When you think of Boyar most people probably think of Russia. But Russia wasn’t the only Eastern European nation with Boyars. Lithuanians, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia had Boyars as well.
Replacing the Knight-line with a Boyar-line for 3 civs (or 5 if Romanians & Serbs are added) would give more diversity to the roaster, much like the Indians are the “Camel civs” the Eastern Europeans could be the “Boyar civs”, not to mention it would give a more eastern european feel to the civs having an unique unit from eastern europe.
As it stands right now, the Boyars are an interesting alternative to Knights/Paladins to the Slavs. They are slightly slower in speed, attack slightly slower, cost +5 gold but have +2 melee armor.
Generally, the Boyars are better in melee (even beating Teutons) but slightly worse against archers (attack a bit slower, otherwise the stats are the same) and worse against anti-armor units like Hand Cannoneers and Leitis.
However, the Elite Boyar is slightly worse than a Paladin. Save maybe for a Lithuanian Boyar with relics.
It’s a unique idea that certainly has potential, but the Boyars would have to see some nerfs if they moved to the stable I think. en masse they can roll over almost anything in their current state.
It would probably also just be a paladin replacement, so those civs would go Knight->Cavalier->Boyar
Also…i’m not sure Lithuanians should get them, from a gameplay perspective they already have Leitis which are insane, they don’t need another really good cav unit.
Please make more Slav rework or DLC threads. 10 in a month isn’t nearly enough and we need the same 2 or 3 people to keep spamming them to convince the devs that this is the hot topic everybody is talking about right now. We also need to remake any threads from two weeks ago that nobody responded to because they were burnt out or lost in the shuffle of all the other Slav threads.
Look at all the topics I personally made about the slavs in the last month with the same 2-300 people to keep spamming them to convince the devs that this is the hot topic.
Ah yes your posts do so well such as your poll about Boyars.
Why do you have to be an ass just because spmeone is pointing that theres way too many similar posts about these topics? Just because I dont have the nationalistic urge to constantly make posts about the civs that would represent me it means that theres no interest for Central Asia or South America?
Why do I have to be an ass when someone is being an ass towards me? good question.
Why don’t you ask him “why do you have to be an ass?” ?
For the Boyar one, I forgot I made it, but for the rest of what he said, please look above to see if we have the same 2 or 3 people spamming about slavs or it’s just something he made up.
Just because I would rather have an European DLC I’m not enough of an ass to go on topics about other DLCs and lie that “oh, only you talk about this, it’s not popular”, when he himself pointed out that the forum was flooded with slavic rework requests at some point. Right after the Georgia & Armenia release if I remember well was “do slavic next” everywhere.
I don’t, at least for a while. That’s something I’ve been very explicit about though, so you don’t have to imply that it’s a hidden agenda. To be fair I understated the number of people starting these discussions, so call that a lie if you wish. However the larger point remains that an influx of largely redundant and overlapping threads within a short time has the net appearance of spam.
I have an interest in this forum being legible as possible, although that’s obviously not shared by everyone. I made the same type of comment when there were literally 100+ different threads discussing Return of Rome. I called that spam as well even though they weren’t all made by the same person, because the result was tons of unnecessary threads and repeat discussions because people had to make their own thread to have a discussion that was 1% different from the other threads.
You’ve personally made 6-7 threads in about the last month and a half about Slavs and/or Romanians.
Maybe it’s unfair of me to call that spam, but it’s definitely a lot, especially when there seems to be a preference for making new threads rather than participating in existing discussions on the same topic. I’ve not been the only one to comment on this either.
Perhaps it was unwise of me to bring this up as it’s only likely to breed negativity, but that sadly seems to be the familiar rut that a lot of these threads fall into regardless, especially for civs in these regions. But it’s easier to be positive when it doesn’t look like people are trying to force engagement by creating threads far out of proportion to the actual interest level in these topics (as shown by some recent polls).
As someone who very much wants to see a Slavs(Rus) rework/Serbs/Romanians DLC done for sure, but also wants some focus on E. Asia and Africa first, can we say that both are ok, and we don’t have to go after people just because they’re passionate about one or the other? It’s not like Player is only here to spam Slavs stuff, i’m pretty sure i’ve seen him interacting with other threads too. He just strikes me as someone whose passionate about it, not some fishy bad actor.
And before I get called a Russian/Slavic nationalist between the comment and the profile pic that looks like the Slavs logo, i’m an American guy with some Ukrainian heritage.
No doubt, that’s a reasonable comment, and I agree there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about this stuff or making a thread or two about a DLC that isn’t necessarily the most popular choice at any given moment. I think very few people have a problem with a Slav DLC/rework thread, but once you get to the 10th or 15th such thread - or the 10th or 15th of any highly similar thread - within a short timeframe, it can get annoying. I wish the forum collectively was better at sticking to a limited number of threads on any given topic at a time. Probably too much to ask though.
I was likewise explicit about wanting Romanians in Age of Empires 2. Or Vlachs, or Wallachians, in any form. I find it unfair that all of Europe was explored except for the Balkans. French & Italians even got 2 civs. And as pointed out here, the Vlachs could have easily been the Burgundians.
It fitted their style perfectly, with being very powerful in Castle Age but weaker in Imperial, much like Vlad the Impaler, Mircea the Elder, Stephen the Great and Michael the Brave won the first half against the Ottomans but lost in the finals. While the Flemish Militia is basically Stephen the Great’s Small Host, basically every peasant was obligated by law to learn how to use a sword & carry with him a sword all the time, even in the field, else he would be put to death. Being a small kingdom surrounded by big empires tends to have that effect. And there were suggestions for Vlachs before Lords of the West (I looked it up).
Anyway, enough what was done, I do not considered them redundant because I always talked about different things. Yes, the common theme is the same, I want Romanians in AoE2, but I didn’t just make a new topic “hey, Romanians when?” every 15 days or so.
Taking a look at your list. Yes, the Boyar regional unit was already posted, you are correct here, I forgot about it, I played AoE2 and thought “hey, these could make a great regional unit” forgetting that I made the same suggestion 2 weeks ago. But for the rest of it:
Galactic Battlegrounds & player counts is unrelated. The Vlach Civ Concept was mainly focused on the history of Romania without any specific tech tree mentioned, it was an informational topic. The 2nd topic Bassarab & Stehpen the Great were actual scenario campaign suggestions. Map of Mountain Royals was just mentioning that they forgot to add the Vlachs to the list of missing civs. “Why no Romanians” I was sad at that time because there were a lot of talks on the forums that the Vlachs could go well with Georgians and Armenians, turns out, they didn’t add them and went back to 2 civs/DLC. Which mountains? the Carpathians. While Battles of the Black Sea is civ tech tree concepts.
So even if all of the 6 topics you mentioned have a common theme as the Romanians, they are all different topics and not copy-paste from each other.
As pointed out previously, all 6 topics are very different, is it still fair to call them spams?
It’s funny because when a western European nation is called for in the game it’s never about nationalism. But as soon as someone mentions an eastern European nation being added it must be nationalism.
Why? because eastern Europe is unimportant and the only reason you would ever want an eastern European nation in the game must be nationalism.
I remember once I pointed out that the Wallachians gained their independence from the Hungarians and not from the Mongols, and was called an ethno-nationalist for it. Which?! I have Hungarian friends from Transylvania and have been to Hungary myself, never had an issue with the Hungarians as a people but history is history. Like, how can I tell the truth without being ethno-nationalist? Because the Wallachians did gain their independence from the Hungarians.
But if someone was to say that France fought vs Sweden in the 30 years war most people would call him an idiot for not knowing that France & Sweden were allies, like you are supposed that (as opposed to not supposed to know Wallchians got their independence from Hungarians, not important), rather than calling the Frenchman nationalist for pointing out that France and Sweden were in fact allies.
I don’t want to call “discrimination!”, “woe me!”, but I’m definetly noticing a double-standard, and I’m not the only eastern European to do so.
And I get that eastern Europe is not as important as western Europe. What I don’t get is that as soon as someone makes a claim about eastern Europe, including Nerathion when talking in that topic, the other guy must be an ethno-nationalist because why else would he know/talk/support/mention the history of eastern Europe.
As a matter of fact, Sveaborgare, the guy Nerathion replies to calling him a Russian nationalism, has a very dangerious job, he’s a pro-west Russian. And no, it’s not BS. There are shades of grey in everything, we talked about the history of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and yes, Ukrainians and Russians are in fact different people. So he called an anti-Putin pro-Ukraine Russian, Russian nationalist. Point is, don’t take things black & white, they rarely are.
I agree that would have been better, but what’s done is done. Vlachs still a possibility though.
Perhaps not, as I’ve said, but it certainly could have been half as many threads with the same amount of meaningful content and discussion - for example, consolidating the Vlach Campaign idea with the civ concept, the Boyar poll with this thread, and honestly maybe just not making the Oct 16th thread since the DLC was obviously Caucasus themed. Or just commenting in your black sea DLC that you wish TMR was regionally broader and had included Vlachs. Either way, I didn’t and don’t mean to make this about you so much as about the collective and IMO unnecessary profusion of highly related threads recently. This was just a convenient example because of how similar it was to the thread I recall from 2 weeks ago. Not the worst thing in the world, but it made itself noticed. But I’ll say no more about it for the foreseeable future since it seems to be a needless point of conflict.
Eh, I should have clipped the first sentence of that quote. My mistake. But I’m not going to address the “nationalism” discussion because it’s mostly not what I’ve been talking about in my posts, and I really don’t think it helps your cause either. This stuff is just close-bait for the mods.
You are correct in pointing out that you’re not the only one pointing out that I mostly talk about the Romanians, but usually, those who point this out don’t point out that I often talk about different things in each topic. I could be wrong, but it makes me assume they didn’t read the topic, and just saw “Romanians” and were like “hey, another post about Romanians!” without reading the post itself.
For example, the Bassarab & Stehpen the Great posts had every mission with intro & outro described. As well as the general history around it. There is no way that that post and this post are “the same”.
I never looked for conflict with anyone, and I see in your attitude that you are willing to discuss. Yes, your original sarcasm made me go sarcastic too, but seeing that you dropped that, I’m not going to make this discussion a “wit battle”.
While I made my share of eastern European posts, I cannot be held responsable for all eastern European posts. If there is an influx of eastern European posts why cannot it be taken as “some people on the forum want eastern European civs & reworks” rather than spamming?
Fair point, you don’t want to go there, I respect that.
Accusations of ethno-nationalism aside, don’t lots of posts about Balkan & Slavic DLCs really mean “oh the people REALLY seem to want a Balkan or Slavic DLC!” ? exactly what Nerathion hoped “the devs don’t actually look at whatever’s posted on the forums” ?
Would 10 Asian civs topics be regarded as the devs don’t actually look at whatever’s posted on the forums as “oh the people REALLY seem to want an Asian DLC!” or would the people in that case be more reasonsable?
As Nerathion said: “five accounts have spammed threads about Slavs in last week”. I already have 4 other examples and with me that would be 5 so let’s take Nerathion’s word for it. There is one thing he didn’t take into account though. Those topics became popular.
Unlike this topic I made, twice apparently. Replacing Knights with Boyars is a very specific request and I can 100% understand why some people would not want it, balance issue, some of their favourite civs would feel very different, and the list can go on. But those 5 topics. They had a lot of talks, so obviously it wasn’t just those 5 people who made the topics interested in a Balkan + Slavic rework DLC.
I wonder if there was the same hype about an Asian or African DLC, would anyone say “it’s just 5 people spamming the forums” in some topics that already prove to be popular? Oh the spam is basically a way of saying “get down, you’re not as important as western Europe”.
As a Westerner that is quite interested in E. European history, it’s super annoying actually. Even with things like WWII and WWI on the Eastern Fronts most of what I know about it I had to teach myself, because the American education system only cares about what America participated in.
While we are at it another shared unit for serbians and romanians.This guy could be similar to the aom dwarf.better villager at mining and fighting with unique mechanics like buffing nearby miners.
I would not overthink how people use the word nationalism anymore, as it has increasingly been confused with ultranationalism. They are distinct concepts with very different ends, the latter being terrifying. The loss of this distinction is problematic for good faith intellectual discourse.
Honestly this is the case with a lot of words; terrible ideologies have become buzzwords to throw at people you disagree with to discredit them, and in doing so you kinda minimize what word actually means and how bad the thought behind it is. It’s not only bad for discourse, but it marginalizes what the word means and distances people from how bad the thought behind the word actually is. It’s really socially dangerous overall…not to get too serious here…
Much of good philosophy has to do with the importance of words, their use and their meanings. Are words symbols or signs? Do they have more definite meanings that are beyond our current comprehension? so on and so forth. Field conventions, and even their internal schools, can lead to great confusion. Category errors often mislead, and this misdirection can shape popular understanding.
