British church does not change appearance at age 4. And Maltese is still using the Spanish church. There are a lot of real-world models that can be used for both. Anything that fits is okay.
Inca and Aztecs should have a more “religious” community plaza in the form of temples, to separate them out further as a different culture group than Hauds/Lakotas.
Aztecs can get the typical pyramid temple, and give the “Maya castle” a more proper model (such architecture was never used for forts, that’s a mistake since AOE2).
I don’t see many good reconstructions of Inca temples. Are there good materials for that?
Chinese village is out of place. The yurt is a typical Mongol (or steppe) thing and never is part of a “village” in the first place, and it looks very odd among the style of other Chinese buildings. Just replace the two yurt models with small houses consistent with the others. Do you really think "VILLAGE" should be nomadic ger(yurts)?
The yurt model can be re-purposed for future central Asian civs, or neutral buildings.
The Japanese “shrine” is not very “shrine” either. Feels more like a re-purposed normal house. We could keep the main structure and add some more shrine-like details such as a small torii gate and the shimenawa (large ropes). The Asian monastery in AOE2 is a good reference.
I still think manor house should have its own model because why not. For example, like the one in the “terraced house” card:
A more radical thought is to make it a true “manor” (larger than houses), like the manor in AOM, but that also affects gameplay so I’m not sure.
I’ve previously suggested that they change Manor to Cottage a cottage is far more common than a noble’s manor and of course it’s quintessentially British.
The Terraces House shipment could actually change it to a Victorian Town House as well.
There can be change in icons itself, once an upgrade or ageUp is aaplied. curretly the icons for all buildings stay age1 in any givent age. that can be adjusted maybe.
New asthertics are always welcome.
B U T
The changes should be subtle, as there is already a thread that does highlight the problem of too much irregularities that put-off the new players. I would like these asthetic over hauls, but not at cost of new new players.
The number of players on this forum who understand Chinese culture and history is very small, otherwise they can easily see that the “Chinese” in the game has a lot of very weird graphic content.
Regarding the “village”, I think I have said a lot about the irrationality of its current appearance, which does not involve “ethnic issues”. It is more simply a settlement of settlers like a “village”. It is completely unsuitable to use yurts to present.
But there doesn’t appear to be any sign of any changes. Maybe the developers don’t have people who know about East Asian culture.
That has been dropped since aom. Maybe with more unique units it’s hard to make a new icon for each upgrade.
Which is 70% nonsense.
Actually most unique cards still keep the old icon designs demonstrating their functions. And the icons of reskinned units (like the coming Russian ones and most revolutionary units) have the exact same pose as their counterparts. In most of the cases irregularities are avoided.
So if they are to implement new icons for upgrades as you suggested, they should have the same pose as well, with only detail changes in the hat and clothing.
In principle and in general too many irregularities may be bad. For sure. No need to argue about that.
In the specific case of AOE3 there aren’t many irregularities at all. That’s from some pvp elites (who always ask the “new players” to gitgud) who do not want to spend 30 min reading to gitgud themselves but can spend hours complaining about it, under the disguise of speaking on behalf of “new players”.
We can talk about specific points (eg skirmisher poses) that need improvement but opposing “new unique stuff” as a whole is nonsense.
Well it certainly do, similar for India, it was a culture shock (if u can call it that) when I started playing it ages ago. Some of them at the top of my head are :
There is no such thing as a “Sacred Shrine” in real world. The in-game building is a mix of a religious idol of “Nandi” (which is usually found inside at a temple entrances etc) and a typical Indian cow farm, which is a non-existent thing in real world TBH. [VERY STEREO TYPICAL AF]
Sacred cows doesn’t look like Indian cows, in fact Zebu cattle is far more alike to an Indian cow.
Its not a Monastry its Temple. A monastry is “typically” reffered to a Buddhist monastry or sometimes Jain Monastry.
‘Mohout’ is Anglosized name, it should be " mahavat "
Caravan Serai as a stable ? seriously ? The model is a mix of an Indian Elephant cage+stable . . but calling its a caravanseria? umm…
Im pretty sure the other civs might be in such similar awkward positions, especially the asian civs.
Is such that.
I don’t know if you’re a friend with an Indian cultural background, but if so, I think we can agree that the Big Huge’s portrayal of Asian civilizations is pretty weird. On this point alone, at least TAD is not as good as Age of Empires 4.
I’m not saying that the design in the game must be completely in line with the history, this is a typical slippery slope fallacy. I think a lot of people wish that some elements of the game were at least not so “weird”.
Exactly the whole point, and Im pretty sure other cultural representation are of similar quality.
I’am
I once talked to a new german friend in the game he was also saying the voice overs are a lil wierd BUT IDK, but it certainly gives me the impression that there is scope for improvement.
Previously, the Mandarin dubbing of most units for Chinese also had a weird accent, as if foreigners were learning Mandarin. However, the developers replaced it with another version within half a year, which fully complies with the official standard Mandarin in mainland China.
It can be seen that developers will actually listen to player feedback selectively. I think it also encourages the players, for trying to provide some ideas for the developers to reference.
Whilst I love that Big Huge Games did an expansion with Asian Dynasties, I feel it’s a really odd sweeping stereotypical Euro/USA perspective of the civs.
That whole discussion is way too big for this particular topic though the building models/names for them (tip of the iceberg!) could be a great stepping stone to rectifying the Asian Civs and their trope-ridden layout!
One of the top Indian building peeves of mine which already been discussed is the Caravanserai.
Give them an Elephant Stables or just a stables (would go nicely with non-novelty cav units such as … Horses, as err… they were used far more than elephants and camels).
They’re essentially an Inn so why not make them the Mughal (uhmm, sorry Indian) Tavern for Mercs and outlaws (and do away with the nonsense repentent prefix as well).
All religious and structural upgrades, as in line with Euros can go into their correctly named religious building - they don’t need anything kooky/crazy/novel…
Totally agree. I guess it may also have something to do with the fact that the Internet was not well developed at the time, and it was not easy for them to obtain information related to the content of Indian and Chinese military history.
I don’t know if you have a similar viewing angle:
TBH there seems to be serious effort, but in a weird direction. For the vast majority of Chinese players, things like “Flying Crow” and “Flame Thrower” are almost only known because of Age of Empires 3. These things are indeed recorded in Chinese history, but the frequency and status of use are far inferior to the various self-made projectile artillery and cluster rockets (such as the “honeycomb rocket” in Age of Empires 4) of the Ming Dynasty.
The most commonly used by the Chinese is the early cannon that was purchased from the Europeans and later imitated by themselves (the craftsmanship cannot be compared with that of Europe).
There are also some completely “weird” things, such as the weapons of the two heavy cavalry in China are the flail (a farm tool that only farmers will use), and the meteor hammer (a special weapon that individual characters in the novel will use) .
I know people are sick of changes to Ottomans, but I think the only change (besides nerfs) that they reaally need is a change in their architecture. I hope that they get it when (if) Persia is implemented.
Yep. It totally comes across as picking the most quirky weapon from a book of medieval China (emphasis on medieval as it’s all stuff before the AoE3 timeline!).
Other weapons like Guandao and Hongyipao would be much more sensible than Qiang (Spear) Pikemen, Song Dynasty Flamethrowers, and cavalry weapons that were never actually used.
Whilst I think the Wonder age-up aspect is fine as something to differentiate from the other groups, I always think it’s odd that your Civ has created this new settlement and somehow has decided to build a one-of-a-kind building that already exists within your country there, in your new establishment.
I think having ‘generic’ versions of the original wonders (with a prefix to highlight how stand-out the monument is) would be better. For example ‘Magnificant Palace’ or ‘Magnificant Temple’ would be better as it denotes a building that is a shining example that your populace admire.
You could then save those real names of Wonders as Wonder-based shipments - abstractly signifying the most awesome version of the wonder (the real one) has inspired your settlers to use some of the building techniques for that structure to use within your wonderous building.
For example, playing as the Japanese, you build your Magnificant Shrine (with the current Toshogu perks) and later on you ship the card ‘Toshogu Shrine’ which boosts your Wonder in some form
This allows:
A way to boost existing Wonders with reference to the original, named wonders along with their icons as Card artwork. Also another way to add new wonder references by way of named shipments.
Aesthetically a more believable way of portraying your Asian civ’s expansion - you (current) Wonders already exist and are either in your Home City or somewhere with your territory - why would you be building the exact same ones again in a new settlement?
Future-proofing for other Asian civs! There may be potentially more Asian civs in the future and they may not have as many obvious real-life Wonders to use for in-game Wonders. Having ‘standard’ (but still large and wonderful!) Wonder structures covers any gaps.
I don’t think it would be overly radical to give them a musketeer unit instead of Changdao. It could even be as minimal as making a card that swaps them out. The Changdao could even be repurposed as a “Palace Guard” replacement for the Disciple if the Shaolin Monk ever got replaced by something reasonable like a general or a prince.
This is a cool idea and I love it. I’m not against the Chinese getting a pseudo-musketeer type unit, and the Three-Eyes Gunner would a cool replacement.
Qiang Pikemen are sensible. This unit is with an inelegant name at most, but it definitely works, arguably the most sensible. The Qiang is Chinese’s most iconic weapon and was used from BC until the early 20th century.
I don’t mind Flamethrowers even although they are ancient. As a rare flame-throwing unit in the game, their existence greatly serves the entertainment of the game.
Guandao is indeed a very representative weapon in Chinese literature, but in reality it is a ceremonial and training weapon, and too heavy and bulky to be used in actual combat. In the game, Iron Troopers have used it as a melee weapon already. I don’t think it has to be a new unit.
Hongyipao should follow the way of Mysorean Rockets, shipping Falconets or Culverins operated by Qing soldiers from the HC.
There is no musketeer type unit among the regular units that is an identity of the Chinese. Making the Three-Eyes Gunners trainable would really make a big difference. If we can get Chinese Isolation at the Consulate, the Three-Eyes Gunners could be provided there.
