Hi y’all
Here’s my updated design for aoe4’s timeline in season 12.
(Previous version here)
OotD and JdA and Tughlaq Dynasty are too short-lived to show up as a full flag.
The dates are taken from in-game under the Learn tab, you can also find them in the match lobby, when hovering in the civilization select dropdown.
They don’t always line up with the full historical dates, reflecting specific eras the devs picked.
And yes, some of these dates are weird or outright wrong, but I’m not taking the responsability to handpick corrections, I’ll update them if the in-game information changes.
Some examples, based on cursory research:
The Ottoman Empire (House of Osman) was founded circa 1299~. Before them, Seljuk Turks were in Anatolia, disputing control of the region from the Byzantine Empire. The Twin Minaret Medrese appears to be from that era. Still, the in-game start date is set at 990 CE, despite even the official website stating: “In Age of Empires IV, the civilization of the Ottomans spans the years from the pre-imperial Ottoman Empire period in the 11th century CE to the mid-16th century CE”. So who knows?
The Ayyubids dynasty is specifically a ruling sultanate from 1171 to 1260~, part of the larger Abbasid Caliphate. When variants were introduced, the Ayyubids and Zhu Xi’s Legacy both used the exact same date as their parent civ. In the recent Dynasties of the East DLC, the same appears to be true for Sengoku Daimyo and The Golden Horde. Probably an oversight? Or simply the devs intention of saying “you’re playing the same era as the parent civ, but with a focus on that sub faction of it, abstractly stretched to the same dates”?
The Chinese start year is the last year of the Tang Dynasty, and the Byzantines dates are the full Constantinople dates, the city was inaugurated in 330 and fell in 1453. Somewhat weird to highlight such early dates when the same could have been done for others like Chinese but they decided not to.
If you think of other peculiarities or oddities with the dates, feel free to share them here, I’m by no means a historian so it’s a good opportunity to learn stuff.
Also posted on reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/1pou284/civilizations_timeline_season_12_details_in_the/