Fixing non euro/colonial esp Asians

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Name is a small part of the problem. Those units are not given gimmicky weapons. And the plain names are not a result of poor research (or “let’s give it a strange look to make it look different”) but rather “simplicity” as these units’ uniforms are very accurate.

If you look at most post-DE new units, European or not, their weaponry, equipment, etc. are mostly practical and normal. The only thing I would compare with the Asian’s gimmicks are grenade launchers and handheld rockets, but those are rare and only obtainable through cards.

We all know European units are by default considered “standard”. Let’s look at Africans then. Their main roster are practical units. Their heavy cavalry and melee infantry (where odd exotic weapons are the most prevalent) uses lances, firearms and swords. Hausa has an “ultimate unit” that simply uses muskets not some situational martial art equipment (imagine that). The native units also use javelins, firearms, lances, etc. Dervish’s throwing knife is a bit odd but the unit reflects local rebels justifying improvised weaponry, and that’s only one out of eight native units.
Then you look at Native Americans in TWC. These have more poor designs for sure. But most of the regular and native roster use bows, javelins, firearms, etc.

Now Asians: Japanese is a little better (and they even have a “forced normal unit” which is morutaru). But nearly half of Chinese and Indians regular roster use some strange exotic weapon. I’d be okay with meteor hammer, or iron flail, or flamethrower, or kung fu monk, if there is only one of them as the odd one out in a rather normal roster, but not when they take up nearly half of the roster. Same with Indians’ “mounting everything on camels and elephants”. Not to mention the religious hero, religious native site and religious mercenary building.

Asian units added since DE, tatar archer and qilzilbash (surprised that there are only two) do not have such forced exoticity.

I’d say this is a particular problem before DE where understanding of the non-European civs were poor (unlike in DE) and they had the growing need to force uniqueness in those civs (unlike AOE2 where you just need to find one unit), and TAD is particularly bad in that respect.

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23

A sidenote:
You know what aspect of AOE4 the fans in China are advertising and spreads really well?
“Now Chinese have proper weapons and units, And even for those that are unique they look strong and advanced not some outdated orientalist gimmick.”
It’s pretty obvious which game they are using as the negative comparison.

The new “variant Chinese”, though still with a terrible name after they got rid of the original most orientalist stereotypical name ever, adds a normal light cavalry, a normal heavy cavalry, AND our old friend Shaolin monk. I’d be okay with that proportion.

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24

I don’t really see the appeal to giving China XIX century unit. In Wars of Liberty we had to bend over ourselves to find a distinct visual identity and the chinese playerbase hated it anyways because it looked so out of place.

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Quite a few Chinese simply hate late Qing because it looked backwards (because it really was). :sweat_smile:

But for WoL specifically I think it’s the same problem as TAD. It mixes multiple non-overlapping and odd concepts together.
Like the Nien were local bandits.
Female musketeer with the name of a single mythological immortal…really?
Meteor hammer and flamethrower are out of place as always.

Yung infantry and tigermen were proper late 19th Chinese units.

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The KotM units are gimmicky as hell even if they use relatively normal weapons. Just because they use random specific uniforms for made up units with weird functions (counter skirms, dismounting, etc) doesn’t mean they’re accurate or fit their roles. It’s a different problem from the Asians but it’s just as dumb.

That’s because there aren’t many wacky units to draw from in Africa. Mabele and Leopard Prowlers are the only thing I can think of that would use out of the box weapons. Both of those would be awesome to have. Hausa also has a guy that blows a horn to damage units so they’re not entirely without weird stuff.

Contrast that with Asia where there are countless treatises on oddball weapons and a multitude of martial arts. When you look at it that way, it’s actually more of a waste to go with faux unique units like “Pikemen” Pikemen or Arquebusiers.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. I’d rather have unique and different civs instead of countless Euro clones with an Asian veneer.

The issue is using any and every oddball unit without regard for when and where they were used. Meteor Hammers are basically impossible to use from horseback (and impractical on foot), Flamethrowers are centuries out of date, Indians have no horses at all, and elephant mounted artillery was not heavy siege guns. None of these things are remotely realistic. And with all that, the Asians still don’t have a proper artillery roster and have to hire European weapons with a limited resource.

Unique units are great, but they should be ones that are at least plausible. Lang Xain, Three Eyes Gunners, War Carts, and Rocket Pods are all just as unique as the most problematic Chinese units but they actually were used in battle. There are more atypical units like Chu Ko Nu and Flying Crows that you didn’t mention. But they pass under the radar because they give some uniqueness without coming off as completely absurd like the others.

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Yeah I’m mostly talking about visuals and practiicality.

Unique itself is not a problem. Nobody complains about katana or nagjnata or macahuitl becuase they are practical war weapons and properly portrayed (despite some being side arms).

Meteor hammer is a side side arm that you’d throw at your opponent surprised in a duel. You can throw it on horseback like a dart rather than the regular melee weapon.
Flamethrower is too antique.
Not to mention Shaolin monk with bare fitsts.
Flail on the other hand was actually a practical weapon even on horseback though rarely used.

We should also take into account what are NOT portrayed. Flamethrower would look worse if it takes the place of standard cannons or replicates of culverins and swivel guns which were actually widely used.

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28

Aren’t Flying Crows about as old as the Flamethrowers?

They are like very, very old and unpractical rocket launcher platforms. Flails weren’t that uncommon as a weapon, but they were more used for raids/chasing down fleeing enemies than in direct confrontations. They were peak war crime weapons.

Basically they should work more like the Oprichnik than the Cuirassier.

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First of all I’m just giving examples not exhaustively listing all of them.

Also flamethrowers ceased to exist after Song dynasty because as “advanced” as it sounds, it is much less efficient than gunpowder.
Flying crow on the contrary is a Ming dynasty weapon. It is still outdated if the setting is 19th century though.

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30

The so-called “pretty big rework” is basically just renaming and reskinning.
sure the units’ stats got some tweaked for their new name and new skin, but essentially they are same thing. The only really new thing is the Azap. Even that, they had a period that is unbalanced after the change.

A popular and gentle suggestion on it is just reskinning the wonder with a generic building, like a firework workshop, and the building still spawn Flying Crows.

Another suggestion is just letting the shipment drop-off point spawn Flying Crows, which means we do not need to build a building for age up, but the Flying Crows may be spawned a bit more slowly.

The latter is what I personally prefer. I usually think that the effect of some wonders does not need buildings at all, just grant it directly to the civ itself or the heroes, but I understand the former is easier to be accepted.

Anyway, the units do not need to be changed due to changes to the wonders.

I’m not saying changes to these units are totally unacceptable, but just not a must.
someone has suggested to replace the Meteor Hammer with a lancer unit. It can work and keep the range for sure. But the thing is, a very unique stuff is removed by just another unit using a lance. The accuracy get only a little little bit better by fixing such a small thing, but the exotic flavor is lost in some people’s view. Meanwhile, the wonders and monks are still there as a bigger issue.

As for the cannon, I say no. They should not be able to train units equivalent to Falconets with general resources since that is what their civs are and how the balance gets balanced. The civs have been well established.

I guess some people wants new cannons because they just hate the Falconets have to be tied with units they do not need at the Consulate. Adding a button at the Consulate to allow a single artillery can be purchased and cost less export than an entire army should be very helpful to that situation.

People also say every units is unique for non European civs in AoE3, not like in AoE2.
so Aoe2 is negative? Is this a reason to ask the devs to stuff new unique units to the civs in AoE2?
I mean every game has its features. Which game has something you like, just play it.
People can still discuss about the issues, but using other games as the reason make less sense.
It just like people can say AoE2 is the most famous, popular and welcome, so AoE3 should be like it and remove the homecity shipment machinic.

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Just renaming and reskinning some Asian units in AOE3 for better representation would not be a drastic overhaul as this.

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32

some people ask more than just renaming and reskinning, like stuff a new cannon in the regular roster, you know.
At least the Chinese regular roster doesn’t need that in my opinion.

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That’s at least what I’m not talking about here.

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This would be relatively easy to balance especially for China. The banner army system could limit them by pairing each artillery piece with a bunch of light infantry or cavalry. You could have essentially the same limitations, just shifted to the Castle with domestic units instead of recruiting Europeans at the Consulate.

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No. That is not same limitations. Absolutely broken especially in treaty games.
The real point is the cost and the training building.

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That’s why I prefer the consulate to send “Western style Asian units” with the same stats instead of Westerners directly.
Especially for the artillery. It’s not that when Asians imported European guns they also hired the entire crew for them.

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Except they often did. Someone had to instruct them at least to begin with.

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The Chinese massively produced and re-designed swivel guns and later culverins (hongyipao).
Even for the first hongyipao they purchased, they were mostly manned by Chinese.

Indians especially Mughals had standing artillery units.

Long metal barrels shooting round metal balls was a universal design and did not have huge technical barriers across regions like in the industrial age later.

Japanese maybe so because they did not massively employ European cannons in the first place. They preferred large caliber arquebuses like the ozutsu, still used by the samurai in real life (though it should be a standalone unit not a bonus for the samurai unit in the game)

So if we are not to drastically change the gameplay, using the consulate units to represent imported cannons rather than imported cannons and men are the easiest thing to do.

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Those are almost entirely examples of domestically manufactured artillery produced by reverse engineering European guns. That is very different from hiring European cannons and crews like how it is done in the Consulate. If they’re supposed to represent something domestically made then the Consulate is not the appropriate building for them.

It’s also not like once they had cannons they were good to go. There were big advances back in Europe so they had to import the latest technology if they couldn’t keep up with their own development. China was bringing in Krupp artillery and Prussian officers to train their army in the late 1800s. Some smaller Asian countries like those in Central Asia and the Middle East just hired European cannons and crews rather than trying to make them domestically. That’s more what the Consulate represents, and the examples you give are pretty much just ignored in the design of Asian civs.

The Consulate is so bad, I think drastic changes are warranted and would prefer that over reskins that don’t make sense.

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Consulate can be interpreted as some sort of trade quarters where the weapons are purchased, and taught by Western instructors (but not manned by Western crew).
From 17th century arquebus to 19th century rifles East Asians imported weapons for their local use. Same with cannons.

Again we could refer to Shogun 2 where you have European trade quarters that grants Western cannons manned by Japanese locals.

Also the first hongyipao were directly purchased from the Europeans and had a great success in battles and they were manned by Chinese crew.

Edit: I think what you mean is locally manufactured weapons should be trained in regular buildings not consulates, otherwise arquebuses should be consulate units too. That makes sense. Consulate is an odd concept. For the sake of representation I’d for sure favor a complete rework, but I’m just thought experimenting the least drastic change possible.

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I mean, artillery in India was about as good if not better than anything made in Europe until the second half of the 19th century or so. (Nepal made their own machine guns after all, not even a copy of a European design.)

China may have lagged behind when the Qing were in decline, but this is not a 19th century game so I don’t really see the need of asian civs to rely on European cannons when it was very much not the case historically.