These monks are still your main units, and they still don’t make sense
The explorer units in the game are either actual explorers or lesser faction/army leaders. But Asian monks in this period make no sense as either.
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It’s not that hard to change the Chinese military units either, like sure it’s not as easy a swap as you removing an unit and placing other, but it’s not something otherwordly complicated that’d require engine rewrites either, you can easily keep the banner system and replace all units even through modding.
This is probably an issue of lost in translation. Since I associate the idea of Bureaucrat with Scholar Officials, and the idea of a Schola Official as an Explorer replacement is kinda funny in an on itself. I’m still not completely sold on the idea, particularly because the most orthodox Confuscian state, IE Korea, isn’t in game, so the idea works mostly for China and if you stretch it a bit maybe Japan, for India it still just looks silly. This isn’t “Ancient Asia” after all, it’s early-modern to straight up modern Asia that’s being represented in game.
I sorta grok the idea of a military officer, which deep down what this “Bureaucrat” idea is, I’d say it’s cheap but the American nations already kinda went with it through the generals (and the warchiefs I guess which in practice is the same idea). I wonder if something else could be used though, maybe some sort of Navigator or Navy Captain?
All 3 civs have some sort of naval tradition after all (China with the Treasure Fleets, Japan with the Red Seals, India with Lascars and just the whole being in the middle of the Indian Ocean trade routes in general.
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Ahh that s word I was looking for, better suits what I wanted to say.
I see the explorers as the more famous identity of the civ at that time, explorers , navigators , scholars etc etc.
For Euro nations they went outwards hence their explorers are like that.
Meanwhile the Asian Civs were at the receiving end of those explorations. Hence their explorers are something that represents their ideological beliefs rather than an Explorer/Military commander etc.
Also its another uniqueness of TAD
Agreed, but well . . .
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Imo TAD was super awfully designed. The monk heroes are just a part of that.
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Dunno what the translator is telling you but “1500-1800” is literally what early modern means.
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I don’t know about super awful, but it was the most inconsistent DLC. The meta narrative of the vanilla game and warchief was that you are playing as a colony/village of your civ and not the empire/kingdom itself, unlike aoe2. But TAD included historical wonders and cards and made it seem more like you are playing as the empire itself rather than just a village of that empire.
Monks make some sense if we think we are playing as a village/colony of the empire. Explorers are navigators and leaders of the colony but not actual rulers, warchiefs are the rulers ( i think ) and heroes of their village but asian monks are neither navigators or rulers. Imo I think of it as a unique unit for asians, instead of a chief or an explorer, aisan get a specialised priest/healer unit which acts as the local hero.
It is a unifying feature of asian civs, like european explorers, native warchiefs, african aristocrats, and usa/mexico generals. Like it or not, asians are heavily centered around religion and spirituality. Temples are unique structures, outlaws and mercs are repentant, units dont get veteran - they get honoured, exalted, certain restrictions in resource gathering according to religious beliefs, religious native sites etc.
Although, if at all they are reworked I see a good alternative is to make them a landowner or village headman : India - zamindaar/ mansabdar/ tehsildar, Japan - shoya/ nanushii, China - chun zhang.
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It might be a unifying feature but it’s not a good unifying feature. Religions existed everywhere at the time and still exist today. The religious focus for Asians in particular makes no sense when everyone else in the game also had a religion.
I’d love a rework but if FE actually cared about removing stereotypes they would have given the Lakota and Hauds an actual rework.
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One of the very few things TAD done right is to throw that so called narrative out of the window.
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Small nitpick, but nah, Warchiefs aren’t rulers, they are more akin to Generals or Commanders.
This look like a fun place to point out that the Native civs would have been far better served to have religious leaders, like Clan Mothers or Heyoka, to act as their explorers instead of warchiefs.
Basically, the entire religious coding given to the Asian civs would have served the Native civs wonderfully but only bogs down the Asian civs, while the highly militaristic aspects that bog down the Native civs would have done wonders for the Asians.
This is what minimal research gets you.
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I feel if the devs followed even one of Ana’s suggestions the game would benefit a lot.
I don’t know that much about history and Native American/Asian cultures, so I can only complain about the stereotypes without really knowing how to fix them.
But I’ll forever complain about the fire pit and its replacement because they feel too much like god powers.
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For the record, I do agree with modernizing the Asian civs somewhat, whether by giving them revolutions/revolution-like cards or new regular units (maybe they should get both revs and new regular units).
New units even just skins could be applied with existing cards, specially for china and japan.
India lacks early real archaic units. The rajputs should be replaced by spearman, the sowar with cavalry. Some Indian European vessels should be replaced with others.
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Because in TAD they changed the concept and left the New World, TAD occurs in Asia with the Asian civs and the European colonies there… with TAR and KOTM the same thing happens but in Africa and Europe respectively…
Just give them warrior nobility like the Africans have. Daimyos, Princes, Generals, Emirs, Zamindars, Rajas, etc.
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