Our much beloved game, Age of Empires 2, now has 53 civilizations. It’s a great joy to see the game thrive as it is today. However, there is a growing discussion about the number of civilizations the game has, and whether the developers should add more civilizations.
Some people feel overwhelmed by the civ roster and argue that there are too many civilizations. Some feel like the game can have a few more civs to fill in some geographical gaps, but there should be a max number. Others argue that any number of new civilizations can be added as long as they provide interesting gameplay.
This is a new poll with six questions looking to understand people’s views on the matter.
1. How would you judge the number of civilizations in AOE2:DE?
Not enough
Just right
Too many
0voters
2. Should the game remove any civilizations?
Yes, many of them
A few of them
None of them
0voters
3. Should the game add more civilizations?
Yes, as long as their gameplay is fun
A few more to fill in some geographical/historial gaps
No more civs
0voters
4. Should the devs rework existing civs into more important medieval polities?
Yes, many of them
Some of them (e.g. the three kingdoms, unpopular civs)
None of them
0voters
5. Should AOE2:DE stop adding civilizations at one point?
Yes
No
0voters
6. How many civilizations should AOE2:DE have?
Fewer than the original 35 at launch
The original 35 at the launch of AOE2:DE only
36-45
46-55
56-65
66-75
Over 75, no cap.
0voters
In the comments below, feel free to discuss your views in more detail.
How many civs? Which should be added? Which should be removed? Which should be reworked? Should there be a cap?
If they would stop adding new civs, which is the most important kind of new content, the game would just eventually die. But that doesn’t mean they have to be in ranked. Maybe more Chronicles like content could be the solution. Also adding an option to play with the old civs with old balance only would make a lot of people happy, so an AoK/AoC/HD only dataset.
So I think as long as enough people want new civs there should be new civs. Older civs should only be reworked if necessary.
There should be a cap on the number of civlizations.
The cap will be determined by the remaining important civilizations still not in the game.
The civs I want to see keeping them to a minimum with umbrella civs: Tibetans(incl.Tanguts), Tai, Serbocroats, Vlachs, Bantu, Kanem, Yoruba, Benin, Perepecha, Mixtecs, Iroquois, Lakota/Mississippians. (total=12).
To minimize the civs I still strongly believe that the Three Kingdoms must be reworked into Tibetans/Tanguts/Thai/Bai. The Romans can be tweaked to represent the Papal States to make them even more relevant to the period.
“Survived” yeah but on what level? A few people were still playing it from time to time. There is a reason why the Forgotten Empires Mod was so popular.
The game is a lot more popular then it ever has before. If they would stop adding new civs it would slowly go back to the state of being a niche game again.
Since the HD edition we had a constant addition of new civs and it made the game much richer. You can play more divers scenarios and cover more of the globe. And even before that there were countless mods adding more civs.
Yet, we still have Mayor empires missing like Tibetans, Songhai and kanembu but also some less big empires are still missing which would give a local flavor like Somali, watcha, Thai.
I was for a long time against it but with the TLC DLC I am convinced that we even could have a North American dlc that works.
Not to make it too long but I have ideas for DLCs work the next 10 years (half of them in Africa to be honest).
Depends which civs, if it’s one of those nonsensical civ splits of AoK/AoC/FE civs then hell no.
Couldn’t care less if they added a Balkan DLC but only if Albanians get added and not Venetians and Aragonese, other than that, obviously Africa needs to be prioritized since it has more potential than splitting Celts/Vikings/Saracens/Japanese into obscure civs like AoE4 did with variant civs.
Yeah supporting the game and adding new civilisations made it popular again. But doesn’t that mean they should keep adding them?
With the game “dying” I don’t mean that it will over night lose 100% of it’s players. What I mean is that it will slowly decline in players and become a “forgotten” game again.
Yes. I should’ve mentioned that Italians and Slavs are the ones that are getting endless requests while some sensible additions are getting ignored, my intention of saying HD’s FE is about Italians and Slavs rather than Indians which was a sensible “split” (more like an actual ethnic fix compared to 3 Kingdoms).
I voted “no more civs”, but mostly because I don’t trust the current devs to add any fitting civs. Instead of crafting a single cohesive civ they make 3 badly designed ones and call it a day. I wouldn’t be opposed to individual well-crafted civs to be added.
Atm I would prefer playing with just the vanilla DE or pre-DE civs. Almost all the new civs are awful.
nonsense. the game was perfectly fine for over a decade without civ additions. what keeps the game alive is a healthy multiplayer community and people like SotL making youtube content. Even when the forgotten mod/HD came out, most people were still playing on voobly, because it was the more stable experience.
DE was at its most healthy during the first year after release where no new civs were being added.
yet the majority of players were playing on voobly because it provided the better experience. There are still lots of people on voobly (and even HD), because DE is lacking in so many aspects. Rn we are in a situation where aoe2DE scratches a certain itch. But if a new game comes along that doesn’t have the gigantic issues that aoe2DE has, people will abandon it.
The biggest peak in the player base was actually after the release of the first DLC while AoE3DE, AoE4 and AoMR had by far their biggest peak on release.
As I said, there is nothing wrong with you personally preferring the game in the state it was in when DE released but that doesn’t mean that the overall community agrees.
In the end a poll or thread like this is pretty pointless since we are voting with out wallets every time a new DLC releases. As long as we buy new civs they will make new civs, simple as that.
I referred to “dying” as a process not a state that is reached over night.
The majority of AoE2 players is not playing ranked so the things you suggest would not grow the overall community but just the ranked and online parts of the community.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against those kinds of improvements. And I can see why many people don’t want to constantly have to learn new civs. But people do want to buy new civs that are available in ranked. Single player only DLC or civs that are not in ranked don’t sell as well.
I think the developers could easily make both of us happy by improving the multiplayer, adding older datasets and then just making Chronicles like DLC with unranked civs. But I large parts of the player base do want new ranked civs.
Unfortunately the poll doesn’t have an option for “more unranked civs”.
Add more civilizations to the game…
The more civilizations, the better. It can be great to reach 100 or even 200 civilizations…
AoE2 De De in 2029…2032…2040…2050…
Buy non-stop… AoE2 today, AoE2 until 2050…
AoE2 is beautiful…
i know, but the player count on voobly was steadily INCREASING, so how was it dying?
Even if you don’t care about multiplayer, the HD playercount was increasing for the entire lifetime of the game, with no major spikes for the DLC releases. (ie tell me which of those spikes on this graph are DLC, without googling the release dates)
in fact aoe2HD peak player count was after DE released. This should be the clearest evidence that people value a stable game over new content. (not to say that HD was praticularly stable, just that DE was even worse on launch).
