These are the ancient Armenians. They had Greek architecture.
The devs clearly show that they don’t want to leave an architecture set with only two civilizations.
The problem is that the Egyptian set is very iconic to be shared with other civs; Egyptian set can’t fit anyone besides Egyptians. So my best suggestion to them is to put Phoenicians in Egyptian set. The area of Phoenicia is next to Egypt, and was under control of the Egyptians for a time.
Hatti to Egyptian set is very daring even if you ignore the obelisks and the egyptian-style statues, because the Egyptian set is very sandy-yellow for Hatti latitude (contrary to Phoenicians latitude, and proximity). Hatti were fine in Mesopotamian set, and they had a part of Mesopotamia under their control.
I would also move Assyrians to Mesopotamian set, and Macedonians to the Greek set, end everything would look like this:
We do have evidence today of significant Egyptian influence to the Phoenicians, a pretty reasonable thing:
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You could also give the egyptian style to the Palmyreans.
Palmyra is sandy enough, but they represent this tho, there’s a Roman link, of the common era even, super distant to ancient Egypt chronologically:
Their capital is full of Roman buildings.
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The southern half of Parmyre is Egypt. And the East of the Roman Empire is more greek than roman anyway.
So instrad of making new styles for some civs that need it they do this? Feels kinda lazy.
Picking a more appropriate style is a stop-gap. But given how much noise has to be done for new styles to be introduced to AOE2, which contrary to ROR has a high established value (ROR is in the question mark territory), we won’t see new styles in the near future…
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Egypt was under Palmyrene control for no more than three years. The Palmyrene Empire that you see in that map has lasted from 270 to 273 CE, while the Palmyrene civilization has existed for thousands of years and was mostly confined to the city of Palmyra and its immediate surroundings.
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Which makes the extend of the Palmyrene Empire irrelevant.
Now, from the ruins of Palmyra, the greco-roman influence is clear. Do we have examples of palmyrene architecture predating Alexander ?
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Depends. They might make a DLC covering South Asia, Western Europe or Central Asia. Which would all need new ones. They have shown that they are happy to add to AoE1’s roster with RoR.
Also to add to the whole confusion with Assyrians architecture. Their symbol on the back of the display during gameplay is a Lamassu. You know…the thing that they built tons of statues of and is on the gates of the Mesopotamian architecture.
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I could see the Nanda, Mauryans, and Guptas being the Indian civs they go with.
Yeah, the Palmyrene Empire was such a crazy period in their history lol
Not sure, but being situated in a desert, I would imagine them using similar materials to Egyptians
Guys, I have mixed feelings about the Sumerians having their set changed… yes, I’ve supported the idea before, but then having looked more into it…
Sumerians have built almost exclusively from mudbrick, and weren’t particularly known for the blue decorations of the current Bronze Age Mesopotamian set (Sumer was gone before Iron Age).
It also doesn’t help, that the DE’s remastered graphics made the Mesopotamian set more distinctly Babylonian-looking than in the CD version, where it actually looked more vaguely Mesopotamian (huh) and thus more acceptable for Sumerians (especially the ziggurat wonder). I guess that the FE’s artists back in 2017 misread the set’s name as Babylonian, as that’s a common name for it in the community, and modelled it accordingly, cuz the buildings are too blue now (which is fine for the Babylonians civ).
I’m afraid, that giving them the Mesopotamian set would look just as wrong as the Egyptian one…
In other words, I guess either is fine…
Some pics:
But, some of us might also say that an assigning of a civ to a set isn’t defined only visually, but also culturally?
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Urartu was not ancient Greek.
Okay, but Armenia of late antiquity had Greek architecture, so it still seems somewhat fitting.
Made a post proposing a different architecture arrangement.
Summary:
| African | Aegean | Mesopotamian | East Asian | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egyptians | Minoans | Sumerians | Shang | Romans |
| Phoenicians | Greeks | Hattusa civ | Choson | Palmyrans |
| Carthagians | Macedonians | Assyrians | Yamato | |
| Babylonians | Lac Viet | |||
| Persians |
- Allow a group to have only 2 member civs, as AoE2 had since The Conquerors;
- Break up the expansion-created Roman group, which only hangs on as a “grandfathered” feature now;
- Move Phoenicians and Carthagians to the Egyptian group.
Deficiencies:
- Despite the Phoenicians’ close contact with Egypt and Carthage’s North African location, they ultimately deserve their own building set, while a Nubian civ would accompany Egyptians better;
- The Palmyran civ still has to play the combined roles of Palmyra culture, the Palmyrene empire, the Mithridatic Kingdom of Pontus, and Numidians (these are all represented by its leader list). No building set could hope to fit all that in.
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Carthage had more like hellenistic architecture than egyptian.
Let’s call the Egyptian set a “holding pen” for Phoenicia and Carthage, in lieu of a proper Phoenician building set. That’s at least a more fitting holding pen than for Sumer, Assyria or Hattusa, and IMO better than tearing the two apart.
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Hattusa would fit better alongside either Greeks or Egyptians
And I avtually like Carthage with Roman archotecture. You could consider Egyptian architecture to be the “bronze age Levant architecture”
The Hattusan civ really had a cool architecture all its own. Honestly whats needed is more civs with some new architecture.
Mitanni to go with an Anatolian style. Maybe the Arzawa?
And a bunch of Nile adjacent civs: Nubians, Axumites, Libyans…. Hyksos?
More Phoenician neighbors: Philistines, Canaanites and Israelites fill the area.
And some Carthage neighbors too. Numidians come to mind as do Mauritanians and Berbers if you see them as different enough from both.
Persians with their own set shared with the likes of Scythia, Sarmatians and possibly Parthians if they’re different enough
Move both then.
(20 chars)
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