How Variant civs are Killing hopes for potential New civs

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Macedonian Dynasty

Macedonian variant civ has major elements of a potential Viking civ

  • Atgeir was a type of polearm used by vikings . It could have been added to vikings as spearmen. Instead they gave this weapon to Atgeirmadr unit .

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  • Bog simply translates to bow. Bogmadr is simply archer in viking. Another unit taken out of viking list

  • Ridder means knight in Scandinavia. Another unit taken from vikings.

  • Berserk is a viking thing. It should have been a viking mechanic

  • Similarly rune stones should have been a viking thing not byzantine thing

Additionally Varangian guards included Rus, Norman, Anglo-Saxons not just vikings. Then why did they just add Vikings to Varangian civ?

After taking out all the core units and mechanics from a potential Viking civ and giving them to the Macedonian dynasty , and Making Varangians viking only
 I’m afraid devs will say this is the viking civ you will get and no new viking civ. If that is the case it will be very sad because this is not enough to represent a true viking culture. We want a true viking civ with music, architecture, religious mechanic, and ofcourse viking ships.

Tughlaq Dynasty

What can I say? They added every single type of Elephant to this VARIANT civ. If you give worker elephant and healer elephant, two civilian type elephants to a variant civ then I’m afraid they are planning to add few or no new Civ from South/South East Asia. But I want to specifically discuss about Ballista Elephant.

Ballista Elephant is the signature unit of Medieval Khmer empire. Even Civ 6 ackknowledge this. It was the UU of Kmer in AOE 2. When you google Ballista Elephant the first thing they show is Angkor using Ballista elephant in war.

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How can they add this to Tughlaqs??? Even if they added it to Cholas it would still be ok as Cholas interacted with Khmer. There can be only one explanation. Khmer civ is not coming. Tughlaq dynasty also hints a very bad sign, that is AOE 4 will not be getting actual civs in future DLCs.

Knights Templar

Although this variant civ is acutally one of my favorite, It also a concerning addition. It has probably all unique unit of medieval Italian civilization, Can you think of an Italian civ without :

  • Genoese Crossbowman
  • Condottieri
  • Venetial Galleass

Now some may argue KT has mercenary units from France, English and HRE . But Heavy spearman is not a signature/unique unit of English. Chevalier Confrere is not a signature unit of French civ.

Overall if this is the route they are taking then I feel sad for AOE 4 . No vikings, No khmer, No italians does not look good for an AOE game

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Some people said that Macedonian Dynasty and Tughlaq Dynasty are in fact ABORTED VERSIONS of Vikings and Khmer respectively.

I am with them!

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You know what, when the AOE3 DLC added Polish, Danish and several other Eastern European units (with unique voicelines, mind you), including the iconic winged hussar, as natives and mercenaries available for other civs, everyone was speculating they are certainly going to expand them into full Eastern European or Baltic civs

I don’t think the Varangian guard had so many different types of Viking personnels and their unique infrastructure, tbh

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The Vikings ended up as mercenaries of the Byzantines and are precisely the Varangians of this Macedonian dynasty.

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Correct! Norse warriors from (what is now called) Sweden.

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This was something that I was really pissed about because it worried me that the Khmer would end up not getting the Ballista Elephant (though that unit could always get moved to the Khmer if that civ gets added).

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Hopefully Tughlaq Dynasty would be reworked in a future and then Khmer be released with Ballista Elephant as one of its unique units

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This could go 2 ways:

  1. They’ll never make a Scandinavian, Italian or Khmer Civ because they don’t want to duplicate and botch the Variants.
  2. They’ll be incentivised to make these Civs, because they already have some assets developed and can even iterate further.

I’ll never accept #1 because it’s just not right to the game to lose these chances for Microsoft/WE/FE/Relic mismanagement. If they mess it up then it’s their responsibility to fix it.

Frankly, if some Norse Civ was to be added, having shared units with the Macedonian Dynasty wouldn’t be an issue at all. The case of the Khmer and the Tughlaq Dynasty is a bit different but everything can be changed. Even the Knights Templar wouldn’t be an issue, although they can have many UU of other civs, those aren’t in their own context, just like Byzantine mercenaries.

Anyway the fear was there since day 1 of the game, with the Rus having the Horse Archer marked as UU and France having the (not a) Galeass. The Ottomans weren’t released with any kind of horse archers in fact and can only access them through Vizir points. Still better than nothing.

Furthermore on the Galeass
 the French one isn’t that, it’s just some kind of war galley with a big gun in a pillbox. The Galeass is well depicted in AoE III and was a Venetian thing. The extreme irony is that the “Venetian Galeass” of the KT is totally wrong, the Galeass was born with multitudes of cannons, never had trebuchets on them! Stone throwing artillery was totally used but on other kinds of ships, like war galleys. Right now I don’t remember how or even if counterweight trebuchets were employed in Venetian naval warfare, but heavy artillery like that probably went on round ships, on platforms built over 2 or more ships, or on barges.

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I think this is the fear that most of people who are being aggressive against Variants.
It will be great if official give us some relief.

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to me personally, the sultans ascent having 4 bizzare variants was a warning sign, devs trying to sell smt that wasn’t a proper civ but just an asset reuse with some renamings and some fresh mechanics (many of which could’ve been their own civs instead), then knights of cross and rose proved people will still buy the dlc with nothing but variants, so this time they doubled down on that
on the rogue like mode: i specifically don’t call it SP content because we don’t know anything about it, nothing suggesting its proper SP content like historical battles or campaign would’ve been
i’m getting historical maps of aoe3 wibes with this, thats not a good sign

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Indeed. KotM had historical maps because they weren’t given enough budget for historical battles.

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ofc my biggest gripe here is, all these years later, where is CO-OP? how can you miss such an obvious win WE, after doing it right 3 times already in aoe2, 3 and AOM

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Why does “proper SP content” mean “SP content I approve of”? Is the franchise doomed to copy itself forever? Are we going to add nothing new ever again?

I really don’t get it.

Wanting campaigns is fine. Wanting stuff you’re used to is fine. But calling anything different “not proper” is silly. It’s not a space battle. It’s not a deck battler. It’s not a MOBA. It’s an AoE IV game mode that keeps you playing AoE IV.

Also it’s funny that you highlight historical battles as proper content but dismiss people buying into Knights of thr Cross as an acceptance of variants. I prefer it for its historical battles (and I’m not just saying that because I’m originally from the other side of the Pennines to Lancaster). Presumably some others bought it for the same reason as me :wink:

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What makes those “proper” and something new not?

What about before historical battles were even a thing in AoE? Were campaigns the only “proper” single player content then?

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all i’m saying with saying i don’t call it SP content is everything around it is too vague
historical maps in 3 for instance were officially classified as SP content too, but they really weren’t SP only
so the way i see it atm, with lack of info, this new gamemode could be both a skirmish and multiplayer custom lobby setting, nothing negative about it, just not what i’d wish for in terms of fresh content (my list having CO OP on top ofc), hope i make sense

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perhaps i worded it poorly, proper not being best word to use, i don’t oppose any kind of actual single player specific content, but i really don’t wanna see them sell you a lobby setting as a gamemode dlc

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Well I don’t know how good this will be yet, but it’s obvious already that it’s more than a lobby setting.

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So what is SP content?

The biggest criticism I’ve seen (that I agree with) is that the Crucible should be co-op. So what is it then?

If it was a multiplayer mode, wouldn’t that have been advertised?

But I guess if all you’re saying is we don’t know yet, maybe we need a better word than “proper”.

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How would people feel about a variant focused single player campaign? The Sultans Ascend campaign was basically just about the Ayyubids, but had a lot of unique units based around the mission content. It even contained content that would be added later with the Knight’s Templar faction!

I also feel like the new variants were designed in part with feedback from the fanbase, none of them give off the same impression that Order of the Dragon, Zhu Xi Legacy, or Jeanne d’Arc do. They all seem to be tailored around significant factions within their parent civ. I thought it was a great evolution on the variant civ concept.

Not to mention, they offer a bridge to new base civs. It may take some of the features that others could have, such as a potential Dane/Swede civ with the Macedonian Dynasty, but there’s always room for improvement there.

Out of everything that has transpired with the new civs, we can at least say that the devs went in a direction no one expected right? It doesn’t seem like anyone predicted this, so who really knows what comes next!

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Didn’t expect what? For them to listen? Yea maybe they’ll listen and give us real civilizations next.

I’m happy they listened to our idea for what variants should be. But, it ultimately is still a mistake. Stepping in dog poop sucks regardless of how little is on your shoe. In this case, theres two extremes in which variants can fall into, both of which are mistakes.

One, they are a hyper focused alternative to the original. Think how ZXL is effectively China with less restrictions, the trade off being that it has a weaker economy. What it essentially means is that it does some Chinese strategies better than China. Like Zhuge Nu rushing–which we associate with China. In this scenario, ZXL has simply stolen one of China’s strategies and made it better, a case of stealing their original civilization’s thunder. Here you must pose the question, why not simply design China to have such an option to begin with? Better yet, why make a civilization that does it better?

Two, they are designed to be entirely different. Think KT. While this is ultimately more interesting and feels less cheap as mechanically, they stand on their own, it begs the question; why the hell are they not given the full treatment? Music, 3D models, animations and voice lines–by far the MOST expensive part of production by a factor of likely more than 10. And putting aside the fact that we are paying the same price for basically a car with no exterior, radio, seats and windows–the very fact that these mechanics are being “used up” when people are hoping to see them exist within real potential civilizations sucks. Like Ballista Elephants and all of these Norse units are practically flagging that we won’t get these civilizations in the future.

Don’t take the rhetorical questions above as a literal invitation for you to answer them individually.