So close. Fell at the final hurdle.
It’s the Iron Pagoda. That’s what it’s called, and it was not used outside of the Jurchen army.
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And my entire life (Since teaser picture release, lol) I’m reading that green cavalry is 100% Iron Pagoda.
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It was literally stated by Cysion the lead dev, there won’t be a Chinese split. 3 Kingdoms is literally a Chinese split.
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So let’s pretend that the Bactrian-Trebuchet are not giving us any tips.
IF
Jurchen got the Iron Pagoda (which I also agreed it seems to match but I’m getting mad at infos vs screenshot)
THEN
This means PH_Plumed_Rider from the PH-Shu_Han is the Hei Guang Cavalry.
Now Who got the Grenadier ? I’m assuming the Grenadier Civ has no access to Halberdier, as they are in Imperial Age due to Trebuchet presence. Korean Variant ? When I searched for the brigandine armor model, the closest style I found was Ming dynasty and Korean style armors, but no real historical representation.
And what’s the Tanguts unique unit if the bactrian-catapult and iron buddha rider are Jurchen ? grenadier Tanguts ? Jin Swordman ?
That’s infact where I’m loosing myself, two units pointing at two different civ under the same color on the screenshot.
Not spliting doesn’t mean you can’t make a campaign with one of the new “early china” civ representing one of the three kingdom faction.
Don’t overanalyse the screenshots they might have mixed units that never existed in that combination.
Actually they gave Chu Ko Nu to a civ that is certainly not the Chinese so why should the other thing be correct.
They showed Persians having Archer Elephants before.
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Well, campaign mission with ennemy beeing Jin on their castle blah blah blah. I see what you mean, but the chu ko nu there can just be gagai units, or hirered scenario mecernaries, or eye candies scenario units. But sure I keep what you’re point in mind.
Right, as that grenadier thing get me totally mad, I just searched for their helmet on the web and finally discovered one thing.
While I was zooming on the unit the other day, I was thinking that the giant ball on their hand was not matching the size of either any of the projectiles we could see in the screenshot, not the smaller balls they carry on their shoulder straps.
The brigandine style armor with “fur” ring arround it made me think a lot of mongolian style helemt, and starting from there, I ended up finding some “caltrop spiked balls meant to be filled with gunpowder”. Pushing that forward abit more, I read that mongol empire were known to use “mines”, that matches the design of the small spiked ball on their shoulder strap.
Now, if you read the technical part of the patchnote, they’re adding the Landmines unit type, but not just that. There is now a modification to the “unit place building” mechanics, I wasn’t sure why they made it “now the building pops ontop of the unit instead of giving you the choice to place it manually” for the Normand Keep. I first thought about some remparts, like archers in AoE4 or that kind of thing, or for practical usage what so ever, like console ergonomical logic.
But now, combining the “mongolish” design of that unit, with the idea of it beeing a “land mine spawner” rather than a “grenade thrower”, I started to analyse the blasts on the screenshot, and here is my results:
What you can see on all those zooms are blasts, and mainly halberdiers and eventually one two-handed swordman somewhere lying dead.
So then, why is it more a mine than a projectile ? Answer is accuracy, there is 0 explosion that isn’t next to red units at all, that leads me to think they walked on something that blasted on their face.
I can’t say that the big ball isn’t a chained grenade what so ever, cause we have no fight animation preview, only some walking animations and one dead unit where it seems the big ball stay close to the owner body on death animation.
I’ve found a chinese weapon called “Meteor Hammer” too but couldn’t find any interesting depiction of soldier using them with brigandine armor.
That’s also why I’m thinking this unit, let’s call him PH-Brigandine_Meteor will probably be able to drop landmines at the location he is onto, with the “building trait” ability mechanics. So how is this all leading me to ? Well, I think, Kara-Khitai will have their own civ and that it’s their unique unit.
The helmet style doesn’t match chinese, there is that round team color part arround the head, joining brigandine to the smooth iron part that definitly is not matching chinese style helmet. Chinese style helmet are more with feather / horse-tail colored thing ontop of the spike, where this helmet has a spike but not like… “on the top top”, if you look closely, it seems the spike is more on the back part of the head, abit like traditional mongolian style hats where you put fur arround it for your hears to get covered in the cold weather what so ever.
We knew landmines are coming, it’s in the attribute changes list, we know the unit builder trait got updated for it to place object where the unit is directly, and this unit carries three tiny spiked-ball thing on his shoulder strap.
Question now is, what this big spiked-chained ball could be for ? Of course a unit that only spawn land mines would not be interesting as a unique unit, so I suppose the traps will cost gold everytime, and then the unit itself will be some kind of melee flail style unit, like the Konnik but with low attack speed. Or it’s some kind of … I think I saw that in the movie 300 chapter 2, chained ball with guys turning and then launching them away.
Anyone got an idea about a “Flail” style weapon famous in asia ?
To be fair there are plenty of instances in the game already of projectiles not matching the size of arrows on the unit itself, I think it is simply a grenadier unit. there are trails leading from the unit to the explosions above the trebs.
The Thais originated from South China is likely real and not legendary, even today there’re still many Tai-Kradai speaking ethnic groups scattered across several South China provinces including Guangxi, Guizhou, Guangdong, Yunnan, and Hainan. Though after migrating to SE Asia the Thais heavily intermixed with the local Mon-Khmer peoples and also converted to Theravada Buddhism, which made them distinct from their Tai-Kradai brethren who stayed in South China that either kept the original animist beliefs or became gradually sinicized.
Agreed with the rest of what you said though.
The Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms were likely multi-ethnic composed of the ancestors of Bai, Yi, and Dai peoples. A better name for this civ would be Baipu (百濮), Pu (濮/蒲), or Bo (僰).
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Tai as an umbrella civ would be cool but also a 13th to 15th century Thai civ too. As someone who is Tai Lue, Tai Yuan (Northern Thai) and “Mon-Khmer”, it would make me happy.
Was addition of Athenians and Spartans a Byzantines split? No.
It’s not same case, those are spin-off civs and this DLC is ranked-compatible
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Some people think thy will be Chronicles civs.
But that goes against the “5 new civilisations that are available in ranked” they promised.
No way we will get 8 new civilisations with 5 being available in ranked, that would be crazy.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1jt9hnt/the_dlc_what_we_know_so_far/
Just doing a summery of what we have so far. And keeping all the info in one neat place.
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Aoe4 DLC release dropping in 12 hours. Can we expect news after this?
Most probably.
I mean if they announce details tomorrow, assuming the usual two weeks before the DLC releases for preorders and marketing, we can expect it around the 23rd of April.
I had hoped they will release it before Easter but that isn’t happening anymore.
I still afraid we must wait until next week.
I was thinking about a middle ground. Maybe reveal on Thursday? Time will tell
Found something while studying the images of the Red vs Green preview.
I’ve already pointed that fabric thing on a stick for the green team there:
But I also noticed it beeing present on the red team castle there:
The castle walls also have this special " /\/\/\/\ " stylization of team coloring details:
That you can also find present there on the fabric of the Camel-Trebs:
There is also the flag color pattern on the castle gate:
That you can see on the new Yurt model fences:
Ingame we have, in the editor, a banner with the same color bands pattern that was added in Mountain Royal if I’m right.
So what does this tells us ? It tells us that the Green and Red eventually share the same civilization on this screenshot. If so, the batrican civ have access to that heavy armor unit, the bactrian-treb, fire lancers, steppe lancers, halberdier, two handed sword man, and also rocket carts.
But, that’s not all that this is saying, it’s also saying “this screenshot could be from a scenario of a kind of civil war on a region with argali”. Many of you pointed that the devs already shown in the past illogical combination of units on the same screen, so it might just be a mix of assets to show off the assets.
But then, the Yurt, which is an editor building, isn’t there to show us something we’ll have, I doubt we’ll have yurts buildable for a civ.
This convince me more and more that this heavy cavalry unit isn’t a unique unit but a generic regional one meant to depicte multiple things really famous such as Han heavy cav, Jurchen Iron Pagoda (maybe there will be a hero unit for them) but also Liao heavy cavalry, or Song heavy cavalry, or golden horde heavy cavalry, and infact, a lot of asian heavy cavalry that could fall under this unit depiction. I don’t say that to counter anyone pointing it may be Iron Pagoda, I’m just saying more hints lead me toward it beeing hte “Hei Guang Cavalry” and it to be a regional stable unit.
The more and more I think about it, the more I think we’ll have Tanguts, Jurchen and Khitan finally, retconning my supposition about khitan beeing a tanguts renamed version in the genghis khan campaign.
There is also a detail I’ve noticed on the Camel-Treb, it’s the projectile inside the weapon:
I couldn’t find any historical depiction of that “jar”, but it’s either Clay or Terracotta jar, probably “Incendiary”.
What does it tells us ? Litterally nothing except it will have probably have it’s own unique projectile sprite and sound effect on projectile landing. It will probably have building damage bonus, with lesser range than a regular treb due to the weapon design, with a short arm.
It can eventually spawn a smoke unit, with the new attributes parameter for projectiles vanishing always spawning dead unit, but we have no hint of that except maybe a smoke cluster in the middle of the red stable that I was not able to determine why it exist where it is on the screen.
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Ignore which civ has which unit in the screenshot. They get shuffled around on purpose for visual effect.
This has happened with every single new civ DLC. The DoI ones used to show Urumi Swordsmen and Shrivamsha Riders on the same side, fighting Chakrams aligned with Battle Elephants.
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I have a feeling that Fire Archer is ranged Obuch. But maybe with a limitation. Like a max of -2/-2 or a time limit.
Also comment #800.
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