Fire Archer discrepancy

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Let’s remember that in the screenshot that showed off the camelpult and the Khara Khoto castle, the Liao Dao was nowhere to be seen. AKA, the only unit that would really only belong to the Khitans, even if (I think) it’s a pretty obscure unit, and to identify it you’d have to zoom in really close and make out the distinct shape of the blade. Coincidence?

Also, I imagined a similar hypothetical scenario, that would feel more familiar to a Western audience: let’s suppose one day the devs announce another European DLC. They show an image with a Swiss castle and the Swiss Papal Guard as a distinct unit. It has to be a Swiss civilization, right? Wrong, it’s the Aragonese. Why? Good question.

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22

Or an Occum’s razor explanation: they in fact originally planned a Tangut civ. The screenshot was made with that plan. Then later some WE management kicked in and scrapped it.

In any case, whether you read it cynically or not, that screenshot is meant to tease Tanguts. That’s pretty clear.

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And there’s always the disclaimer that everything is a work in progress, but still, you tease tanguts and jurchens, then release 3k. Seems like a massive shift.

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they said the player would be replaced.

they did not say the replacment would be with a new Tangut civ.

Theres no conspiricy here. this stuff is planned months and months in advance (and data mining has already determined that this DLC was being worked on as early as prior to V&V).

this weird circular logic to attempt to justify the conspiricy. People thought they had the new DLC figured out, and when it turned out they didnt, theyre making any excuse to blame the devs vs their own overeager analyses.

Real life isnt exciting. Its boring. The reality is that there are easy explinations, but they arent fun.

Devs didnt say they were swaping the tangut player to a tangut civilization.
Devs showing the south east asian UI could be a variety of things, could have been in a scenario editor, could have been a placeholder, could have been intentionally misleading for marketing purposes. It is not hard evidence of another civ.
Devs showcasing things percieved as tangut related for a theoretical civ that players theorized was being added is not evidense of a civ being cut. Thats begging the question.
A patch change to a scenario, which sounds like its happening towards the finish line of development, being rolled back to impliment is not evidense that it was ever planned to be a different civ. Given some of the other scenerios that were working fine that are now bugged, clearly some back end stuff is being played with.
The devs didn’t “tease” tanguts. Devs teased “5 new civs” and then players assumed one of those would be Tanguts.

You guessed wrong.

Now could the devs have been more direct and clear with their communication after seeing fans rapidly coming to the wrong conclusion? or assuming they were aware that people were coming to the wrong conclusion? sure. 100% I think they could have. But at no point have the Devs “lied”.

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Except for campaign focused expansion with polished scenarios inspired by filithydelphias custom scenarios.

Except for when they said they weren’t splitting china.

Except for when they said they needed khitanguts and jurchens to tell 3k stories

Except all of those lies, they’ve never lied.

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26

Now tell me how anyone would:
(1) Explicitly look for sources of Tangut units and castles then give them to Khitan
Or:
(2) Accidentally run into pictures of Tangut units and castles requiring in-depth research about Tanguts and mistaken them for Khitan

Real life is boring, not exciting. That’s why we see messy management, poor planning, bad communucation and half-assed products like this all the time.

They are smart enough and have the legal advices to be not really caught lying. But they will do their best to deceive people as much as they can sitting on the border of lying.

That’s business in real life.

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Sure. All of those things can be true

I would 100% agree that they set themselves up for disapointed players. I myself am disapointed they didnt go with tanguts and some of the other suggested civs that were being theorized.

You’re asking why Tangut inspiried units might be in a Khitan civ? Maybe the top down call was that Tanguts alone werent enough to justify a civ, as rough a call as that would be, so to include them in some way they added those elements to Khitans. Maybe from the top down the civ was always designed to have elements of the Tanguts, and like other civs that are amalgamations they are meant to represent that entire region. there are plenty of completly viable development reasons for those units existing with no “civilization specifically called tanguts” to exist

Except for campaign focused expansion with polished scenarios inspired by filithydelphias custom scenarios.

I hate to tell you this, V&V is absolutely a campaign focused expansion with polished scenarios based of filithydelphias custem scenarios.

Now do I think that realistically the differences are so minor, and the “polish” was so minimal that they deserve flack for suggesting any significant work had been performed? absolutely. but there is no lie in the statement.

Except for when they said they weren’t splitting china.

As far as I can see, The Chinese are still a civilization, and they have not been split. No lie here either.

Except for when they said they needed khitanguts and jurchens to tell 3k stories

That is a wild misinterpretation of what was said on the podcast. He said, very specifically, that the choice of civs when making new content is partially determined by the stories they want to tell. That does not mean that applies to all civs being added, and even if it did, you could argue they were added for fans of the Gengis Khan Campaigns or the new V&V scenario.

So again, Dev man isn’t lieing to you.

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Sure they are not really “lying” in its literal meaning.

But isn’t it possible that they intentionally manipulated their communication and advertising materials, spotlighting some aspects while downplaying certain other aspects, to provoke certain feelings from the consumers, then attract (or rather, “deceive”) them into buying what may not meet their expectations?

For example, I believe most people would have a standard for the amount and quality of work when they see “polishing”. And I also believe the devs are very aware of that. But they still set their standards a little lower than what most people would have…by accident? But why do you NEVER see devs’ standards being above people’s expectations?

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There was one Chinese civ, there are now four. Three to represent Chinese states when ethnic Han China was literally political split.

That isn’t some edge case. That’s literally the most split any civ has ever been.

I could not disagree more strongly. He was asked why there were 5 civs this time. He said to tell the stories they wanted to tell you needed more content and civs. That’s literally what he said.

It wasn’t a campaign, bugs from the mod scenarios were present in the release version, and most of the scenarios were copy paste.

Literally every thing you said was as wrong as it could be

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But…BUT! They fixed this one or two bugs, so it’s not absolutely zero work! It’s polishing! Nobody lied!

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They were definitely enough.

  1. Big Empire
  2. Unique Culture
  3. Fitting the timeframe
  4. Tons of history recorded about them
  5. They interacted a lot of existing civs
  6. They waged a lot of wars vs those existing civs
  7. They were even part of world trade via Silk Road
  8. They had distinct military

Scenarios aren’t campaigns. Campaigns consist of multiple related scenarios with a protagonist.

Chinese has been split to Wu, Wei and Shu. They’re all Chinese, so it is a split. Not to mention Cysion also stated new civs are Chinese neighbours. Guess what? Wu, Wei and Shu aren’t neighbors, they’re literally Chinese.

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32

And yet we have the Wei. A civ with so little evidence behind it that it’s basically a Xianbei civ with a different name.

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33

Sure, but if you’re making a 3 kingdoms inspired DLC, and you want to design 3 specific factions around that era. naming the 3 factions after the litteral 3 Kingdoms makes a certain logical sense.

The 3 Kingdoms were litterally called Wei, Wu, Shu.

Again, you may disagree with the direction, or with the choice of civ, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t explinations

Thats like, your opinion man. Not a fact. Its subjective and the devs may have thought those were compelling enough reasons.

Scenarios aren’t campaigns. Campaigns consist of multiple related scenarios with a protagonist.

You can argue semantics of what the word campaign means to you. It’s clearly another tab in the list of campaigns in game. Battles of the Conquerors and forgotten would still be considered campaign content.

Chinese has been split to Wu, Wei and Shu. They’re all Chinese, so it is a split. Not to mention Cysion also stated new civs are Chinese neighbours. Guess what? Wu, Wei and Shu aren’t neighbors, they’re literally Chinese.

There was one Chinese civ, there are now four. Three to represent Chinese states when ethnic Han China was literally political split.

Again, they have not been split from, they have been added. the chinese as a civ still exists. The question asked on the podcast was if it would be like india, where the indians civ no longer exists in the same capacity. Chinese still exist. As before with the stories, he also mentions “China and the surronding area” which would include the Khitans and Jurchan. Context matters.

He said to tell the stories they wanted to tell you needed more content and civs.

and three of those civs are needed to tell the story they want to tell whats the lie? The other civs support other stories that currently exist

There are tons of things to legitimitly complain about regarding the DLC. Weather its the content, direction, choice of civs, the bugs that have been added with the patch. But your expectations being wrong does not mean the devs lied.

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No, they are split off of.

Hell, the Chinese civ changed as well. So other than a name change, this is basically the same, other than the fact that the three new civs are all still Han Chinese.

No, he said “around China”. That suggests around the periphery of.

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35

Uh-oh

  • Tangut is not enough to justify a civ
  • More than a half of the uniqueness of the “Khitan” civ is Tangut
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36

No, they are split off of. Hell, the Chinese civ changed as well. So other than a name change, this is basically the same, other than the fact that the three new civs are all still Han Chinese

So other than this key difference, its the same.

  • Tangut is not enough to justify a civ
  • More than a half of the uniqueness of the “Khitan” civ is Tangut

I’m not a historian, so I don’t know the relevence of the unique techs, the unique civ attributes, the unit choice. but all ive heard so far is that they have the castle skin and one of the unique units. thats 2 things.

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Nobody thinks it’s a key difference though other than you.

Whether or not the Chinese civ kept its name, there are now 4 Chinese civs.

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Slavs 100% not split. Don’t look at the three new civs, only look at the name. Believe only what is explicitly communicated by the devs. don’t think for you self. listen and consume

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You are not a historian, but you immediately determine the devs’ understandings are facts and those of the forum users who did the research are opinions.

Besides another UU (rather generic, btw), two techs (also rather generic) and the wonder (indeed Khitan).
So that’s more than half.

Why don’t you look for yourself instead of “hearing” before jumping to conclusions?

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My guy, my point was not that there aren’t reasons for the Tanguts to be a civ.

My point is it doesn’t matter if you or I think they should be a civ. I happen to think they would be a great civ choice and I was disapointed to see they didn’t make the cut.

My point is that the devs made that choice. you can be disapointed in that choice, but people are acting like the devs said “tanguts are going to be a thing” based on a couple of screenshots and a patch note. Some other people have taken that a step further and started spreading a conspiracy that they were actually confirmed and then cut last minute. All of that Im pushing back against because its baseless.