I think they could have make Kalmar Union

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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I think they could have make Kalmar Union Civ using Macedonian Dynasty’s Varangian units.

Just reading the description, it seems a bit bland compared to the original Byzantine. While the Byzantine Cistern system offered significant differences in base construction, the Macedonian Dynasty’s silver system only deals with Arsenal upgrades. Maybe the Arsenal upgrades might offer significant strategic advantages? It would have been even better if they had added other unique features, allowing for a new Nordic civilization like the Kalmar Union.

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It seems like their arsenals would deliver bonuses if are built near Gold veins
And granting Silver instead of Olive Oil for mercenary corps

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Yeah the description reads, but compared to the economic impact of Cistern, it seems rather dull. Could there be other uses for silver?

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What it seems like is they were doing full civs and in some point they lost their minds, money and time in development process.

Now, to compensate a little they are reusing the assets

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It would have been better if they had put a little more effort into making it an independent civilization. It was a great opportunity, but it’s a shame. I’m not saying variant civilizations are bad(Unless it’s something like JD or ZXL), but I can’t shake the feeling that they’ve killed a goose that lays golden eggs.

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The new civ Macedonian Dynasty is fine.

About the “Viking representation” and Swedish Paralelism, well:

I see a lot of similarities between the Macedonians having a metal bonus and the fact that one of my Swedish civ concepts was going to use ORE or IRON as a 5th resource.

And the fact that the Varangians are actually Swedes who migrated to the area of Russia and the Roman Empire, also called Rus, makes me think that when they made the civ they were thinking a lot about how to represent Sweden, but in its Viking period (approximately 800-1000 AD).

In fact, this civ is quite useful, since in the future there could be a Swedish civ of its own, but already in the Medieval to Early Modern periods with the Vasa Dynasty.

More than Byzantines, this civ it’s a way of representing Sweden in its Viking period, using the fact that they worked for the Byzantines at that time. Curiously, by the end of the Macedonian dynasty, Sweden had become Christianized and began banning berserkers, so the Byzantines exported English troops to replace the Varangian Guard.

Kalmar Union

I personally don’t recommend the Kalmar Union for creating your own civ or variant:

  • Lack of unique bonds. While it allowed Denmark, Sweden, and Norway to unite for a time, it was very short, and almost the entire kingdom was spent with Denmark commercially dominating the rest, and Sweden rebelling for the slightest reason, all to maintain private control of their markets.

  • Lack of unique units. The point is that until now, and in the two years since I asked, “no one” has given me examples of unique units for this Kalmar civ. The main reason, I would say, is that historically it lasted so little and never had a unified army, so they even imported Landknechts from the HRE as mercenaries. This is primarily a war game, and unique military units are extremely important; lacking them makes the civ very difficult to express.

  • It was basically Denmark, which could be its own civ and have a Kalmar period. Otherwise, it could also be represented as a period in Sweden, similar to the Chinese dynasties.

I originally planned to make larger concepts and publish them when they were complete. BUT, seeing as the devs are possibly drawing inspiration from concepts, maybe even mine (this Sengoku variant seems to have several ideas from my Japanese concept, and another one made by a user), I’m going to try to release a BETA version of my concepts to inspire more ideas and make more civilizations.