I’m sure other people noticed this, but there’s been a few signs pointing toward a new civ being the Barbary Pirates.
The unit roster for the Barbary Pirates in the historical battle is really deep. It practically has a full unit roster already, enough so that you wonder if there was at least a barbary civ planned and scrapped at some point along the way.
Pirates are already in the campaign. Sure they’re fictionalized Caribbean pirates, but for people who want Pirates we’re not sticklers on these sorts of things anyway.
There was the whole bar-berry promo incident, for lack of a better word. While the devs came out and said they didn’t mean it that way, it’s still possible that they did mean it that way but got sidetracked with other things and couldn’t release it until much later.
In the latest Pup notes, The Barbary States are listed under revolution civs, but instead of the name being in all caps like the rest of the revolution civs, it’s lowercase like the full civs.
As pointed out by @MissionLemur128, the Barbary Coast already has a theme
Lastly, let’s not forget that Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge movie franchise taking place during the game’s time period, so it might make sense from a marketing perspective to make something adjacent to it.
Barbary Pirates makes a ton of sense for all the reasons you pointed out and I’ve been expecting them to come along for a year or two now. Only other thing that’s close to a full civ in terms of unique assets is the Mayans.
This isn’t the first time there have been formatting inconsistencies in the notes. Not good evidence IMO.
People have been so psychologically conditioned to think whenever WE marketing remembers 3DE exists and throws random screenshots out there for fun it’s actually DLC hints. And now we get 2DE shots in the 3DE timeline.
The berries were nothing more than WE remembering this game exists.
This is the reason why I push Caribbean pirates as well as Barbary.
People think it’s all rather fantasy and silly but pretty much during the whole of the timeline organised piracy from all regions was a massive thorn to empires in their infancy and empires on the decline.
Barbary Pirates would be a fine addition. They had strongholds, they were contracted by the very loosely controlling Ottomans and they were a significant threat until later in the 19th century. There was infrastructure and economy. It was just seen as completely and utterly illegal but most of the world (which makes it fun, right).
The normal arguement for pirate types for not being in the game is that that are water-based, however pirate forces raided inland and pillaged settlements, and had self-funded weaponry (so often better than the standard soldier). Besides this their ships/boats most often were small so we’re not looking at OP water map only civs here.
Rather, light infantry, irregular forces that would acquire additional resources through raiding buildings, killing enemy units, capturing enemy boats, being a general pain in the butt!
It’s unlikely, however I’d certainly say that Barbary Pirates had more of an (infamous) impact on the world than Greece for most of AoE3’s time frame!
i think this is about the most unlikely option available, which is why it is all too possible for it to happen.
personally i dislike these sorts of faction, there is nothing “good” or “noble” one can show about these faction, yes all civs in the game did something bad in the period, this is inevitable. but what are you going to show on factions who literally existed ON slavery?
It was pretty wild the way the historical battle celebrated their victory over the Spanish. I know that’s how the real story goes but it was still kind of an odd feeling at the end of it.
Also, any group from the campaign is fair game as far as I’m concerned.
You missed point 5: the Barbary Coast has had a theme since African Royals (iirc). My guess is it was a considered but ultimately dropped 3rd civ for the Africa DLC.
Just remembered, that the loading screens for european maps include “gibraltar” and “balearic islands” (for example when u play on “Spain”)
(Also has “iceland” and a few others)
Maybe instead of poland + persia, we get denmark + barbary pirates as a maritime theme. Feels unlike, but would be hilarious
I interpret that as it was considered in the brainstorming phase but didn’t make it to actual development. He mentioned earlier in the thread that there were only going to be 2 civs and Songhai was also an early contender.
In my opinion Barbary States is a great fit for a revolution but not well suited for a full civ. Especially when Morocco fits better by most criteria.