A heavy infantry doesn’t really match the image of Trekker Infantry. I agree. However, Trekker Infantries were really heavily armored but rapid in the history.
But that Liao Dao sprite works as another Chinese unit might also be good idea. It really looks like Podao or Zhanmadao/Horse Cutter.
Well, I think that is more likely saying the Romans and Italians should be merged into one civ. If only Xianbei and Khitan are integrated into one civ, that is still OK, as I think, devs might move the UU and castle to Tangut.
In my conception, Khitan or Xianbei might own Imperial Cavalry Archer(equipped with crossbow) and Imperial Steppe Lancer(wiht horse armor) as UU, with UT Iron Forest Army to add 20HP, 1Armor, 1PA to their horse units, UT Ordo to allow the player package and move the TC.
Many of us often say “Jurchens and Khitans were the only good additions by the 3K DLC”, but in fact the existence of Liao Dao as a very generic-looking unit with a name that carries no historical importance or distinctiveness, all the Tangut assets and no new voices in fact make them not any better than the Xian-Wei with Xianbei units and wonder, “tiger cavalry” with literal tiger pelts, or the very generic “Jian swordsman”.
Very likely this entire DLC was a few assets that were originally planned for campaigns, editor, generic Chinese regional units or other civs hastily put together. That happened before. Sure. But at such a scale is unprecedented for a “bread and butter” DLC (I don’t count V&V)
I agree that Khitans are not well designed, but I think Jurchens are actually fairly good by recent civ design standards. (I dislike some of their gimmicks and their arbitrary lack of knights, though.)
Well, I’m glad there are already fans concepts for separating Tanguts from Khitans.
Because make civs in AoE2 is easier than other games, as long a Concept it’s well-crafted and there are good unique units to give them, anything is possible in the future.
The Fire Lancer update for the Chinese and the Rocket Cart for the Koreans were already a wonderful addition, so anything is possible.
Me too.
In AoE4 they solved this making 2 types of heavy cavalry: Knights for European Christian Civs, and Lancer for any other civs heavy cavalry.
They should make the same for AoE2, at least would correct some aesthetical problems, as the Huns with paladins.
I agree strongly with the general feeling of separating Khitans and Tanguts, and adding Tibetans in there as well sounds excellent. As for thr implementation, I will defer to others’ judgement this time.
But I appreciate the time of research and creativity you put in this!
That’s one way to solve it, and in general I approve of the idea of different regions having units that are functionally the same but look different (like we have for monks and trade carts). Not so keen on lumping all non-European civs together with a very generically named unit, and in any case AoE2 shouldn’t have a unit called Lancer because it’s too similar to Steppe Lancer.
My real issue is not that knights look European – it’s that Jurchens and Khitans don’t get them but all the adjacent civs (Mongols, Chinese, Koreans, Tatars, etc.) do. I’m not aware of any historical justification for this – it seems to be because recent civ designs follow different principles to earlier civ designs, and one of the new principles is that knights are now considered a European unit rather than a generic one.
This change in design principles is true more generally, and we have a situation now where some older civs have been reworked, but this has only partially resulted in them following the newer principles (e.g. Persians have a non-European heavy cavalry unit, but they still have the European-style ones earlier in the line). Thus while most civ designs are in some sense ok in a vacuum, looking at all civ designs together, the overall picture is now a total mess.