I know you look at the posts here and consider feedback. There have been suggestions tossed around on this forum that have ended up in the final game. So I know you know how popular the Caucasus is for addition to the game. It’s my most wanted region as well.
So I humbly request the following: Whenever you make a Caucasus expansion, please go all out. I simply ask that you make it more in line with how the HD expansions were, and not the more limited DLCs of DE. I love those DLCs, don’t get me wrong, but I feel that a region as underrepresented as the Caucasus deserves everything it can get.
So I propose four civs for the expansions: the Alans, Armenians, Georgians, and Kazars (can’t say the actual name for censorship reasons). Just the Armenians and Georgians are fine, I guess, but I think it would be better if four civs were added this time. I even have well-polished and balanced concepts for the four civs, based on community feedback elsewhere.
I also ask that you make a new architecture set to go with it. Caucasus civs won’t feel right with any of the preexisting sets. I’m currently partnered with AbeJin to try to create an architecture set based on Georgian mountain villages and Armenian and Georgian cathedrals. If you can wait a few months, I can probably have all of the buildings sketched that aren’t currently modeled by AbeJin, and then either he or someone else can complete the set according to my sketches. Even if you don’t want to use my work, a new set based on the things I mentioned would be good. None of the currently existing sets will work at all.
The Caucasus is the area I want represented the most. Please don’t mess this up.
I mean, if India DLC got only three, I don’t think you’ll see four civs for Caucasus.
If we are going to get a four-civ DLC at some point, I’d much rather it be an African or Asian DLC, since it seems like we might only get one four-civ DLC only.
I would argue that Alans should be included with Vandals. Another option is to have Eastern Alans and Western Alans as two civs. We have Eastern and Western Romans, and Unified Franks and Eastern Franks, so, it makes sense
Technically DoI had only three, but the Hindustanis were so radically changed from the Indians that I consider them to be basically a fourth civ.
Africa and Asia already have some representation, while the Caucasus has none. So a larger DLC to help the Caucasus catch up faster makes a lot of sense.
Maybe, but the Alans are highly relevant to the history of the Caucasus, so having them in a Caucasus DLC makes just as much sense.
I would love to see the return of 4 factions dlcs. On the other hand, we could get more campaigns for older civs such as Persians or Turks by splitting this idea into two different dlc (Transcaucasia with Armenians and Georgians and Ciscaucasia/Pontic Steppe with Alans and Kazars).
As long as all four eventually come, and there’s a new Caucasus architecture, either option is fine with me, though I obviously would prefer the 4-civ DLC route, because that’s how things were done in HD.
Mmm… I have the idea that many civs would be bad for AoE2, since it could make the game to overwhelming for new players, and eventually fewer new players mean that the game will slowly decline.
I thinks devs realize that and it may be one of the reasons we get 2 new civs on average in each dlc.
That’s why I think an unlock system is not a bad idea, despite a lot of people lashing back against it. It would only be for new players anyway, not people who already own it (or the HD version on Steam).
I don’t think that’s it, that ship had already sailed when the DE came out. Imo two other things play an important role in the number of civs per dlc:
Each new civ needs to be somewhat balanced in its interaction with each of those already in game and those it’s released alongside with, which means exponentially more playtesting and rework in future patches as time goes on.
The devs seem to have settled for 3 campaigns per dlc, and may never go higher again because it’s quite probably one of the most time consuming parts of a dlc. DoI was a special case because one of the new civs was given one of the old campaigns with little to no rework, but aside from a few specific cases I don’t see it happening so often in the future.
I feel like completely changing the last scenario and making some significant changes to #2 (Plus minor changes to the rest) is a pretty sizable rework (Not that it disproves your point, as it’s still not as much work as a full new campaign)
The solution I propose for this is to put a filter tab when you search for civs so if you’re new to the game or even to generic history you can filter by let’s say cavalry, navy, defensive etc civs.
I’m an enthusiast of splitting civs and this particular era but western and eastern Alans may be a bit too much given how poorly documented they are (to my knowledge at least). It would be like having ostrogoths and Visigoths or suebi of Galicia and suebi of Swabia.
I just posted an Alans concept a few days ago that I’ve had made for a while now, so you might want to check that out to see what an Alans civ could look like.
Dear Santa (regarding how I have been a good boy this year),
I know you read letters from all the boys and girls all around the world, and that some children have ended up getting the things they asked for for Christmas…
Sorry, couldn’t resist. That’s what this genre of post reminds me of though, as if explicitly addressing the devs is going to magically make your requests carry more weight. I guess there’s no harm in trying, other than the naive overinvestment in the belief that one will change the course of the game via such an appeal.
I do hope they get back to their roots though, i.e. DLCs for Medieval civs, and Georgians and Armenians are strong contenders. Don’t care so much about the number of civs as the quality though. For example, a 2 civ DLC is better than a 3 civ IMO if the former is well-designed and adds lots of extra content, Editor stuff, etc, and the latter is gimmicky, poorly balanced, buggy, and comes with little or no extras.
The Frankish and Roman redundancivs were more than enough, no need to use them to justify another.
Respectfully, nobody at FE is going to run with anything provided by some random forumer unless it has become massively popular (e.g. a fully-functioning mod with thousands of subscribers). The supply of “idea people” who are waiting for the devs to finally realize how brilliant they are and hire them or explicitly choose their ideas far exceeds the (probably nonexistent) demand for such people.
Yeah, I know. I just said that so you can have an idea of how they could work.
This is something that I am trying to work on currently. I have a few other people involved.
Maybe they should consider bringing in fresh faces, before their current designers are stretched thin and we get worse-quality civs over time. This is already starting to happen. If they want it to stop, they need to bring in new people who can provide fresh perspectives.
I’m not saying that should necessarily be me, but several of my ideas that I’ve come up with independently have made it into the game already, which means I think on the same wavelength as the devs. I can confidently say that only a handful of designers on this site and elsewhere have that quality. Most ideas are absolutely terrible and don’t fit the game.
Alans can be part of the potential Vandals. The alliance between the Vandals and the Alans can be expressed in a manner similar to that of the Cumans and the Kipchaks. This also effectively extends the timeline of this potential civilization. In any case, they can still be represented by the Huns like how the game works now, after all, they are one of the forces that follow the Huns. Some Roman scholars in the fourth century think that the Alans “somewhat like the Huns”, and some even directly conflates the Huns and Alans.
Kazars are currently represented by Cumans in the game, such as 2 AI leaders of Cumans are Kazars. The Cumans seem to have been clearly defined as representatives of the Turkic peoples of the north of the Caucasus, meaning that they were not only Cumans and Kipchaks, but also Kazars and Pechenegs.
Only Georgians and Armenians are high-priority contenders, and 2 civs also qualify for DE’s standard DLC content.
The Alans and Vandals were only allied for a brief period. The Alans are much more significant as a separate entity in their own right. It wouldn’t be right for them to be lumped in with the Vandals, when they were separate for most of their history (unlike the Cumans and Kipchaks).
This is something that I disagree with, and there’s also precedent for moving AI player names when a new civ gets added that’s more fitting for them.
The Cumans were nomadic; the Kazars were not. They built things and had a settled kingdom, while the Cumans just moved around and were immigrants in other lands. It is not right for them to be the same.
Read up on it for me. The Cumans and the Kazars are not remotely close to being the same thing.
In my opinion, the Alans are best known for conquering Europe with the Huns as an important member of the Hunnic confederation, and conquering the Iberia and North Africa as an ally of the Vandals. After that, for most of AoE2’s timeline, they were just one of many peoples of the steppes, with no particularly impressive achievements, although they existed for centuries. On the other hand, the Vandals were short-lived, but the sack of Rome brought them to prominence.
We all know that every civilization is an umbrella, big or small. As a civ in the game, the Cumans represent the Turkic peoples located north of the Caucasus and actively interacting with Europe, which is the current reality, nothing about their live styles. They are not impossible to be split, just as almost all civilizations can be split too, strictly speaking.
It’s just, do we have a great demand to split this umbrella? How many Turkic civilizations do we need in the game?
In my opinion, we only need the Gokturks as the new and final Turkic civilization, because there are no Turkic representative in East Asia and in the early Middle Ages, and the Gokturks were the strongest one of those Turkic peoples East Asia and in the early Middle Ages. If you want, you can also use Gokturks to represent Kazars, since Kazars were originally part of the Western Turkic Khanate of Gokturks, and their rulers were Ashina tribe.
A lot of people on the forum want the Kazars to be added.
I think it should be the other way around, personally. The Kazars are a much more notable name, and were an offshoot of the Gokturks anyway, so if we’re only going with one of them, we should go with them, because they had more lasting prominence than the Gokturks, as far as I know.
I have done a lot of research on this subject, but not nearly as much as on Georgia and Armenia, so my knowledge is still fairly limited. But I think that the Kazars should not be represented by the Cumans, because they’re significantly different. And actually quite a lot of people want them in the game, so they should be prioritized if we’re going with a Caucasus or Pontic Steppe theme. I just hope that they remove the nonsensical censorship once the civ is actually in the game.
In Asia, or at least China, the Gokturks and their khanates were very well known as opponents of the Tang, but few people have heard of the Kazars. Just for your reference.
Considering that we can also have DLC for other regions, not just the Caucasus, I’d still say that Gokturks are more suitable and more applicable. I don’t think Kazars are a good choice for representing Gokturks when making a campaign about East or Central Asia.
So everyone agrees on the high priority Georgians and Armenians.
It’s just, does the Caucasus urgently need as many as 4 new civilizations?