Apart from the Chinese civ who are in AoM 1, I think this is a good selection of civs. Since AoM 1 has 5 civs, AoM 2 could have 10. Atlanteans civ could be replaced by Romans civ.
Greeks
Norse
Egyptian
Moche (south america)
Africans (many options of tribes)
China (of course)
Indians (Vedic period)
And alot of maps with a Late bronze age (collapsed) theme, like minoan ruins, babylonian ruins etc
***To me Mayans and Aztecs doesnt make sense because of the time period, and they have a lot of human sacrifice in their myths and I dont think they will bring this up in a game (I was hopping in the new AOE3 Aztec patch)
Slavs would be an awesome addition. It would be cool to see how the Greek/Egyptian/Norse mythical units fare against werewolves, vampires, witches, and demonic babies with bat wings lol.
I might get a lot of hate for that but I wouldn’t want to miss out on Atlanteans. They’re a fun civ to play and I really like their architecture as well as voice acting. Sure, it’s made up, but it gives some extra spice.
A lot of great ideas! However, IF there ever will be a AoM2 (let’s hope) I really pray that they doesn’t remove the orignial mythologies from the first game because in my opinion those are what makes AoM work so good and without those it just wouldn’t feel like an AoM game.
I’d love to see more added like the Japanese or Mayan etc but please don’t change the original civs.
AoM2 would have different gameplay anyway.
AoE4 doesn’t have the same civilisations that AoE2 has and those that are the same have different gameplay.
AoE4 China has a fucus on gunpowder while AoE2 China has nearly no gunpowder units.
The voice clips are different anyway. (AoE3DE uses some AoE2DE ones now though.)
I think according to some leaks the Athlantians where supposed to be Romans originally which kinda makes sense considering what kind of units they have.
The concept of having villagers that don’t need drop of points could be used by a different civilisations too.
Their architecture kinda think of the New World civilisations in a way. And you could argue that Atlantians = Olmecs or early Maya. Both are across the Atlantic after all.
I kinda like the idea to use Native Americans as Atlantians. That would allow adding a real Mythology and while also linking the Old and the New World.
I don’t think that’s a good limitation and the difference between existing and extinct is hard.
It’s relatively clear that basically anyone who practices Norse, Greek or Egyptian paganism today doesn’t do so out of a tradition but as some kind of Neo Paganism.
But for other groups this distinction is less clear. There is a clear line of people practising Zoroastrianism since ancient times and a lot of East Asian societies more or less still have the old believes.
That would mean that Japanese or Korean mythology wouldn’t be possible.
The same goes for many people in the Americans.
Basically any place that didn’t have an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity or Islam) for a century still has some people sticking to old believes.
But I think it would be better to depict those believes in their old forms and not in the way they are practised today.
For example for India it wouldn’t be the modern Hinduism but instead the old Vedic religion or for Japan it wouldn’t be the new Shintoism or even Buddhism but the old believes before Buddhism arrived in Japan.
What you say makes sense, but even depicting these religions in their older forms has its risks. I am from India, and I know that people here can be incredibly touchy when it comes to their faith. Even proper depiction may be seen as an insult where none is meant. That’s why I think the developers would avoid using existing religions, especially ones like Hinduism. Though I’d love to have them included.
Yeah it would be a bit hard to find a good middle ground but I think it’s worth it in this case.
You can’t do things like showing the sacrifice of cattle for example even though it was practised in ancient time.
Some religious practices might have to be ignored completely like human sacrifice.
Mycenaeans / Minoans
Greeks
Celts
Egypt / Ptolemaic Egypt and Ancient Egypt
Chinese
Hittites
Phoenicians
Romans
Carthaginians
Olmecs ( Aztecs were medieval, however, Olmecs belong to ancient age)
Sumerians / Babylonians
Idians / Maurya dynasty
Japanese
Germanic or Slavic
Bonus: People of the Sea (responsible for helping to end the Bronze Age)
Minoans are something completely different. Sadly we barely know anything about their mythology because we don’t know their language and we can’t read Linear A script.
Carthagians are Phoenicians but they are definitely a good pick.
Similar Issue here. We just don’t know enough.
Mayans would probably be the best pick because they are old enough (older then Japanese for example) and we know a lot more about their mythology.
Who are they?
That is still up for debate. They were likely a mix of people.
They could work in a historic game but not in an AoM.
I’d love to he the Hittites. they are one of my favourite underrated civilisations of world history.
They could also perfectly work as Troy for the campaign.
Indeed some of these civilizations share the same culture/religion and others don’t have enough information. I think if we’re going to have a large number of ancient age civilizations, we’ll have to wait for an " Age of Empires 5 ".
Now, some other civilizations have modifications… example of the Romans, who were inspired by the Greek Gods, but the Romans modified the names and several other details, thus creating their own.
I’m also curious to know… Hebrew Civilization, which has its own culture, religion, history, monsters. Could they be put into the game?
other…
I would like to imagine, which period AoM2 will take place… will it only be until the bronze age, or will we be able to have iron and who knows, rustic steel?
In short, AoM2 has a lot that could be done… but I think that certain things might not appear…
Myceneans are just early Greeks. The Greeks from the legends (like Trojan Wars) are just Myceneans.
Minoans are very different people but because they got replaced by the Myceneans (Greeks) we don’t know much about them and their religion outer then that bulls where very important. That’s how the Minotaur myth got created.
One can only dream.
Olmecs would perfectly fit into AoE1 though.
It’s a bit more complicated.
The Romans (or Italian people in general) as well as the Greeks, Germanic, Celtic, etc. had the same origins so they already had similar gods and mythology. But then on top of that the Roman got heavily influenced by the Greeks over time so their Religion was changed to be more similar to the Greek one.
The Romans had enough unique religious traditions and mythology to be worth their own Civilisation, especially early Rome.
Late Rome had more then just Greek influence as can be seen by the fact that the Egyptian god Isis had a temple in a place as far away as London.
A monotheistic religion is harder to fit into the game. The Jews unlike the Christians don’t have Saints that could be used as a replacement for gods.
The original AoM already had an early medieval civilisation with the Norse. Northern Europe didn’t have a Bronze Age. They basically went directly from Stone to Iron Age.
I think a Mythological setting has the advantage that it’s more reasonable to have civilisations from different time periods.
For example the Japanese people didn’t even live in Japan yet at a time where we already have many documents for China.
The ancestors of Japanese people migrated to Japan around 750-250 BC which is well after the Bronze Age.
The Yamato period of Japan starts around the same time as the Qin dynasty.
btw.there is no Steel Age.
Steel is as old as iron. When making iron you usually also produce some steel. Just that for a long time people didn’t know how to reliably produce high quality steel. This only really happened in the Middle Ages.
AoM just had Copper Bronze and then Iron upgrades at the blacksmith.
Sadly the visuals didn’t match, they were Copper, Iron and Gold.
