El Dorado the city of gold…how does this give eagles more HP? Like… I don’t see it. Just curious if there is any reasoning behind it that I’m missing.
There is none (20 characters)
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Those are just names of techs dont think beyond that.
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Maybe the search for the alleged city of gold motivates your main gold unit a lot as to having higher survivability 11
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I once saw someone suggest it should be renamed to Cotton Armor and I think that’s the most braindead (in a good way) decision the devs could make.
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El Dorado means “the golden [man],” so it means the Mayas must have learned the art of alchemy to transmute the dead outer layer of their skin or clothes into gold. While gold is soft for a metal, it’s harder than dead skin, and provides superior protection. This is represented by having more hit points.
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They just picked a random mesoamerican-ish name, because El Dorado is a muiscan prosperity ritual… Not even a war ritual…
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It’s a stupid name, I think it should be Cotton Armor, which makes more sense in like every way.
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According to The Conquerors manual, it’s because
The Mayans proved very tough opponents when whipped into battle frenzy in defense of their hidden wealth.
I don’t think it was intended to be anything to do with cotton armour. Bear in mind that, back in 2000, the internet was not what it is today. It was probably genuinely difficult for Ensemble Studios to find much relevant information about Mayan warfare.
I agree that it should be renamed though. I’m surprised it wasn’t renamed for HD, to be honest.
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I’m no Mayan, but if someone tried to take my stuff, I would be pretty angry too.
Surprised this tech was left in, when the El Dorado campaign went. Although that was probably because it was pure fantasy from start to finish.
I loved the El Dorado campaign. All the puzzle stuff and RPG elements made it one of my favorite campaigns at the time.
Well I am glad you got it running. I never got to the end of one of the later levels as it just kept crashing and it took SO long to get to that point in the first place.
okay summing up: Seems like it is pure fantasy. Someone hinted me that some guy already made a video about exactly that: AoE2: Ranking Historical Nonsense in Unique Techs - Worst 5 - YouTube
seems also like el Dorado is more a spanish fantasy than a mayan
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El Dorado, as some already said, is supposed to represent the frenzy of Mayan warriors to defend their “hidden riches”. Now, it needs to be said that this “technology” is complete fantasy, nothing about it is remotely historical, let alone sensical. “El Dorado” was the name of an alleged city covered in gold, and presumably it’s ruler was covered in gold, hence the name: “The Golden One”. But this was, to put it frankly, a baseless RPG-like treasure quest that the conquistadores invented while chasing non-existing super large gold riches in the Americas. I ignore how the misunderstanding took impulse to the degree it became a popular myth, but suffices to say that the first conquistadores ended up a bit disappointed in that regard. That’s not the only weird thing, El Dorado’s supposed location isn’t even on Mayan territory, it’s all the the way in the Amazonas, which is super far away geographically speaking. I personally would change this stupid name with something else, although I would not give it an overly generic name like “Cotton armor”, I’d rather see something more specific to their culture. My proposal would be to find the Mayan way of spelling a particular kind of armor the nobility used comprised of hardened cotton filled with small stones (apparently they had stone filled vests). Or maybe make a reference to a particular warfare style named by specialists “Star War” (yeah, yeah, I know…) referring to the appearance of the glyph that references the concept of “total war”.
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Could be Xkapupul (cotton armor in K’iche), or something like Q’u’l Abäj Chupam (Coat with stones inside). Star war would be something like “Ch’imil Ch’o’j,” but I don’t think that’s actually what the Mayas called it. Or even something like Kotq’u’l (Eagle Armor), which is pretty on the nose, but which I think fits the conventions of the game (Konnik, Hul’che/Atlatl). I’m interested in looking up the name for that particular armor though, since there was probably some special term for it.
Not exactly unprecedented in this game.