New Year's Suggested Resolutions for AoE2 DE in year 2021

Since joining AoE2 DE I have been enjoying this game a lot, and I appreciate all the hard work that has been done to this game this past year in 2020 in improving it and making it more fun with new content.

So to all the DE game, devs: thank you for your hard work.

This post I would like to put forth some of my suggestions, or New Year’s Resolutions as you will, of further improving the game. Now, I understand that you and other players here in the forums may not agree with me on any or all of my suggestions, but I figured my suggestions might help you and the rest of the AoE2 community brainstorm some ideas on further improving the game in a few ways.

For all who is reading this post, wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays!

2021 New Years' Suggested Resolutions: 

(1) Give the “Mounted Samurai” cavalry Hero unit its own unique appearance so that it looks more like a actual mounted samurai and not just a generic Hussar.

(2) Re-introduce skeleton-decaying corpses into DE. AoE2 originally had all corpses decompose to skeletons, and it was such a cool feature visually see. But the current feature of “sinking corpses” that just sink into the ground after a unit has died is not as exciting as the decaying corpses.

(3) Make the Huns architecture-building style of Central European architecture look more weathered and tarnished. As the Huns in real history were a pastural peoples, and they were not much for building their own buildings, but rather seizing buildings from others, I think that Huns should have “their own” architecture style that not as clean and nice like the buildings of the other Central European civilizations (Goths, Vikings, Teutons) to give the feel that the Huns have taken over the buildings of a Gothic tribe that they vanquished. I came to this idea for two reasons: Reason #1 In the Scenario Editor I found that there were damaged buildings that you can add for effect in a scenario to give the appearance that the building was raided and attacked. Reason #2 I get confused when I see a Huns player’s buildings to be that of a Teuton player, Viking player, or a Goth player because the Hun buildings, share the same clean, well-lit appearance as the other Central European civs. Plus, the Huns civ’ buildings do not seem to fit exactly well with the Hunnic Wonder (a sacked, and battleworn Roman Arch)…unless the Hun buildings had a more weathered appearance.

(4) Make Hand Cannoneers better. Not just me, but several other players have pointed out that Hand Cannoneers are a bit underwhelming in performing their main role as an anti-infantry unit. Several suggestions to improving them have been made, but me personally, I think that Hand Cannoneers would be best improved if their accuracy were increased a bit more and/or if their anti-infantry bonus damage was buffed slightly higher.

What about you?  In what ways do YOU think the game devs could improve the game next year, 2021?
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Add new civs at the end of the year, that’s what I would call a big patch :slight_smile:

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Yes, yes and again yes. When I first played the game in the first grade I didn’t receive a fatal psychological injury after seeing the fields of semi-decomposed corpses and skeletons that were left after huge battles. It made the game so immersive! Now we have to use the mods, that are over the top in my opinion, especially the crimson blood.

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I almost put that down as my fifth “resolution”, but I am skeptical on WHAT new civs to add to the game that would fit well into the medieval setting that AoE2 has, while also not breaking the game and not making the game more overly complicated with there being too many civs. (the current number of civs, 35 is remarkably a lot if you think about it)

But if we ARE to add new civs, I would state that added the Medieval Dutch (aka Frisians) would make sense as they are technically distinct enough to be “Teutons” or “Franks”. Other players have mentioned added some North American civs into AoE2, like the Mississippi peoples who lived and build modest earthwork cities in the Illinois river plains, but I am unsure if added a North American civ or two would properly fit in the “medieval narrative”.

Personally I think that the city builders in the Mississippi Delta (which built Cahokia, a city bigger than London at the time) would make sense, at least from an Empire building aspect. On the West Coast, the Hitsatsonim/Pueblo would make a great civ too.

I’d also love to see more African Empires, especially considering that some of the Portuguese scenarios used quite some egregious replacement civs for East Africa instead of the proper civs in the regions.

I know it’s unlikely to happen but the T’ui Tonga Empire as playable civ would be a dream come true for me.

I’m confident that there’s enough design space for at least 5 more balanced civs. I think the maximum which is reasonable is 50 civs but that might stretch the design space a bit, though I still think there’s still a lot of untapped areas in regards of certain Regional unit-Tech tree combinations, especially when we look outside of Eurasia.

Here’s some concept art for 2 new architecture sets made by Kondrikthus:

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Nice drawings by Kondrikthus! They are well thought out.

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