So, the recent update note has gotten the whole forums quite excited, many things have been discussed to death and I don’t think it’s about to change, but there’s one thing I haven’t seen brought up that much yet I think it’s quite interesting: the new monastery skins!
What we know so far:
The one on the left is for Byzantines, though it would perfectly suit the Bulgarians as well (and the Serbians if they’re ever added)
The one in the middle is for Ethiopians
The one on the right is for “shamanistic civilisations”, which I mean mostly Tengri people so Cumans, Mongols and probably Huns. Magyars or Turks for instance are too defined by Christianism and Islam respectively imo. However, some of the new civs may receive it.
So, the shamanistic skin is shared, but if we take “Byzantines” at face value and assume the Central Asian building set isn’t given to the Persians or one of the new civs, it means we will have four civs with a monastery skin unique to them: Byzantines and Ethiopians obviously, but also Malians and Tatars.
From this, we can consider several possibilities:
More civs are planned to receive unique skins for monasteries (or other specific buildings) in the future, possibly with the end goal of having them all be completely unique in the end. After all, they just finished doing all the castles, so they may as well jump to other buildings. If that’s the case, it’s likely all new civs have a unique monastery, but in that case it would be weird to make a shared skin for all shamanistic civs and also not to give new ones to the Chinese and Koreans as well considering how heavily they’ve been reworked. I guess it’s possible, but not extremely likely.
It’s the first step toward adding entirely new building sets. In that case, not giving the Byzantine monastery to the Bulgarians would be even weirder, as they shared very similar architecture styles and would be part of any Balkan/Southeast European building set. And it would be weird to start a new building sets trend with the ones with only two civs in it (Africans and Central Asians) unless…
It’s a teaser for future dlc’s about those regions, meaning in the near future the devs may be planning stuff for Africa, the Balkans and… Central Asia/the Pontic Steppe? The third pick sounds a bit weird, especially if the next dlc includes Jurchens, Tanguts and Khitans as it has been heavily speculated, as they are already among the most relevant “steppe civs” and I would imagine any future Asian dlc might try to move away from this environment to cover more ground (SEA is the most logical next step). Additionally, the absence of an Inca monastery would have very unsatisfying implications… All of this being said, I would be overjoyed with more African content and I’ve said multiple times that if the devs ever want to come back to Europe, the Balkans are the logical next step. Additional note: If we get an East African dlc with an entirely new set and Somalis or even Swahilis are part of it, it would be very weird if their monastery was the Ethiopian crossed shaped church after they created it to distance them from the Malian mosque.
A religious overhaul may be planned, in which you can pick among different religions based on your civ, giving you different skins for monasteries and monks and possibly different techs and mechanics. To be honest it seems even more unlikely to me, as fun as it may sound. It would clash with the conservative expectations of many members of the fanbase, and in some cases giving you the possibility to pick a different religion might feel forced or cause troubles in some countries with the fanbase and local governments (with Saracens for instance).
It doesn’t mean anything at all and I’m wasting my time overthinking this. Yes, I know it’s a very real possibility, but to be perfectly honest I’m not trying to predict the future as much as I’m having fun theorising and it’s kind of an end in itself. So if you come here just to say we can’t conclude anything with certainty from so few information, know that I’m perfectly aware of it and also that you’re officially a party pooper.
Anyway, that’s all for what I could think of. Feel free to tell me if you see any other angle that I’ve not considered or if one of those possibilities seems particularly likely/unlikely or cool/terrible to you!
I highly doubt that Central Asia will be the next DLC, but it certainly has potential for a DLC with perhaps Gokgurks and Oghuz Turks. Maybe they try to go a bit further south and throw in Pashtuns/Afghans too (though that one isn’t the best option IMO). Personally I hope they do SEA first like you mention, but Central Asia is by no means finished, IMO.
Turks are already mostly Oghuz, the term covers the Ottomans, Seljuks and Pechenegs alike. On the other hand, Uzbeks or Uyghurs could be decent picks imo, and so would indeed be Gokturks and Afghans. That being said, I also think SEA would be more interesting among Asian civs. Thais (or if they don’t want to make a new umbrella, Siamese) are often requested and people are speculated they might be part of the Chinese dlc, but we also still lack the Mon, Chams and various civs that could come out of a Malay split such as the Javanese.
Still, I very much hope that the next step will be Africa, or maybe the Americas. I’m afraid if things keep going at the current rate, the Euro fatigue might turn into an Eurasia fatigue or even be replaced with just Asia fatigue.
Yes, but the current “Turks” civ is very much geared towards the late-era, Ottoman gunpowder empire. Sure they get the Sipahis tech and CA, but no one ever uses them. I’d like to see a Turks civ that covers the group when it was in Central Asia and its first forays into the Middle East as the Seljuks. This Oghuz civ would cover the central asian group, Pechnegs, and Seljuks, and let the current Turks civ be the Ottoman niche that they currently fill in game.
There’s a reason the campaigns use Cumans to represent Pechnegs even though they’re Turks, because the current Turks civ is that far outside of what the Pechnegs are.
Indeed, but all the…political concerns people had about Tibet are amplified with Uyghurs unfortunatly.
I’ll be honest i’m not sure about a Malay split, and I don’t understand this Javanese idea. I’ll grant this may just be ignorance on my part, but even the current Malay campaign is based on the Majapahit Empire, which was from Java. It seems to me that the Malay civ as it is is already based on Javanese to a large degree, but please educate me if i’m wrong on that, I admittedly don’t have a massive bredth of knowledge on Indonesian history.
I do agree with this, I don’t necessarily think two DLCs in a row should be for the same region, they should bounce back and forth between continents.
Yeah, but I’m not sure “Oghuz” would be the best term when there’s another Oghuz civ in the game. Maybe the Sejjuks, Zengids and Central Asian Oghuz could be renamed Turkomans or Turkmens, while the current Turks would be renamed Anatolians (and cover the Sulatanate of Rum and the various beyliks who came out of its scramble in addition to the Ottomans)? As for Pechenegs, they could even become a separate civ eventually, if we also get the Khazars and Alans at some point.
I wouldn’t be so sure. From what I understand, the modern-day Uyghur actually don’t have anything to do with the medieval ones, basically it’s two different people before and after the Mongols and Chagatai. And unlike the Tibetans, we already have medieval Uyghurs in a campaign scenario that dates from AoK yet there was never any problem (tbh I think the fear of Chinese ban is extremely overblown).
Basically it wouldn’t be so different from the Indian split where most of the old civ went to the Hindustanis while the campaign was given to the Gurjaras. Maybe it’s slightly different because the Javanese might keep some if not all of the civ’s bonuses in addition to the Gajah Mada campaign, but the “Malay” civ should mostly represent the people from the Malay peninsula such as the Malacca Sultanate, and possibly those from Sumatra such as the Srivijaya Empire (though Sumatrans may also be represented separately).
And yet, if we don’t count the RoR and Chronicle stuff that’s technically not AoE2 proper (aside from the Roman civ), the last two dlc and the next one are technically in Asia. I’m very hyped for what’s coming, but I think we really need to give some love to one of the “forgotten” continents before we touch Asia and ideally Eurasia again.
I don’t know, aren’t Sicilian churches more angular like other catholic religious buildings? I don’t know a lot about Sicilian architecture, but I’m not sure it would be well represented with domes on all their monasteries, at least after the Norman conquest. Maybe I’m just extremely ignorant on this topic though.
I agree with Byzantine church being applied to Bulgarians (and it’s not happening but I would like to the Goths too).
Sicilian medieval architecture does includes Byzantines elements (like the Montreal cathedral or the Palermo palace), but there is maybe a “readibility” reason to keep the Italian monastery as it represents Sicilian being a Mediterranean and Catholics.
There is also a time factor: maybe the Sicilian does represents also the latter history of the island, with Angevins, Aragonese and Renaissance, and then the Italian monastery is fine.
Norman architecture is also called Arab-Norman although this is incorrect. The Normans in Sicily had zero relations with Normandy, and the Arabs had left nothing behind. So all the buildings of that period are a mix between southern France or Burgundy (Western European in the game) and Muslim (Middle Eastern?) or Byzantine (Mediterranean?) architecture.
If I may, Normans who settled in Sicily where from Normandy. Have you played the Hauteville campaign?
And the Normans did built up on Arabs buildings.
I agree that medieval Sicilian architecture is a mix of Byzantines, Arab and western style, like the examples you gave. It was after the 12th century more western, local and italianized (like the different fortresses, the Messina cathedral, the abatellis palace…)
It seems appropriate for Goths too – although it wouldn’t go with the rest of their building set, and currently the monastery is probably the most appropriate of their Castle/Imperial Age buildings. (Apart from the wonder, of course.)
I do find this quite odd – it seems like the perfect opportunity to give them a more fitting monastery. I initially thought the new building in the bottom right of this screenshot would be their new monastery:
But it doesn’t have any team colour, plus there’s a regular monastery opposite it.
It depends how well the Byzantine monastery would fit with the current Bulgarian architecture set – I would guess not that well. If the plan is to add a full Byzantine architecture set (e.g. for Byzantines, Bulgarians, and perhaps Goths, Georgians, Armenians?) then I expect they’d change the Bulgarian monastery at the same time.
I think this is unlikely. If this was the plan, I think they’d want to keep those graphics in reserve for now, to use them in promotional screenshots for those DLCs.
I must have misunderstood, let me put it this way.
The Normans stationed in Sicily did not continue to have any contact with Normandy. That is what I meant.
Secondly, the lack of Arab buildings refers to the fact that no archaeological remains have been found from the time of the Arab occupation of Sicily, they are all posthumous. As said, built by the Normans.
So the so-called Arab-Norman architecture is neither Arab nor Norman. That is all. It takes its inspiration from other parts of the world.
