EXACTLY!!!
I assume that’ll happen right before the announcement, but regardless honestly I think that’s the coolest part of my theory, far cooler than the lead up itself.
Weeks of getting these posts, most people don’t think much of them probably, then suddenly one drops that no one recognizes. The frenetic scramble of amateur linguists trying their best to identify the language in a few second clip. Then another drops, and then hopefully two more.
If this comes to pass…it will be sooooo cool.
I’m just hoping it’s much sooner than your guess. Anyone doing this for 13 weeks clearly does c*&^ and ball torture for a side hobby…
I would guess the reason being because several of the potential languages are just flat-out dead. Tangut and Khitan are just not used, at all.
I believe at least Tangut might be known enough to have the lines for a civ. Khitan is not even close to that.
Yeah I looked into Tangut, and there is an entire field of study devoted to it. So likely the one that could be shown off.
khitan isn’t completely unknown, unlike hunnic. There are some surviving scripts and words that have been translated. We aren’t trying to translate the bible, we just need a few dozen simple phrases.
Perhaps there isn’t even enough known of khitan for that much, but I think there’s some room for optimism.
If not then probably just use the mongols lines.
Problem is what about Khitan we know. Most scripts are official documents and the sort. We may know how to say “king” or “tribute” or “sword” but how do we go about on mundane things like “lumberjack” or “cut wood”?
Ok I aint reading the last 776 posts in this thread, but can someone who has just tell me is there actually any verifiable news here about the content of this DLC? 
No. We’re just esquizoposting for now.
Well at least I learned a new word today hahahaha
Had to get a bit creative to get around the forum censor that doesn’t want to acknowledge mental disorders.
Both…also remember that every year, they add two civs to AoE 4 in November: Malians and Ottomans in the Anniversary Edition in 2022 and Byzantines and Japanese (plus the 4 variants) in The Sultans Ascend last year…so this year it would be the same: 2 new civs (probably Spanish and Aztecs plus the 4 remaining variants)…
Although Khitan raiders had looted the Chinese villages along the borders, they also had farmers and workers at the southern and eastern territory where many people were Chinese, Jurchens, Balhae people and some Khitans that turned to settle.
The reason that beta content were discarded might be about gameplay. It might fundamentally not be suitable to how this game works, regardless of history.
It may be hard to find professional voice actors and actress who well understand and speak the Daur language.
Besides the technical problem, the dev may consider the dialog voice is not important, like the Romans, Italians and Byzantines speak Latin.
As I said, they might have found a middle-ground way of making it work.
I mean, have you heard the quality of the voice lines already in the game…?
I mean, it may be literally hard to find a man speaking Daur language and to record his voice. The Daur people now mostly live in rural places in the provinces of Northeast China. The only city you may find Daur people relatively easily is Qiqihar. It means to have an outsourced employee or hired employee go to Qiqihar to find a suitable Daur person to record, which may not be cheap.
Or you want just an American guy to imitate the pronunciation of Daur words.
Alright. Who in AoE wants a holiday then?
I’m just imagining someone walking around a small Chinese village like they are documentary maker, asking if any locals would like some money to speak some very bland words into a mic for a few minutes.
If we get something like the Goths, it would throw all previous theories out the window.
actually that’d support @Tyranno13 raider civ theory. Huns weren’t ever a raider civ, as the raider civ concept was abandoned before AoK released, but Huns totally would have been a raider civ. Goths were also supposed to be a raider civ.
EDIT - Goths weren’t a raider civ. I got that from a post that mis-quoted an interview with Brian Shelly. The mis-quote included Goths, but the original quote does not.
What would be crazy tho if the next civ is magyars. Like Huns, I think magyars would have been a raider civ, and it’d support both theories, also being a forgotten civ.
Also, looking at the post more carefully, I notice that Hindustanis are down near the bottom with the DoI civs. I consider Hindustanis a continuation of indians, but it seems whoever created the graphic considers hindustanis a new civ introduced with DOI.
So I’m really hoping the next civ is incas, italians, or slavs.
For what it’s worth, I decided to take sceenshots of both posts to compare to see if there were any differences.
Well there are, but I don’t think it’s anything important. the civ icons are slightly larger in the hun post, and the white balance of the civ icons has also been adjusted.
I’d have uploaded images to show you, but for some reason, when I save the screenshots they look exactly the same, but when you have both open in two different tabs, and go back and forth, the difference is easy to see.
I do think the hun version looks better. So maybe it’s nothing.
So it occurs to me, that the huns post came 10 days after the vikings post, and aoe2 has 10 dlcs that has added civs.
So if interval between posts is reduced by one day for each subsequent post, then we get the following schedule.
September 3rd, Vikings
September 13th, Huns
September 22nd, Forgotten Civ
September 30th, AFK Civ
October 7th, RotR Civ
October 13th, LK Civ
October 18th, LotW Civ
October 22nd, DotD Civ
October 25th, DoI Civ
October 27th, Romans
October 28th, TMR Civ
That gives us a few days for a blitz of the new civs, and the actual announcement about two weeks before DE anniversary on November 14th.
I don’t think they need to be fluent in the language. You just need one person that understands the language on a good enough level and at most five people to record under their directions.