I don’t see how this would be an issue for a campaign. Is there any scenario or campaign which uses the actual skirmish factions? Theyre all altered versions.
True but they’d pretty much have to make Prussia from scratch to do that. And it would be odd to go to all that effort and still not make them a multiplayer civ.
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Prussians would probably not even be playable in a Napoleonic campaign, you severely overestimate how much work would be involved here.
Jena and Auerstedt were pretty significant battles so they’d have to be mostly fleshed out to cover that. Even if it’s only battles where you’re on the winning side they were also a major presence at Waterloo.
Mate, I believe your eyes are very dirty with the idea of political propaganda.
I can’t talk about other topics, as I don’t follow them all, but, in this one, it was never said that European history should be rejected or anything like that.
On the contrary, the title of the topic talks precisely about the Napoleonic Wars, which I would LIKE to see included in the game.
It turns out that, during the dialogues, HoopThrower mentioned his preferences in terms of what would be best for the game, and, likewise, I did the same about what I would like to see included.
However, for marketing reasons, I believe that the Napoleonic Wars are more viable.
But this does not exclude our genuine interest in seeing the history of other regions, such as those already mentioned.
Furthermore, I think I must have expressed myself badly when I said that Europe might not be the focus this time. I believe it was only understood in relation to AOE3. But, allow me to correct:
When I said that Europe could not be the focus, I was referring to a large number of strategy games, I will cite some examples that I remember now:
Total War Empire
Napoleon Total War
Thrones of Britannia
AOE2
AOE3 (look to Vanilla Civilizations)
Cossack series
Some High Fantasy Strategy games
Company of Heroes series
and a lot of others.
So, when I say that AOE3 could not focus on Europe and take the opportunity to show other war scenarios, that’s why.
Finally, allow me to comment: what is popular, in my humble understanding, is defined not only by what people naturally like, but rather by what they consume of these stories through the media products that reach them, like movies, tv shows, games, books.
So, if European wars are so popular today, it is because there was an extreme consumption on these contents, and this can always be changed, not meaning that a well-made media product about a non-European setting will not be popular.
An example of this is what was done in relation to the War of Independence of the Spanish colonies in South America led by Simon Bolivar, it was not done in an interesting way in AOE3.
Although unlikely, within the game’s theme there would be room for an exclusive campaign to be inserted alongside a civilization from Colombia or derivative.
You may not be familiar with him **** in literally every post about European contents. I was not targeting you.
First of all, “no campaign at all” is far away from “focus”.
If we have ONE, just one European campaign, we can talk about which should be the focus.
My entire reply was about that and it seems you didn’t read.
This would be extremely difficult, especially when it the first installment in this series.
If AOE had a series of games on popular settings in the same period then a next game on different settings would work.
AOE3 is not. It is the first game in early modern period, one that not only AOE but most other games did not explore at that time. It already gave a disadvantage, and choosing unpopular setting among a already-less-popular time period gave it a bigger disadvantage.
Imagine AOE2 being the first medieval RTS in the series and its ONLY (this is very important so I highlighted it) campaigns are about the Hundred Years War from Burgundy’s perspective, plus a fictional story about two barons fighting over one village for a decade. That’s what AOE3 did. It did not turn out well.
It’s not that AOE2 did not have such campaigns. But when were they added? Much much later after the game became successful. The game started with the most popular, to-go campaigns. They didn’t start with Bari or Lords of the West.
And AOE4 did the same all over again.
This is a time to correct that for AOE3 before doing anything unconventional and adventurous. What AOE3 should have done while ago is listing out the most well-known events of its period by flipping through a middle school history textbook and pick from them, just like how they (very likely) picked civilizations.
For example if you want to pick three civilizations from Asia, it’s very difficult NOT to choose China, Japan, India and that’s how TAD came into being. I don’t know why people lose that intuition when talking about campaigns and settings.
BTW I was not equating “popular” with “European”. You did. I’m just saying French revolution and Napoleon is an immensely popular setting and should not be ignored. It’s just that it happens to be in Europe and happens to be ignored. I’d say American revolution and Sengoku Japan are the other popular settings but they are not ignored so no need to request them.
And I need to point out these are not European nations. These are European colonies in the Americas.
Europe had little to no representation in the campaigns up to now.
And again we are talking about the game having European campaigns at all which is miles away from being the “focus”.
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Now that you brought it up, allow me to make a deep dive into that topic:
Let’s assume an alternate universe that in 2003 CA was planning its first, major, 3D strategy game, and they eventually made…Thrones of Britannia. It’s very likely you will not see any total war game after that.
Why the game is centered on Rome not, say, Thrace? (no offense)
CA knows this. Thrones of Britannia is a small, experimental spin-off game. It’s not a main title. It was only made after CA had much more (spare) manpower and funds.
Same with Pharaoh. It is obviously a spin-off game forced into a main title because CA was in such a financial crisis. And see how it turned out. Now CA is savaging it not by further sticking to its narrow scope, but by expanding it with more popular requests like Babylon and Assyria.
Even for Thrones of Britannia, the rule of popularity still holds.
A player with little knowledge to history would simply skip it and directly go to those with more popular settings. You lose a lot of potential players already. Now for those interested in this period, what most of them would expect to see in this game? Which faction/character should be featured the most heavily in this game?
Alfred the Great. Obviously. You don’t need any mental gymnastics to come up with that name. And that’s what CA did. The starting time was when Alfred the Great started to expand, he appeared in the center of the artwork and was the easiest, introductory faction.
Otherwise you’ll lose a large portion of the already-small audience that are interested in the setting.
Now AOE3 did worse than “otherwise”: it’s like Thrones of Britannia where you CANNOT play Alfred the Great.
Look, there is a difference between “offering unconventional options alongside the popular ones” and “not having the popular ones at all”. AOE3 is almost in the latter situation.
I’ve emphasized it several times: AOE3 is the series’ FIRST touch on this time period. And it excluded most of the popular settings. For example:
- French Revolution and Napoleon
- Ottoman Empire
- The transition of Ming and Qing
- American revolution (added later)
- US Civil War
- Sengoku Japan (added much later)
- Bolivar, as you’ve mentioned (we only have one level of very shallow and generic representation, which I can reskin to any event)
This comes from what I remember I’ve already known in primary school (excluding other parts of Chinese history because they may not be as well-known in popular culture worldwide). If AOE3 were released with campaigns with 3 of these settings (plus one or two with more freedom) it would be much better received. But it ended up doing none of them.
Most of these are not European, BTW.
AOE2 and AOE4 did the exact opposite. Most of the starting campaigns are obvious choices. Let’s say if they made AOE5 and it’s still medieval (hope not), and it had the same Jeanne d’Arc, Mongols, Hastings, people would be bored and would expect different things. But neither AOE2 or 4 is in that situation. If they started with fictional and/or unconventional campaigns like Bari or Great Dukes of the West, while excluding the most popular ones, they were very likely to fail.
AOE3 was not in a good position for experimenting with novel takes on history. That’s different from its gameplay. AOE1 and 2 had similar gameplay and AOE3 should not directly copy that. But AOE1 and 2 did not touch early modern history and AOE3 should have started with the safest choices in this new time period. You have every freedom to explore other subjects in later additions and spinoffs, but starting with exclusively unpopular settings is dangerous. It has been proven to be the weakest part of AOE3.
BTW I’m a strong advocate of more faithful representation and the removal of stereotypes. I’m open to learning more beyond what I have already known. However, what I don’t like about current entertainment industry is that some producers and commenters have an attitude of “you should be ashamed for not liking this”, or even worse “you should be ashamed for liking that”.
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AoE3 took way too much inspiration from AoM regarding campaigns, and it hurt the game. If AoE3 went the campaign route of AoE2 perhaps the game would still receive campaigns today.
Aside from obvious budget issues, I suspect the devs are reticent to change the campaign formula to more expansive historical settings after all these years.
Restricting the campaigns to the colonization of the Americas, while globally significant, also meant that they could not expand in the necessary ways to engage a broader audience and encompass historical events from around the world. TAD tried (kinda but not really) but it was too late and at this point, ES moved on while BHG did what it could.
I love ES as much as the next AoE lifer, but they made mistakes with AoE3 that limited its potential. It is frustrating because you see areas where ES evolved drastically in quite a fearless manner from AoE2 but I think it backfired as far as AoE3 campaigns were concerned.
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Because it was an AOM-like spinoff forced into the main title, with little time for adjustment. TWC was very likely planned at release, and TAD was an attempt to bring it back to course but it was too late.
From whatever perspective AOE3 as part of a renowned historical series, one of the few games on early modern period, with great depth and potential, has no reason to ignore most of the important historical events.
We have two games in this series that depict Hastings, Mongols and Jeanne d’Arc twice and not single one on French Revolution.
I’m not adverse to being presented with something fresh and unconventional. But I dislike it when someone intentionally skips the most obvious to-go choices that I’m naturally expecting just to “educate” me. Like “Here is a LOTR game. You are expecting elves? Dwarves? Heroes that you’re familiar with? No. You’re too biased and entitled. You should appreciate Gollum.”
I don’t think that was ES’s intention but some people sound like that.
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Should have been added with the KotM DLC, along with tons of scenario content (european urban houses, landmarks, maps of real cities like Paris or Petersburg).
But as always, i fear the game isn’t popular enough to justify so much work just for one campaign. One can only dream^^
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Yeah, it usually happens…
True, but is what is…you have skirmish civs,only-campaign civs and only-Historical Battles civs…
Sure, European wars and civs always are popular in strategy games…much more than Native Americans civs…
Sure, maybe if they put Gran Colombia in the game, they will put a historical battle with Bolivar in Carabobo in 1821, four years after Steel campaign.
Yes, anyway, we already knew that AoE 3 was going to be early modern since 2000 with The Conquerors (Moctezuma, Lepanto, Kyoto and Noryang Point)…
Yes, AoE 3 should have been delayed until 2007 (launched with TWC and TAD as base content) and then the first dlc should have been KotM in 2008 with 4 campaigns and 2 civs: Italians and Swedes: Napoleon, Suleiman, César Borgia and Gustavo Adolphus and then TAR in 2009, with 3 civs: Hausa, Morocco and Ethiopians and their respective historical battles made campaigns…
Yes, I think that AoE 5 may be AoE 1 or AoE 3 made by Relic… I would like them to take more risks and set AoE 5 in the 20th century, but now I see it as unlikely…
This is all apt for the recent Survey form. Not just Napleonics - more historical-based campaigns are welcome in general.
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