Concept for a future Spanish civilization

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Dear Community, i created a concept for a Spanish Civilization in Age of Empires 4 because i’m currently researching Spanish history and i would love to play them in the game! I’m sharing this with you to get some feedback. I’m interested in your opinion and would like to know what you like about the concept and what you don’t. I didn’t always mention exact numbers for the boni because i don’t know exactly if the balancing would work. People always tend to make the faction they like stronger than it should be, so i tried to maintain balance. And don’t forget that this is just a draft which can be always changed and adapted.

Spain – a civilization of trade, faith and gunpowder

Civilization Bonus

Battle-hardened villagers - the life at the frontera, the boarder to the moors, was very tough. Daily acts of violence shaped a society that was prepared for raids and plunder. (Villagers get the ‚Textiles‘-technology for free. Additionally there is another technology available in the Castle Age which increases their fighting abilities and another technology in the imperial age which grants villagers throwing spears that act as ranged attack with long reload time.)

Cultural Diversity - In medieval Spain there lived christians next to muslims and an exchange between the cultures took place. It was a common thing to use mercenaries from the other religion. For this reason the Spanish have access to arabic horse archers from the Feudal Age. These horse archers are lightly armoured but very fast. However, they can’t shoot while moving like the Mongols.

Focus on skirmishing - Some military forces of the Spanish developed early types of guerilla warfare. For this reason, the Spanish units move faster in forests (or however the terrain is called where the units can hide). Medieval Spain had many knightly orders which specialized on combat against arabic forces. For this reason, the Spanish knights have a better ranged armour.

Unique Units

Almogávers - Anti-cavalry skirmishers with javelins. They are very lightly armoured but can move very fastly. These units cost few food and wood. They have an upgrade in the Imperial Age like the other units, but the granted advantages aren’t very high, so the Almogávers are most useful in the Early-Game (available from Feudal-Age).

Inquisitor - The Spanish equivalent to the priest; costs gold. It’s a religious unit and available from the Castle Age. The inquisitor is great at converting units (and maybe even buildings???). In addition to that, the inquisitor is only visible to the enemy when he starts converting or when the enemy gets close to him.

Conquistador - Mounted Handcannoneer with farily good armour. Costs much food and gold. Available from the Imperial Age. Only weakness is that both anti-ranged and anti-cavalry bonus damage apply to him. I know, this one is difficult, but i love this unit so much from Age of Empires 2 and could not live without it in Age of Empires 4.

Ideas for Landmarks

Please note that i considered historical context when deciding about which Age is being started by building the landmark. I didn’t look on how interesting it would be to decide between two of them.

-From Dark Age of Feudal Age-

Embassy of Cordoba - Military Landmark that produces horse archers at +100% speed and contains upgrades for them (like the Council Hall does for the English longbowben)

Santiago’s Grave - Economical Landmark with a large aura. Every military building in this aura gets a bonus on the production speed (or maybe on the production cost?)

-From Feudal Age to Castle Age-

Toledo Cathedral - Religious Landmark that acts as a church and can produce inquisitors. Relics placed within the Toledo Cathedral boost the working speed of the villagers by 10%. It holds up to three Relics.

Market of Sevilla - Economical Landmark. Traders of the Spanish player and the teammates can trade between the Market of Sevilla and another market. This way they won’t generate gold every time they reach the normal market, but they will accumulate a great number of gold at the Market of Sevilla. The Spanish player can decide when to collect the gold, like with the French Guild Hall. His teammates will also get (about) 80% of the amount of gold. Trading with the Market of Sevilla grants more gold this way than trading with a normal market, however it doesn’t bring a constant flow of gold because the player actively needs to collect the gold.

-From Castle Age to Imperial Age-

Keep of Alhambra - Military Landmark that acts as a keep. It has additional range and can garrison twice as much units which will increase the amount of arrows being shot by the Keep of Alhambra.

University of Zaragoza - Technological Landmark that acts as university. All the technologies can be researched for free (or, if that’s too powerful, with less costs). (Maybe there can also be a few additional technologies here?)

— /// —

I didn’t consider the navy because that’s a difficult thing at the moment (i mean look at the French?!). But i think the Spanish should have a better battle ship in the imperial age because of their maritime background in the 16th century. Or maybe they get better trade ships?

I’m completely new to the forum, so i’m sorry if i posted this in the wrong section or did anything else wrong. I gladly accept any help or advice. Greetings, Octanidas :slight_smile:

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The Spanish navy would be great. Maybe an Armada technology where imperial age ships buff lesser ships in the vicinity. Colonization would be hard to replicate, so I got nothing on that. A scout ship or upgraded trade ship would be nice too, I don’t have ideas for those at all.

Welcome to hell!
Jokes aside, welcome to the forum. You’ve made a high-quality concept first try, holy shit.

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awesome work and concept! well done :slight_smile:

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Please, I beg you please don’t put the conquistadors again, it doesn’t really make sense for a medieval game and also it wasn’t anything special at the time. It doesn’t define any specific unit it only means people who conquered, but not a specific unit like the one portrayed in AOEII.

Also, inquisitors… I’m sure you are all using the ‘spanish inquisition’ meme but really can you not also translate it into games? It’s just strreotipical and there were a ton of other nations using religious torture, it wasn’t Spanish specific.

I really don’t think they are going to include Spain any time soon, if you look at the post where they talk about civs that might get into the game, Spain is not even in the list and I think is only mentioned a couple of times. I’d love to have Spain in the game, but I’m very pessimistic about it.

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I like the idea but I think the most correct way to put Spain in aoe4 is with kingdoms like China with the dynasties. Starting with Asturias (the only kingdom that was not conquered by the Arabs) in the dark age, passing through Castilla, Leon, Galicia, Aragon, Navarra and uniting in Spain for the imperial age.

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No tercios… No fun (20 characters)

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LOVE IT 100% , as a spaniard my self im proud of what you did wrote .

agree , it would be very cool , but you know WHAT would be nuts , if they have a “dinasty” type gameplay , starting off with arabic dinasty they have access to houses for free and they also can build special horses since age 1 , in age 2 they unlock the castille - aragonesee dinasty they have access to specials mills and they cannot build the special units from the arabic dynasty , with these special mills they could plant vines! , they are slowly produced but they give 20 of food and you can only have 4 vines per mill.

Economía de la Baja Edad Media - Didactalia: material educativo

For castle age , they could have the normal things of all civs but maybe another special unit

and for imperial age… conquistadores and tercios!

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well said lmao

20 chars

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EXACTLY WHAT I SAID!! good one i like this even more that what i wrote

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I’m also a spaniard, and I don’t think we need a harsh representation of medieval Spain. All frontiers were complicated. Neither kingdom was very different from the other at that time. People became very deeply integrated, and citizens had love for each other. Amazon Prime’s El Cid series provides a good representation of this time period, that is consistent with history classes at schools :slight_smile: .

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Same here, i would not go too far into colonization, that’s something for Age of Empires 3 in my opinion.

Thank you for the kind words! :smiley:

I really appreciate them and try my best to answer all the feedback.

Thank you :blush:

I had the idea for it very spontaneously and wanted to write it down before i forgot about it. First i tried to post it on the Duscord but then i was told that this is not the right place for that so i registered on this forum. :smiley:

I understand you and agree with most things. But the problem is that the developers already put the conquistadors in Age of Empires 2 and i think many fans would not like to miss them in Age of Empires 4 :wink: Also, in my opinion, they are one of the best special units.

(Apart from that it does make sense to portay them as mounted riflemen because that is what made them special and dangerous for their american foes.)

I am not only referring to the meme. The Spanish inquisition was 1. a very early inquisition and 2. very well organised when comparing to other ones. In addition to that i think that the Spanish would need a special religious unit so it is completely obvious to choose inquisitors. (Their ability in my concept to be invisible is also not referring to the meme, i did that because the inquisition was supposed to a very abstract threat to the people which also could act from the underground.) Do you have a better idea for a religious unit? Do you prefer the missionary?

I also think that and i am totally fine with the Spanish not being added soon. I just wanted to start some kind of discussion about that and maybe (MAYBE) they will get the attention of the developers at some point, which would be really great.

This is a good idea. Starting with the Asturias would be fitting indeed, not sure about the other ones, because if i am not wrong these other kingdoms mostly existed at the same time. Asturia then became Leon and after some time Castilla became independent, while on the east side Navarra, Aragon and Catalonia were already founded.

But when we just consider the idea of dynasties, i think they could be added to other civilizations as well. In my opinion the Holy Roman Empire is a very bad name for the respective civilization, which could use a fitting dynasty-system. The current Holy Roman Empire is very much based on the Swabian dynasty known as ‘Staufer’, judging by the landmarks and the dialect of the villagers and soldiers. It would be better to have the dynasties of the emperors, for example also include the Ottons and Habsburgs. I don’t understand ehy the developers chose to name the faction ‘Holy Roman Empire’ when they have literally another one ‘Abbasid-Dynasty’ (by the way i love the Abbasids!).

Haha, i get you. But here is the same problem as with the colonization. Does the Tercio still count into the timeframe of the game or is it already too late?

This, my dear friend, is the greatest compliment i can get. Making a Spanish proud of what a wrote warms my heart, thank you so much! :innocent:

Again, a great idea with the dynasties. I think they would work pretty well for some civilizations. But i am not sure if the developers want to keep dynasties special for the Chinese, and, if not, which civilizations they consider to be worth of a dynasty-sytsem too.

Oke, i get your point. But i think when the developers are adding more civilizations they need to add the Spanish at some point. Not only because they are relevant to history, but also because they can be created as a European Civilzation with arabic influence. And the developers want asymmetrical civilizations, or not?

Speaking of the El Cid series: I don’t know this series, so i can’t answer on that, sorry. And yes, it was not just the Spanish which had a complicated frontier. But saying that the citizens loved each other, does only show one part of the truth. Some historians would even say that this is a huge exaggeration.

Just to make that clear, because i already saw another post about this topic which was sadly deleted before i am writing this:

Yes, the people from different religions lived together in medieval Spain. And yes, they were deeply integrated in some regions. Especially in arabic towns the christians even had own rights (but needed to pay more taxes).

But when you look at the the time from around 1250 to 1500, you see the boarder from Castille to Granada which only marginal changes throughout the time. Yes, there were some forms of trade and pragmatic cooperations between muslims and christians. But there were also very many raids and acts of violence, which shaped the everyday life of the people living there. A specific type of society developed which ‘armed’ itself for this type of life. You can ready about it for example in ‘Frontier Society’ by Frederick Jackson Turner. Yes, that is a bit old, but also the current research investigates this. For example it has been shown that there were institutions on both sides of the border which specialised on buying out captives. Or just take a look at the big number of local militia which was established.

In summary, i just want to tell you that we always need to look on both sides of history. We can’t deny that in medieval Spain there were exemplary types of coexistence between people from different cultures, but we also can’t deny all the acts of violence (even pogroms) and hostility. For this reason i think it would be fitting to add this feature into a future Spanish civilization and make their villagers some kind of battle-hardened (as they are already in Age of Empires 2). :wink:

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Just stop now and go watch the El Cid on Amazon Prime.

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I think Tercios and Missionaries would be better unit choices than Inquisitors and Conquistadors

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Mmm the concept is similar to the English vills though… Maybe just give them extra armor or HP.

Maybe just give them one of the 2. Both seem unnecessary and too much…

And this is basically a third CA.

Also, conqs shouldn’t be a mounted rifleman. I get that aoe2 made it iconic by putting in one unit all technological advantages of the spanish over the aztec, but it’s still silly.

Make it an unique HC, or an unique MAA.

Usually, one LM have an economic bonus, and the other a military bonus. In this case it seems that both are focused on military.

That’s really similar to the HRE LM though…

Again, this is the same problem, 2 LM focused on eco… maybe this could be an unique aspect of the civ, but then choose between just eco or just military.

That’s pretty much a house of wisdom…

In general though, I feel like the civ lack some standard bonuses, like this building is cheaper, that unit is faster, and so on…

But not bad overall, the design have potential, especially with the combined Christian-Muslim effect.

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So you don’t want to enter into the colonization because of the late timeframe, but you are ok with conquistadors? In the AOE2 France had axe throwers and look at them now.

Yes I much prefer the missionary, it doesn’t bother me at all, the spanish inquisition is justa no no, also it was set around 1500, so again late right? Almost at the same time as the colonization

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The problem is that a Tercio can’t be represented by a unit (one individual). When you simplify a Tercio, it’s basically a big bunch of pikemen and riflemen.

But maybe i have a solution for this: The Spanish could receive a unique upgrade for their spearmen and their handcannoneers, which turns them into pikemen and arquebusiers. This upgrade would be available from the Imperial-Age. It would grant the pikemen extra range and armour and the arquebusiers maybe faster reload speed and better damage output, i don’t know.

And then there would be a Landmark from the Castle-Age to the Imperial-Age which keeps automatically producing ‘armies’ like the Wynguard Palace of the English. These ‘armies’ would contain pikemen and arquebusiers which could then represent a Tercio.

First of all thank you for the feedback. When i understand you correctly, most of your criticism is related to 1. similarities to other civilizations and 2. that the first two pairs of Landmarks are either both military or economical.

  1. I understand what you mean. Maybe i am not creative enough to make up new and interesting features, maybe i don’t have enough understanding of the game to know which parameters would be great for new Landmarks. But i also think that the more civilizations are added, the more similarities you will find and it will always be hard to create stuff that is 100% new.
    And speaking of the combined Christian-Muslim effect: Maybe you have better ideas how to do that. Yes, there are similarities to the house of wisdom and so on, but doesn’t make it sense to you? Copy-pasting it would be much worse, or not?

  2. Yes, that’s a valid point indeed. But please don’t forget that i mentioned that i only looked at the historical context of the Landamarks and not about how two of them would work as a pair to decide between. Combining the Landmarks in the best way for gameplay would be a continuing step.

Yes, i am fine with having conquistadors but no colonization, and here is why:

  1. The time of the classical conquistadors, as we know them, ended about 1572. Please correct me if i’m wrong. Compare this to the landsknechts of the Holy Roman Empire. These guys covered a much larger timeframe and they are in the game.
    Depending on what you understand under the term ‘colonization’ … i personally don’t think you can define it’s end before the Seven Year’s War. Maybe you could make an argument for ending it with the War of the Spanish Succesion but even that is way behind the timeframe of Age of Empires 4.

  2. Adding a conquistador is not different from adding another unit to the game. When you want to add the colonization, you speak of a much larger context. Again, depending on what you understand under the term … i think there is not even infrastructure for it. We would need American Maps, at least one American civilization and also a fitting scenario where you would need to cross the ocean and build a new base on the other side of the map. How do you want to integrate this last point into the current game?

  3. Colonization is a thing of Age of Empires 3. We would need like a fifth age called ‘Colonization-Age’ and a ton of new buildings, upgrades etc. to come with it. This would overstretch Age of Empires 4 by far.

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Adding spanish to the game would be awesome.

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True, in fact I didn’t mean to scrap all bonuses that are similar to other civ, just to suggest to try to make them different.

For example, the stronger vill bonus, I wasn’t trying to suggest to remove it, but to focus it in a clear different direction from the English ones. The English have vills with a stronger attack, then the spanish can have a vill with more HP, or armor.

Do you see what I mean?

Not at the moment of course, I just pointed out some things that came to my eye, but yourself have suggested a correction if I’m not mistaken, and that was that you could get techs cheaper. That would be different enough than having them simply for free.

It always the same thing, overlapping bonuses are already in the game in one way or another, it’s enaugh to see that 2 civs have early knights and another 2 early MaA. But both get the same effect through different means, and on different degrees.

I agree with you on this. I made a fan design of a civ myself, and I know that it’s difficult to find a good compromise between balance and history.

My suggestion is simply to switch one castle age LM with a feudal LM, so to alternate eco and military for both ages, and then maybe find a different effect for one of the imp one. The discarded effect can still be recycled as a bonus, or a series of UT.

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Alright it’s ok. I only mentioned history that’s relevant to me personally, because this history is also relevant to AoE4 civ design.

As I said very clearly, I support Spain as a civ and even explicitly suggested it in the 4th or 5th DLC according to my proposed plan. So just chill. :peace_symbol:

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