Civilization Idea: Croatians

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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The Croatians mainly represent the Kingdom of Croatia and the Duchy of Croatia. They have a new Balkan architecture set, NOT the Mediterranean set, which would be shared with the Serbians and Albanians. Their unique Castle is based on Trakoscan Castle, and their Wonder is the Church of St. Donatus.

They are another infantry and naval civilization, but also have strong cavalry, having access to fully-upgraded Paladins that are cheaper to get to. They have a fairly open tech tree for everything except foot archers, so they can perform a wide variety of strategies.

Let’s get into their civ bonuses:

Civilization Bonuses

  • Receive two free Fishing Ships after building the first Dock

This references Croatia having access to the Adriatic Sea, and the country is apparently quite famous for fishing, at least these days.

  • Barracks, Stable, and Dock unit upgrades cost -10% in Feudal, -15% in Castle, and -25% in Imperial Age

This references the primary land and water forces raised by Tomislav, which consisted of 100,000 infantry, 60,000 horsemen, and a fleet consisting of at least 80 ships.

  • Villagers +1 attack per age (starting in Feudal)

I can’t remember what this is referencing, but it could reference Croatian hajduks. Considering they are outside of the AoE2 timeline, though, I don’t think that’s it.

  • Careening, Dry Dock, Gillnets free

This bonus simply references Croatian proficiency in shipbuilding.

  • Team bonus: Knights +3 attack vs buildings

This does not have a particular reference, and was added to further improve Croatian knights and diversify their kit.

Unique Unit: Banus

  • The Banus is a cavalry unit with extremely high HP, at 180 (200 for Elite), but it has extremely low attack, at a mere 6 (8 for Elite). However, it also has very high armor, with 5 of each type. It’s fairly cheap as well, costing 65 food and a mere 50 gold. However, this is compensated for with its train time, a very slow 25 seconds.

  • The Banus is a useful unit when population limits are being reached, and cheap, population efficient units are required. Its low attack prevents it from dominating all units easily, but its high defense gives it robustness to make its training time worthwhile.

  • A ban was a title used in Slavic countries. Kingdoms ruled by a ban were referred to as banates, though most bans were local rulers. After 1102, Croatian viceroys were referred to as Bans of Croatia. A particular variation on the name was banus, used by Croatian noble tribes, derived from the Latin root.

Unique Technologies
Zupani: Barracks units +3 attack vs archers

  • Cost: 450 food, 350 gold

  • This technology makes infantry units significantly deadlier against archers, provided they can reach them. The presence of all relevant Blacksmith upgrades, Squires, and Gambesons really helps in this regard.

  • Zupani is the plural of Zupan, a type of noble that ruled over a zupa in Eastern and Central Europe. In Croatia, they acted as nobles representing the twelve noble tribes of Croatia, and the royal servants were recruited from their ranks.

Kondura: Galley-line gold cost replaced with wood

  • Cost: 800 food, 600 gold

  • This technology, while expensive, makes Croatian Galleons trash units, in exchange for costing 120 wood instead of 90. To compensate, Bracer and Shipwright are both missing, but that doesn’t matter when the Croatians can have a fleet when the opponent can’t because gold ran out. However, since it doesn’t pay for itself until after 20 ships, getting it while gold is still abundant is important.

  • The kondura is a particular type of ship commonly used in the eastern Adriatic coastline. It was part of the Croatian navy in the 10th century, and said navy was quite large considering Croatia’s relative power. The Italian gondola seems to have a related etymology.

Tech Tree

Missing Units: Eagle line, Arbalester, Elephant Archer, Hand Cannoneer, Hussar, Camel line, Battle Elephant line, Steppe Lancer line, Siege Onager, Heavy Demolition Ship.

Missing Techs: Parthian Tactics, Redemption, Heresy, Bracer, Keep, Heated Shot, Bombard Tower, Stone Shaft Mining, Guilds, Shipwright.

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An interesting idea. It would be helpful in island games where players are selling wood for gold. However, it would become detrimental once wood runs out, making it a bit of a two-edge sword. But a far more significant consideration would be its effect on hybrid maps (especially those with mangrove shallows). Ships are stronger than units, and trash galleons would be absolutely broken on those maps (like Persian Trashbows, but much much stronger). I think I’d prefer something like “galleon gold cost halved” with any necessary cost adjustments and shipwright enabled (possibly as an additional free tech - comparable to Viking shipbuilding bonuses and Korean wood discount). Or it could give the galley line +2 range. It also would be nice if the tech had an second (weaker) effect for land maps. In any case, the tech as is would not work on maps with lots of Mangrove Shallows.

Like Italians, Dravidians, and Burgundians bonuses combined and weakened. A good bonus (though I wonder if the tiering would actually be necessary). Is this referring to all barracks/stable/dock techs or just the unit line upgrades?

People often don’t like free bonuses like this, and I could see it being really powerful on nomad (where the dock is often up before the TC). It should at least require the TC to be up (even then it would likely still be OP). That said, I think the fact that Gillnets is free would be enough to reference their fishing prowess.

Seems like a bit much for a team bonus. Knights would not be something that could be ignored because they’d then be able to tear through buildings as if they were infantry, but with much more mobility. Just imagine Poles with this and the Persian team bonus. I’d rather reduce it and then switch it with villagers +1 attack per age (which might not be super strong, but would have some occasional use, and not just in meme strats or Inca/Spanish vils).

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It is worth noting that the creators once made an entry in which they presented campaigns created by fans - there was the Campaign of Tomislav - the greatest king of Croatia, together with the Croatians civ.

The same entry mentioned one of the Philadelphia scenarios that has now become DLC.

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I would support a Croatian civ just so we could have Tomislav

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Yes, in my vision for a Balkan expansion, Tomislav would be the Croatian campaign. No one else makes nearly as much sense.

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What if I increased its cost considerably so it’s harder to justify and get to?

What if I kept it as is and also gave them Shipwright? It would be like Malay Forced Levy essentially needing Supplies to be viable.

I believe the Armenians already have something similar.

Just the unit line upgrades.

The thing is, I’m not sure it really is. It only really noticeably helps at the beginning, before other players have Docks up. It becomes less noticeable once everyone else has started fishing. Sure, you’ll be 2 ships ahead, but they’re easily susceptible to being destroyed by warships. I think their best maps will be Nomad (like you said) Mediterranean/Baltic, and Four Lakes.
If you’re concerned, I could decrease it to one ship.

How about just a simple +1?

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It would have to be increased a ton to be balanced on mangrove-dominated maps. And with that high of a cost, it wouldn’t be practical outside of those maps. Remember, a galleon (even without bracer) is stronger than two fully upgrade Arbalests.

Docks for fishing often appear in the dark age. Warships can’t appear until Feudal age (by which point, fishing ships have already paid themselves off). On nomad, you’d be seeing two fishing ships before anyone has a TC up, which might be enough to justify putting every vil except the dock-building vil onto wood and relying on fish to maintain constant villager production. I don’t know how much food you could collect before the TC comes up, but I think that the dock-building villager collects a little below 50 food (probably somewhere around 40, maybe as low as 30). I’d expect a similar number for the fishing ships which are faster at gathering food but will have travel time to factor in - I could be wrong about the 40 food number though. But we’d be looking at over 100 extra food before the TC came up, and significantly more before most other players would be able to build their first fishing ship. I would have to test it to see how much quicker you could go through the dark age, but I suspect it would be significantly faster (allowing for naval raids well before anyone else is able to respond). On Four Lakes, you might be able to justify building a dock immediately (similar to what Lithuanians used to do), but testing would be needed to be certain.

But I think it would of necessity need to be restricted to have the fishing ships appear only once the TC is up. Otherwise, it’s overly strong on nomad (and other nomad-style maps where building a dock before TC is common). And even then, it likely would still need to be reduced to 1 fishing ship. But that is something that would need to be determined by testing.

True, for galley-line and dromons. I’d forgotten that.

That might work. I still think it would be better as a civ bonus than a team bonus.

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Wait till devs ignore you and make this civ with the same architecture.

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That’s because they’re lazy and think fans will be satisfied with no new architecture sets. They would be wrong.

I shudder to think what they would do for Oceania civs…

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I do wish you wouldn’t word your posts like they’re fact. Because you talk in the present tense, it makes it seem like it’s factual, which caused a huge amount of confusion for a lot of people when Mountain Royals came out, before the wiki edited your blog thing to say it wasn’t actual content.

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too overpowered.

Also overpowered.

Rest of the civ lacks land eco bonus. Poor tech tree design however. Its a paladin civ but neither has bracer nor gunpowder nor some major bonus on scorpions.

Kondura is a bad tech given that wood becomes a bottleneck on many water maps. And the lack of bracer makes it a rush water civ.

Banus again would be situationally OP when the Croat player is ahead since its very difficult for enemy’s defensive structures to kill them but otherwise it can’t kill any other unit and has limited usage.

Overall this civ design is quite poor, too niche bonuses and lacks complementing military options.

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Did I do that particularly much in this post? It should be obvious it’s simply speculative.

As for the wiki page thing, I feel that the format works a lot better when it is worded like it’s factual. If people pay attention, they shouldn’t be confused. Now that that template is on those pages, it’s entirely on them if they’re still confused.

Honestly, even before the template was there, the fact that “User blog” preceded the title and the articles weren’t accessible on the main section should’ve been a tip off, but I guess some people aren’t super attentive. Official content wouldn’t be on user blogs anyway; it would have pages.

I can see where it would be confusing, but anyone who knows how the wiki works should be able to tell the difference. I’m not going to radically change the way I do things just because it might be confusing for some people. The fanon template at the top of the page should be enough.

Besides, I don’t always talk in the present tense. If anyone notices that, they should be able to realize it’s not actual content.

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They wont be added.
Word limit

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Most of these bonuses are overpowered or powercreep another civ, or both… Like the fishing ships bonus that is busted on any water setting a game breaking on nomad basically

Also why a infantry+navali civ should have strong cavalry bonuses like 25% discount upgrades and paladin? unless you want to see another infantry civ that never goes for infantry

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What’s the inspiration for this bonus?

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I think it probably has something to do with Croatia’s thriving fishing economy or its historical strength on water. Or both.

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Ain’t this something generic to all coastal people? If it something special then there should be more to it than a chatgpt answer “thriving fishing economy”

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The loud minority like you and me will be unsatisfied. The regular playerbase is willing to pay for recycled content.

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I don’t even understand why people want Croatians. They were largely insignificant, mostly a vassal state of Hungary.

At least Serbs had a short lived empire and Vlachs defended against stronger powers for many years.

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The Croatians created a strong kingdom in the western Balkans and became a vassal of Hungary only after the extinction of the Trpimirović dynasty, from which King Tomislav came, who united Croatia. This kingdom included Croatia and Bosnia - at times they controlled the territory of modern Slovenia.

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It is worth noting that in the years 1358–1809 there was a free Croatian merchant republic, which was a serious competitor to the Republic of Venice - the Republic of Ragusa, also known as the Republic of Dubrovnik.

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