Let's build a world map of AoE3

[KarstHillFort77]

@M00Z1LLA

They’re definitely on Hokkaido, the fringes of Honshu and Kamchatka, and arguably present in Manchuria. So all you need is one more map like Sakhalin or Kurils and that’s a good enough distribution. Unlike southern China they aren’t overlapped by dozens of peoples so you’d actually see them every time you play a map.

Well if you support adding the Ainu who arguably have a lot more restrictive distribution than the ethnic groups in Southern China and Indochina (unless you wanna split up small islands ad infinitum just to accommodate for the Ainu, which I don’t think is a good idea and would be even more of a waste of time and resources than splitting up Southern China or Indochina), then I see no reason or logic why you would refuse adding the ones I proposed. The only thing I could think of is that you have some sort of inherent prejudice against the indigenous peoples of Southern China and Indochina.

@M00Z1LLA

arguably present in Manchuria

Their presence in Manchuria is at best tenuous and is not supported by much evidence.

@M00Z1LLA

So all you need is one more map like Sakhalin or Kurils and that’s a good enough distribution

Well that’s still only 2 maps, Hokkaido and Sakhalin. So you already contradicted your own criterion of minor civs appearing on a minimum of 5 maps.

@M00Z1LLA

adding half a dozen overlapping ones is not reasonable

How are the ones I proposed overlapping if they don’t even speak the same language and have noticeably different cultures? Do you even know anything at all about their cultures and languages?

@M00Z1LLA

The reason for the rule of thumb of at least 5 maps per minor civ is twofold. Firstly it’s not an efficient use of resources to make things that are barely seen, and secondly, gameplay features need to be common enough that players are exposed to the feature and get familiar with them.

Huh, excuse me? Then why are you supporting the addition of the Ainu in this case? So in your opinion it’s very efficient to split up small islands ad infinitum just to accommodate for the Ainu? So we should have maps like Hokkaido Hill Number 1, Hokkaido Hill Number 2, Hokkaido Hill Number 3, and that’s what you call efficient? LMAO

@M00Z1LLA

Overlap is also a major issue.

They aren’t overlapping at all cause each of them speaks a different language and has their own culture. On the other hand if you introduce a bunch of Hokkaido maps that would be overlapping and redundant.

@M00Z1LLA

For example Hmong only live in the northern region of Indochina. So if you split the area into 3 maps (say Tonkin, Annam, and Mekong Delta), you haven’t added any more maps for Hmong to appear on.

If we split Indochina into Red River Valley, Lanxang, Plain of Jars, Annamite Range, and Mekong River Valley, then the Hmong could appear on the first 3 maps, and the Zhuang could at least appear on the first 2 maps. And combined with their appearances on maps about Southern China they would easily satisfy the 5 map criterion for minor civs.

@M00Z1LLA

The various ethnic groups you mention are overwhelmingly concentrated in the mountainous regions around Yunnan. So there is a ton of overlap in a very restricted region.

The Hmongs can be found in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hunan, and Hubei, as well as in Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. That covers a huge area much larger than Hokkaido.

The Zhuang and related peoples (Bouyei, Tay, and Nung) can be found in Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Vietnam, and Laos, still a quite wide area.

The Tanka boat people can be found across the southeastern coast of China in several provinces and stretching into coastal Vietnam as well.

And I don’t think I need to introduce the Tais and the Chams, cause they can be found in a bunch of different places across SE Asia and into Far South China as well (Tsat and Tai Lue).

All of them are much more widespread than your beloved Ainu. And plus they all speak different languages and have different cultures and ways of life. So if you support the addition of the Ainu, then there’s no reason to refuse the addition of these peoples as minor civs.

@M00Z1LLA

I’m not against adding ethnic minor civs for Asia

Then there’s no reason for you to reject these minor civs, cause all of them fit better with your criterion than the Ainu.

The only thing that leads you to reject them is your prejudice against the natives of Southern China and Indochina.

[anon18935754]

love me some strawman arguments ngl

[HoopThrower]

The entire premise is impossible to fulfill to begin with because Asia is orders of magnitude larger than Europe so you’ll never find any one native site that’d fit 5 maps unless you make… tons of maps for every single last region of Asia.

[KarstHillFort77]

@HoopThrower

The entire premise is impossible to fulfill to begin with because Asia is orders of magnitude larger than Europe so you’ll never find any one native site that’d fit 5 maps unless you make… tons of maps for every single last region of Asia.

I suggest tuning down the number of minimum appearances from 5 to 3 for Asian natives, it’s completely reasonable and fits the situation in Asia better.

[CanineCrown7153]

@HoopThrower

tons of maps for every single last region of Asia.

Are you threatening me with a good time?

[UpmostRook9474]

I actually agree with you. In addition to the condition that a minor civ requires at least 5 maps, highly overlapping is indeed another issue that has been less discussed in the past. Your opinion is quite practical and realistic, and I don’t feel it is motivated by any prejudice or something.

If multiple potential minor civs are located on nearly the same maps, it may seem economically reasonable for the developers to instead cover them with just one or two minor civs. I wouldn’t be surprised if a minor civ of shamanism gets introduced to represent animistic beliefs common among ethnic minorities in China (such as Moism of the Zhuang people).

The suggestions I made in other topics in the past were the Yangtze River, Sichuan Basin, Yungui Plateau, and Coastal Hills to fill the blank in southern China. The Sichuan Basin, Yungui Plateau, Indochina, and Parallel Rivers are the obvious maps for this shamanic holy site, while the Himalayas and Coastal Hills are also possible maps. Of course this is just my personal suggestion.

I would also like to see Tibetan Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism replace Zen and Shaolin on some maps. When introducing new maps for southern China, Taoism would be clearly a reasonable new minor civ. If Honshu can be split, a Shinto holy site would be very attractive. If possible, I would like to have one or two new Muslim minor civs to better represent the Islamic cultures of different regions.

[KarstHillFort77]

Again if the minimum requirement for a minor civ is for it to appear on 5 maps then I don’t see the Ainu being viable at all, cause they could at most occur on 2 maps Hokkaido and potentially a map about Sakhalin and that’s about it.

If some people really want the Ainu to be introduced, then they have to lower the requirement. I don’t see another way around this. You can’t argue for the inclusion of the Ainu on the one hand, but on the other hand also argue for the exclusion of others who have a much wider distribution than the Ainu, that’s simply unfair.

Regarding the potential maps for Southern China, I suggest to divide it into 5, Jiangnan, Lingnan, Yungui, Dongting, and Sichuan. This would account for both geographical and historical/cultural differences among these regions.

Zhuang and Hmong deserve to be 2 separate minor civs for several reasons. First of all they don’t speak the same language, in fact the languages they speak aren’t even in the same family (one is Hmong-Mien and the other is Tai-Kradai). Secondly they don’t have the same ways of life. The Hmong mostly live in the hilly regions and practice highland agriculture, with maize, millet, and sorghum being their primary crops; on the other hand the Zhuang mostly live in the lowland regions close to rivers with rice being their main crop. And thirdly they fought differently as well. The Hmong were known to have built hill forts and fortified towns and used crossbows, javelins, and later arquebus to ambush their enemies; the Zhuang preferred riverine warfare and excelled with sword and shield plus hand to hand combat (Ang Quan). And the Tanka are different from both since they spend most of their time on the sea.

For reasons that I already mentioned before, the Asia-Pacific region definitely needs natives and can’t just have holy sites or religious sects.

[MatM1996]

@RatcicleFan

Isn’t that the space between Spain and North Africa?

Yes, it is a rock between Spain and Morocco. Spain had to cede it to GB after the War of Spanish Succession in 1715…

@KarstHillFort77

The main civ could be called Siamese

Yes, the logical thing would be that it would be Burma and Siam…Thailand had that name until 1932…

@RatcicleFan

Other regions that deserve to be split are India (Deccan), Honshu, Siberia, Amazonia and the Andes. All these maps cover too much territory.

Maybe Scandinavia as well, given England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all became separate maps, but I don’t think we’re desperate for more European maps.

@KarstHillFort77

I agree with your suggestions, however the Indochina peninsula also has diverse landscapes and deserve to be subdivided as well.

@RatcicleFan

This bothers me because due to this they don’t want to add more minor civs to South America. No other minor civ fits the region because the maps cover way too much territory (even some of the DE ones like Minas Gerais and Bahia) and they refuse to split older maps into smaller territories. Instead, Maya and Zapotecs get pushed into South America even though they never lived here because they don’t fit even two maps and FE also refuses to add more Mexican maps which is where they belong.

@KarstHillFort77

No worries I have quite a lot of knowledge regarding the geography and ethnic composition of Southern China and SE Asia, and yes Indochina definitely needs to have some subdivisions can’t just have 1 map covering the entire area.

@KarstHillFort77

100% agree, I think there should be more native minor civs for East and SE Asia, Siberia, Mongolia, Africa, and South America, and the maps need to be subdivided further for these regions.

@M00Z1LLA

That’s still 5 in southern China. So you’re going to get maps with 5+ options for natives that appear nowhere else. Creating natives that are only seen 20% of the time on a couple maps is not a good use of resources.

Yes, with the successive DLCs they will be subdividing the larger maps into smaller maps at the rate of 10 maps per DLC…

@RatcicleFan

A while ago I tried suggesting more maps but I couldn’t find names for potential subdivisions of the Andes. And for India, I was only able to find modern state names (someone suggested other stuff to me but I unfortunately forgot).

Edit: Oh yeah, another region that should be split is the Caucasus.

Andes, I don’t think they will divide them because you already have 2 maps there…although I see Araucania having the Atacama map to the north and India, you can get like 5 more maps…

@MUTYLATOR5553

This is not desperation. Europe is truly very diverse in terms of natural landscapes. There is a lack of quite a few European maps that could be based on regions famous for their natural beauty - Scandinavian Fjords, Provençal Lavender Fields, Dubrovnik, Tuscany bathed in sunlight and many other interesting regions of Europe.

Unfortunately, currently there are many maps based on administrative boundaries instead of regions. Maps like Spain, Italy or Scandinavia are huge umbrellas that cover many potential beautiful maps.

@HoopThrower

The entire premise is impossible to fulfill to begin with because Asia is orders of magnitude larger than Europe so you’ll never find any one native site that’d fit 5 maps unless you make… tons of maps for every single last region of Asia.

Yes, it is quite a topic…

@Dumuzi

I’m grateful that KOTM was as expansive as it was (it had more maps and minor civs than African Royals did), but it always seemed strange that of the featured civs, Malta did not appear as a map and still does not despite appearing on some of the loading screens, and the Italians only have one map representing the actual Italian Peninsula. Sicily and Tuscany as maps would have been much appreciated.

I’m trying to keep my expectations realistic for the Baltic DLC, but adding the missing loading screen maps, plus adding a few more does not seem at all unreasonable, so I hope that happens.

Yes, I think that with the Baltic DLC they will complete the missing maps (Malta, Iceland, etc etc etc)…

@MUTYLATOR5553

What I like about African maps is that they refer to regions, not national borders. I miss more African Minor Civilizations there.

Yes, they must be saving them for later…

@MUTYLATOR5553

It would be difficult. It’s a good thing they invented Royal Houses which are very good at representing different nations… but many Royal Houses are still missing.

In the case of the British Isles, the Tudors and Stuarts Royal Houses would have been perfect.

@MUTYLATOR5553

The most problematic situation is with Asian maps. There are too many empty places like Thailand or South China. Still missing are Minor Civilizations adapted to Asia. The Holy Sites in the game have long since been no longer reserved exclusively for Asia - which is very good because it should only be a universal supplement to the map content for all continents.

Asia is so diverse that there are three different categories of Minor Civilizations:

1. Middle Eastern and Caucasian Nationalities
2. Far Eastern Dynasties
3. South Asian Communities

@KarstHillFort77

The Chams and the Tais can appear on even more maps. After the 1471 Vietnamese conquest of their kingdom the Chams dispersed across the region some fled to Hainan and Guangdong others went to Siam, Cambodia, Aceh, and Johor, so they could appear as minor civs on a bunch of maps. And the Tais would appear on maps for Siam, Indochina, Burma, Yungui, and even potential map or maps for Northeast India given that a branch of Tai called Tai Ahom went there and established a kingdom.

So in brief all 5 of them are valid minor civs and I could see them being introduced with a new DLC for SE Asia.

@KarstHillFort77

If we split Indochina into Red River Valley, Lanxang, Plain of Jars, Annamite Range, and Mekong River Valley, then the Hmong could appear on the first 3 maps, and the Zhuang could at least appear on the first 2 maps. And combined with their appearances on maps about Southern China they would easily satisfy the 5 map criterion for minor civs.

Yes, those are good ideas…

@RatcicleFan

It has more maps than even vanilla.

Yes, it is literally a new game within the game… that DLC alone could easily fight with the original AoK and AoE 3 CC… I think that with this DLC, AoE 3 DE can compete with AoE 2 DE (although obviously more campaigns and historical battles like VaV are missing for the missing civs: Dutch, Aztecs, Incas, Swedes, Italians and Maltese)…

[RatcicleFan]

@MatM1996

Andes, I don’t think they will divide them because you already have 2 maps there…although I see Araucania having the Atacama map to the north and India, you can get like 5 more maps…

My point is it’s a rather large area to be only represented by one map