It is not a matter of taste, because Malta has some very cool things, but its implementation is very forced. I also once suggested that it would fit better as a minor faction, since it seems that it is only present for those who are nostalgic for the campaign.
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We all know that they will never remove a civilisation just because a few people donāt like it.
Even if it actually were 50% of the people here.
Having a civilisation the the game that you donāt like barely influences your gameplay experience.
But removing a civilisation is a lot more impact full for those people that like playing it, they will have a lot less fun with the game now.
Especially because people payed to be able to play them.
Giving them something else in return (like Sicilians or something) is not what they payed for.
You could offer everyone a refund but then you would have to give money away.
Why would any company do that.
The amount of people that hate Malta is pretty small.
Even when the DLC released there were only a hand full of people complaining about it.
And yes turning it into a Minor civilisation is the same as taking it away.
Being able to play a civilisation in every match is completely different to being able to ally to them on a hand full of maps that might not even be in the ranked map list.
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Thatās the crux of it there. It would be a Developer and Publish no-no to charge for a DLC highlighting two new civs, then down the line remove it. Letās not even entertain that.
Religion in the grand scheme of things was being ousted by the Enlightment and scientific thinking from the 17th century in Europe so having Holy Sites doesnāt sit quite right for me. Other than a few organisations (listed already, however reality is that they would have far smaller projection), thereās nothing else akin to devout holy warrior clans/groups widespread over Europe.
I think above is totally the way to implement more Minor Civs (Iād love to see the Tudors and Stuarts!).
If you want something that a little unique and could potentially incorporate religion (within context), might I suggest:
Encampments
Represented by tents/shelters, weaponary stacked and a flag of whatever movement (Rebellions/uprisings/religious factions) is being portrayed, the Encampments could be present in many Euro maps (and of course, further into the world) as an alternative to your āprim-and-properā Royal Houses.
Example encampments:
Jacobites (British island and Ireland maps) - Covering the Jacobite Uprisings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Units could include Highland Targeteers (claymores & targe shields) and Jacobite Infantrymen.
Alternatively (of additionally) thereās also the Scottish Covenanters, which were the oppposite but linked.
Bohemian - Covering mainly Hussites from renaissance to the Bohemian Revolt era
Hugenots - (France) - Covers the Hugenots (French Protestants) and their rebellions (1621-29) but could also cover the War of the Camisards, 1702-1710 (Camisards being the Hugenots from rugged, mountainous regions of France, who had a perchant for guerilla warfare).
Peasant - A more general Encampment, though could be specific to region. Covers the many peasant uprisings in the early modern ages. Units would be quanity over quality, usings farm tools such as scythes as weapons.
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The idea of the Royal Houses is that they can be used on several maps and will span a long period of timeā¦holy sites or encampments wouldnāt fit if they can only be used in specific placesā¦
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Obviously if you took it away and gave nothing in return there would be a riot. But they could swap them out with something like Morocco or Egypt as the playable civ and still keep the Mediterranean theme. Throw in a mini campaign with Malta as a campaign civ and there wouldnāt be too many complaints (maybe Napoleonās Egyptian campaign).
Youāre projecting modern biases back on history and falsely framing religion and science as mutually exclusive. Europe was incredibly religious at this time and still in the middle of the wars of religion. Only a fraction of a percent of the elite were deist or atheist at this time.
This is why I only suggested these two options. Just because a religion or royal house exists and you put it on a list doesnāt mean it would make a good settlement. Hussites are too early and geographically restricted, I have no idea what could possibly populate an āOrthodox Templeā, and the best option for a Protestant site is Pilgrims which make no sense in Europe.
There are already 9 of them, so Europe is already massively overrepresented. Out of that list, only Nassau and Medici are realistically widespread enough to even make sense adding.
This doesnāt really make sense. The peasants had homes and even in rebellion, they would have mostly occupied towns and fortifications.
I think the best option for diversifying European settlements would be modelling them on the Three Estates. So you could have sites as follows:
First Estate (Clergy)
- Papal Basilica
- Hospitaller Commandery
Second Estate (Nobility)
- Royal Palace
- Could have a few variable techs to represent the most prominent houses
- Princeās Estate
- Represents Prince Electors
- Units could be both Knights and Serfs
Third Estate (Merchants and Peasants)
- Hansa Kontor
- Represents the merchants of northern Europe
- Manufactory
- Represents both the cottage industry and emerging factories
- Could have an āIndustrial Revolutionā just like the Victorian Era
- Other?
- Peasants werenāt very organized so itās hard to come up with a generic institution for them
- Maybe a merchant quarter with more of a southern European theme?
Itās not like most of the royal house units have any strong connection to the royal houses they are trained by, and most of them could work better in their respective civs.
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There would still be a riot.
You canāt just give people something completely different compared to what they payed for. You might even brake some laws by doing so.
We all know that this will never happen.
Itās not like they are more likely to add Morocco by removing another civilisation.
The opposite even, if Morocco is part of a new DLC theyāll make more money and therefore can justify putting the work into making a new civilisation.
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I donāt wanna necro-post, but Iām just looking for some cool ideas. The first time I read these brilliant ideas, I realized we had already implemented at least half of them into Age of Pirates.
Butā¦ @M00Z1LLA I like the idea of the Prince Elector House as an alternative for the Royal Houses. Can you please tell me a bit more about it, what such a Princeās House should do, and how it will be different from the standard Royal House?
Necro away!
I think all Euros should* get Royal House wagons with a choice of relevant houses for each civ.
*Wonāt
Ah, I see, so no real native sites? Because we already have something like this for the King of Bohemia historical map. You can chose one of three existing royal houses and turn the āElectorāsā socket basically in their settlement. Plus it provides you with two more techs and one comon unit. I was thinking about making it working universally and defining a special Electorās site class using more medieval architecture and working as a place where you can select houses as politicians. Currently we have only Bohemia, but there can possibly be also Saxony, Bavaria and others - especially on the Central European maps.
I was just spitballing ideas so I hadnāt really fleshed out anything. My intention was more a replacement for royal houses so it would probably cannibalize some of their features.
I can think of a few features that might work for an Imperial Prince / Prince Elector site.
When the Catholics failed at killing all the Lutherans they came to a compromise where the secular rulers dictated the faith of their lands. It could maybe be a tech that gives healing units a watered down āUnctionā ability like I described in my post about reworking royal house abilities.
- Imperial Election instead of Trade Monopoly
Could function similarly just with different theming. The candidates for emperor also handed out a ton of bribes to electors so that could be another tech to tie in with it.
- Imperial Diet
Not sure what the function would be, but it was part of their powers. Regensburg was where it was in session for the longest so maybe this could be unique to a Bavarian elector.
Iām not a big fan of replacing / removing stuff from the game. I fully understand your desire to make the game cleaner, but from my experience mods which are removing stuff rom the game are mostly unrecognized. My idea was to have Electorās site as an empty site providing you just with some very basic stuff, but after that youād be able to select one of possible Royal Houses.
We 're already testing something like Bohemian Electorās site as a Historical map only asset:
The historical context is different, because you vote for a King, not an Emperror, but the way it works should stay very similar.
It gives you only two techs, one unit and one ability. The rest you get after chosing one of the Bohemian Royal Dynasties when you basically get all their units and techs (except the ability). On the King of Bohemia historical map, it also works as a victory socket and revolution socket (turns your civ into Bohemians). But I was thinking about removing these effects for the standard maps.
My idea was to define more types of Elector sites and I already created unique models for these (including five color variations (brown is already taken by Hussites):
The allied Royal houses for the four Electors are planned as following:
- Bohemian Elector (black KarlŔtejn castle): Habsburg, Jagiellon, Wittelsbach
- Saxony Elector (Blue): Wettin, Hannover, Oldenburg
- Bavaria Elector (light red): Wittelsbach, Bourbon, Jesuit (catholic league)
- Austrian Elector (dark red): Habsburg, Jagiellon, Venetian merchants
But, Iām struggling with several technical challenges:
1/ Electorās sites are using proxy units and techs from the original royal house, so itās problematic
- to have more same type of electors on one map, because even though the build limit of the base unit increases with more sockets being taken, the allied house build limit stays the same
- to have two types of electors using the same ally (like Austrian and Bohemian Habsburg), because then only one house can research the techs and the other canāt.
2/ Combining Electors with the standard royal houses - having standard Habsburg + Austrian elector for example on Unknown map can cause potential conflict and only one site will work properlyā¦
3/ Limited amount of maps where these can be used - even though Historical maps are a successful pivot, Age of Pirates still remains primarily a naval mod focused on improved naval gameplay. I was thinking about following maps where these could appear:
- King of Bohemia (modified Bohemian elector, historical map, already implemented on Beta)
- Elbe (Bohemia, Saxony, standard map)
- Bohemian Ponds (Bohemia, standard map)
- Danube (Bavaria, Austria, standard map)
ā¦ and thatās all and even this plan is very optimistic, because Holy Roman Empire would be a topic for a separate update or maybe even a mod.
I also like your idea with the victory conditionstrade monopoly alternative. Such thing would be perfect for historical maps. It already works on the King of Bohemia map, but works only for a single socket. making it work for more sockets would be cool, but again, is it something what would work only on one map or something what could be applied universally?
There are still many questionsmarks around the Electorās sites and Iām afraid, the topic is very complex, so I donāt really know if I have a capacity to make it work properly to donāt damage the actual user experience from the gameās own royal houses and our historical maps.
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That idea was more of a hypothetical āif royal houses didnāt exist, what would European natives be?ā I donāt think itās realistic to replace them at this point.
Youāre probably better off going simpler and just using those castle groupings for the existing royal houses. They look phenomenal so it would be a shame not using them because of too complex ambitions.
Have you considered a Hansa Kontor as an option to ally with? That would be a lot more in keeping with the AoP theme. For a military unit you could go with some kind of city militia (they even raised a Hanseatic Legion to fight Napoleon). Maybe some Trade Cogs for a naval unit and a tech that sends Merchants.
We plan Hansa Kontor as separate natives (same class as Venetians). So this is a completely separate topic.
Regarding the Elector Sites, the main problem is technical. The way itās written just simply does not allow two elector types to share one Royal House Ally. It sounds trivial but technically itās extremely complicated to solve this issue. Maybe more complicated then create all Elector House units end techs from scratch. So if we go for that, any ideas or help are more than welcomed.
God those elector site models are beautiful! I didnāt know it was possible to add new models like that to AoE3
Thanks! But we still have critical issues with the electors I mentioned above. So for now itās technically impossible to make the elector sites mutually compatible. So Iām looking for ideas how to make it possible.