How to solve a problem like the Three Kingdoms

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Alright, for the forum-goers reading, this is an idea pitch. And for the devs (and I know you’re reading this). I’m angry, you know I’m angry, you know I know you know I’m angry. So let’s cut to the chase; solutions.

There are multiple ways this can be done, each varying in the amount of work required. I am going to cover each as thoroughly as necessary, and list the pros and cons.

A: Banish the Three Kingdoms from ranked into a Chronicles-type mode

Pros:

  • Gets rid of the problem civs
  • Easy to do

Cons:

  • People that paid for 5 civs will be angry
  • Does not solve the Khitanguts problem

B: Rename the Three Kingdoms civs and their heroes to generic names

Pros:

  • Not technically Three Kingdoms civs
  • People that paid for 5 civs will be happy
  • Easy to do

Cons:

  • Nobody who dislikes the Three Kingdoms civs will buy this option and will still be angry. Problem not solved
  • Does not solve Khitanguts
  • Does not solve heroes

C: Rework the Three Kingdoms civs ala Indians → Hindustanis along with the Khitanguts. Meanwhile add a Chronicles-type mode with the original Three Kingdoms civs to keep the campaigns intact

Pros:

  • People angry about Three Kingdoms civs will be happy
  • People that bought the DLC for 5 civs will be happy

Cons:

  • Takes more work than the former two

Ok, this needs more detail.

First. The Three Kingdoms civs are…not great. Even taking away all the baggage of what they represent, these civs are really twisting themselves awkwardly due to their lack of basic stuff like trebuchets, and all have issues with their representations of the Three Kingdom states. Plus not many people like a lot of their units, which are almost universally seen as clunky (especialyl the non-castle ones). They need serious work. (History time, skip if not interested)

Wei is…completely Xianbei (a non-Chinese people) who formed a dynasty called the Northern Wei. The hyper-focus on cavalry is also a bit of an exaggeration, as the Cao Wei territory isn’t that conducive to cavalry warfare. The Tiger Cavalry, castle, Xianbei Raider and wonder are all incorrect in some way(hehe, Wei) or another.

The Shu’s War Chariot is incredibly anachronistic. Chariots stopped seeing usage on Chinese battlefields centuries before the birth of Christ. We can attest to this, because Cao Cao’s revision of Sun Tzu’s Art of War was done specifically because Cao Cao noticed it mentioned out of date units like the war chariot. tldr; chariots were not a thing post the turn of the 1st century outside of parts of South Asia.

And then there is just how…random the bonuses feel. A lot just don’t seem to make sense, or are really odd and gamey. Likely a result of having to make a whole civ from a 60-year-long state…

(History rant over) So how do we solve this? Keep in mind, none of this is about balance, as that’s a “cross that bridge when we come to it” element.

Before we start, a blanket change. Remove all heroes and replace with trebuchets, then remove the Traction Trebuchet.

Wei:
First, the easy one. The Wei can be changed into the Xianbei. This wouldn’t take much effort at all.

  • Change their icon, unique tech names & civ name
  • Look into their unique techs and bonuses to see if they fit the Xianbei well enough
  • Switch their voice lines to Mongolian

And really that’s it for them.

Shu:
This one isn’t so bad. Change them into the Bai, for this you need to do a bit more, but not a huge amount.

  • Change their icon, unique tech names & civ name
  • Change them to an archer and infantry civ
  • Remove the War Chariot and replace it with the scorpion
  • Improve their cavalry a bit by giving them Iron Casting
  • Add the Fire Lancer. The Bai kingdom of Dali were close traders with the Song, and this would give them more of an infantry vibe with more utility
  • Look into their unique techs and bonuses to see if they fit the Bai well enough
  • Have them speak the Bai language. It’s not a dead language, shouldn’t be that difficult compared to Cuman, Old Persian or Chagatai

Wu:
Ok, this is the problem one, but it’s also an opportunity to fix the Khitanguts.

For this, the Wu would be changed to the Tanguts. For those that don’t know, Tanguts were the people to the west of China, descended from the Tibeto-Burman ethnic group. They were primarily focused on cavalry and infantry, so let’s begin…

  • Change their icon, unique tech names & civ name
  • Change them to a Cavalry & Infantry civilisation
  • Give them fully-upgraded Cavalry Archers
  • Remove dock bonuses
  • Remove the Fire Archer and replace with a new UU; the Iron Sparrowhawk (Iron Hawk if character space is an issue)
  • Give them the Khitanguts castle model
  • Edit the Sanchi Stupa model to remove the gates and give them that for a wonder. As it heavily resembles Xi Xia imperial tombs.
  • Remove the Jian Swordsman
  • Give them the Mounted Trebuchet unit. This is their unit, and only they were recorded using them.
  • Give them access to gunpowder units. The Tanguts have some of the earliest recorded cannons. Hand Cannoneer, Fire Lancer, Bombard, Cannon Galleon etc, something, go nuts.
  • Have them speak Tangut. There are people who posted a link to a deciphered Tangut script on this forum.

That should be the bare minimum to get them working as Tanguts.

Finally, bonus round:

Khitans:

  • Remove the Mounted Trebuchet
  • Give them a new castle model based on something the Khitans actually built
  • Change their designation to just a cavalry civ.
  • Probably change Lamellar Armour. This civ is really really complicated already, it does not need all of this at once.
  • Give them their own voice lines. Do you want Khitan script? Because I have deciphered enough Khitan script for most of the AoE2 voice lines. Literally contact me and I will hand it to you.

Oh and while we are here…

Jurchens:

  • Give them Manchu voice lines

Alright, that was fairly long, but I have one more potential solution…

D: Add a Chronicles-type mode with the original Three Kingdoms civs, and replace their absence with brand-new civs.

Pros:

  • People get the civs they have been asking for for years
  • People that bought the DLC for 5 civs are happy

Cons:

  • This is the most work

I’m not going to go into too much detail on this, as the designs for new civs from scratch are the devs proclivity. So just to make sure I’m clear…

  • Remove Wei, Wu & Shu
  • Add the Tibetans, Tanguts & Bai as new civs
  • Remove the Mounted Trebuchet and Tangut castle from the Khitans
  • Give Khitans & Jurchens their voice lines

This is the hardest work, but it does bring the biggest payoff and can potentially turn this entire debacle from a negative into a positive. People will be happy that the devs have listened and put in the most effort to sort this whole situation out, and it will return the goodwill that the giga-patch earned and then some.

But, that’s just my thoughts on the various potential roads ahead. The choice is yours…

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Unfortunately I think the problem is largely unfixable. They can’t go back in time and not lie to us and if like me you find the lies abhorrent, then you can’t ask WE to go back on the other promises they made to other fans for the inclusion of 3k.

WE can’t really fix anything without breaking a promise to someone, as is the consequence of promising mutually exclusive things to different players.

Best case at this point is to make 3k as ignorable as possible. Add a civ ban, and anybody that doesn’t want to play against wu, shu, and xianwei can ban them.

There are plenty of things WE could do on top of that to try to restore player trust, but I doubt we’ll see much if anything.

They’ve repeatedly demonstrated they’re quite willing to lie to us to further their goals and I see no reason to believe this is any different.

I’ll continue to share what so many of us “hate” as the devs said, but mostly to make the record clear when they ignore us.

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The one thing I see for giving hope that they will do something is the “post more about what you hate” bit. That’s as close to admitting there’s a problem as I have seen from corpo-speak. But more importantly, it’s a very strange thing to ask for if you’re not planning to do anything.

Think about it. Going “please make more noise and potentially put people off by pulling the covers off and showing the emperor has no clothes” is a horrendous idea if there are no plans to fix things. As if you don’t fix things, you make your own areas to talk about your product into an even angrier space if nothing is delivered.

It’s planting a bomb and sitting on it. Not something I have seen often. Is this a good sign? Or a ballsy game of chicken? Not sure, but this along with the interesting replies to negative reviews has me slightly hopeful for the first time in weeks.

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Yeah unfortunately I believe that now that they are released theres no going back

I will have to live with the idea that the potential of AoE2 wont be fulfilled by keeping the official release intact, and that I qill forever cringe in multiplayer and specially watching casted games whenever stuff like the Wu appear

To me its a sign that modders shouldnt have any reason to keep any of the new DLC civs intact if they feel like doing an expansion in vanilla style. Before this I thought that Burgundy, Sicily or Romans were a disapointment or a waste but that it was a harmless one worth keeping, now if we need to replace the 3K may as well replace those ones and feel free tp use their bonuses

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I hope the higher-ups realize that “cringe” is not the type of feeling you want highly engaged players to have when watching casted games or tournaments.

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I mean teasing Jurchens and Tanguts, and saying you weren’t splitting chinese, then releasing Jurchens and Khitanguts and splitting chinese is similarly a very strange thing to do…but I see your point.

Why say anything if they weren’t at least open to make some changes. If they had no intention to make any changes they’d just double down on the corporate speak of how awesome everything is.

“Our goal is to preserve the game you like” is such as weird statement out of context. And corporate speak using “hate” in any context beside outright condemnation of the concept is pretty unorthodox.

I’d assumed corporate speak delay and placate. But that’d be playing with fire.

After V&V and V&V2 I’d committed myself to listening to what the devs say…and then assuming the exact opposite is what’s actually closer to the truth. I’m still going to assume they intend to make no meaningful changes, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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In favor of this, though it make sense about the upset towards “5 civs”. But technically it’s still 5 civs right? We’ve been there before: V&V technically are “campaigns”. Right???
The only player base I definitely see hurting is those who really want 3K in ranked, and the DLC seems to have promised ranked play.

The problem is now I can’t unsee that they were 3K to begin with. Not without lots of rework, which I think is better spent on making new proper civs and Kitanguts. Which brings me to:

and

I like this more than A. However, I don’t see the new content happening in the near future.

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As passionate as people here are, the DLC is not that bad in terms of reviews, it has a better approval than return of rome and they kept the Romans. The three kingdoms are being massively played, you’ll see the stats.

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Oh yeah, I fully appreciate that things that take more effort take longer.

But if the devs/social media team learn that BETTER COMMUNICATION IS KEY, then they should at least make people aware of the direction of travel beforehand.

I think you’ve forgotten what happened.

That one they added the Romans because people complained.

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I said this before but we would need another DLC to fix this one. Similar way the DoI fixed the Indians from TF.
@Tyranno13 great analysis and solutions. We can only hope. Thanks.

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It’s a good lesson for the devs that, no matter how good you try to make the gameplay and civ design, people will still be disappointed if the vibes are wrong. Ultimately, all civs only have small differences between each other, and a lot of casual players don’t really care about the specifics of civ bonuses and tech tree balance - what a lot of people care about are the names and overall vibes of the civs. The devs shot themselves in the foot by announcing there would be five new civs before revealing the theme. The Three Kingdoms civs don’t fit thematically into the main game, but I do love the idea of expanding the game to other periods and game modes if done differently. It wouldn’t take much to adjust the implementation of this DLC and fix the vibes.

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DLC is that bad in term of review. If you go to steam, it’s rated mixed, which is already a big red flag. And those are the people who bought and review it. Now, add the people who don’t buy it because they boycott it, see the problem?

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Option D is the most ideal solution, just throw those new unit assets into the scenario editor, make the 3K civs into their own weird gamemode and add 3 new civs that actually fit with the concept of the game (and if it’s not too much to ask, have them be well researched).

But, I doubt that’s going to happen, as it’s too much work to do for free.

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What’s going to happen is they’ll add the other civs missing to anyone who purchased the dlc

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I think the best solution would be to announce a new DLC and say everyone that, before this announcement, bought TTK will get the new DLC for free. New DLC adds Jurchen, Khitans and Tanguts, with their proper campaigns. Former TTK loses Jurchens and Khitanguts, becomes a new game mode, like Chronicles, with its own architecture and goes down to 10-15 dollars.
They’ll lose some money, but you cant expect to get only win-win scenarios when you fucked up so much in a product. Rather lose your rings than your fingers.

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Personally I don’t care about campaigns (I’ve never played a single one). For me, simply removing the 3K civs from ranked and splitting Khitans into two (Khitans + Tanguts) would be fine. I’ve previously talked about how Khitans right now have too many gimmicky technologies and bonuses for one civ.

If they just did this, I would happily buy the DLC.

Later on they can do further refinements to the civs (like adding voice lines).

Also, perhaps they could give the (OG) Chinese civ the Hei Guang Cavalry (instead of Knights). Then that 3K unit/asset would not go to waste.

And by the way, if there’s any one unit from the 3K civs I find intriguing, it is the Fire Archer. So if they used that as the Tangut UU (maybe slightly modified), I wouldn’t object to it. Then they wouldn’t have to create any new unique units. Tanguts could also take over Llamelar Armor from Khitans. That would make Khitans less “bloated” as well. (Although if it was completely up to me, I’d rather remove that tech from the game altogether).

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Exactly, good list. Altho I am european I still whanna see more diverse chinese civs in ranked. But medieval as you did here.

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The problem qith that is thats still only three out of five

Unless we get five quite a few people will complain, we have already seen that on the forum

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changes on the horizon are on the table maybe? they want to know what peoples hate*
yeah this is mostlikely for the DLC.

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I doubt many people would complain about only receiving two or three civs (for ranked) instead of five.

The people you hear on forums complaining about this are clearly just narcissists who wants everyone to pander to them. They don’t really play the game. They don’t care about the game. They probably didn’t even buy the DLC.

People who bought this DLC fall into two camps: Noobs who got it just for the single player campaigns, and veteran players who wants to support the game. Neither category of players will care if the amount of multiplayer civs are changed from five to three.

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