“Was” Now it is not. Unless Cysion himself replies me.
The game was always about people, and trying to change that direction is disrespecting the original creators, betraying its origin and promise, losing credibility, and alienating its player base.
Age of Empires 2 isn’t just a game you play to win. It’s a timeless classic, an art with a soul, full of emotion, harmony, fascinating aesthetics, ambiance, and gameplay. It masterfully blending historicity with endless replayability.
I watched a lead developer’s podcast about the 3K DLC and was disappointed to realize that his only concern was balancing the new civs. But just because something is balanced doesn’t mean it’s automatically okay to add.
So no, I don’t want to see the Safavids fighting the Persians, or the Turks fighting the Seljuks, or any other similar nonsense in the game.
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Saying that adding Seljuks, Safavids, or splitting Persia is “nonsense” makes no sense at all, AoE2 already includes multiple civs from the same cultural roots, like for Slavs : Poles, Bohemians, and Bulgarians, or
for Hindustanis : Dravidians, and Bengalis, precisely because each had their own distinct identity and historical impact.
But I guess knowing the civ roster and basic historical context isn’t for everyone. On what basis can someone say one split is “valid” while another isn’t?
If having Slavs in the game doesn’t stop other Slavic civs from existing, and if India was split into three completely different cultures, then why should Persia be an exception?
Because the old Indian civ was as much making sense as like lumping Berbers, Ethiopians and Malians and calling it Africans. Dravidians and Bengalis are not same people, just because they lived in the same empire doesn’t make them same either.
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Tbh, ME civs should be more dynasty theme centric instead of ethnic civilization compared to other civs. Because thats literally how ME civs operated in Middle Ages. You literally had Kurdish guy, having army of Turks/Syrians, ruling over Egypt. This sort of dynamic even existed long before Islamic era. Sassanids did relied on neighboring Mercs like from Afghans, Arabs, etc. to fight their war efforts. Regionally ME countries stayed same border and sharing same culture until 1920s. History books still refers Caliphates/Sultanates to refer a region specific ruler ruled in instead of certain ethnic group of people when it comes to Islamic Empires.
With that, you can technically cover all the Persian time period,
we got Archaemanids with Chronicles
then Sassanids
then Seljuks
then Safavids.
Perhaps making the civ which covers all the period…
I think the game won’t be enriched any further by adding new civs.
New civs added should at least be empires and not tiny kingdoms. It is age of “empires” after all.
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all of them were very strong Empire entity unlike 3K
All the people who built their empires and significantly impacted history between 395 and 1580 have already been added.
That’s false. There are many others.
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Most just aren’t Persia adjacent
I repeat for the cries from Africa and America
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OMG noooo, this is the worst idea ever.
Also Seljuks are Turks not Persian so it doesn’t really work as a Persian empire.
Create an Afghan civ if you want an alternative to Persian
Firstly I want to thank you for your effort but I really don’t like ideas here.
Sassanids are represented by Persians well.
Seljuks are represented by Turks very well and nöker isn’t a Seljuk thing. They’re releated with Mongols and later it is used as a title in Ottoman Empire till XVII. century.
Safavids are debetable. However I think they fit Early Modern Ages more than Middle Ages and Early Modern Age civilizations fit AoE3 more than AoE2.
If we want to manage Persians why don’t we add civilizations that aren’t represent in the game in Iran history? For example;
Daylamites: These guys are Spartans of Persia. They are skilled warriors and join Sasani and Muslim armies as mercenaries. They founded Buyid Dynasty and controlled Middle East. After they were defeated by Seljuks, Daylamites continued to have key roles in Seljuk army.
Afgans: These people have a rich history from Bactria to Modern Ages. Afgans founded Saffarid Dynasty and Gurid Empire and they have important role in Iranian and Indian history.
Seljuks even had Arabs/Kurds/Iranians and even had Afghans in their armies but leaders being Turks. Again its very dependent on time periods. Depending on time period and context. Iran itself is diverse on its own by ethnic grps. All those above groups are still there though becoming more minor ones. You cant really explain Seljuks ruling over big portion of ME somehow limited to one ethnic grp mainly.
That’s why I say ME civs should be more Empire entity instead of flat out ethnicity. Its just not easy to do otherwise. History books still refers to these entity instead of some ethnic grp as said. Today Turks claim Seljuk as their own because Seljuks after all in a way predecessor of Ottomans.
Ottoman empire was referred as Turkish Empire in renaissance for a good reasons.
Only the Turks, Persians, and Arabs created impactful empires in AoE2’s timeline in the Middle East, and that’s why they are in the game while the others are not. If the game was meant to represent all ethnic groups, then we’d have hundreds of civs and the game would be ruined beyond playable.
You really run into some issues. Like current Saracens being odd. Arabs/Iranians were also good in Swordsmanship and no bonus in the game reflects any of it. Egyptian Mamluks should’ve been Knight/Cav Archer switch unit instead of throwing Swords. Fire Ship should’ve been a regional units shared by hypothetically Fatimids/Byzantines. Then you have Umayyads in Spain who had military order more similar to European counterpart compared to Arabs/North Africans.
All these issues are difficult to address. That is to design civs. People throws around suggestions like Syrians/Egyptian and even Kurds just based on Saladin. While Saladin never ruled as “Kurdic Empire” in a sense.
Cysion already talked about possible “Saracens” split. I think turning ME civs into more strong Empire centric instead of ethnicity would be right way to address it. Or suffer odd civs like Syrians/Kurds/Egyptian. Every other strategy games out there to reference ME civs uses Caliphates or Strong Sultanates for a reason.
Possible way to solve ME civ split would be:
- Current Turks being renamed to Ottomans
- A new Turk civ being Seljuks
- Fatimids which can also represent Ayyubids. Turning current Saracens into Fatimids
- Abbasids/Mamluks
- Umayyads of Spain
This way you can design these empires with more gameplay variety.
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Knight and Cav Archer variants are already a dime a dozen, but Mamelukes being the only melee cav with a ranged attack is what makes them unique.
A guy throwing a scimitar while riding a Bactrian camel is so iconic, interesting, and fun to play. I don’t care how historically inaccurate it is I don’t want to see it lost in exchange for just another heavy cavalry or cav archer.
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Completely irrelevant. All medieval armies hade multi-ethnic units in their armies.
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Even though I play this game primarily for its historical aspects (history is almost a hobby of mine), I also believe the developers shouldn’t continue to dilute the base game with new, supposed civilizations.
Especially in the Middle East, there are hardly any additional civilizations; they were all empires/sultanates/caliphates that mixed/combined a few civilizations.
The pure civilizations are actually already well represented in the base game.
However, since there are two large groups of players: fans of the pure base game and those who want more historical accuracy/diversity on many levels, the developers could even relatively easily accommodate the second group as well.
The genius of the game also includes the relatively easy-to-use editor. After one or two hours of practice, anyone can adapt many things to their needs and create an excellent gaming experience for themselves.
That’s why finding a middle ground would be relatively easy. The developers should either assign one themselves or simply collaborate with players from the community to create or edit editor objects.
There are still many hero units that could be given a unique spirit. Taking the Saracen as an example: The hero Saladin is a common Mameluke. These may be cool for the game, but they are historically completely inaccurate.
Why not simply depict the hero figure as a rider with a Middle Eastern sword and regional armor? As a gimmick, you could actually give the unit a switchable mode of melee and ranged combat.
This would make the hero unit appear even more unique in existing campaigns, and players and modders could, in turn, further process/edit this model for themselves to “create” a more historically accurate Mameluke.
And I think there are already many possibilities to do something similar among the current hero units.
Regardless, there’s still a seemingly infinite number of conceivable units that I could add to the editor as pure scenario/campaign units, even with the help of community members, which anyone who wants a more historically accurate and diverse experience can then use.
This way, the base game and the ranked games would remain largely unchanged, but through my own work or mods, it would be possible to create Radom games with more historically accurate units and elements.
The fact that this is relatively easy to do in Aoe2 puts the game ahead of almost all other games and should be utilized much more extensively by the developers. Because it requires very little effort, and there are certainly many within the community who would even like to contribute to it themselves.
Finally, I’d like to mention why I would really stick to pure scenario/campaign/editor units.
There’s one outstanding negative example on the games market. It’s World of Tanks. I played the game for years. At some point, however, the developers decided to monetize it to the maximum. They ruined their own basic idea with a never-ending flood of new tanks that eventually became impossible to balance. The balance in this game is irretrievably broken, and it’s essentially become a pay-to-win game.
Balance is the be-all and end-all of any competitive game. And if you were to add more and more units to the base game, increasing diversity, you would eventually ruin the balance and readability in AoE2. Less is actually always more in games like these. At least when it comes to the competitive aspect.
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