Maybe we can have both. The Gokturks were good with infantry, after all, while the Kazars were more all about horse archers and siege weapons.
The 4 civs that I have chosen have a great deal of synergy with each other in terms of campaigns. If the three campaigns added were the Armenians, Georgians, and Kazars (the Alans can get a campaign later down the line if there’s a Late Antiquity DLC), then they would all appear in each other’s campaigns for the most part. That’s largely why I went with the four I picked, because they interacted with each other a ton.
For what I read to me it seems Alans, kazars, pechenegs, gokturks and maybe even kipchaks (not sure) could be their own civ. Gokturks were extremely important in central Asia late antiquity and dark ages and they appear along with hepthalites (here’s another one!) in Bukhara already.
Pechenegs, like Avars (yeah them too are missing), were one of the tribes periodically coming from Asia to sack byzantines, but after Magyars and before cumans and like cumans and Avars but unlike Magyars and Bulgars they weren’t able to preserve their identity for long once settled.
Alans were all over the place in western Europe late antiquity, from Gaul to Hispania, Africa (some say Britain too) and even trying to harass Italy periodically but without success. A part submitted to vandals but even when their kingdom was gone a land called Alania existed in Transcaucasia. We don’t know much about it but all these little piece of accounts combined are enough to justify a civ separated from vandals at a certain point imho (maybe later perhaps).
Kazars were important to byzantines but unfortunately their accounts are pretty obscure, we only know of them in relation to Constantinople or Arabs. It’s not clear what was their religion even if the temptation to have a Jewish Turkish tribe is very tempting for wacky design lol. With a bit of imagination they can have their own civ for sure.
I know next to nothing about kipchaks so I won’t speak for them.
Cumans and Kipchaks were different terms for the same people group. So no, they can’t be separate.
Allow me. My Alans concept represents Western Alans, Eastern Alans, the Kingdom of Alania, and the Sarmatians, as well as other Scythian spin-off groups. They originally represented mainly Alania, but since the kingdom was very small (and having an amalgamation was more interesting), I slightly redesigned the civ.
Yes, I have a concept for the Kazars, but due to the censorship of the civ name itself, I’m not going to post it here.
Well it’s ideal. I just don’t think we have a chance of getting two new Turkic civs. Not counting the Huns, we already have 3 Turkic civs. One more is probably the limit. And then if there is only one slot, I’d leave it to Gokturks fot their applicability and filling the big void in Asia and in the early Middle Ages.
That question of mine was precisely, can’t such synergy be achieved without 4?
I mean, It is not wrong to think that more civs are better, but a more realistic option would be to just bring in Georgians and Armenians to achieve that. I guess you also have noticed it, so you said “Just the Armenians and Georgians are fine” too. Having the Huns or potential Vandals play the Alans, and the Cumans or potential Gokturks play the Kazars, and the devs don’t need to develop two more civs.
I don’t want you to think I’m spoiling your mood. It’s just a very reasonable decision. Even though the 48 slot limit seems to have proven to be a rumor, it’s still clearly the devs’ attitude to avoid too many civs and carefully limit the growth of the number of civs by using smaller umbrellas.
Not to say that Santa exists but I’m pretty sure Devs took a glance at my and Robbylava Roman concept while making the Romans. Otherwise it’s a big coincidence and very in time with me and my requests I must say. Also they may be short of ideas right now.
I suspect this mainly for the bonus where infantry benefits double from armour blacksmith techs while legionary as an upgrade to longswords and a new pre gunpowder siege ship could be pure coincidence. Robby had an idea for an aura effect for his vexillarius UU which could have inspired the centurion gimmick while the scorpion bonus was more common sense probably.
Yes, I suspect that too. The devs are clearly paying attention to ideas that stand out – which means my concepts, which I always try to make realistic and polished, have a chance. The fact that I’ve already had to change multiple concepts multiple times because the ideas overlapped with ideas later put into the game shows that I have what it takes to design a civ that the devs will notice.
IMO the actual impact of this forum on devs’ decisions is very low. YT videos are a little more plausibly impactful, but I’d still be surprised if the devs outsource their brainstorming to players more than once in a blue moon.
It’s possible, but the likelihood of this just being coincidence (and confirmation bias) is also very high. The nature of bonuses in AoE2 is just not that complicated, and 85% of them just follow an easy pattern of applying existing principles to different subjects, with the last 15% mostly being borrowed concepts from other games. IMO most “civ crafters” overestimate their own creativity and uniqueness, speaking as someone who has made a few designs myself.
Hell, I’ve made only like 6 civ concepts, but I had already proposed almost every bonus in the current Roman civ spread across a few of my civs (scorps with ballistics and lower minimum range, villagers working 5% faster, more effective armor techs, catapult ship that filled the role of cannon galleons, Imp tech that granted units a charge attack). Almost the only thing I missed was an aura boosting unit, because I don’t like that gimmick for AoE2, yet I predicted in March that the devs would give this ability to Centurions. So if I wanted to pat myself on the back, I would say “the devs used my ideas!,” but in reality, I’d be surprised if they even read any of my threads, much less that anything from them actually got discussed in their meetings. Designing an AoE2 civ - even a good one, isn’t exactly rocket science, and on the level of individual bonuses, many of them (e.g. 2x2 farms) have been invented independently at least dozens, and probably hundreds of times. When a civ like “Romans” was going to be predictably themed around scorpions and infantry, I think the odds are high that any random hypothetical fan design would share a few points of coincidence or heavy similarity to the current Romans civ. But I understand the appeal, conscious or not, of believing that one had a hand in the current outcome.
I can assure you I’m not “proud” of it and I’m not a civ theorycrafter anyway, just made Romans, vandals and a bunch of others, I’m really not good at it.
But there are very creative civ crafters out there and Robby is one but that’s just my opinion.
You seemed somewhat triggered by people boosting themselves because of it which it’s fine but it doesn’t pertain me. If you guessed at what was coming congrats but it wasn’t meant to be a challenge lol.
The specific thing I wanted to say is just that double armour for infantry techs and centurion aura seem pretty specific to me but maybe it’s a coincidence idk. The rest of our ideas may easily be a coincidence I agree with you. But in general I don’t think it’s actually that hard at all that Devs look at what people requested or created. That doesn’t mean they take it as it is, it’s just inspiration like musicians listening to other musicians, it’s just normal.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find the idea of a civilisation called the Alans pretty funny, on a par with having civs called the Geoffreys and the Brians. Of course, we already have the Franks and almost had the Normans – but Franks get away with it by being much more well-known. Is there a possible name that sounds less silly, e.g. Sarmatians or Ossetians? (I realise that these are not actually synonyms.)
Well, now I’m imagining a civ called Vandals with a unique unit called Alan… and that’s even funnier.
Totally agree with this. I think the quality of new civ designs has always been quite variable – but particularly with the DE ones, there have been a fair few where the idea doesn’t seem to have worked out as intended, and they’ve ended up feeling (to me, at least) quite awkward and unpolished. I think Sicilians are the worst offenders, but add to that Bohemians, Dravidians, Bengalis, Cumans, and arguably Bulgarians. I’d rather have an expansion with two well-designed civs (e.g. Georgians and Armenians, with presumably the third campaign being for Persians) than four awkwardly designed or filler civs.
Maybe it could be named Alani Horse Archer (or Alani Horseman or Alani any other else) and then it might sound better. That seems how they got named in Total War: Attila.
I indeed think having Huns or Vandals to cover Alans is a better choice than a specific Alan civ. In my opinion, They are famous as the allies of Huns and Vandals, and they no longer had a significant influence after the fall of the Huns and Vandals, although they still existed for a few centuries.
They are represented in the campaign by the Huns.
Frankly, I think that is not bad. Given the short time the Huns were active, there isn’t much potential content covered by the Huns civilization, so it is helpful to have the Avars under their umbrella who were also active in Europe (mainly Pannonia) during the early medieval period. In Chronicle of Fredegar, the Avars were also directly referred to as the Huns.
I think the most realistic thing would definitely be this. Not that I’m against Kazars and Alans but it feels like the devs would go for the popular choice if they’ll ever consider making that type of DLC, I’ll be content enough for it
Remember Sandy Petersen’s reaction to Cumans? When he was like “Kazars? Ah the Jewish horse archers with the Rabbi UU” 11
edit: Thanks forums for censoring that civ’s name for the millionth time…
If I had to bet on it, a Caucasian DLC would probably look like this
Slight Persian rework, but nothing groundbreaking. Even replacement of Knight Line with Savaran would surprise me to be honest.
Persians get Central Asian architecture, bumping the set up to 3 civs.
Introduction of Armenians and Georgians, which both use the Middle Eastern set with both a unique castle model, leading to a total of 5 civs using the Middle Eastern set.
Campaign based on Tamar the Great for Georgians and Ashot III. Campaign for Persians.
Introduction of a unique monastery model for both to replace the mosque of the Middle Eastern set would result probably in Czech and Polish players wanting their own, resulting in at least 15 different threads how the Bohemian/Polish monastery needs to get the same treatment 11 A random Byzaboo would want the same for the Byzantines of course.
I’ve given up on getting a new architecture set but I’d be positively surprised by the introduction of a new one. Would elevate any new DLC by a lot in my eyes.
Not bad but could be better. Huns history is brief but cumans’ one is not that longer either. Avars stayed a little longer before Magyars.
About Avars being called Huns, well everybody east of Crimea was Huns for byzantines and Scythians for Romans lol. So that’s not much of an argument.
Yikes this is almost on pair with Romans represented by byzantines with middle eastern architecture during the Battle of the catalaunian fields in Gaul lol.
No. Just no. If the devs do this, I’m not buying it or any other DLCs. The Middle Eastern architecture does not fit either of them. We would need a new architecture set for the DLC.
If they make a mistake that big, I’m never going to buy the DLC, and will simply stick to the mod I want to work on. Which means they’ll never see a cent from me again. Yes, I’ll take it that personally.
Why does this area deserve more love and care than say
America? we can finally reach a dozen different civs that have access to (but dont specialize in)Eagles and thats still staying in or south of Texas
