I agree, if the game becomes as popular as any of us hope for it to be it’d always be a benefit to have more civs in it.
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You are very right, it’s bad if a historical game is rather influenced by modern day believes, than historical facts and games lore.
Considering we had already big expansion for America and Asia, Africa sounds logical as next.
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I don’t understand some of your arguments. The fact that European nations didn’t invade Africa prove African factions were… weak? On the opposite, what prevented European from swarming the continent was the fact that contrary to Latine America, the local high attrition couldn’t be nullified by the spread of diseases since even far remote areas were indirectly connected to Asia and Europe through trade and exchange, and even petty kingdoms proved a challenge to invade without using locals against each other. Sure the Europeans had a technological superiority from the start especially in armament, but they had to wait for the gap to be far wider before they could trully claim the lands, and even then it wasn’t always without huge casualties.
Sure, none of the African factions in this time period could have become a colonial power, but neither did the civs in the WarChiefs expansion.
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Temudhun, the WarChief expansion was picked due to the single player story that the game follows. It was the logical expansion especially considering mission in the 2nd act was played along side the Native-Americans.
Another expansion consisting of the African civs could be viable, but I believe there are other civs during that period that would add more to work off rather than a few select wars.
Capablesum 2087, you need to study history. The Portuguese and the Dutch were well established on the African coast and had relations with African kingdoms or sultanates, friendly or not, seeking economic profit. The kingdom of Congo was largely influenced by Portugal, it became a Catholic monarchy, with the Portuguese in general as allies. The Portuguese, using palace intrigues and involving the lines of succession (succession to the throne was extremely bloody), supporting individuals who wanted to ascend to the throne, managed to overthrow the kingdom of Congo by blowing it up. The subjects, largely Catholic, of the Congolese kings were largely enslaved by the Portuguese and sent to Brazil and other colonies. It took two centuries for that to happen. The Yoruba state cities, which were attacked by the kingdom of Dahomey, which sold these slaves widely to Europeans, were mostly paying vassalage to the kingdom of Oyó. They had a large cavalry army, they had noble units with European armor, they fortified their cities. They even imported muskets from Europeans. Europeans only did not usually invade these kingdoms because the invasion was difficult. All of these peoples were farmers and ranchers before Europeans arrived. People from the interior of Africa had weapons of stone and bone, but the peoples of the coast of Guinea and those of Bantus languages, in general, in addition to the Ethiopians, the Sudanese sultanates had iron or steel weapons before the Europeans arrived and some villages and towns were fortified.
We talked about Bantus and Yorubás, but there were several important kingdoms, such as Dahomey (aggressive and largely enslaved in economy), Kanen Bornu, the kingdom of Haussas, as well as some who had great contact with Europeans, such as the Ethiopians, owners of an ancient civilization that merged the South African base with the influence of Middle Eastern civilizations from Yemen. The Ethiopians fought Ottomans, fought Sudanese sultanates, had internal divisions, re-established unity, lost it again, but never surrendered. And there were the Suaíles sultanates, which economically dominated a good part of the Indian Ocean trade, and the conquest of some of these lands was essential for the expansionist policy of the Portuguese and for the economy of Oman.
As for Europeans not entering Africa so extensively at that time, remember that they did not enter the Americas as widely either. My country, Brazil, and the USA, were just fine guts, until the 18th century. Almost all cities and towns were coastal. Europeans did not invade African territories, as widely as the Americas, either because the invasion was difficult, or because they did not see enough profit from acquiring that territory. As the few cities and forts that they established on the African coast served their practical purposes, extensive invasions rarely occurred, but small conflicts were constant with African peoples, interference in the internal political of these peoples as well. Imagine what would be better, you make a deal with a Yoruba city and buy war slaves from that city, or you try to conquer an entire Yoruba city to enslave the population, and your musketeers are surrendered by a fast unit of Yoruba cavalry that attacks your snipers with a very sharp Ida sword below the throat? It was better to stay calm, trading and stimulating the slave trade through the market, no? They would come one way or the other, it was just a matter of having goods to exchange.
African civilizations were very interesting indeed. Needless to mention, Ethiopians overcame Italians in the 19th century, having also successfully fought Ottomans, Yemenis and Egyptians at the time of the AOE III timeline, in addition to expelling the Portuguese Jesuits when these priests were a pain in the ■■■, and Portugal decided to remain silent, and that Zulus, much less organized urbanly, having only good blacksmiths, without gunpowder, slaughtered the British a few times in the 19th century too! If you won powers in the XIX century, imagine before that! I suggest that you play MOD King´s Return, made by White Raven, who introduced Yoruba and Congolese as playable civilizations for AOE III, through extensive research, so that you understand a little about these incredible African civilizations. And stop with this “you want to put your ideology” speech, otherwise you will get a sad speech just like youtuber Mayorcete. And soon you will find that there are communists chasing you!
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I believe that the main reason behind the failure to include African civilizations in the game is the issue of slavery. It is an essential issue even in the Americas, but it is not mentioned in AOE III, perhaps the team has legal implications for introducing slaves into the game, or slave trade policies, or slave capture. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a society in which touching certain subjects always causes discomfort for some people, even if it is not unethical to touch matters, or to introduce them, always with an educational bias and showing the social problems that they provoked and provoked in society. It is preferred not to mention the subject. See that among the peasants of the game, there are black peasants, but they are peasants, nobody explicitly says that they are slaves, even because they are well dressed for peasants, like everyone else. Is that false moralism? IT’S! But I understand the fears of the game’s creators. Introducing some of the important African civilizations would always address the issue of slavery, with the exception perhaps of the Ethiopians. And it looks like a historic battle will be precisely related to the story of Christopher of the Range in Ethiopia! And there are circular Ethiopian country houses, as well as Ethiopian watchtowers there! You see, in my view, perhaps they are intending on a future expansion to add the Ethiopians. As the slave trade with the Ethiopians was not strong, it may be one of the future civilizations that they add, and this battle serves as something for us to experience a contact with a future civilization. I also saw that there are African trees in this Ethiopian setting, and African farms, based on Native American farms. It seemed extremely suspicious. Myself, I always dreamed of Incas, Yoruba, Congolese, Swahili, Ethiopians, Savafids and Koreans in AOE III. This would unite much of the world at the time through trade and battles.
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Why would they introduce slavery in the game? Is this essential to the gameplay? I really don’t think so.
If there was a campaign with a map that introduces a discussion about the slavery, it would be another point. But there is absolutely no reason to put slaves as civs units or bonus.
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This is truely no mean PC cancel culture… Just alike they dont include rapery and torture to the medieval game, because that would hurt the naive lighthearted approach to represnet a medieval themed war game.
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This is exactly the point. Touching African civilizations in a game set in the Age of Discovery until the 19th century means, even if the historical game is as fictional as possible, touching on the issue of slavery, since African civilizations had contact with European civilizations specifically due to the need of the Europeans from a slave market to work on plantations in the Americas. It is okay to introduce indigenous native subcivilizations in villages that you can just ally with, never destroy them, this is possible, in part it has happened, just ignore the bad side in favor of the politically correct, as is done today in schools . Now, there is no way to introduce the Congolese into the game without touching on the issue of slavery, for example: see, here we have the Congolese, the first contacts with them were established with Portugal, why did Portugal want to form an alliance with the Congolese? Spices? No! Some Portuguese walked through the slave market in Mbanza-Congo and saw that it was full of slaves and thought: that’s it! We need to fill our caravels with these good families captured from other peoples across the kingdom of Congo and put them to die on a cane plantation in the Americas! Or sell them to a false moralistic English Christian farmer so they can hear the gospel and die of exhaustion by picking cotton! If we buy more, the kingdom of Congo will be encouraged to make more wars so that they capture even more, so soon we can occupy the entire territory of Brazil, producing a lot and a lot of sugar at the expense of the suffering of these people, and we can sell people to die on the plantations of our commercial allies! The cost for us is minimal! So it was also in the relations that Portugal had with Benin, Dahomey and the kingdom of Oyó! In Benin and Daomé they bought Yoruba slaves, in Oyó they bought slaves from Benin and Daomé. They stimulated wars in the three kingdoms. Try to mention the Suaíles without mentioning the slave trade? It was one of the three pillars of the economy of Zanzibar! Spices, Ivory and Slaves! Perhaps the only exception are the Ethiopians, who were somewhat isolated, trying to get in touch with Europeans, and because they were already well-established ancient Christians, who felt threatened in the midst of several Muslim monarchies, it was more profitable for the Portuguese to form alliances with them than to engage in palace intrigues to overthrow Ethiopia and conquer it, enslaving the population, even if it was Christian, as happened with Congo, or trying to win them in battle, enslaving their Christian brothers as well. It was not profitable or practical to do that, better to make friends, so the slave trade was not something that highlighted Ethiopia in the scenario of the Age of Discovery, they stood out for being a Christian enclave in the middle of Islamic kingdoms, seen as a possible ally for Europeans, as a safe haven and someone to market and help maintain. That is why the Ethiopians were allies of the Portuguese until the Jesuits were very pissed off and were allies after England. At the end of the 19th century, even from Russia and France. Apart from the Ethiopians, and perhaps the entrance of the Swahili kingdoms, something really big would have to be invented, an incredible magical world of false moralism, to introduce other African civilizations to AOE III without mentioning slavery!
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I think this was the most consistent idea behind why no African civs. Bc at some point they’ll have to introduce the slave trading since in some of these nations it was huge portion of their gdp… and though we speak of wars and freedom and conquest there is seldom gore and gloom but instead a romantic viewpoint portrayed in aoe3… how would you keep the game “cute” while having “herds” of chattel slaves?
This iteration of AOE is already the weakest among the series how much more unpopular would it be if you introduce slavery? A large portion of the game subscribers play these games for the stories.
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Say that to some AOE2 players too. I’d love another African Kingdoms and/or North American civs.
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I still disagree with this idea. The Age of Empires series is not 100% based on historical facts, it takes history as an alloy to do a RTS game. Slavery has nothing to do with any mechanism we’ve seem so far in any AoE game. No one is asking for slave traders in Portuguese, and none is complaining about them as historical inaccurate for this. Actually, no one is complaining about the need of slavery (it’s not like Africans were the first slaves ever) to any civ in any AoE game, but in this hypothetical concept of African civilizations to AoE3. Why would that be a must with African civs in the game? This makes as much sense as asking for raping after destroying one of your opponents town centers. Did it happen in real life? Of course. Is this a must in the game mechanism? Well, no.
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I think you miss the point. Its not about the gameplay needing slaves to work. But in the campaign if they were to intorduce Congo and wanted to follow any of the historical basis for forming an alliance with Portugal what fictional story would the developers have to spin to omit the slavery aspect of that alliance? I’m curious to what kind of campaign you’d want them to have?
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It’s not like I said that talking about slavery in a campaign shouldn’t be done.
What I’ve been talking about is slavery mechanism in the civs’ build, as Wars of Liberty mod has done to Brazilians. In a campaign you could, for example, explore the topic and teach people how it was developed.
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Civs can be added without campaigns.
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Yes but all such discussion are distasteful and distract from the romanticism of this game’s aura. Lets use something that is part and parcel to slave trade, ■■■ tracking…if this theme were prevalent in said trade slaves would you want a GAME to bring the topic up? And teach ppl about how it became developed?
You want to play as ■■■ trafficking “heros”? No… no such a take would not be well welcomed. Slavery isn’t as wildly deplorable as ■■■ tracking but its not a romantic topic to throw around Willie nillie in a game thats supposed to be for fun AND a game that went out of its way to change civ names and flags and voices to appease the ppls that were offended.
I still think they might add Africans but I do see this slavery point as a detractor.
it hasn’t been done in this game and ppl would revolt in a different way if an African civ or civs were introduced as full playable factions with ZERO storylines to play thru. They would hardly take it as “well we didn’t want to be historical inaccurate and make something up and offend ppls heritage but at the same time part of these ppls heritage would be offensive to others so we just left it out all together…but at least you can play as the Africans you wanted…”
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Swedish and Inca do not have campaigns.
You can add new civs with some historical battles.
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I didnt play the single player beta I didn’t know they did that? In that case I completely agree with you!! If they can pick a handful of memorialized battles to represent said factions that would be a great way to stick true to the history while sidestepping controversy
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I would like to see Mohammed Ali’s semi-independent Egypt. <3