Chinese is a little hard to say because they mostly followed swivel gun and culverin designs after exposed to them. But they did manufacture a lot by themselves so it should not be only accessible through imports.
Japanese may need European cannons if they need cannons but they did not really use a lot of cannons in the first place.
The only problem is if “regular cannon types” (maybe with an Asian skin) can be trained massively it would lead to drastic changes in the gameplay.
Reply again after sleeping.
I can change the example, like AoE3 should rename and reskin most unit to be same as the Europeans like AoE2. The thing I’m trying to say remains the same.
This may be a viable compromise.
Just for me personally artillery operated by European crews does not pose any problem. Since Europeans can be asked to send troops directly, it would not unusual for Asians to ask Europeans to operate their artillery.
If something needs to be done about the consulate’s artillery, then allowing the purchase of single cannons should be a top priority.
Most likely this depends on what you want to emphasize.
If you wanted to emphasize that these weapons were acquired and learned to use by Europeans, you would place them in the consulate. If you wanted to emphasize that these weapons were later made and used in large numbers by Asians themselves, you would put them in the castles and barracks.
But if you don’t explain too much about the types of weapons themselves and try to understand from a looser definition, then the units in the castles symbolize the artillery produced by the Asians themselves, while the units in the consulate symbolize their purchases of artillery from the European allies, regardless of the type of those artillery pieces.
When are they giving Asian mercenary age 5 upgrades? The merc for asian civ is unusable after age 4 because they keep age 3 stats and no way to upgrade
by improved do you mean buffed? cause i am against that.
in TAD the Asian civs where widely considered OP, or at the least they had specific units and mechanics considered OP. Japan is only held in balance because of their relatively poor artillery and their limit of 75 villagers, in every other aspect japan is a strong faction.
China is strong but unique, hard to learn but man are the unit cost effective. their main issue is dealing with enemy cavalry in the late game.
India has in every way stronger infantry than european civs, again the only thing holding them back is their poor artillery.
Asian civs beat europeans most of the time unit for unit and can more or less match their economy.
okay, what units are stereotypical?
chu ku nu and maybe the elephant and camels for india?
Chu Ku Nus are fun, and i doubt any Chinese person feels deeply offended by their inclusion. why change them?
i don’t understand the need to change things for the sake of changing them, obviously India used horses but man is it fun having camels and elephants, and you know India did use both of those animals in war, why change it?
I don’t see anything terribly stereotypical in the Japanese faction, except perhaps flaming arrows but again, who cares?
Another perspective here is that if the Asian Dynasties were originally released with more standard lineups such as Mughal Musketeer, Qing Musketeer etc all the way up to very standard artillery types, we’d probably have threads where someone has dug up sources that the Chinese did use repeating crossbows during the timeframe (no matter on how small amount used) and that they should definitely get Cho Ko Nos or insert other more novel units here.
Fine as it is? Japanese and Chinese artillery sucks and Indians don’t even get any.
“There’s nothing stereotypical about the Asian civs”
“These things are stereotypical but should be kept because I like them.”
Anyway, here are things I’d remove/change:
*Replace all the monk heroes (the armored elephant should totally be the new default Indian hero skin)
*Split monasteries between religious and merc builds
*Remove the dumb spin kick animation from samurai style units
*Nuke the Repentant tag. It’s dumb as all hell.
Also, give the Chinese Monk replacement a weapon. Why is he fighting barehanded? Why are the Chinese and Indian armies even led by decrepit old men?!
As hot as that is, both dynasties (plus the Jin and others inbetween) all had effective control over China one after each other, plus the Qing absorbed much of the Han culture anyway, so ‘China’ existed throughout - just with a change of hands (much like various dynasties/royal lines in the rest of the world at the time).
Yes, I agree with all of these.
The whole monastery thing is my biggest pet peeve - why on earth was it ever made the ‘tavern’ building??
Now whilst the Asian civs should have some nuance in buildings as a gameplay thing - this was just a silly one to choose as the ‘quirky AD building’.
All 3 Asian Civs should have Monestaries/Temples (temple is far more univeral in term to the Asian civs) as purely the religious building. Allow them to train Monks/Priest respective of their religious building and civ.
Then give them a seperate building for mercs.
For Japanese and Chinese this can be a Tea House
For the Indians, they get a Caravanserai which is totally more fitting than the current setup.
The existing Caravanserai gets a simple name change to Stables… 'cos that is what it is (plus the Japanese one is just called Stables as well as other Stable-using civs - doesn’t need a quirky name).
As an aside the Ottomans can also get the Caravanserai as a replacement for their current Tavern as a far better fitting Merc building (it is literally the Muslim equivelent).
With that in place, the silly Repentant tag vanish.
Heroes
The heroes themselves are the biggest challenge. Again, I understand the need for gameplay/variety sake to have them different to the Euros, but Religious figures was an odd take that just doesn’t mesh well with other facets of the game. These Religious heros could still be in a specific shipment as extra Hero units I guess, or they could be made into ‘normal’ healer units in some form or another.
I think what would work better as heroes would be Viceroys. Your Governor-General equivelent officials. Generally were in charge of a province (or two) in matters of military and economy and would often be involved in war too, so fit into AOE3, especially with the notion that these Viceroys are leading a new settlement away from a Home City.
In-game they could retain some of the original AD hero ‘defensive’ aspects (such as the Stuns & Stomps) minus the healing, but possibly some sort of economy-aiding aura instead, so we occupy a balance of military and eco in-game, which also echo their historic roles.
Chinese Viceroy is Zongdu
Indians Viceroy is Nawab
Japanese Viceroy is Tozama
As Japan was far more militaristic, being run by a Shogunate, they get a Tozama variety daimyō - effectively governor/protectors of fiefs far away from the capital (unlike regular Daimyos)- which fits in with our use of Home Cities and settlements. The other Daimyos can still exist in their current form - this is just a unique hero version which would fit more into the Viceroy area.
All Viceroy types are mounted (officials are not going to be walking with the riff-raff). Zongdu and Tozama are on horseback, whilst the Indian Nawab would of course be mounted on an elephant
Such big expectations from devs who can’t even give Zebu Cattle models to Indians even though it originated in India. It’s scientific name is literally Bovine Indicine. They don’t care to fix such small problems. They look for things which brings money.
Yes Indian Sacred cows are still using the generic European Models even though a more correct model exists. The type of questions you are asking I suggest you should first play the game and know about it before engaging in the forums.
You can say Ming and Manchu, but not Ming and Qing, because Qing is a Chinese empire, ruled by a small group of manchus but still largely assimilated to Chinese, in terms of culture, government, language, everything, just like Mongol Yuan empire became Chinese. Today the manchu people don’t even exist anymore because they are absorbed into Chinese.
However if you talk about China being Ming and then a separate Manchu civilisation, the story began in 1300s and ended in 1600s, which is kinda too early for aoe3 time.
Zebu cows originated in India. TAD didn’t bother making a new model for an actual Indian breed and simply reused the pre-existing Holstein-looking one from vanilla.
What the hell are you talking about? Aztecs died down sooner than even that. There’s no reason why Manchus wouldn’t fit.
I thought about Qing being Manchu and China while Ming is just China.
So there is an overlap in time (Ming and Manchu existing at the same time) and and overlap in culture (both being China).
Qing replaced Ming in 1644, that is long before the Aztecs (1525) and Incan (1572) Empires stopped existing and even before the begin of the Japanese isolation (1639) which the ingame Japanese also predate.
Ming would fit better next to Japan and Qing would fit better next to India.
Both would make a lot of sense in AoE3.
They could both share some units (while only Qing has the banner army system) and buildings but Ming have less cavalry units and not those nomadic looking villages.
That means the current China would be renamed into Qing and mostly stay the same while Ming would be a mostly new civilisation, sharing architecture and some units with Qing.