units and so on
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I didn’t get a theme either, at this moment the name is just pointless. I don’t have the slightest idea what it could be could because I don’t have the slightest idea what it’s trying to represent. This really just looks like the Chinese 2. And more interesting, not only because they novel.
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Monks will go to war with no armor 
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I’m not a competitive player but I’m concerned that these kitbash variant civs will still require the same attention post release as normal civs with balance passes and the like.
What happens if say Palace Guard overperform in Zhu’s Legacy but not in China? Would a nerf apply to both versions of Palace Guard or would they split with two different versions of the same unit? Could we end up in a situation where when we say ‘Camel Archer is weak’ We need to specify Abbasids CA or Abyuuids CA since they are different?
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They’ll definitely be split. It’s like how most factions share the core units, but nerfing English Crossbowmen doesn’t nerf Ottoman Crossbowman. It’s an extra word to throw in front of a previously-unique name I guess, but the principle is the same.
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Oh I thought the core units were identical in their base form? So my age 1 English spearman is identical to your Abbassid age 1 spearman, sure you could get the unique abbasid upgrade to increase their attack range just like how my man at arms can get a extra armour upgrade but without unique upgrades they are identical.
Then the exception was unique units which were different right out of the gate which is made apparent by their unique name.
Oh sorry, yes, they’re identical. I was thinking codewise, my bad.
It’s a good question! I’d assume they’d be tuned individually, or again maybe have different upgrades or timings r.e. when they’re available.
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