There will probably be French and Norse/Vikings as per the English campaign leaks (you fight against both factions). So those are my predictions.
Which leaves 1 more unknown civ. Either Japanese or someone to the west of Delhi Sultanate. Maybe Persians or Arabs?
Byzantines would actually be pretty cool and kind of toe in to everything. But they need more than just 8 civs to start off with imo.
Like Age of Kings had 13 to begin with.
I still kind of prefer a fresh start and perfecting the civs that are already in the game. But yeah game would be a bit small compared to AOE2. Game really would need an expansion within a year. Otherwise it’ll die soon enough. lol
My guess is M$ wants to market AoE2 as much as possible and over years when AOE4 catches up ditching AoE2:DE
I still feel like AoE4 could be a flop. It will probably fare better than AoE3, but it’s hard to beat a classic. As long as aoE2 gets updated it will be a popular game.
They should have done it up like Starcraft2, it terms of the playability being the same but just nicer to look at. But I will reserve final judgement until release
English is the only European civilisation confirmed right now, all three others are Asian. While I also want diversity in the game, stating that one is already too many is kind of a stretch, don’t you think?
I only hope Aztecs and Vikings, with that I would be happy, although I have heard rumors that neither of them will be at the launch of the game : '(
There was one more major Danish attack on England after Stamford Bridge. In 1069 Sweyn Estridsson of Denmark launched an abortive invasion in support of Edgar Atheling’s rebellion in the North. Sweyn’s fleet raided the east coast and helped Edgar take the city of York, before ultimately withdrawing back to Denmark - some accounts suggest he was bribed into leaving by William. It was this rebellion which resulted in the Harrying of the North. My guess is that this is the “Viking invasion” the campaign trailer was referring to.
Aoe4 civs are going to be more different than Aoe2 civs, so starting with 8 civs is a healthy amount I would think
What would’ve been the point of releasing DE then?
What I’m hoping
-Ethiopians or Malians
-Abbasids
-Inca
-Spanish
What we will probably get:
-Abbasids
-Germans
-Franks
-Rus
I would like to not have to wait an expansion pack or two to get African and Precolumbian civs.
I think French/Franks are gonna be in base game due to English being in base game but I agree that there needs to be an African civ.
French
Ethiopians
Inca
Rus
I think Rus makes a lot of sense since with it included in the game we have what we need to have a great Mongols campaign. Chinese, Delhi, Abbasids and Rus all make for a great campaign showing different phases of Mongol expansion.
Hopefully they don’t pull an Aoe2 and call them Slavs
So we have 4 more civs to come right? Obviously they’re going to be past Civs from Age of Empires 2 most likely, but with a twist or different iteration of focus on them. Kind of like North India being ruled and dominated by a Turkish dynasty.
I think we will get 2 more European civs and then one African civ and then one more Asian civ.
My guess for the 2 European civs are: Franks for sure and either Vikings or Germany.
My guess for the African civ will be probably a West African kingdom/cultural group or Ethiopia.
My guess for the Asian civ will be either Middle East with Saracens or Southeast Asia with Malay.
It could be possible that instead of 2 European Civs there will just 1, being Franks, and then the 4th slot will end up being Japan. I think this has a high possibility.
I’d guess they probably won’t go that broad with the civ name, if they’re willing to give a more accurate name to Delhi rather than just ‘Indians’ - Age of Kings had a weirder mix of ethnic groups and nation states that sometimes led to broad umbrella civs, but I get the impression they’re trying to be a bit more specific for this game.
AoE4 would do well to also focus on European medieval age. Esp. with a reduced civ pool. The battles need also to make sense. It’s stupid if medieval English fight Mongols or Chinese or even Indians to that time. I don’t want that immersion breaking nonsense. At least not without the possibilitiy of more realistic match ups. Africa and the Americas is always good bonus content, but it would be a grave mistake to contain civs from all over the world with unique playstyles at launch. That’s too much AoE3 while they try to focus on what AoE 2 did well. Mongols, Chinese, Indians… That’s already 3 Asian civs. In order to be a somewhat successful game and not be some weird civ potpourri, they really need to include an Arabian civilisation like Saracens, probably Byzantines to cover the European-Asian transition, a Crusader-like central European civ that could be Teutonic Order or Holy Roman Empire (which would cover Germans, Italians, pretty much every civ in between and the Bohemian area) and a Western European Civ that could cover Franks, Normans and even Celts (at least for Campaigns or as per age (feudal age “celtic” style, castle age “normannic/frankish” style, imperial age “french/burgundian” style)).
So:
Mongols
Chinese
Delhi Sultanate
The English
Saracens
Byzantines
Holy Roman Empire
Franks/Normans/Celts that are just called Franks
DLCs or Addons could then focus on Africa and the Americas. And maybe Vikings or Rus-Vikings, because AoE in a medieval setting without Vikings would kinda suck. I don’t see them to be a launch civ, tho. And then we would need to see where this game goes anyway.
I dearly hope that the unique playsytle thing does not lead into a bunch of civs from every continent. That would kill the game for me as 8 civs would just be too little and all the vs. would be a slap in the face of a medieval setting. The medieval English never fought the Mongols and didn’t go much further than Jerusalem. So Indians and Chinese are also pretty much nonsense as enemies for the English. If you can only have nonsense battles in AoE4, I am very sure that the game will fail. Esp. when when they do campaigns. Do the English fight Normans that are just renamed English or how will it be eventually? We can be pretty sure that Normans will not be a civ just on its own, they would have said that when showcasing the campaign. So in order to keep up immersion they really need to maintain some kind of coherence and comprehension in regards of what civs are being included at the start.
I really don’t know what to expect. From what I’ve seen the game is far from being finished or polished and needs to fix a lot of graphical wonkiness and colors anyway before it can even begin to think about dethroning AoE2 gameplaywise. Some things looked like alpha-state shiz while they are planning to release the game in autumn. My hopes are… well, not overhyped. But I’d be glad to end up surprised, tho.
I understand from a realistic perspective, why you would like more European civs. BUT I think the devs will have an african and american civ from the 8 base game. Personally, I always thought AOE was cool because you could do the “what-if” matchups. I’ve always wondered if the Incan empire vs Byzantines would look like, and because its a video game, it makes my fantasy possible. It’s the cool part of age of empires
I would like the european from the base too and leave the american and african for another expansion, but we might not get that. It looks like we will at least get the arabs and the Rus
Vietnamese used to loot their own city and burn their own farmland so the Mongols would go back empty and hungry xD
Really tricky and intelligent people.
From the trailers and the info you can see that all the civs are campaign related.
Since the Civ’s are glued by the campaigns the 4 lacking civs must be related to each other. Since the Franks and the HRE are related to either the brits as well as to the Mongols respectively makes sense for them to appear.
The Norse Vikings will appear as part of the english campaign hence it makes sense for them to be a playable civ.
The Mongols fight the Chinese, then the Russians, and the Indians and only then the Poles and the Magyars. They also try to fight the Japanese, hence the remaining civs are probably related to these.
Hence my prediction is
English
Franks
HRE
Mongols
Chinese
Indians
VIkings
Russians/Japanese/Magyars
The DLC will then be probably 4 civs related to the same campaign. The next will probably about the Crusades, and there we will have the Abbasid, the Sejurk Turks, the Byzantines, and the Persians/Venice
We will have probably an “american exploration DLC” with the Spanish, the Aztecs, Maya, Inca
And an African Exploration DLC with Portuguese, Malians, Ethiopians Kongolese or Morrocan Sultanate
NGL, just want Koreans b/c turtleships and hwachas. I still remember finding turtleships in AOE2 while conquering south america as the conquistadors hilarious.