Interesting things from the Immortal Pillars trailer

[EverybodysFoo1]

@Skadidesu

Would be kinda funny to have a mission where you control like 10+ heroes at once.

Avengers?! Assemble!

[Skadidesu]

If it would take part after the New Atlantis campaign we could have following heroes:

1. Ajax
2. Amanra
3. Brokk
4. Eitri
5. Odysseus (needs older version)
6. Reginleif
7. Setna (also maybe need older version)
8. Folstag
9. Kastor

People that I did not count:

1. Chiron (dead)
2. Agamemnon (was never really part of the group)
3. All antagonists
4. All characters that don’t even have a unique units (like Niordsir)
5. Arkantos (because he is a god now)
6. All other gods

So we need some new heroes to get more then 10, but I’m pretty sure we will get those.

[SoullessHeathen]

@Skadidesu

Agamemnon

The Homeric Agamemnon got murdered as soon as he got home from Troy. IIRC it was his wife that killed him in retaliation for him sacrificing their daughter to Artemis.

[Skadidesu]

Homeric Ajax never made it home.
AoM is a little less dark then the original myth.

[SoullessHeathen]

@Skadidesu

Homeric Ajax never made it home.

I know. That’s why they quip about him being alive.

[Skadidesu]

Either way it’s unlikely that we will see him again.

I think he wasn’t even playable in the original AoM at all.

[SoullessHeathen]

You do control him in the first and last of the Troy missions. In the first mission he is controllable once he lands with his army, and in the last troy mission he is controllable from the start, and then returns with the army at the end after you destroy the gate.

Also, he was originally going to appear in The Titans instead of Melagius, and since art assets existed for it and he also showed up in the previews, it’s likely he was removed late in development.

[MatM1996]

@Skadidesu

If they ever want to have any civilisation appear in the Chinese Campaign that is not Chinese then Atlanteans are the only realistic option.

@SoullessHeathen

Someone found more atlantean buildings on reddit.

@Skadidesu

That would mean the Chinese campaign has more Atlanteans in it then the Fall of the Trident that has multiple missions literally taking part in Atlantis.

It makes sense… in Tale of the Dragon there were several Atlantean ruins in some scenarios of the Chinese campaign… perhaps they will take up the same concept for Immortal Pillars…

@SoullessHeathen

The campaign might be about the Yellow Emperor. The two Titan sized units are likely Tingxian and Chiyou, enemies of the yellow emperor (Chiyou is already confirmed as a summonable god). And the pillar at the end of the trailer has Oracle Bone script on it. Which fits since the Yellow Emperor lived in around 3000 BC.

@SoullessHeathen

If my theory is right and the campaign really is about the Yellow Emperor, seeing as he lived 2000 years before the Trojan War, it would be ancient Atlanteans from before Fall of the Trident.

At the same time, they might just be Atlantean ruins in the underworld and no living Atlanteans show up in the campaign.

Yes, it could also be the period of the Warring Kingdoms (5th century-221 BC) which was when the cult of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) was most popular…ending the campaign with the Chinese unification of Emperor Qin in 221 BC would be interesting …In his Shiji, Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshiping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC, along with Yandi, the Fiery Emperor. The altars were established at Yong 雍 (near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province), which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC. By the time of King Zheng, who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of a unified China in 221 BC, Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four “thearchs” (di 帝) who were then worshiped at Yong.

@SoullessHeathen

She has a snake body below the waist. It’s clearly Nüwa.

Nüwa is already confirmed as major god, but there is no news about Fu Xi and Shennong…

@Thanik

Pretty sure they’d go with underworld passages / sky passages to justify connections like that. esp. because those can be ‘ancient’ themselves. Maybe it’s an expedition East from Egypt. Maybe they’re not going to be involved at all and it’s just decorative.

@JordanEver

While I do expect the Atlanteans to sail to America and encounter the Aztecs, I don’t expect them to do the same with China* and other places.

I just expect they using Ancient Uranos Passages to run from New Atlantis/Europe to a place like Hainan to make a new Atlantean colony and then comming into mainland China.

Edit: Fixed Egypt to China.

@JordanEver

Yeah, I mean China, as Skadidesu said he don’t think Atlanteans should sail to China as I agree and see them going with Uranos passages, not sailing.

@Skadidesu

It’s generally a flaw of AoM that it’s hard to come up with a scenario that is not just a mirror match unless you use the wild card that is Atlanteans.

@RoomOfTheEvil

Helios can teleport your units, they have sky passages; Atlanteans being anywhere in the world is not an issue.

@Skadidesu

It could simply be because they had not decided which god would get what bonus when they started making the campaign.
Maybe the Sky Passage was originally available to all Atlantean Major Gods.

@JordanEver

Yeah, I don’t assume they sail to the other side. As I said, I find more fitting they simple going there with sky passages.

Yes, that wouldn’t be a problem…with the underworld and sky passages you can have Greeks and Atlanteans in all places on the planet…you can even have Egyptians with the Roc…having Norse and Aztecs in other continents would be more difficult in that sense…

@Buonaventura

When will the expansion be released (more or less)?

@Armilus

My guess is that it’s gonna be mid December at the latest and late October at the earliest.

Yes, mid-December like it happened with Rise of the Rajas which came out in mid-December (although Tale of the Dragon came out in January)… it would come out after the AoE 3 Baltic DLC (which would come out in early December) and before that the AoE 4 DLC would come out in mid-November and maybe an AoE 2 DLC in mid/late-October or early November…

@Skadidesu

How to Sky Passages work lore wise?
In the campaign you sail to Greece, then Egypt and Midgard, then back to Greece and then back to New Atlantis.
You only teleport from the Tundra to New Atlantis, then from Greece to the Olymp and at the end from New Atlantis to Old Atlantis.
How do they appear any why can’t they appear when they would have been super convenient to have?

The next Question is can they logically appear before and after the New Atlantis campaign?
Before the Titans were not strong enough yet, and after that they were locked away again, I guess.
Unless it’s only Gaia ruling over everything now, lol.

@JordanEver

No idea, as The New Atlantis plot is so bad, nothing make sense really.

@JordanEver

It’s worse than you describe. Kastor sail from new atlantis to Greece and when he arrives a Sky Passage appears on Greece so atlanteans can teleport from new atlantis to greece. Oranos ####### ## with Kastor for no reason lol (worse yet, Uranos make many others sky passages for kastor to find later)

Basically if you go by the campaign plot, Oranos simple decides to make a Sky Passage appears when he thinks it needs to appear and it leads to whatever place he thinks it needs to go, as we see how he can make a sky passage to mount olympus and somehow make that you can’t come back in the same sky passage (???)

The thing where they sail all over the world makes zero sense and it’s obvious it’s supposed to be the Atlanteans teleporting over the world, as if you Remember from the Cerberus mission, there is an evil faction of Atlanteans there before Amanra, Ajax and Kastor arrives on Egypt and they where Followers of Oranos, so they obviously arrived there by sky passages before our heroes. (it was retoconned in Retold to become Followers of Kronos)

@JordanEver

This does not work in the logic of The New Atlantis campaign, as fake Kryos make a Sky Passage to New Atlantis that had literally no one there so he can move his evil Atlanteans and worse yet, make a Sky Passage on Mount Olympus that is literally the place with less Titan workshippers on the planet (on the contrary, the biggest forces against Titans are there).

The campaign needed a full overhaul to flesh these things and give sense for everything.

So basically Kastor sail around for no reason lore wise.

@JordanEver

I don’t know what to think of Oranos now. In original, like I said, the faction that is helping Cerberus destroy everything on Egypt is Followers of Oranos, and with how his power is in service of fake Kryos in all the campaign, there is no doubt that Oranos is on the side of Kronos, so, nothing neutral.

On Retold they retconed so the faction became Followers of Kronos but all the rest of Oranos helping fake Kryos still means he wants the Titans to be free.

The only mistake is on the mission Atlantis Betrayed the player is Oranos, but this is just by a technical reason, as if the player was Gaia, when they get buildings it would grow Lush for no reason. And as New Atlantis atlanteans workshiped Oranos, the faction of the player basically only represent the faction of the Atlanteans being rescued on new atlantis.

But if even Prometheus, that by lore was not supposed to be an evil Titan was on Kronos side, we have no reason to assume Oranos that have a much more active role helping the Servant of Kronos plan is not of their side either.

@Skadidesu

It is not really logical over all.
But you could somewhat argue that his power is limited so he only makes the Sky Passages appear where they are really needed and doesn’t “waste” them somewhere were they can just sail to.

@Skadidesu

I think practically every story that involves gods is automatically full of logical errors and loopholes.
That includes the old myths themselves.

The term “Deus Ex Machina” is nowadays used for when a story (movie, book, game, etc.) solves a problem by letting a higher power or just an external influence appear.
Originally it described the tendency of ancient Greek drama authors to have a literal god appear on stage to just solve a conflict. The god was often lifted on to the stage with a crane, so they came out of a machine.

Kinda just bad story writing.

@Skadidesu

I don’t even think that’s the case. Lush is only spawned if you build a building. If you convert one that already exists there should be no Lush and you can’t build anything in that mission.
Also you don’t need to worship Oranos to use Sky Passages, you only need him to build them.
So there is no technical reason.
Maybe they simply wanted to buildings to not change god statues from Oranos to Gaia when they are converted to you.

Yes, The New Atlantis it’s a bit crazy, but everything would be justified with “the support of the gods”…

@Skadidesu

Like how would the Norse realistically make it to Egypt, or the other way round?

Using Drakkars possibly…

@Skadidesu

I don’t think that dates actually matter at all.
I assume they want to keep all things close in the timeline and all characters alive at the same time so they can do crossovers more easily later.
Even if Chinese never go to Greece there could still be a connection though India and Mesopotamia.

@Skadidesu

Would be hard to make the old heroes fit into this setting.

@JordanEver

The cut dialogue of the campaigns have Gargarensis saying that the gods where distracted by the Trojan war while he did all his machinations and when the Tojan war is over he is already digging the gates to Tartarus.

I think in the campaigns some characters like Athena talk how they can’t interfere directly to not start a war between the gods so I suppose they have some kind of politics for interference…? Like they are a big Parliament where the gods are like politicians finding ways to use loopholes in the divine rules to further their agenda.

Like if mortals give X tribute or serve the god in whatever way they seem fit the god are “allowed” to give his bleesing without “breaking the rules”. (like when Zeus give Arkantos a way out of the underworld when he pray directly to him)

So when a god try to interfere too much, for example, Loki fucking everything around, destroying Thor hammer, etc… then Thor can strike back (like sealing the gate and exploding everything) and no one have a case against each other to justify anything.

The most extreme case is in the end of the campaign when Poseidon decides to answer Gargarensis call and bless him a bit too much, creating a fucking giant Avatar Statue to help him, then Zeus says it “oh yeah? fuck then. Arkantos, build a wonder in my name and I will give you a bleesing” and he bless Arkantos with demigod powers to just destroy all of Poseidon minions lol

Imagine in the Pantheon as a big parlament with Poseidon and the other gods in his side complaining and acusing Zeus of interference and Zeus saying he didn’t break any rules, as Arkantos gave him a very big tribute and his blessing was the same scale of what Poseidon gave to Gargarensis.

@Skadidesu

• Arkantos (because he is a god now)
• All other gods

That’s true, but remember that Athena and Arkantos are gods, so they are immortals and can appear anywhere and at any time in history…

@JordanEver

But like the guy said, Lemuria can be a continent with a Atlantean colony, because it’s a myth continent just like Atlantis is. And they can position Lemuria close to China.

@Skadidesu

Considering that they knew that they were adding Chinese and the Chinese DLC was at least half way done when AoM released and they also decided to remove the reference to Lemuria, I think it’s very unlikely that Lemuria exists in the AoM universe and if it does it won’t be related to Atlantis.

Yes, in classic mythology, Lemuria included the entire Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka and Madagascar, so it may be that after its sinking some Atlanteans reached the SEA and China…

@JordanEver

Yeah, they need a new campaign later that have elements connecting all the other pantheons so we can have our heroes back.

@Skadidesu

Would be kinda funny to have a mission where you control like 10+ heroes at once.

I hope they do it…it would be epic…

@Skadidesu

• All characters that don’t even have a unique units (like Niordsir)

It can appear together with Reingelif as in Reingelif’s Rally…

@Skadidesu

I think he wasn’t even playable in the original AoM at all.

@SoullessHeathen

You do control him in the first and last of the Troy missions. In the first mission he is controllable once he lands with his army, and in the last troy mission he is controllable from the start, and then returns with the army at the end after you destroy the gate.

Yes, Ajax is playable in the horse mission and in the infiltration in Troy and after Bad News onwards until the penultimate mission before returning to Atlantis…

@SoullessHeathen

Also, he was originally going to appear in The Titans instead of Melagius, and since art assets existed for it and he also showed up in the previews, it’s likely he was removed late in development.

Ah look… although it is logical that they do not want you to face Ajax if you were going to ally yourself with him and Amanra later in the campaign…

[-sb-zveroboy]

I never played the original China DLC so I dunno what it had or how bad it actually was, but one thing I did think of for a cool myth unit was Terracotta Army soldiers, which would kind of be magical clones I suppose? Kind of like Automatons in a sense. Cheap and spammable but definitely among the weaker myth units.

[SoullessHeathen]

I thought we were talking about Agamemnon, not Ajax.

[BaphometSLM]

The terracota soldier was a myth unit in EE. I hope he’ll make a comeback for the new DLC.

[JordanEver]

@Skadidesu

It is not really logical over all.
But you could somewhat argue that his power is limited so he only makes the Sky Passages appear where they are really needed and doesn’t “waste” them somewhere were they can just sail to.

Oh of course we can say his power is limited and his Sky Passages are strategical and not something he can just spam all over the place.

@Skadidesu

I think practically every story that involves gods is automatically full of logical errors and loopholes.
That includes the old myths themselves.

The term “Deus Ex Machina” is nowadays used for when a story (movie, book, game, etc.) solves a problem by letting a higher power or just an external influence appear.
Originally it described the tendency of ancient Greek drama authors to have a literal god appear on stage to just solve a conflict. The god was often lifted on to the stage with a crane, so they came out of a machine.

Kinda just bad story writing.

The moment you have gods you need political motivated rules to prevent them just doing everything. But Age of Mythology, specially with the cut dialogue, don’t really care very much for the worldbuilding and just handwaive it by some mental gymnastics by Athena.

The New Atlantis campaign on the other hand, is simple impossible to understand how bad the story writing is.

@Skadidesu

Considering that they knew that they were adding Chinese and the Chinese DLC was at least half way done when AoM released and they also decided to remove the reference to Lemuria, I think it’s very unlikely that Lemuria exists in the AoM universe and if it does it won’t be related to Atlantis.

The reference to Lemuria had it destroyed in the past, they can easily use it again as a colony for the refugee Atlanteans or some kind of wild card of long forgottent atlanteans that where living ther in secret.

@Skadidesu

I don’t even think that’s the case. Lush is only spawned if you build a building. If you convert one that already exists there should be no Lush and you can’t build anything in that mission.
Also you don’t need to worship Oranos to use Sky Passages, you only need him to build them.
So there is no technical reason.
Maybe they simply wanted to buildings to not change god statues from Oranos to Gaia when they are converted to you.

Lush didnt spawn by passive ability? But anyway, pretty sure its just by convenience like this or the temple statues, just like how they make you play as Set in missions like Cerberus just so you don’t pick Osiris (very lazy job) even if it makes zero sense.

@Skadidesu

Would be kinda funny to have a mission where you control like 10+ heroes at once.

lmao

Hope they stop with this and actually give missions with allied having bases of their own.

[Armilus]

Took this screenshot from the trailer. It shows this golden urn that seems to give the antagonist powers.
But it also shows those two stone lions and those three legged pots. Maybe they’re hints to something?
I haven’t found anything about the pots yet. But I found a wikipedia page about the lions.
Appearently they symbolize Yin and Yang, Male and Female, the duality of the Universe and of Power.
And according to traditional symbolism, those are two male (yang) lions. Usually they come in pairs of male and female, and the female lion has a lion cup instead of a ball.

Could this mean that because of the urn (or its misuse) Yin and Yang are out of balance?
That would be the plot of Tale of the Dragon all over again, right?
Or is this simply a honest mistake?
Does anyone know anything about those three legged pots?

[OmaDesala]

I bet the Atlanteans will appear in all the new DLC, otherwise the new civilisations are so far apart that they have no enemies apart from different factions of them. With the Ouranos titan, it’s very easy to place sky passages all over the world and allow confrontations in the new campaigns.

[Skadidesu]

This is generally one of the biggest issue with AoM campaigns.
You can only really have mirror matches. Almost every scenario in Fall of the Trident has you face the same civ as you play yourself.
Even the New Atlantis campaign has a lot of mirror matches, Egyptian vs. Egyptian, Norse vs. Norse and Atlantians vs. Atlantians.

Fixing that is relatively hard unless they keep adding enough new pantheons.

[SoullessHeathen]

Some people have noticed Ajax in the new steam screenshots. Though he may just be set dressing for the store page.