Could someone with knowledge on military or Mongol history please provide me with an answer?
Did Mongols actually use lances like the ones in this picture?
In my mind and in pop culture I think, they look incredibly westernized.
Due to the kind of their handles, their grip, their huge size or the small and clean triangular flag on top that gives a royal air to them.
That’s something I would normally expect to see during jousts in Western Europe or in a European than a Mongol army and puts me off.
It looked like a mistake but I was holding back a little due to the advertised trips that the dev team did to Mongolia and their eagerness to give emphasis on historical accuracy. Hard to believe that they would blunder something like that
If it’s really a mistake, it should be fixed.
Well, Adam Isgreen did say the “Fan Preview” was shot months before, and a lot of things are being adjusted and fixed. So I think they were doing the main battle tests for the game, reskin, I believe should be a smaller issue.
Haven’t read up on this so not sure about the particulars of history, but one thing to note is that the army from the AoE4 capture is an imperial age army - so it’s possibly the case that the cavalry it represents are from some of the follow-up empires that were created as a result of the Mongol empire, rather than cavalry from the typical “Mongol expansion” era.
It should be a small issue but I’m afraid that such things rarely change unless a lot of people actually request it. From what I can see around that’s probably not going to be their priority. I’m just one of those players who can get really turned off by cultural inaccuracies and overlapping. Probably one of the reasons that AoEII could never win me.
I’ve heard this just as an idea being dropped by the community at times (to have follow-up cultures or empires). As far as I am aware such thing hasn’t been officially confirmed and does not exist. For all we know those are standard Mongolian soldiers. Their armors are quite accurate actually. It’s just their lances that stand out.
For example, if you look closely, they look too much alike if not identical to the English lances. And I’m afraid they may have copied them to make specific units easily readable from civ to civ, sacrificing however some cultural uniqueness which shouldn’t be happening.
As a player who transitioned as the franchise evolved to each sequel as they were released, I expect every civilization to have historically and thematically correct units. AoE hasnt had this kind of generic inaccuracies since 1999. This is a huge requirement for me to feel like the game was crafted with the care the franchise deserves. Having Mongol units looking like European knights is a huge turn off for me. I’m glad this has been spotted and brought up.
I agree that the lances do not look like something a Mongol army would use. Since cavalry switch weapons after their charge attacks complete, it’s possible that this visual is something that’s associated to that special animation, not the unit. That would explain why cavalry from other civilizations seem to have similar lances. They may be trying to give the player a universal way of knowing when cavalry are ready for their next charge. Also, since the in-game justification for the units switching weapons is that their lances splinter, maybe that’s why they chose to use this lance again? I’m not sure whether it would make sense, visually, to have the Mongolian lances pictured above splinter when used. I’m guessing that those lances were used more than once? Regardless, I definitely agree that they should consider changing the visuals. I’m just unsure of what exact change should be made, assuming that we also want the Mongols to keep the charge mechanic and have a visual that indicates it is ready for use… It seems like a tricky problem. Hopefully they already fixed it, like the arrows.
Lances used in warfare were far more spear-like, even couched ones. And vamplates were only used on jousting lances, so the lances used by knights (and other units) in medieval games shouldn’t have them.
We’re in the same boat. And that’s partially the reason I couldn’t point this out as a straightforward mistake, I was certain that the series had moved on from such old practices for good.
As I can see, Delhi’s charging cavalry also appears with the same again kind of jousting lance. It has to be an unfortunate decision about readability.
For example, the Chinese charging weapon below looks more unique and natural. You can assume it looks right even if historical accuracy is not 100% there and that’s ok.
Now, seeing Mongols or Indians holding a western jousting lance looks as much wrong as seeing Aztecs with knights and trebuchets.
Although I’m unsure if that’s China’s imperial army. Perhaps they they too change to western lances when they hit imperial. I don’t know but that would be really disappointing.
I think that is one of their unique units, using a “fire lance.” They may have only made the weapon more civilization specific here because it has the gunpowder animation, but hopefully they will make the other designs more accurate, too.
Looks like that unit is from the third dynasty of China included in the game, so it is not necessarily reflective of their generic imperial age heavy cavalry.
The game has a heavy cavalry with lances and light cavalry with spears that fulfil different roles.
It seems like they want to give Mongol heavy that fits into that scheme but Chinese heavy cavalry has a Guandao instead of a lance so maybe they’ll change that for the Mongols later.
Or the Chinese heavy cavalry is an exception because they also have the fire lance cavalry.
Civs in this series don’t need to have generic units to fulfill roles. Age of Empires3, Age of Mythology, and Age of Empires Online have proved that over and over for 19 years.
I do not know who would say that generic units are needed and for what reason but at least for the things that I enjoy in this game, not only are they not needed, but they are harmful to the experience.
What is particularly annoying though is that this is not a generic lance. It is not culturally neutral. Jousting was a sport popular to French and Anglo-Normans, so Western Europe.
Seeing Mongols or Indians holding them hurts the eyes and dampens the initial enthusiasm.
Looks like we will remain stuck with western anglo-norman jousting lances for every civ.
It must signify a generic charging type of cavalry that every civ is going to have.
But apparently, they kept the weapon visuals the same for everyone. Disappointing.
