Yeah, I agree with everything… at some point they’re going to have to rework the first variant civs, because no one’s going to play them when we get better variants or main civs in the future…
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Yes I think the biggest problem with the problematic ones is the lack of identity. And since they advertise those variants as “more focused” or “different aspect”, then the lack of thematic coherence also contributes to the lack of identity.
Basic civs are usually sprawled across regions and geography. That’s understandable. So the variants need to be really distinguishable to feel like a real variant not a cheap reskin resold.
For example, most of Lancaster’s UUs are late medieval to early Renaissance. The yeoman has a typical late medieval cap. All these contribute to a faction in a different, more focused timeline than the English
But then:
- ZXL: sprawled just like the Chinese civ with little relation to its namesake.
- OOTD: just HRE gilded and scaled up. Not a single visual or design cue that points to its namesake. Bonuses are extremely generic and random (give the landsknecht a pike——basically every European nation would do so, and OOTD as a small elite symbolic order were ironically less likely)
- JDA: basically French + one hero. It just felt like one UU sold as a separate faction
All these feel like “scrapped civ designs or campaign mechanics quickly stitched together with the name as an afterthought”
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Yes, the Lancasters are literally England in the 15th century, which is why they feel more like the late Middle Ages and Renaissance… the basic English are the English between the Norman Conquest and the Lancaster dynasty itself…
Yeah, exactly…they’re the only variant civs that feel weird or out of place…
Good Things About the First Variants
Since I’ve already talked about the problems, it’s time to highlight the good things of the fist variants.
Order of the Dragon
- The Gigachad, or Gilded units, which serve as a Protoss version in AoEIV
- Easy civ to master (Difficulty: 1/3)
- More focused on Micro than Macro than its parent civ.
Joan of Arc
- Dota Hero, with XP mechanic and 4 abilities.
- Has JoanDArc!!! and has a healing ability at level 2.
Ayyubid
- 7 unique units different from the previous ones.
- 8 choices for leveling up between ages.
- Dessert Rider is the first Hybrid unit: Melee and Ranged
- Ayyubid Casino is a meme.
Zhu Xi Legacy
- 6 new landmarks, 13 new unique technologies.
- Shaolin Monks!!!
- Zhuge Nu and Crossbow civ.
- 100,000 Bolts rules!
As I see it, the first variants had some very good ideas to implement and add to the game. If they were to undergo a remake or modification, I think these would be aspects they should keep.
Discussion
As I see it, the first variants had some very good ideas to implement and add to the game.
I think it’s mainly the lack of historical accuracy in certain aspects and the desire to make them look too similar to their parent civs that greatly affected their appreciation.
In fact, the limitations that these variants suffer from having a tech tree so similar to that of their parent civs are currently being noticed in the competitive balance aspect:
- ZhuXi’s Hornet’s Nest cannot be modified without affecting the Chinese Bee’s Nest, because they use the same unit.
- The same applies to JoanDArc’s and French Royal Knight or the Landsknechts and Gilded Landsknechts.
However, this problem does not occur for the new variants, the Lancaster and Knight Templars, because they have different unique units. This was reflected in the fact that Lancaster could be balanced in one day without much issue, something that wasn’t the case when the first variants came out.
To conclude, the best things for new variants, or if the rumored Juana remake is made, would be primarily:
-
Historical Representation.- Mainly so they can be used in future “Historical Battles” and Campaign scenarios. Also to keep fans of the historical representation happy.
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UU and UT Differences with its parent civ. Ensure that it doesn’t share too many Unique units and Unique technologies with its parent civ, as it’s difficult to balance it without involving its parent civ.
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Architecture that’s at least slightly different.- Two or three different Landmarks, some new buildings, or at least different colored roofs. In fact, it was once suggested on Reddit that Zhu Xi could have buildings with cyan-colored roofs to stand out.
Yes, at least we know that the next variants are going to be better designed, more fun and historically accurate… we just have to remind them that we don’t want variants like Joan and Zhu Xi and more like the Ayyubids and Knights Templar…
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Regarding:
OotD
Historically, the Order of the Dragon which was part of the Holy Roman Empire was based in Hungary and Austria. But, in game you cannot see much related to these countries. Thus, a lot of buildings do not properly fit. There are no specific units and abilities. E.g. the Aachen chapel doesn’t really fit.
Zhu Xi
I would prefer that Zhu Xi would have more specific and distinguished units. Though, overall I actually prefer the units of Zhu Xi compared with China. But, it still feels to similar.
House of Lancaster
The devs probably wanted to add an easy to entry civ. Though, the manor building is just boring. Why not make manors a more “strategic” element which grants several economic bonues to its sorroundings or vice versa the sorroundings determine the economic bonuses. With each additional manor build the bonuses increase for all manors. A mechanic similar to the Zhu Xi meditation garden would be more interesting. Similar tu RUS hunting cabins overlapping areas of economic bonus creation are only usable once. Thus, instead of just putting one manor next to each other you would have to think about when to place a manor where.
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OOD is the worst variant civ and needs a massive rework.
This super soldiers faction by its design and skin is totally adapted for a warcraft play style, but not an AOE game.
Common devs, i know you can do better than a civ based on slow tanks with 75mm guns…
Yes, eventually they would have to include Hungary as a main civ or HRE variant…
Yeah, I think they’ll eventually rework them for TSA’s 2th anniversary, otherwise I doubt people will want to use them when there are much better variants…
This is perfectly put, I think a lot of of people don’t grasp the difference between consistency in tone and where unnatural deviation from that tone begins. If something breaks the conventions of the game in an obvious way AND isn’t popular that’s where you have an issue. If the tone of variants was consistent across every single one there wouldn’t be an issue. Like for example, if EVERY variant had a hero character from history that led the army, Jeanne wouldn’t stand out. We would just know that there are two standard options of play: hero faction and non-hero. If EVERY variant functioned like Lancaster’s (which is historically based and consistent in gameplay with the other major civs) nobody would have an issue. Ultimately they have listened to feedback and the last two variant civs were exactly what everyone wanted, they’re beloved. If some tweaks were made that could be the case with EVERY variant’s tone, and then we’d be cooking.
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Because that’s a common strawman to use.
You want more consistency in the in-game design, lore and tone, and more thoughts and efforts put into those, they say you want hyper-realism in every part of the game.
The sadder part is, this is not even a major request. It’s so easy to achieve as long as you have a tiny little more additional consideration beyond “what sells?” and “what saves cost?”
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I think the core problem is there’s no way to align individual expectations of personal immersion, across an entire playerbase.
I like that factions are designed differently. I don’t think it breaks any convention, nor can I find where such conventions are documented.
Do I get why people think Jeanne is immersion-breaking? Absolutely. I can see where they’re coming from, 100%. I don’t share their opinion, but it is what it is. The devs released her with her design, and changing that design is entirely up to them and the data they have available to them (that we don’t) r.e. the theoretical players it would gain vs. the existing players it would annoy.
This is why the more sensible route is to simply focus more on immersion for newer variants, which as you rightly point out we’ve seen them do. Though I also like the occasional less historical design, simply because “good design” and “good history” are two parallel things for me. They’re not necessarily linked. Never have been. It’s great when they overlap, and it can be great when they don’t. Half of my childhood playing AoE II was MP games with friends where we messed around with the cheat car and endless Wololos.
Historical? Hardly. But fun!
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There is no documented convention that the game is strictly about history or middle ages, or even strictly RTS either.
Galactic Empire next?
True MOBA civ next?
Squad-based civ next?
First person unit control next?
The developers could indeed try any of those things.
I don’t think they will. Jeanne’s variant is still a RTS faction in a medieval RTS, and none of your suggestions are even that.
What factions (or civs) do you play in IV?
And the backlash they are going to face is far from just “different taste”.
They already added non-medieval non-civs into AOE2 and beat them into admitting they are. Anything could happen
We already have Jeanne with a hand cannon and giant gilded HRE. Anything could happen next if they want money
We’ve had monks shouting wololo and mind controlling units for decades. Anything could happen!
You ignored my question, so hey. You keep doing what you do.
And you ignored the whole point of discussion
I play every civ that qualifies as a civ. How does that relate to the topic? Because I’m disqualified to the party for not eating up whatever they feed us?
Very sure the discussion had been very focused on THEMATIC consistency not gameplay abstraction
It’s called a monk or priest. With the model that reflects what historical monks should look like. Even if the gameplay is mind control, it is not Yuri, not psycho control tower, not propaganda tank, not protoss archon. They didn’t give him a giant lasso to catch units. They made him chant instead of casting sigils.
But hey it’s just different taste. Just misalignment. Just too much expectation. Corporates always right and innocent and sweet. It’s other people’s fault.
And I think you will still be defending them if they do
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No, I was just interested in the stuff you liked and didn’t like. I don’t enforce silly things like “you must play the game to comment on it”. I post in the other game subforums occasionally, and I don’t play them anymore either. Though I have played them (III: DE a bit, II non-DE quite a lot).
What is thematic consistency? What makes wololo thematically consistent with any kind of historical record?
This is an immersion thing. Your immersion is different to mine. I see magical god powers as being very similar to what Jeanne does (in terms of gameplay effects). I see an experimental variant trying a “hero” unit as just that - an experiment. They’re not making twenty hero-based variants. They’re just giving players options. Niches.
Your opinion can (and probably will) be different, and that’s fine. But don’t try and pretend that wololo is a “gameplay abstraction”, but a larger-than-life inspirational leader design isn’t. What it is, doesn’t matter when it comes to you not liking. You don’t like it because it strays further from a classic RTS faction design than you would personally prefer. That’s it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you thinking that. But you don’t need to invent phrases to try and objectively justify it.
Jeanne’s design saw a lot of pushback. Your opinion doesn’t seem to be in that much of a minority. Maybe we’d have seen more similar designs, if reception had been more positive. We’ll never know.
Posters can do whatever they want so long as they follow the rules. Defend, criticise, complain, praise. I hope you agree 
I didn’t say they can’t. I just say you definitely will. Without judgement. Whether that is a plain fact or an accusation, I think you already have an idea.
You can abstract conversion and diplomacy as “unit conversion”.
I don’t see how you could abstract Jeanne d’Arc into someone on horseback firing a giant hand cannon. That’s a deliberate digression.
For example, in a game strictly about real history, giants are not thematically consistent.
They are not adding cobra car to the barracks in AOE2 even though there were already units that do similar jobs.
In a game with high fantasy, spaceships are not thematically consistent.
For example, though some races in the Warcraft lore are effectively “aliens”, they didn’t appear in the high fantasy world in futuristic spaceships.
Speaking of Warcraft, even though magic and steam engines were already fantastical, they didn’t add WW2 looking units just because it’s already fantastical
It would require tremendous design work to make it really work out if they chose to, unless the target audience are corporate simps.
You sell the game with a certain vibe. Customers buy that vibe. If you want to steer it to something else, do the work and take the risk. Don’t sit there and blame others’ expectations and rely on the community to headcanon them.
In fact they really should if they made that first step.
In AoE2 there had been discussions about giving heroes universally, at least for a special mode, as well as some mechanics that should be universal but turned unique like charging or dodging.
Civ 6 had zombie modes or hero modes where any civ can play. That is consistent. They didn’t simply add a King Arthur civ or a post-apocalyptic civ to the base game roster. That would be inconsistent
You’re kind of pretending they have brainstormed a whole list of new ideas they should add to the game, and took tremendous efforts into realizing it.
I think they simply chose the quickest and most brainless option that “sells” and does not require much design work. Those ideas like upgradable heroes or super units are not new at all.
Like how they decided to add 3K to AOE2. I could come up with that idea in 5 minutes for “what is popular in China regardless of the setting?” and reject it because it won’t fit. They just skipped the latter part.
Edit: and I’m not saying “all variants are like that”. But those in TSA felt more like that than the more recent ones, and Jeanne and OOTD even more.
I recall during a stream for Cross and Roses, a developer suggested a rework for Jeanne was something they were considering.
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