Grand Poll on the Three Kingdoms DLC

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I’m opening a poll on the Three Kingdoms DLC so that the developers understand the fans’ views on their product. Feel free to participate and voice your views if you vote ‘other’.

Question 1: What is your opinion of the Three Kingdoms DLC?

  • Good, no/minor changes needed.
  • Neutral, some important changes needed
  • Poor, many significant changes needed
0 voters

Question 2: In which areas of the Three Kingdoms DLC are there problems?

  • The non-Chinese civilizations added (Khitans, Jurchen).
  • The Three Kingdoms added (Wu, Wei, Shu).
  • The campaign (Romance of the Three Kingdoms).
  • Trainable hero units.
  • Cosmetic additions (e.g. no new architecture set, units’ appearance, voicelines, castles, wonders etc.).
  • Design of new civilizations (e.g. civ bonuses, tech trees etc).
  • Design of new units (e.g. Unique Units, traction trebuchet, fire lancers etc.).
  • New mechanics (e.g. pastures, hero auras etc).
  • Other.
0 voters

Question 4: What are some changes the Three Kingdoms DLC should have?

  • Move the Three Kingdoms of Wu, Shu, Wei to Chronicles
  • Convert the three kingdoms to medieval Chinese kingdoms
  • Add ethnic voicelines to Khitans and Jurchen.
  • Add a historical campaign for China.
  • Improve the Three Romance campaign.
  • Replace the Three Kingdoms with other Medieval civilizations.
  • Change the bonuses of the civilizations included.
  • Redesign the Khitans to remove Tangut elements.
  • Split the Khitans to Tanguts and Khitans.
  • Campaigns for Jurchen and Khitans.
  • Remove trainable Hero units.
  • New units need a redesign.
  • Add a Sinitic architecture set.
  • New mechanics need a redesign.
  • Other
0 voters

Question 4: What other civilizations should the Three Kingdoms DLC have added?

  • Tibetans
  • Thai/Siam
  • Tanguts
  • Cham
  • Bai
  • Other
0 voters
3 Likes
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Aren’t Bai and Dali the same thing?

1 Like
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Fixed now.

20 characters

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Great poll. I would like the pressure to be permanent so that some changes would be made.

I personally support 2 minimal changes:

  • Renaming the China campaign tab into “Romance of the three kingdoms”.

  • Giving OG Chinese, Khitans and Jurchens and why not Koreans their own campaigns. Could be a paid single player DLC imo.

9 Likes
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Not the DLC wanted by the community

The community hoped for a medieval classic DLc with civilization + campaign but we was given a campaign with late antiquity chinese. I enjoyed the 3K campaign (playing pre-gunpowder chinese) but I will have enjoyed more a DLC put in the Song dinasty with campaign for the chinese, kirean, khitan, jurchen, tangut, bai and tibetan. All with their proper voiceline.

Trainable hero units, makes them optional

No problem for me but problem for many players. You can resolve them with an option in multiplayer : remove hero units option. Simply removing them will be bad because the 3K civilizations are tied with a story, for example I cannot imagine playing the Wei without Cao Cao.

Maybe with an option to disable them in multiplayer we can add (optional) heroes for other civilizations. Maybe in the future we can have a toggle option to have Genghis Khan as the mongol, Attila as the huns, Jeanne d’Arc as the franks.

No voice-line for some civilizations

Jurchen is not an unknown language they have still some speaker today. Khitans can speak daur. There is also the problem for other civilization : Byzantine must speak greek, Itralian must speak italian, Huns must speak Chuvash. Goth must speak goth. Making voieline for extinct language was done for Chronicle, the thracian voiceline is very well done. if it’s possible to reconstruct an extinct language there is no excuse to do the same with very well documented language like the modern manchu (actual jurchen).

Some civilizations are missing

Tanguts are the obvious one, merging them with Khitan was a mistake, splitt them. Bai, Tibetans are most wanted. I hope in the future one DLc will fix this. 3K DLC was good but was not the one wanted by the community.

Missing campaigns

Some old ans new civilizations have no campaign : chinese, korean, jurchen, khitan

Some old campaigns not updated

Some scenario are not updated with new assets. For example in the Ghenghis Khan scenario of Victor and vanquished there is old AoE1 looking like shaman in spite of new accurate skin for the mongol monk. Also the Jin faction are still played by the chinese civilization in spite of historically the Jin dynasty was founded by the jurchen who are now available in the game.

Regional units and building are not given at some civilizations

Hei Guang cavalry is a chinese unit but the chinese have not access to them. I think than removing the knight line for the korean and chinese can be good.

Pasture was not given to the mongols, huns and cumans beside their are very well fitted for steppe civilizations.(for the tatars a poll shaow that the community prefer to keep farm). Rebalance this building and give his for those civilizations.

Traction trebuchet can be good for the mongols.

No new architectural set

The actual east asian set are japanese inspired except for the wall who look like chinese. The best thing is to make a japanese wall for the east asian set (and rename his japanese architectural set).

Makes a chinese architectural set (keeping the actual wall of the east asian architectural set).

For the mongol and the khitan a chinese architectural set with pasture instead of farm and yurt instead of house can be enough.

Also I hope for new architectural sets : western nomad (huns and cuman) northern architectural set (viking), byzantine architectural set, aztec architectural set, etc.

Moving Shu Wei and Wu to their own game mode or to Chronicle, not a good idea for me

No a good idea to make a proper game mode because their technology tree is the medieval one and unlike the one of Chronicles he will not be expanded. Making a game mode for only 3 civilizations will be a lot of work for little result because in this game mode they will be only the actual 3 kingdoms civilizations and no one more.

The Chronicle game mode is totally different of the medieval one and is the 3 kingdoms civilizations will be too medieval like to be in Chronicle.

If one day there is chinese factions in Chronicle I hope this will those of the warring states period. (A grand campaign featuring the unification of China by Qin Shi Hungdi can be wonderful with Xiongnu, Qin and other chinese faction, and will sell very well !)

Saving the mess

Always announcing the civilizations that will be added in a DLC, with this no false hope. The Last Chieftains announce was good because she announced the 3 future civilizations and the reworking of the incas. Also if there is no campaign but only scenarios like Victors and Vanquished call them a scenario DLC not a campaign DLC. With this no false hope.

You can add campaigns for the jurchen and khitan in the 3 kingdoms dlc, but I think the best is to make a new DLC

Renaming the China campaign tab into “Romance of the three kingdoms”
Can be good because it’s free the China name for a tab for future campaigns.

Make a proper medieval chinese DLC with campaign for chinese, korean, jurchen, khitan and new civilizations like the thibetan civilization.

Give us various way to buy a civilization. With this future DLC those who hate the 3 Kingdoms DLC (and will never buy him) can have access (in skirmish) to the jurchen and the khitan if they buy this future medieval chinese DLC. With this the jurchen and the khitans will not be locked behind a very unpopular DLC.

Also adding the access to the Romans civilization in a future DLC can be good because many players don’t want to buy Return of Rome just for one civilization if they are not interested by the AoE1 content (15€ for one civilization is expensive).
Romains can be unlocked by buying either Return of Rome and a future DLC (Barbarian invasions, a DLC in the migration period with a romains campaign and new civilizations : vandals, suebi, alans, saxons, reworked goth and in additon the access to the Romans civilization). With this the Romans will not be locked behind an unpopular DLC.

6 Likes
6

Good point tbh, haven’t thought about that.

Probably the simplest solution would be to medievalize the three factions into proper civilizations. I’ve read that redoing Shu info Bai for example wouldn’t make much sense (their warfare style was very different despite bordering each other) so I guess we’d be stick with three more Chinese “sub-civilizations”, but at the very least they could be reworked to represent their regions and cultures throughout the whole medieval era rather than just a single century before the game’s timeframe.

So the Shu would become Sichuanese or Ba-Shu; the Wu would become Wuyue or Jiangnanese; and the Wei would represent Northern China throughout the ages, though I can’t decide whether it’d be better for them to be specifically called Xianbei, or just the Khitans after the current Khitans are reworked into Tanguts.

This would however mean that we’d have at least two more Han Chinese civs alongside the current Chinese in ranked, so it’s not ideal. Moving them to Chronicles as they are would free the slots for non-Han civs in ranked, and would spare the devs from needing to edit the campaign heavily to hide potential medieval elements that’d be added to the civs if they were reworked to match the other civs in the game.

That said, the campaigns themselves aren’t great apart from a few scenarios, so I wouldn’t be opposed to a substantial rework.

1 Like
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All 22 people that participated on the last poll, chose Tibetans. Irony is that it won’t happen even if 22k people vote it.

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Eh, I mean folks speculate that Tibetans are taboo because censorship, but from what can be deduced from other games sold in China without problems, as well as from Chinese players’ own words, depicting medieval Tibet as an independent policy isn’t banned, it’s just the modern era. That’s why Paradox can sell CK3 and EU5 in China, but not HOI4.

4 Likes
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I’m actually for the extreme case, just deleting the 3K civs from existence. I know that will never happen, so I agree on mostly what is suggested here.

1 Like
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I’d like to see the 3K civs removed from ranked play. I don’t have an issue with them existing in the game overall, and I think the campaign and single-player content built around them is actually quite good. I just don’t think they belong in ranked multiplayer.

5 Likes
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I have mixed feelings. I really like some scenarios (Liu Bei 4, Cao Cao against the Yuan brothers), but the narrative is so condensed I had no idea who all of those people are (I only started learning about the period recently through YT). It doesn’t even flesh out the main characters properly, we only learn that Cao Cao is a poet from his epilogue!

So it’s neither good for newcomers nor for existing 3K fans (why play the shortcut if there are already other strategy games fleshing out the period in much better detail).

I think a decent approach would be to rework the three campaigns into one mega-campaign with 15 scenarios, following different characters and civs chronologically. This alone would’ve freed at least two slots, because we’d only need a single Red Cliff scenario. Also I’m really not a fan of the wildly ahistorical outcomes. It’s one thing to escort Barbarossa’s pickled body to Jerusalem even if such a plan was never realized, and another to have Liu Bei or Cao Cao unify China in their lifetime.

2 Likes
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I actually find it an eyesore, mainly because it came from a lack of communication and unclear, if not outright misleading promotion. Because of that, I can’t really say anything other than that it shouldn’t have happened at all. I can’t support its existence in any way, shape or form.

1 Like
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I understand that what was promoted was completely different from what we actually got. That said, I do like some parts of it: the new units, the new skins, and even the Jurchens and the Khitanguts (yes, I know).

The Three Kingdoms campaign and civs could work very well if they were treated the same way as the Chronicles DLC (without being part of it, as a separate concept). The content is already there, and it would be better used as campaign/single-player content.

What I really dislike is seeing the 3K civs in the standard civ pool, especially in ranked play and tournaments. These are the only civs I have zero interest in learning — their bonuses, achievements, or even playing with or against them.

2 Likes
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give Hei Guang cav to Chinese. new architecture set would be baller.

1 Like
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Isnt this the fundamental problem?

7 Likes
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For the vast majority of voters it does seem so!

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It’s pretty biased this voting. You left no possibility for positive changes or “I think this is fine”. I reckon the answers is all ready set before voting

Eg. I think the heroes mechanics is marvelous if rethought to all civs and work as a “charge this part of the army” just like a good general did in those days.

After all, raiding and castle drops are two of the most used win moves in the game, and both have zero historical relevance.

1 Like
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Small point here. Raiding and Castle building were actual historical tactics - See Longshanks’ approach in Wales and Scotland and Ireland and in Outremer.

4 Likes
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In my humble opinion I did. The first question has the option of good, no/minor changes needed. At that point if you’re pleased with the dlc you and don’t move to question 2. If there is something you could change however minor you move to question 2. And then for question 3 if you want to be more specific. You can choose even just one thing in questions 2-4.

1 Like
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Ok. That’s the my way or the highway-mode :zany_face: Either you see flaws or we don’t want do hear your thoughts on that topic?

I think its interesting how different we all see this game, and loop sided votings won’t cast any light on that. After all I’m pretty sure that neither you nor me have the perfect take on the needed changes, and voting on HOW bad something is, is not the right way imho.

2 Likes