I didn’t even mention American civilization in my post. When I said 'thematically appropriate I mean the DLC shares a ‘theme’ (Portugal allied with Ethiopia and Vijayanagara against various Islamic sultanates during their voyages around Africa and to India)
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Yes, for me, we have Spanish and Incas for sure (because the Genitour doesn’t have a voice and the Atacama map), we could also see Vikings/Danes and Aztecs and then there would be 4 civs in the DLC… and then the variants would be 4:Tatars (Mongol variant), Ghurids/Vijayanagara (Delhi variant), Moscow/Novgorod (Rus variant), Seljuks (Ottoman variant)… then obviously 10 maps, 2 biomes (Yucatan jungle and Deccan plateau like the AoE 3 map) and probably 8 historical battles (for all DLC civs):
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York (865) (Vikings/Danes vs Anglo-Saxons)
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Seljuks (985) (Seljuks vs all civs in the region)
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Tarain (1192) (Ghurids vs Delhi)
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Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) (Spanish and Templars vs. Almohads/Berbers)
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Battle on the Ice (1242) (Novgorod vs. Templars and Danes)
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Battle of the Maule River (1485) (Incas vs. Mapuche)
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Siege of Tenochtitlán (1521) (Aztecs vs. Spanish and Aztecs)
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Lepanto (1571) (Spanish vs. Ottomans)
Yeah, I don’t think the dances are coming back, because they were supposedly offensive and that’s why they were removed from AoE 3…
Yes, the winged hussar will arrive in due time with Poland as a civ…
Yes, it would be like The African Kingdoms but more varied…Portugal, Ethiopia and Vijayanagara and then obviously 4 variants, 10 African maps and like 8 historical battles…
They are much better suited for AoE3 than a medieval setting. First contact with the Haida/Tsimshian/Tlingit was well into the 1700s. Obviously there were people there earlier but knowing anything in detail is basically impossible due to the late contact and lack of preservation in their rainforest environment. Even oral histories are hard to come by since they were devastated by disease and then had their culture suppressed by the government for decades. I made an Aoe3 mock-up of them and the earliest primary sources from the Natives were interviews from around 1900 that relayed stories from about the last century. In those accounts there were only a couple of stories describing fights with pre-gunpowder weapons.
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I hope this time civs got a connection.Last dlc’s name was The Sultans Ascend and they added japanese not the crusader state.Its funny actually.I hope if they are planing adding american civs they add spanish or something which they had connection in real history.
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First contact?
What, are these aliens? This isn’t Age of Europe. It doesn’t matter when Europeans contacted them. The game was never about who “realistically” would’ve gone to war. The game simply features a timeperiod and civilizations of those eras.
Your headcanon is not Age of Empires.
Yes of course, pointing out when the historical record starts for a region is entirely to exoticise them and support my head cannon. I spent weeks making a civ concept for them because I’m just so Eurocentric.
We can just consult all the medieval manuscripts written by the Haida and Tlingit and base the civ around that. That totally exists, and archeological and oral histories are just as plentiful.
Maybe there’s a better game to include a civ that’s only conclusively known from the 1700s on and utilized modern weapons like artillery to successfully defeat European invaders.
Aztec is not too different from this. A lot of the information we reference for their culture and history are from codices and manuscripts that Europeans made when visiting the continent. It’s not too different here, and there is a lot from the region in terms of archaeology as well as stories coming from oral tradition to talk about.
We know a lot about their history, it does go back 13,000 years, and the population is known to have been in the 10s of thousands pre-contact. Categorically they fit the definition for a civ option. An outside perspective not existing for them is actually what makes having them as an option more interesting. I get kind of confused when we talk about viability of a civ introduction being based off of their contact with Europe or Asia, that’s not really what civs are about.
Designing the civ would require working with nation representatives IRL, but I think it would be worth it just for the novelty (and lack of representation in past titles).
Something like making a DLC called “Asian Culture”?:
Asian Culture DLC: Koreans… and 3 African civilizations (Congo, Songhai, Moroccan Sultanate)? Hehehe.
I think the same. The title is important, and at least from the experience of other games in the franchise, like AoE3, AoE2, AoM… well, all of them, people want their expansions to have a theme, or at least for the title to be honest.
Lets take a example:
Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires (2012)
AoE2 did the right thing with the name of their first fandom DLC.
AoE2: Forgotten: Because of the name, they added 5 extra civs, with little relation to each other:
- Italians
- Magyar
- Inca
- Slavs
- Indinas
Results: DLC fandom become CANON with Microsfot Aproval, and the franchise began to revive.
Age of Empires IV: Knights of Rose and Cross
Back to the topic:
I don’t think we should worry too much. The recent DLC had a catchy name and sold exactly what its title promised.
Learning from experience, the devs will surely try to choose names that better match the full content they will be selling.
Well, that’s what I hope, as I understand “Knights of the Rosy Cross” is selling like hotcakes.
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Aztecs is very different.
They came into substantial contact nearly 300 years earlier and the codices are from around that time not the 1900s after a century of plague and cultural oppression. There are extensive archeological sites and even indigenous records from the region like Mayan glyphs. Their initial population was in the hundreds of thousands, not thousands.
Contrast that with the Pacific Northwest where there is almost nil from before the mid 1700s.
Contact with the old world only matters as far as them providing a historical record. Without that you at least need some good archeological or oral records to ground the civ and the Pacific Northwest is severely lacking in that. Some pre-contact civs like Mississippians, Puebloans, Chimu, or Muisca probably do have enough archaeology to piece together a civ, but most other native peoples really don’t.
You do understand we can speak to the living descendants to get the history right? We don’t need to rely on what the English, Spanish, or French thought about their culture. That’s why referring to European contact is extremely confusing.
I would like to suggest that a future Age of Empires IV DLC includes two essential civilizations for the late medieval and early modern period: Spain and Portugal.
Both played a decisive role from the 13th to the 16th century, with distinct military traditions, political systems, and technological developments that would greatly enrich gameplay variety:
- Spain, The base form, representing the late unification and rise of a centralized empire. Weak early game, but powerful in Castle and Imperial Age, with elite gunpowder, Spanish Tercios units and religious mechanics.
- Portugal, A naval and defensive powerhouse. Emphasis on exploration, trade, and map vision. Strong navy, tech-oriented economy, and early access to gunpowder. Great for players who excel in long-term control and adaptive strategies.
As for civilization variants, there are three clear and historically grounded candidates:
- Castile – Strong in Feudal and Castle Age, with powerful cavalry and economic bonuses. Ideal for early aggression and territorial control.
- Aragon – Excels in Dark and Feudal Age, with fast development, hybrid map capabilities, and light infantry. Strong on naval or trade-heavy maps.
- El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) – As a hero-led variant, offering unique mechanics around loyalty, mercenaries, and versatile cavalry tactics. His semi-independent campaigns between Christian and Muslim realms provide rich narrative potential.
These variants would mirror the diversity of the Iberian Peninsula during the AoE IV timeline, much like the Joan of Arc variant for France, and open the door to compelling campaigns and new gameplay mechanics.
Love how bluntly eurocentric this is. You do understand the Americas EXISTED regardless whether Europeans knew or not? Incas, Aztecs, Mayas and many more. They had kingdoms, empires, politics and a world of history just as the Old World did.
We know a fair amount from these cultures, and maybe not to the same degree as some others, but this ignores just how biased history research is–and to use it as a justification to simply negate entire cultures is inherently ignorant, because even from the most well-researched civilizations we have, we are still forming an ABSTRACTION of the past.
To put it simply, these justifications are pure dogshit. They are just as valid as any other.
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You do realize we can’t? They lost 90% of their population to disease and then their language and culture was made illegal for generations. There’s only 24 native Haida speakers left. We’re lucky any of their culture survives. It’s a pipe dream to think they’d somehow have an oral tradition stretching back a thousand years under those conditions.
Then you’re fully aware of how important it is to keep these kinds of things alive by having representation wherever possible.
Edit:
Look, I can understand what you’re saying. I don’t think you see that it really doesn’t matter or apply here. In age of empires 1 we have representation for Phoenicia and some other people who have no actual record to use. It’s that kind of stuff that shows that we don’t need this hard proof and distinct written record.
I really have no idea why you think that it shouldn’t be added because of the history this franchise has with adding civilizations that have very little to go off of. That’s what age of empires is all about.
Cool beans. We know tons about Aztecs, Mayas, Inca, and many more indigenous civs in medieval times and they’d make for great civs. Maybe focus on those civs instead of anachronisticly putting modern tribes into a medieval game. This notion that the natives of North America are simply primitives that underwent zero change in the thousand years before 1492 is frankly quite offensive.
The only thing I know for sure is native civs will be anything but well researched and well executed. I’m firmly convinced they’ll make a dog’s breakfast of it giving them European siege engines and other such nonsense.
And in this case it isn’t possible because we know next to nothing about the medieval Pacific Northwest.
If only there was an AoE game that focused on the natives of the Americas in the early modern period and beyond. If such a thing existed the Haida and Tlingit would be an exceptional civilization in that game.
Yeah, the whole point is to represent them in a time period that isn’t defined by colonization. It would be welcome to have a version of them that showcases their actual culture instead of what they were defined by post contact.
What are you proposing to showcase? The only culture we know of is what survived contact. They were badass warriors that played the Europeans off each other and thrived in a changing world. If not for the devastation by disease they may have even survived. And the start of AoE3’s timeframe is hundreds of years before European contact so there’s plenty of room to show their pre-gunpowder combat and culture in that setting.
I look forward to some of these civilizations or variants in the future, I don’t know which one would come, so I don’t care which one it is, as long as it comes gradually:
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- Vijayanagara
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- Chola
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- Ayutthaya(Thailand)
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- Mughal
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- Timurids
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Yes, in any case, they should include Mississippians and Puebloans, who were, after all, “medieval” civs…
Yes, at most the only thing related to the Sultans were the Byzantines and the Ayyubids along with the sultans’ campaign, after that nothing more… at least in this KoCaR DLC we had Crusaders (Templars) and well the rose related to the Lancastrians…
In 2012-2013, the franchise wasn’t dead either… you have the AoEO DLCs that it had throughout 2012 (Celts, Babylonians and Norse), and when they stopped supporting it in 2013, AoE 2 HD came out with The Forgotten and when they closed it in 2014, AoM EE and AoE: Castle Siege came out…
Yes, they will arrive eventually, the Portuguese will have the Caravel and the Feitoria (which generates passive resources and creates troops related to the map where the Feitoria is established; e.g. in India you create Delhi and Vijayanagara troops) and the Spanish the typical units that we know from AoE 2 and 3 (Conquistador, Adelantado -who can create War Dogs to help him in battle-, Missionary, Rodelero and Almogavar versions of the basic units)…we could also see an Al-Andalus variant…
Yes, those will surely arrive in due time… at least the Aztecs and Incas will, the Mayans, it depends…
WE: “We warned you that game doesn’t exist” *You were banned…
Not hundreds of years, just a few decades…1421 with the Chinese campaign (which we already know is fictitious)…
Ayutthaya could be, although I would see more Sukhothai (1238-1438) and Mughals I see it difficult because they are a late 16th century civ (the Indians of AoE 3 are Mughals)… with Delhi to the north and Cholas and Vijayanagara (Dravidians) to the south, India would already be more or less represented… Timurids/Tatars would be the Mongol variant (in fact they appear in the Rus campaign after the prologue mission in 1238 in the missions from the 14th to the 16th centuries)…