I can’t believe what they’re doing to my big video game love, which I’ve been playing since I was 7 years old. I’m honestly speechless and have been sitting in my chair staring at the wall for the past hour. Jurchens and Khitans seem like perfectly fine choices, but adding the Three Kingdoms to the base game is beyond my understanding.
1.) They’re all China. Now we have one Chinese civilization and three different versions of basically the same thing.
2.) The time period: why do we need to go back to the years 220–280? Age of Empires II is mostly centered around the medieval period. Civilizations like the Goths, Romans, Bohemians, Huns etc. still feel way more fitting than these new additions.
3.) There are way better civ choices that would fit the Chinese theme and the time period of the game—like the Tibetans, Dali, or Tanguts. You could even go for the Uyghurs, the Qara Khitai, or the Champa people.
4.) Since when do we add kingdoms and not peoples or ethnicities? That really messes with the continuity of the game.
They originally advertised Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings with the phrase “Rome has fallen and the world is up for grabs,” so no civilization before 476 should have been added.
I am sorry, but no, this is in no way comparable to the Romans
They are more than finely fitting into AoE2 timeline, this ridiculous attempt to conflate the two as the same issue has to stop
When did I say this?
Just because the state was collapsing does not mean the civilization suddenly disappeared. Where was the great Hunnic Empire by that time then?
At least their peak is closer to the beginning to the time frame. My mental image of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages is a dying corrupt empire whose ranks are filled with “Barbarians” wrecking it. Not exactly the thing you’d want for AOE2.
They literally collapsed before the Western Romans did. Remnants of Roman states still existed even after.
There is a lot of plausibility to have a WRE type of civ that is fitting
Huns initiated the Great Migration which makes them 1000x times more worthy to be in the game than Romans which are just dying in the AOE2 time frame if we’re generous enough to start it from 450.
I can probably throw the time line being 500-1600 for AOE2 away though, so of course your Romans were great around 117 CE which completely is in the time line of AOE2 now. Looking forward when they’re going to add the Scythians and the Olmecs as well going by their recent track record /s
I’m sorry but those are just double standards to me.
So what? The Romans created the conditions for the entirety of Europe to end up as it did in the campaigns in the first place all while outlasting the Huns physically and politically.
The timeline only BECAME exactly that after the expansions with the addition of the Age of Discovery campaigns, the end was artificially selected after. Why do civs that exist around these times have to be added when they are great? That comes off as a madeup pre-requisite you want to enforce, considering Celts were not great.
There is no double standard. My qualms with the 3 Kingdoms have less to do with the timeline, and more to do with the fact that these are 3 regimes with 0 distinction between each other, unlike Romans (Italian peninsular people) vs. Italians (Lombard influenced) vs. Sicilians (Norman influenced)
Most of the game is just loosely based on history. So its very obvious to see several historical inaccuracies. Same goes for the time period.
Since it seems like a lot of people do care about their history being represented the right way, devs should discuss with the insiders from the chosen region to better understand what factions can be considered a separate civ.
