More Than Just 3 Kingdoms: An Honest Take on the AOE2 Update Every Fan Should Read

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I reviewed now most of the available new content and I want to give an honest review of all new things. I play aoe since a little kid and have a very emotional relationship with the game. Things got heated because of the 3 kingdoms, and I can understand that because also my hype died when I saw this, but it is easy and unfair to not review everything else because of one (even though it’s a mayor) thing.

First the free update:

All of this is nice and except for some purist, everyone appreciates this.

New elite skins are well designed (just would have preferred the maya keeping his arrows). Nobody even asked for this, yet if was exactly what the fanbase wanted. One can therefore understand if the devs go new unexpected ways. Sometimes its awesome, sometimes not. There is always a risk.

I give new elite skins 99/100 points

New Monks: Devs, thank you so much for this. Finally, the Saracens don’t have monks but imams. It’s exactly what was needed. Also, the new monasteries are well designed and fitting. Only one comment: if a converted monk picks up or lays down a relic, he changes religion. Maybe this can be fixed.

I give the new monks 99/100 points. Maybe we can get regional skins for casern, archer and stable units next?

New castle skins: same here. Fans did ask for this and devs delivered. Thank you for this!

I give new castle skins 100/100 points

New animals and plants: this is an amazing addition to the diversity of this game. This also includes the new terrain and elevation options. Real Asian maps are now possible. Chickens are fun. I relay like them. Some don’t like them but come on, it’s something new and nice. Also, the new predators give some more real felling to some maps with not all wolfs and bears are the same.

I give new animals and plants 100/100 points. Please give us more of that in the future for Africa, America and maybe Australia. (We have an Australia map after all).

New scenario editor items: I guess many did not look at this yet, but the possibilities to give Asian Maps / Missions an authentic look are now much much bigger than before. The Hall of Heroes, new eye candy, flags and the new Yurts are absolutely beautiful.

I give new scenario editor items 100/100 points. Keep up the good work!

New modding options: it honestly is to much to write here. The options are now endless. We can have traps, burning and bleeding effects which opens the door to unlimited custom civs and scenarios.

I give the new modding options 100/100 points

New regional units: rocket carts, Lou Chuans, Fire Lancers are what was needed to give the Asian civs a more unique identity, same a s the elephants for the Indians. I love every of the units and appreciate the effort of the devs.

I give new regional units 100/100 points. Please do the same with the African and American civs.

The Jurchens: They could be my new favorite civ. I played against them in the Xie An Scenario, and man this was fun. Dogeing the rockets of the rocket chart while keeping in mind they explode a bit later was super exiting. Also, the grenadier and the unique unite are well designed and fun to play with or against them. I hope you will give them unique voice lines, and it will be perfect.

I give the Jurchens 100/100 points

The Khitans: Well, its seems like they are more Tanguts to me. However, the Civ design itself is quite good in my opinion. Reflecting damage, healing while fighting and bleeding damage all makes this enemy something to fear and easily underestimated. The mounted Mounted Trebuchet is a really nice unite because it leaves burning ground or buildings behind that still adds damage for a while. The Pasture is a very nice addition, that hopefully will be added to more civs in the future. I don’t know what lead to the decision to unite the Khitans and Tanguts. I guess the Tanguts were too small and short lived? I would have preferred to have 2 Civs but the 1 Civ itself is fun to play and I hope they will get a unique voice line and not copy the Mongols.

I give the Khitans 80/100 points

The 3 Kingdoms: Now we come to the not so well received part. Lets start with the positive: the new (non hero) units look well designed both esthetically and functionally. If they were a Chronicles Civ, I would have given them most likely 100 points. However, they are not in Chronicles and therefore need to be measured in comparison of the other aoe2 Civs. In the Interview short before the announcement, it was said, that a small Duchy would most likely not have what it needs to be a aoe2 Civ. Well the 3 Kingdoms are basically this: A small and short lived part of the old Chinese. The fact that they are outside of the timeframe of aoe2 is not the biggest dealbreaker in my opinion. They represent like the romans the old system that started the Meadville era in that region. I do play in single and unranked multiplayer with and against Chronicle civs and I like it, however in ranked they seam a bit out of place, mainly because of the hero unit. I haven’t seen enough videos and I didn’t test them in scenarios enough to give a final verdict, but I think it would have been better if they would have been only 1 Han Civ that develops to one of the 3 Kingdoms depending on the choices of technologies and instead we would have gotten the Tibetans as another civ. I think that would have led to less harsh reactions. I keep an open mind for now and lets see if I get to like the 3 new Civs more but for now:

I give the 3 Kingdoms 45/100 points.

Last point the campaigns:
Here I need to wait of course for the release. The Xie An Scenario was nice, so that will give some points and I am sure the 3 Kingdoms campaigns will be designed well and innovative like always. However, the fact that Jurchen and Khitans, as well as the reworked Chinese and Koreans have no campaigns feels like a missed opportunity. Including the Japanese, we have now 5 big Civs that don’t have real campaigns, leaving us with the Mongols as the only campaign to visit this area. I understand that it would be a lot of work for one DLC to add so many campaigns and therefore I think it would be a good idea to have a DLC that adds the Tibetans (rename them if its so problematic) and gives many campaigns to this region.

So I can not give points here yet and will wait for the release, but it misses at least 40 points here already due to the missing medieval campaigns.

Summary and Conclusion:

elite skins 99/100 points → awesome, good work!
new monks 99/100 points → awesome, more like this please (regional unit skins)
new castle skins 100/100 points → awesome, good work!
new animals and plants 100/100 points → awesome, more like this please (Africa Amerika Australia)
new scenario editor items 100/100 points → awesome, more like this please
new modding options 100/100 points → awesome, more like this please
new regional units 100/100 points → awesome, more like this please (America and Africa)
Jurchens 100/100 points → more Civs like this please
Khitans 80/100 points → good but please mix less relas Civs into one in the future.
3 Kingdoms 45/100 points → you sure had good intentions, but please don’t repeat this mistake
Campaigns tba → add more for the Civs that don’t have Campaigns yet.

Finaly I would like to say that despite the fact, that I don’t like that the 3 Kingdoms in this form, I buy the DLC. Why? Because protest is good and believe me that protest was heard for sure. It is on all channels like youtube, the forum, reddit. But not buying the DLC will show MS the wrong picture: That DLCs for AOE2 are not wanted anymore. And to be honest, the Devs gave us many many things that are awesome in that update and most of it for free. But that will not pay their salaries, and I want a lot more DLCs in the future. So I forgive them for this mistake, thank them for all the good things and hope for more better content in the future.

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You are wrong here. Not buying the DLC will show MS that we don’t want this DLC and that we don’t want Chronicles civs shoved into the base game.

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I disagree. MS only sees the money. That’s why Aoe3 doesn’t get Anymore content.
The devs read the reddit and forum posts, not MS. The devs will learn what to do, MS will only see numbers to decide to continue or not

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This should be put in the bug report section.

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This isn’t a bug, but a byproduct of how Monks picking up Relics works. It can’t be fixed.

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Anything can be fixed if you have the base code.

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That’s exactly the reason i preordered this DLC while i completely disagree with its content. But we cant tolerate 3 straight bad or non mainline DLCs

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I think the merging of the East Asian DLC and a Chronicles can be nothing but a management intervention.

I can’t believe any of the developers would be comfortable doing this.

The corporate greed if encouraged in any form would continue to pressure the developers.

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It does not affect the pagan priest and aoe1 priest both of the scenario editor. (or any hero monk)

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The ones at the top making decisions based solely on the bottom line won’t see that.

Let’s hope the community manager does his job, takes the temperature notably of the forum and tell the high-ups “the fans say they want this, doing it would be a slam dunk”

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I think because they aren’t normally available to any civilization.

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The management only cares about “growth”.

If this 3K on ranked BS pays off, they’ll expect more growth, and impose more demand on the developers. The developers will continue to live under the pressure of having to sell the game to wider and wider audience, so they’ll have to resort to more radical, aggressive and desperate choices. Maybe One Piece DLC next?

I think people should drop the illusion of “if we gave them money for what we dislike, they’ll make what we like in the future”. That never happened. With any company. Many of us AOE3 players bought all their games and even the cosmetic DLC to support them so that they can continue to support our game. Then what?

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Why does this argument keep coming up? It’s not true. There are an estimated 1 million owners of AOE3DE on steam and 3 million free-to-play accounts. There’s lots of money to be made.

While making money is certainly the goal, many of these decisions across the series are just stupid, and it indicates that the studio’s upper management is just incompetent.

Why are Chronicles civs being shoved into the base game when it could be sold as two separate DLCs and avoid all controversy? One civ pack and one Chronicles. The fact that it isn’t speaks to utter incompetence at the decision-maker level.

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Even if it’s the case, let’s make a thought experiment:

AOE3 players believed if they bought all WE’s games, WE will have the money to support AOE3. As a result, most AOE3 players bought the other games, but not all their players bought AOE3.
Reality: the money eventually all flows to the “more profitable” games and they cut the fundamental maintenance for AOE3

Now, similar situation:
AOE2 players believe if they bought WE’s unfitting BS, even if they don’t like it, WE will have the money to make more real medieval contents they like.

What will happen in reality?
A: WE sees those BS sell twice as much as the traditional medieval contents so they continue to make more and more aggressive BS.

B: WE deliberately chose to go back to the medieval contents of the other parts of the world, even if it’s not as profitable

Think for yourself not the billionaires.

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Precisely.

WE will go for option A every time.

We should not encourage them.

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I think there could be a mutual trust between developers and players, that the developers are reacting in response to the players’ demands, and that they are both enthusiastic about the game as it is.

I’d say it’s most of time an illusion, like the Disneyland characters and Santa Claus, but one that when carefully maintained can create a heathy relationship and a positive atmosphere. It requires efforts from both sides to preserve it.

But then when the company breaks the bubble with obvious greed, people suddenly realized “oh, they may not really care about us or our game in the same way as we do. They just consider them as cash cows and only care about revenue and growth. They can do anything to our game as long as it generates $$$.”

In fact the latter is always the case, but a wise and competent business could manage to minimize such feelings.

AOE3 players had that disillusionment long ago. Maybe this one is the disillusionment point for many AOE2 players. For some it could be V&V, ROR, or any one of the strange DLCs. But this one is unprecedented.

Like “they made the medieval civ and campaign DLCs not because they really cared, but because they hadn’t figured out a better way to print $$$”.
The reality is of course a mixture of both, but WE’s shortsighted greed tips the scale so drastically to the other side.
What we can and should do now is blocking this way of printing $$$ for them instead of encouraging it.

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