Wanna see something kinda controversial? If the devs wanted a Hawaiian civ and they wanted it to be accurate? It would look a lot more European or United States-like than I think a lot of players would be expecting or even comfortable with, besides, of course, how units were named, the age-up system, and some minor visuals. I’m not kidding. They had an Anglo-style legislature in Honolulu. The kings/queen resided in a European-style palace complete with electricity and running water. They had a European-style whaling fleet. The Hawaiians even tried their hand at colonialism when it came time to start claiming remote Pacific islands during the guano craze.
Hawaiian infantrymen wore Union Army-style uniforms, in a different shade of blue. The Kingdom of Hawaii also contributed at least three volunteer Zouave regiments to the American civil war, and if Mark Twain is to be believed, one even wore the sort of red trimming you see on the “New York Zouaves” Federal card.
I know people elsewhere have been puzzled when I say that Hussars should be the mainstay cavalry unit for the civ, but the Hawaiians only ever raised a single standing cavalry unit, and it wore, in succession, American, Garibaldi-like Italian, and then Napoleonic French uniforms. All of these civs in game have the Hussar. (Yes, the Leleiohoku palace guard unit was also cavalry, but they were explicitly a militia unit and I think they’d be better off as a Dragoon-style force instead.)
The Hawaiians organized their Oahu-based militia along British lines, most notably the Hulumanu militia regiment which was active for more than a century and also used British weapons. The only difference being that their soldiers eschewed the bayonet and deliberately opted for swords, spears, and clubs instead.
If we get the civ, there will probably not be some exotic hula dancing, surving civ with island vibes and spear-flinging boar hunters. These are probably going to be unique “church” technologies locked behind a “First Hawaiian Renaissance” card and only available in the Industrial Age.
Pretty sure that developing an AoE3 civ costs much higher than developing an AoE2 civ, even though some elements can be reused. We can reasonably assume that maintaining an AoE3 civ also costs higher than maintaining an AoE2 civ as we can see how difficult to keep the balance in AoE3, not to mention debugging.
Now there is 22, and I’d say it could be stopped at about 30, and guess that no more than 36. In the other hand, I’d say about 60 as for AoE2. There will definitely be a limit point, and AoE3 will be much earlier than AoE2 due to its higher cost and smaller market.
There is even a consensus on the potential civs in the forum, like Persians, Brazilians, and Siamese. I just keep to support some choices to make up a combination suitable to being a DLC, like Persians+Omanis, Brazilians+Mapuche, Siamese+Burmese, Danes+Polish-Lithuanians, and Kongolese+Zimbabweans. But eventually there will not a split for the existing civs because there will still options better than a split when we hit the point, at least in my opinion.
Revisions on revolutions still remaining to be reworked (ie Chile, Barbary States, Hungary, Romania)
Balance pass on the revolutions to ensure they are all viable and reasonably playable, this includes QoL things like having counters for “fighting villagers” (ie, especially Canada, Finland, French Revolution), reasonable offensive and/or defensive tools to play a long game if the all-in fails, reasonable choices of land- and naval-focused revolutions, update on the tool-tips to help players choose.
Improved AI - specifically, AI that can function as a teammate, AIs that don’t stalemate late-game and just sit there idle, AIs that know how to use all units available to them (ie no fixed gun wagons tanking for cavalry), AIs that are capable of using several viable decks/strategies, and ideally an APM limit to mirror what a human is capable of doing because that late-game, high-difficulty unit spam forcing multi-hour-long games SUCKS.
AI that is capable of operating on water maps
Better balanced AI skill level, so I don’t watch Aztec or Hausa throw units away all game and end up with 1:2 or worse kill:loss ratios if they survive at all, and so I don’t see Gall (Sioux) in the game and know that side will lose or Maurice (Dutch) and know that side will win with an army of 15-20 cannons and next to nothing else.
Give the Iroquois and to a lesser extent the Indians a viable renewable late-game wood source. Viable. Not relying on shipments. Not relying on my allies to not cut down all the trees. Reliable.
Outlaws finally given some role in the game unique from mercenaries and enough to justify actually using the things in a regular game in my army. Not just as an ultra-rare emergency unit in Age 2, and not only if I pick a particular civ and send 3-4 cards to make it viable.
Optimize the game’s MP interface
Optimize the game’s performance to avoid halts, freezes, crashes, etc. I don’t want to watch the game try to write a novel to my hard disk every time an age flips or an AI is defeated, and I don’t want to see the game go into a crash-recovery-memory dump loop at the end of every vs AI game I play. Get the game to run as smoothly as possible with all the final coding in place.
I know this next part will be unpopular, but I don’t see much of any need for a new civ. Every strategic focus I can think of is already well represented in the game, including high-flexibility and hybrid options. I don’t want to see carbon copy civs or bloat added for “representation.” That adds nothing interesting to the game and I don’t want to see complexity added (that is, a new mechanic or resource or other fiddly stuff) added just to justify a new civ. The game is complex enough. I also don’t want to see much more unit renaming. Not every unit in the game has to be “unique,” nor should copy-pasting a unit, fiddling a few numbers up or down, and slapping on a translated name be considered a substitute for actually unique unit concepts. We don’t need another copy of a hussar or a musketeer, and I darn sure don’t want to see a DLC try to exploit such a thing as a cash grab like AoE2 has done. Much to their credit, this dev team has held a higher standard than this and I’d like to see that standard maintained.
I don’t want to see Zulu added as yet another infantry swarm civ (see offensive version: Aztec and defensive version: Inca already in the game). I don’t want to see another infantry-artillery heavy gunpowder empire (ie. Persia) Ottoman and India both do this already. Ottoman have the slower army and bigger guns. India has better cavalry support and a faster army and guns on elephants. The Safavid army looked essentially the same as the Ottoman one, but with cav support from various Turkic tribes. I absolutely do NOT want to see another cavalry-focused civ (ie Poland or Slava Ukra… whatever). We already have France and it’s gendarmes. We already have Russia and it’s cossacks, oprichniks, and cav archers. And we also have Sioux and Hausa and a fair number of revolutions that all focus cav too. We have winged hussars and cossacks already in the game. I don’t want to see Siam or Korea or Mongolia or any other minor group shoehorned into the Asian civ motif without having a fully-fleshed out set of options, historical references, valid wonders, valid consulate options, etc. None of these were major players, let alone “empires” during this game’s time period, and if there is no truly new and unique concept (concept, specifically, not just translated unit names imprinted onto archetypes already in the game, and no new mechanics just to add complexity) to justify them, don’t add them.
And just for the argumentative sort. I did not think the USA or Mexico needed to be anything more than revolutions. Adding them looked like market chasing and favoritism and it created a slippery slope for players now demanding every nation in the Western hemisphere be added as their own federal-style civ. I didn’t support adding Italy (it wasn’t even a country til the 1800s) or Malta (which we only know about because of a single battle), and I thought the archaic knights focus was wrong for the AoE3 time period.
The game is largely done. It’s been through 2 full development cycles now: the original and this one with the DE team. There’s just not much more it needs. I’d love to see some more single player content. I’d love to see another full-fledged campaign. But those are long shots given they’re unlikely to be enough to justify a DLC + charge to pay the programmers for doing the work. That’s ok. Just polish it up, IMO.
Yes, ultimately leave that region to the Tatars or Georgians or simply to continue being Russian territory post-18th century…
Of course, of course, or the same Aztecs and Mexicans who share home city…
Yes, I agree…
Very difficult, unless Big Huge Games takes charge of the AoE 3 dlcs like they did with TAD…
Don’t worry about the chronology, from TWC it goes until 1876 (that is, all the post-colonial civs of the 19th century can enter: USA, Mexico, Hausa-Sokoto Caliphate and the historical battles of the 19th century)…
There are not many civs left that do not appear in historical battles or campaigns: Dutch, Swedes, Incas, Italians and Maltese…
I don’t think they’ll do another native rework again…
You can rename the wonders into landmarks and that’s it…
I would prefer Tupi to have another native South American civ…
The devs already said that they are not going to divide India or Germany, at most they will add new civs…
It wouldn’t change much about the Mayan rev of the Mexicans…
That’s true…at least we can have like 50 civs…
The devs included Malta and the USA simply as nods to Morgan and Amelia’s campaigns…
Look, I didn’t know that, but you’re right considering that Hawaii was unified in 1795 to 1810 and from then on it had a lot of British and American influence (in fact, almost the US and Great Britain went to war again for the 3rd time once in Hawaii in the 1850s)…
Yes, I think you can reach 36 civs (several new ones from Asia, Africa and post-colonial ones) and then make the rest revs (as if alluding to the revolutions of 1820, 1830 and 1848 in Europe)…
You would still be missing Denmark, Poland and new civs from Asia…
Persia was one of the gunpowder empires that fought against the Ottomans and the Mughals…you cannot simply leave out a mythical civilization, from the saga, like Persia (especially considering that in the last dlc of AoE 2 they included the rise of the Safavids)…
The Maltese had colonies in the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago) in the 17th century…so they do fit into the game…
Yes, but we should not be pessimistic either… if AoE 2 continues to receive DLCs and it is a game that is almost 25 years old, why can we not continue receiving DLCs, even if AoE 3 is almost 20 years old, which will be in 2025?..the devs love the saga as much as we do, it’s just that the budget that World Edge gives them is limited, but if it were up to them, they would make dlcs for all the games…
Yes, but it is understandable, obviously they did not occupy all of Austrialia in one year xd…
You most certainly can. The game has existed for nearly 20 years without it just fine. The fact is that Persia had it’s hay day during the Achaemid (sp?) dynasty, not during the period of this game. It was largely defensive during the Safavid period, took very little territory, but held its own. Now, why not add it? Because you can’t make it unique in terms of the game play mechanics. It doesn’t fit easily into the Asian civ motif or the Euro civ motif. It’s army was extraordinarily similar in terms of how you’d translate it to this game, to the Ottoman empire’s army. And we already have an artillery-focused siege/anti-siege civ (Malta) in the game. If you can’t make it feel unique, don’t add it. And no, slapping a bunch of unpronounceable Persian names on units and HC cards doesn’t make anything “unique” in terms of the game play mechanics.
Just because they owned an island does not make them an “empire,” nor does that alone justify addition to the game. Denmark owned Greenland. It’s not in the game. Poland had some obscure island. It’s not in the game. I’m sure there are plenty of others. Malta is in the game because the siege focus was a new and interesting concept and they were able to borrow assets already completed from the campaigns.
Who’s being pessimistic? I’m simply saying they’ve finished out the game, content-wise. It’s in a much better spot than the original game was in terms of strategic options and depth of play. In fact, I’d argue they have overdone it in places and made the game more complicated than it needed to be. More doesn’t always mean “better.”
Well, it was the first dynasty that unified all of Persia since the Sassanids; besides, it is strange that it is not in the game, when it fought against its neighbors (Ottomans, Mughals, Russians, even Portuguese)…
Well, you can do like the Indians but with Persian wonders and you would only have to put in unique units from the armies of Abbas and Nader Shah…
True, but at least they tried to create a “colonial empire”…
They will arrive…first they decided to focus on the Mediterranean (that is, Italy and Malta) and then they will focus on the Baltic (Denmark and Poland)…
Yes, don’t think too much about that…they had the assets and units and said,“that’s it, let’s put Malta into the game”…
I still think that they are going to continue releasing dlcs… AoE 2 DE came out in 2019 and they continue to release dlcs like hotcakes; because now they focus on Retold does not mean that they are going to stop releasing dlcs for AoE 3…
“In my opinion, there are still missing European civilizations that must be polished like Spain, I would like each European civilization to be unique, unique units, unique buildings, unique ships, etc., etc. In short, European civilizations need a rework just like the one Russia had.”
Like buddy said, I think dev should forcus first on this, in the case of Russia, when you played this civ before the big update of the middle of the year, I had the feeling to play just an Euro civ like many others, here after the update, we have the feeling to play Russia with it’s own units. I would like they do the same with other Euro civs.
For DLC, my opinion is also to favor the Euro first, I agree that we need the Danes and Poland, and what do you think about adding historical civil battles, like the Tatar States and Barbary?
Tatar because of the Crimean Khanate, conquered by Russia in the second half of the 18th century, and Barbary States because I believe there was talk at one time of adding them. There were actually three of them (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, of course independent of the Ottoman Empire) and they posed a lot of problems for the Europeans at that time, so I think they deserve their place.
Only one civ needs to be added for completionist’s sake: Persia. The safanids were immensely powerful and a gunpowder empire, and the country was never fully controlled by colonial powers (excluding WW2, when it was occupied by the allies)
On the other hand, it needs lots of maps, covering central Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, and the holes in East Asia and Europe.
Yes, too, but I prefer the Omanis for it to be a Middle Eastern dlc, and you can save the Uzbeks for a Central Asian dlc with the Tatars (from Crimea obviously) (and make it a TLK type but for AoE 3)…
Yeah, Crimea was in the Ottoman’s pocket, though like all Protectorate/similar, they basically did what they want.
Kazakhs however are a million times more unique and offer us a true nomadic/semi nomadic civ and clashed with many civs already in AoE3. A much stronger candidate.
Ottomans should offer Protectorates as rev options which allow Ottoman variants (sorry, aoe4 term there!) rather than revolutions. They basically ruled themselves with the occasional order/guidance from the Ottomans.
If they add a Hawaiian civ, they could perhaps have them maintain a more distinctly Polynesian flavor (e.g. warriors with shark-toothed clubs, wooden or bamboo houses, etc.) in the first three ages and then adopt a more Western aesthetic like what you described for the final two ages. The game’s time frame starts in the 1500s, and I would think the indigenous Hawaiians still had what we think of as their traditional culture back then.
