For the 3rd civ, a lot of people are hoping for Byzantine, those crusader cross could very well be, but I’m less sure about that one, since more than one civ were part of the crusades.
EDIT : In the end, Egypt (Saladin’s Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt) seems a lot more likely than Persia.
EDIT 2:
Japanese seems like the only confirmed pvp civ.
No other pvp civ are certain right now. The new campaign will be Saladin vs crusader, most likely the siege of Jerusalem of 1187 right before the third crusade, but it could use existing civs (saladin = abassid and crusader= french english hre).
There is nothing pointing towards egypt, byzantine or persian yet. As those horse models in screenshot are the abbasyd lancers already in game, same for the tower it’s just abbasyd, and the crusaders could be special models for campaign only.
Another thing to consider is that historically the Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt was like a province within the Abbasid dynasty so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make it a separate civ. Persia was ALSO under the Abbasid.
But i think they will announce more of the other new civs later this week.
From the announcement picture we can clearly see a crusader vs a new middle eastern faction. Because of the title Sultans Ascend the main enemy of the crusaders was Saladin which came from Egypt.
So it must be Egypt (Mamlurk) + Crusaders + Japanese
We must wait for the Byzantines for the future im afraid.
aren’t they called “Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt” ? Not sure what the term “Mamlurk” refers to??
Also I’m really wondering to which civ people refer to when they say “Crusaders”. That’s not a civ. Cant Byzantine be crusaders since they were christians?
If we get crusaders that’s probably just going to be a mix of civs (HRE, French…) part of the campaign and not an actual civ.
OR if its about the Siege of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, then it’s against crusaders. Which aren’t really a civ but an alliance of multiple civs such as Teutonic Order and the Knights Templar. Maybe that would mean that its a campaign only faction and not PVP for crusaders.
I’m not saying we won’t see a new Middle Eastern civ. I’m just saying that the lancer photo is not it. They announced that this is the biggest expansion ever and the only other expansion had 2 civs. So, we should see at least one more civ in addition to the Japanese.
But I also think, that cavalry on the picture are Abbasid lancers, not the units from new unit…
I guess, that means new SP campaign for Abbasids, not new middle easter civ, but we will see
I think Saladin vs Crusader just make too much sense now for the campaign based on screenshots.
That would mean at least the Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt + Japan as new civs. Crusaders could be a campaign only civ comprised of french and HRE and Jerusalem.
The “Sultant Ascend” seems to be definitely referring to Saladin.
With this picture, I am bit sad, it is wall protecting empty area with 2 houses, they could do really something better for in-game representative pictures
I’m right there with you. ”The Crusaders” would be a super questionable civ name. I assume those speculating in that direction are just kinda messing around.
