Mandate of Heaven - An East Asian mod for AoE2DE

Not at the moment. We have quite a bit on our plate with the current civs and their campaigns.

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We really need a canon elephant hero skin to make a proper Tai civi.

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I know what those words mean on their own but not in the order you used them
Aren’t there already multiple elephant-mounted heroes?

If possible, I’d like to see campaigns with female protagonists, or campaigns that are connected (i.e. one story follows another like the Jadwiga story follows the Lithuanian campaign, or the protagonists are opposites like Joan of Arc and Philip the Good).

That’s why I always stand with Empress Dowager Xiao Yanyan as the Khitans campaign, and Wuzhu and Yue Fei as the Jurchens and Chinese campaign respectively.

On the other hand, regarding famous events and battles spanning several Tang emperors, such as the founding of the dynasty and the Xuanwu Gate Incident, the conquest of the Gokturks, the Battle of Talas, the An Lushan Rebellion, etc., perhaps it would be nice to create a series of historical scenarios called Book of Tang as if it were a work of history book to collect them.

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What I mean is we need a canon elephant unit as the UU for the tai,mods usually take hero skins as uu’s.

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Oh, cannon. With two Ns. Canon means something else.

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While I did look for female protagonists, this isn’t always easy as you also have to balance them with having a good campaign with a wide variety of opponents. If someone just didn’t do anything outside of mirror-matches, that does not make for the best campaign.

We have made a bit of a compromise with the Chinese campaign, choosing a male protagonist, but a very famous female ruler to do the narration.

However. We did manage to make the campaigns semi-connected. In fact each campaign takes place in a different century, and bookends each other to tell a long history of China. It’s not like Dawn of the Dukes or Lords of the West. But they do tell a long story of the region.

Chinese (7th century)
Tibetans (8th century)
Bai (9th century)
Khitans (10th century)
Tanguts (11th century)
Jurchens (12th century)

Some of these events are covered in the campaigns. Scattered throughout.

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I was hoping for something like this! Very excited

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And of course, there is one campaign to play after this that happens in the 13th century that this all leads up to. The official one
Genghis Khan.

Which one of the campaigns even dips into with a single scenario.

Also Le Loi even later.

The absolute insanity that WE obviously wants the chinese market, that instead of covering nearly a millennium of china and china adjacent history over all these new (and old) campaigns instead chose to cover the same 25 years three times.

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True.

Although this can be seen as one single long mostly-continuous trek across the history of China.

And who knows. We might add some one-off scenarios covering parts that are important, but don’t fall into the lifespans of our chosen protagonists. Such as the An-Lushan Rebellion.

It’s honestly quite lazy. Given the same characters and scenes pop up multiple times.

Empress Dowager Xiao Yanyan’s life won’t be a mirror match for sure. In fact, she was indeed the de facto Ruler of Liao at the time, leading her own cavalry troops, fighting against Chinese and Balhae (can be represented by Koreans or Jurchens). The narrator could be her son, Emperor Shengzong, and the last scenario could be Shengzong’s invasion of Goryeo after she passed away.

If meanwhile the Tangut campaign is based on Yuanhao, the comparison would be interesting. Both of stories can be narrated by the sons respectively, and the image about what kind of ruler and parent they were can be presented. Xiao Yanyan was a wise and brave mother, and her son cherished her teaching and legacy even after she passed away; while Yuanhao was ambitious, dangerous and brutal man, even his successor had to assassinate him


What I talked about is things like the Lithuanians and Poles campaign. They are basically ONE single long story narrated by same person but the former part is presented by Lithuanians and the latter part is by Poles.

When I imagined the story of Jurchens and Chinese, the rivalry between Wuzhu and Yue Fei came up to me. The former part would be based on Wuzhu, who followed his brother to conquer Liao and Northern Song and later led the southern expansion, and the latter part would be based on Yue Fei, who led the great countback against Wuzhu and Jin army until a palace intrigue.

The campaigns could be one story narrated by a Jurchen captain of Jin army, descendant of a Wuzhu’s trooper, to his Han recruit on the eve of Mongol siege. The last scenario could be the captain defend a city of Jin while the Song would betray their ally and allied with the new conqueror, which would ironically be a de javu of they betray Liao and allied with Jin in the very first scenario of Wuzhu.

The rise and fall of empires, the satire of history, and the image of a tragic hero would come to life, which are what I prefer than just a victory after another victory of a great emperor. One of the reasons for the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty was because they turned their backs on Liao and cooperated with Jin. After the Southern Song Dynasty abandoned Yue Fei’s efforts, they eventually faced the same history. They turned their backs on Jin and cooperated with Mongols, and also finally conquered by Mongols. This is even another and better interpretation of “Into China”.

So you mean to pick one protagonist in each century in the region, though they are not having a clear tie to another.

This is your mod, so it’s all on you. You and your team have worked on it with passion and without compensation, I can’t and won’t challenge your choices.

It would be my pleasure if my outdated two cents on the concept of East Asian DLC and the campaign DLC could be a little bit of help or reference to your team.

Thankyou.

We’re honestly too far in at this point to change the characters. As all the levels have a “script” that would need to be utterly redesigned from scratch. And we have advertised these 7 as the protagonists. Don’t want to put out misleading advertising about a Chinese add-on now do we


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All the cool kids are doing it.

Am I missing something? Korean, campaign as well?

No Korean campaign is planned as of now.

China was the focus, so they get the campaign first out of all non-mod civs.

So who’s the seventh protagonist? I see six campaigns.

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Quick question: Do we need to own the 3K DLC to play this mod?

Or can you add civs to AOE2 without replacing existing ones? (cause I thought this was the case with mods).

I understand. It’s a pity that my ideas couldn’t be shared with you earlier enough. When I noticed, it’s too late, your work had already made considerable progress.

If you are still interested in running more than one campaign for each of those civs, or are interested in developing Gokturks and Sogdians, perhaps those ideas may still have a chance to be a reference.

It’s called posting with lack of sleep haha. I meant 6.

No. 3K is not needed in any way shape or form to play this mod.

Sadly this is the case. And as of now, the civs do override others. Namely ones from regions that East Asian civs never encountered. So as to make campaign-building for them easier.

Thankyou. I’ll keep those in-mind.

There is a small plan to perhaps cover some big events in China that these campaigns miss. As kind of “gap-fillers”. Such as the An-Lushan rebellion.

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