Only 2 unique units per civ?

I don’t think anyone is asking for totally different civs like in Supreme Commander or StarCraft, but perhaps add a little more variation to basic units besides a reskin job.

Have you seen the Chinese Imperial Guard in the gameplay trailers and screenshots? They have a long spear-like weapon. Are they going to behave just like any other man-at-arms or will they have some bonuses against cavalry? I’m thinking the former rather than the latter.

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Same with some landmark buildings and unique units. They really lack flavor.
Such as the “Royal Knight”, which just feels like an upgrade to the normal Knight. And they actually co-exist with the normal Knight, so if you upgrade the normal knight you’d get “Elite Knight” next to “Royal Knight”…
They could go for names like gendarme or something.

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You know devs said that there is only 8 civs because of assymetric civs right? This is no different than symetric AOE2. We don’t expect starcraft level of assymetry but for sure more than what it is now.

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It is that if the game goes well, they will add more in the future and they cannot go crazy.

Do you remember the two DLCs of AoE3 and the eight European countries of AoE3
I think it should be a conservative attempt at the beginning

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I understand they will be different from each other gameplay wise, like Mongols vs English…
But i gotta admit i thought all units would be totally different for each civ, not just skins, i expected something like SC2…

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Most players are from Europe and USA so it makes sense to pick nations to satisfy them and not some gods of objective historical justice.

So expect even more European nations.

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White dude from America checking in. I worship the pantheon of gods of historical justice. European civs are so boring. I get it — they had knights and swords and crossbows. I don’t think we need any more civs like that.

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Maybe I missed something, but the 8 starting civs in AoE III also don’t have a lot of differences in terms of unique units, do they?

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I can’t really comment in depth about this as it would break NDA. I will just say that from the trailers they seem to differ in far more than just looks. They have different weapons. And im sure different civs will have different tech access as with most aoe games.

For example I am willing to believe these are a mace-wielding man-at-arms variation for the HRE.
If some shared units will look different AND have different stats I feel that is a fair amount of asymmetricality. This is ignoring the different playstyles each civ will have based on their bonuses/buildings. The Rus being an interesting example.

I think a really good example of asymmetricality would be Deserts of Kharak:
It had a general framework of ship “classes” that each civ had. But their stats, looks, and playstyle differed drastically. For example all civs had access to Railguns but the Galsien’s were higher dmg, faster, but had less armor. IMO in the same way we will have a shared Man-at-arms line but they will look different, have different stats, maybe even scale differently based on techs.

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You are correct. I don’t recall them being hailed as asymmetric marvels of their day, though. We need to measure AoE4 not just against all other Age games but in the context of how they are being presented. If Adam said “the first 8 civs are honestly pretty boring but we are just getting started and will deliver real asymmetry in the dlcs,” that’s a very different conversation than the one we are having now where they are saying they think they have already achieved asymmetry.

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You missed something. There are a few unique units, a few “royal guard units”, the main tech tree overlaps far less, and the bonuses between them drastically change the play style. And of course - the “dreaded” deck system that allows you to customize the play style of your civ in different ways.

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I did indeed like the deck system. But I was mainly responding to the statement that reskins don’t count as unique units. Because they are essentially the same unit, just a bit better.

I mean units like Landsknecht, Lancer or great Bombard for instance.

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I believe the Chinese in AoE3 have 12-14 unique units and a few unique buildings. Should that not be the metric against which we measure the asymmetry of AoE4?

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My standards may be lower than most, but I personally don’t have any problem with the -current- lack of unique units per civ.

Maybe an unpopular statement but I would like to see things happen in this order:

  1. Game Launches, gains some traction, builds a solid player base.
  2. Patches, Fixes, Balancing, Establish a sort of “civilization balance benchmark”
  3. Add to the 8 starter civs. New units, mechanics, options.
  4. Add new Civs to the game.

But that’s just me. :slight_smile:

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I agree that there should be a higher standard in this regard. But after playing the new African Civs in AoE III, I can see how a certain recognizable bread and butter constellation of units is important.
Very subjective of course, but to me it felt like a mess to navigate through the new units and know what to recruit.

I agree, with the overall premise that 2 unique units isn’t really a lot and it could have been more.

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It’s incredibly unlikely that they would add things to existing civs post release. That would be unwieldy, expensive, and totally throw off balance. Has anything like that ever been done in franchise history? Other than when every civ in AoM got a Titan, I can’t think of any examples. And that was a universal change that affected all civs about equally rather than a slew of unique units moving in different directions.

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That I can recall, no, it’s never happened before.
But this is also not our usual dev team, so I don’t want to discount the possibility entirely.

With the landmark system, it is probably getting slightly easier to add new options and with this, perhaps new units.
There might be 3 choices instead of 2 down the line, not talking about probability here.
But that might be something which could be easier to implement.

I would still argue the AoE3 civs are more asymmetric. There are just as many (or more) purely unique units, and additional semi-unique units since the main tech tree isn’t overly shared. So cavalry archers may not be technically unique - but only ottomans and Russians have them.

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