More Asian and African civilization

[SirBarnzy1]

Sure:

Development on African Royals

@tilanus

Hi!

Let me start with a platitude: Game development costs money and time, so that is always a constraint for any developer. With TAR we could design 2 civilizations, but knew we had to be smart about how we used our resources.

One big solution I came up with was synergies. If you look at the African buildings you’ll notice they often combine 2 buildings in one. The War Camp is a Stable and Barracks, the Livestock Market a Market and a Livestock Pen, etc. This was beneficial for production while at the same time creating building hybrids that didn’t yet exist. You can also see it to some degree in the unit roster. While both African civs have their own unique roster they do heavily rely on the Alliance age-ups that enable new technologies but more importantly new units, which are often new African mercenaries and natives.

Alliances
That, of course, is only one side of the coin. If you look at the history of the Hausa and Ethiopians you’ll quickly notice that they weren’t centralized states like France or Great Britain. But much like the German HRE it was a loose collection of Ethiopian and Hausa kingdoms with their own power dynamics, such as constantly shifting alliances and rivalries. They also weren’t strictly heterogenous. Ethiopia is a good example with its different warlords but also multi-ethnic structure (Oromo, Habesha, etc). With Alliance age-ups we felt this was a good way to portray the influence of various “internal” and “external” players as well as feature actual units that either had to be created for a proper expansion anyway or already existed (i.e. Indian and Jesuit units for Ethiopia). It ticked a lot of boxes for design, production and striked a nice balance between novelty and familiarity.

Influence & Livestock
As for other mechanics I think the Influence and Livestock mechanic are the most prominent ones. Both husbandry and cowry shells as currency played a huge role in Sub-saharan Africa - and partially still does. So it seemed obvious to me that this should play an important role in the African gameplay.

Influence
The Influence resource is a more consequential realization of the Export resource to be - pun intended - more influential on the civs’ path to dominance. Influence narratively links to the actual history of complex relations between the different players in the Ethiopian and Hausa realms. It even is reflected in the AI personality’s biographies, who both in their own right had to work their way up to and from local rulers to dominant, highly respected and influential sovereigns. Influence of course is not really a hard currency which is why I found the cowry shell to be a fitting representation of it, since unlike metal-based currencies it doesn’t really have a material value, it is more of a status symbol. From a design & balancing perspective we wanted it to be spent on “power units” and I think it’s also a lovely narrative fit that the more influential rulers can find stronger allies.

Livestock
This analogy also translates quite well to the Livestock mechanic as owning a large herd of cattle was an indicator of wealth and status. The initial design challenge of that mechanic was to find a good gameplay reason to keep your livestock around for longer, make its use both necessary and appealing. Livestock generating Influence achieved exactly that. It encourages you to grow your herd, keep it alive and only “trade” them when it is to your advantage. I just love these analogies.

Getting the cost conversions from food/wood/coin to Influence as well as the Influence gather rates right was quite the mathematical challenge, I still remember the big excel sheets of my fellow designer! Hell of a job.

Civilization picks

• Ethiopians were an obvious pick from the start. There was huge community demand and the history was fascinating. The idea of an African civ that resisted colonialization and had this strong controversial leader figure in Tewiodros was just too good to be left out.
• Hausa wasn’t as obvious from the start, but kind of emerged after lots of research and internal discussion. Songhai was actually a strong contender at first, but was eventually “demoted” to a Hausa alliance option as its history was rather short-lived and it was very hard to find a lot of source material. Since AoE3 civs aren’t really only about single empires either we went on to actually find a dominant culture. It had to be from West Africa to ensure the DLC covered enough territory to deserve the “African” in its title. The Hausa-Fulani culture stretched from modern-day Nigeria (also the most populous state) to Senegal, primarily through trade and transhumance. The latter, again, being a great fit for the mechanics we were looking into.
  There were more factors obviously, like the geo-historical proximity to the Akan people (Ashanti), the Yoruba and the resulting potential for features of these in the Hausa civ.

Hope that helps you with your paper!

Regarding Morrocans (and I guess applies to MENA in general):

@tilanus

Moroccans were definitely considered for TAR, but they didn’t make it into the “final round” since there are so many overlaps with the European design culture (and history). It really sits at the crossroads between the two civ styles. That obviously didn’t make it a 100% fit for the African culture and for the DLC we really wanted the civs to be distinctively different from European civs. So due to this Moroccans were never cut or started.

With that said it is still a very interesting civ, however it’d be made, i.e. as a more African or European civ blend with elements from the respective other culture. If the game actually needs a Moroccan civ is a good question, since there is already so much there. Barbary Pirate scenario civ, revolution, African alliance, mercs, Berbers, etc. Thematically one could argue it’s notably covered already (though a main civ is always something else). Contrary to widespread belief existing content wouldn’t actually make the development of a Moroccan civ easier, since we can’t just rip all this content out of its embedded place within the live game. We’d actually need to come up with work-arounds, replacements, etc.

Hope that gave you some insights!

I think it could still be a possibility if a decent structure could be found for Morrocans et al. This is why I’m pushing it’s gameplay to not necessarily be totally unique, but rather a happy medium between Euros/AR civs. Embrace the crossroads!