Fun fact: the Stone Age is a description of a specific era of European history and doesn’t even apply to other regions.
“The Three Age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) and its variants were created to classify the prehistoric archaeological record of Europe, and to lesser extent the Near East. It’s used with modification across much of the Old World but it isn’t a universally applicable schema. Notably it’s completely useless when it comes to the New World, so asking why Native Americans remained in the Stone Age is akin to asking why Europe never progressed past the Warring States period into the Qin dynasty.”
No it doesn’t.
It only refers to metallurgy.
Rating civilisations by only that is very limiting ignoring all other advancements in architecture, agriculture, medicine, etc.
Also it’s not only about technology but also about resource availability.
There is nearly no place on earth that has both the metals needed for Bronze, Copper and Tin. It always has to be acquired through trade or conquest. Egypt even got both through trade.
Native Americans knew how to make Bronze but only a few had enough raw materials to make enough of it like the Inca.
Even the great pyramids of Egypt were primarily made with stone tools because Egypt just didn’t have enough Copper or Bronze available during that time.
Or would you say the Northern Europeans just skipped all the development that Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Greeks made when they directly switched from Stone to Iron?
Dude it sounds like you are just mad that multiple people, including mods have to constantly deal with your posts. You shouldn’t try to hyper-focus on just one person and blame them for what’s happening to you.
Let me put it like this. I do not respect people who are abusing flagging functionality as soon as they are getting criticism on ideas which aren’t that sound anyway. The fact that you think that this is normal behavior, makes me disrespect you as well.
This is an open forum and if you are unable to discuss ideas based on the CONTENT, then this is not the place for you.
I’m pretty sure the moderators could have done something if it’s unjustified. Instead they stay auto-hidden. You can always contact them about this instead of blurting it out randomly in the topic.
Its not normal to blame just one person for your posts being removed.
Once again, a community flagged post needs quite a few users to agree that a post should be flagged.
Top this off with the fact i’ve seen mods remove your posts multiple times.
Im suggesting you actually reflect on what you’re posting if you are getting continually flagged/moderated. There is clearly something happening and tbh, you aren’t important enough for people to start some smear campaign against you.
What bothers me is that I am the only person who is pushing back against this unacceptable behaviour by OP. Perhaps most people find themselves getting censored one time and then decide to back off because they do not want to lose their account.
What also bothers me is the complete acceptance of this behavior by you and others. We can agree and disagree about ideas (which I like), but we cannot fail to condemn this kind of mass flagging.
Why the mods are accepting this behaviour by OP and his/her other accounts is beyond me.
Ok, then you tell me what about this posts is against community guidelines.
Imagine that you create an RTS game about modern day military factions. This RTS game follows a realistic documentary style approach.
You then start with 5 factions: USA, Russia, China, India and Japan.
OP then comes in and wants to add Angola to the game and then creates a forum post in which she describes which unique tanks and planes this Angola faction is supposed to have in order to compete with the others.
No serious person would take this Angola idea seriously though. Imagine Angola being able to compete militarily with Russia and China in a realistic documentary style RTS game about modern-day military factions.
Such an RTS game would become the target of satire, memes and will lose its reputation as a serious documentary style project.
Now let’s move on to AoE4
Now, anyone fully understands this logic in the modern-day context, because anyone understands that Angola being able to compete with the strongest militaries in the world is a joke.
However, if you come up with this EXACT SAME idea, but instead of applying it to the modern-day, putting it in the context of 500 to 1000 years in the past, people have a harder time recognizing this joke for what it is.
Native Americans being able to compete with the existing factions in an RTS game that follows a documentary style approach is impossible, as it would undermine realism in a way that would break the game.
You can either agree or disagree with this. Fine. Let’s discuss. No Problem.
But you can not claim that this post should get censored.
Edit: And Yes: Other users have also had similar posts removed as soon as they criticised OP. So, who else than OP could be abusing flagging functionality (either multiple accounts or in coordinance with others)
Anyone with any decency should openly condemn OP for this type of behavior. It should be named and called what it is openly.
You, and I have the make that clear it’s you and not the developers, say that the “powerlevel” of the Aztecs is to weak for the imaginary minimal “powerlevel” line you decided on.
You didn’t even check make the effort on checking how hight the military strength of the Aztecs was, you just look the single even of their conquest through the Spanish (and Tlaxcaltec allies).
That would be like saying Italy couldn’t be in a WW2 game because they had more than 10x as many losses as the French they fought against.
But still again. You say that the fact that the campaign pretends to be a documentary means that Aztecs are impossible. That is your opinion, I and many others have a different opinion. You can repeat your opinion but you can’t pretend as if it’s the “truth”.
What I say is my opinion. I don’t claim that AoE4 must have the Aztecs.
I just say I wish they were in the game and I think about interesting ways to add them.
Back to the Angola example.
It’s bad, like really bad.
Countries like Vietnam or Afghanistan can beat bigger military powers
Having asymmetric warfare makes games like those more interesting
Angola does have a lot of modern weaponry of mostly Russian origin (like SU-30 jets)
No.
It would not break the game. Even a DLC that would add Elves and Unicorns would not break the game. It wouldn’t even be the first serious game that adds fantasy elements in an expansion.
Because the original campaign and the documentary in it would be unchanged.
If the new campaign would be natives vs. natives only it would be 0 problems.
Even if it was something like Spanish conquest of Mexico, it could easily put those things into perspective trough narration, including in the missions itself.
Also the game has a separate balance between Singleplayer and Multiplayer, for example the Mongols can build Nest of Bees and even a mega trebuchet in the campaign.
I agree with you that giving Aztecs heavily armoured units like Man-At-Arms would be stupid. Also some buildings like a blacksmith would make little sense.
But I don’t think it’s impossible to make an Aztec civilisation for multiplayer that strikes a balance between realism and gameplay.
The game already does that.
Why should the English and the HRE have much worse Knights on a horse but much better Knights without a horse (Man at Arms) than the French? That makes little sense historically.
That’s why no one plays Age or Empires 2 and Age of Empires 3.
I don’t think many people care about the “documentary” style.
No one is gonna see the game and than see it has documentary style and is totally shocked that it has the Aztecs.
I don’t even think that includes you.
You are just against every civilisation that is not on your wishlist or you somehow want to keep your false sense of superiority of being somehow related to someone who won a war 500 years ago.
I think it is generally unfair to tell anyone that their civilisation should not be in the game at all.
You can think that other civilisations should have a higher priority and you can also voice that opinion but you can’t just pretend your opinion is a fact.
I wasn’t quoting you. My reply to you got censored and I was just copying and pasting it back in this topic.
You are just against every civilisation that is not on your wishlist or you somehow want to keep your false sense of superiority of being somehow related to someone who won a war 500 years ago.
Is not your point aganist adding Aztecs is that they weren’t as strong as already existing civs irl ?
I am honestly suprised that the mods haven’t week suspended OP yet . Perhaps (s)he was given a warning but we’ll never know
I also had one of my posts (which was a meme) flagged as offensive for some reason which was weird .
The documentary style presentation is present in campaigns and hands on history . It has nothing to do with random map games (for which civs are balanced) which are inherently ahistorical (English vs Chinese in Arabia) .
Yes , but not here .
I’ve seen many many civ concept threads go offtrack due to people who are aganist adding the civ for some reason . Better create a new topic instead of derailing the discussion .
You are actually right. I agree with you. My Angola example is somewhat rusty. In modern times, there is indeed something called asymmetric warfare, meaning that if you are a weaker country, you can still fight back against a stronger occupying force by doing things like trying to blow up a convoy by placing explosives, leaping a grenade into the enemy camp during the night, unexpectedly driving a civilian car into a group of soldiers, wearing civilian clothing and blowing up yourself near a group of enemy soldiers, etc. Even if you are a weaker faction, a grenade is still a grenade and an explosion is still an explosion. You can still blow up a group of soldiers wearing the most modern outfits by throwing an old grenade from the time of the Soviet Union.
A fun game that I like a lot is Command and Conquer Generals and it has a faction that engages in asymmetric warfare against the US and China, although this game isn’t supposed to be ‘realistic’.
However, the problem with this is that this didn’t really exist before the invention of modern weapons such as explosives. There really wasn’t much asymmetric warfare in the Middle Ages. The Huns raided the Roman Empire using hit and run tactics with their horses, Shia assassins fought against the Sunnis from the shadows, using blackmailing, etc.; but it is not as if the concept of ‘asymmetric warfare’ can be used as an excuse to argue that it makes sense to add factions to the game that really were thát much weaker than the others. (Of course, maintaining historical accuracy and realism; which is something that we might not value to the same degree and that is okey.)
If you are a faction that is fighting with sticks and stones, there really isn’t much you can do against heavily armed cavalry. It is that much of an unfair advantage really. Of course, you can still hurt the armed cavalry riders by throwing stones on their helms and knocking out a few, but you just can’t really win the fight or stop them from marching into your town. The Native Americans couldn’t secretly place a bomb somewhere, wait in the bushes and let the explosion to its work.
This is why I think that the argument of ‘asymmetric warfare against a stronger enemy’ cannot be applied in this specific historical context or used as an excuse to add native Americans to the game without the cost of sacrificing realism.
