[poll] Future Chronicles Civs

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
41

I think it would work mostly fine. If the BFG civs can have crossbows instead of handcannons, the sengoku civs can have teppo instead of crossbows.

The only real issue is the skirmisher line. The japanese didn’t make use of javelins, or really any throwing weapons on the battlefield (except for throwing boulders down from battlements). One could throw a te-yari but it was meant for CQB defense against home intruders, not throwing, and not battlefields.

If one were to take creative liberties, the skirmisher line could be replaced with shuriken throwing units. Perhaps bo-shuriken thrown like lawn darts. But that’s a stretch.

42

I think he means that it would be weird to have the classical greeks included with the Sengoku Japan factions in the same gamemode

That it eould be better to give them its own tab

43

The Romans are a bit different… because they are the Western Roman Empire/late Romans that are even the enemy in the Huns Campaign = they fitting the time period.
Spartans certainly do not fit into the timeline of a Middle Ages.
The only thing I see from this DLC later in AoE2 are the bonuses. Definitely not the civs.

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44

Chronicles doesn’t have to be a single time period. It can be any period that AoE2 gameplay fits with. For example, a Chronicle about the Tikal–Calakmul wars. Or a Chronicle about the rise of the Tawantinsuyu.

It’s called Chronicles, not Iron Age Chronicles.

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45

While technically true, the team working on it cut their teeth on this time period. I would guess they were going to stick with it given it’s their passion project.

Not to mention I would prefer more consistency overall with this.

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46

In my opinion, I may make teppo soldiers replace archers, yumi archers replace skirmishers, and odzutsu soldiers replace handcannoneers.

If they must be throwing something, in Japan, especially Western Japan, people had used a slinging technique called inji. Although not as mainstream and famous as guns and bows, the slings were indeed used on the battlefield during the Sengoku period. At least, they seemed to be more common than shuriken.

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47

While Chronicles is a pretty generic term it is one civilisation set so all the civilisations in that set should be balanced against each other and also have the same time period right?
Also it is made by the Rome at War developers so Antiquity is their whole thing.

If they want to branch out to other time periods/settings they would likely hire a new team and this team would then make their own thing with it’s own civilisation set that has a different name.

If they start putting early modern civs under the same brand as Spartans it starts getting confusing, doesn’t it?

I agree with this.

Let other developers make their own series that is independent of Chronicles that has it’s own civs.

Thanks to some musician having the same name and even making a song called Slingshot this topic is hard to google.

Shouldn’t slingers be the Skirmisher replacement since Slinger units are Archer counters in AoE1 and AoM.

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48

Chronicles has been confirmed to be sticking to this time period. From the latest article:

“the designs of our ships are creative composites of styles from across the ancient world, and from across the time period that Chronicles will eventually cover.”

I bolded the important part. But basically it’s confirming that future Chronicles DLC will be set in this rough time period.

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49

I must reiterate be careful throwing full fledged suggestions. When it was just a mod I was told to not suggest. Not sure why. But if law is not equal then there’s much to be angry about

50

This pretty much confirms it.

I think for other spin-offs we should make our own threads.

Already did that for early modern:
Spin-off that fills the gap between AoE2 and AoE3

Or talk about which mods could be turned into official content:
Adding content from Age of Chivalry: Hegemony to AoE 2 DE

What did they tell you?

If someone works on a free mod project as a hobby and they are passionate about the subject they likely have more then enough ideas internally that they want to do and not enough time to do even a fraction of them.

Not that they are making a living out of it they should be more interested into making what the players want. Or at least someone in the company should tell them to listen to the players.

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51

That would be perfect for AoE3.

Curiously, I want the late Western Roman Empire. I want Majorian fighting against all odds, showing everyone the mettle of the Western Roman Empire, raging against the dying of the night that covered the Western Romans, expanding one last time the Empire borders but then failing, dying not in glorious battle, but pitufully, by betrayal and deception, to satisfy the power hungry aristocracy

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52

The Japanese are already in there and cover that time period pretty well.
AoE3DE really needs another Asian DLC.

But we already have that in AoE2.

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53

Not from the PoV of the Romans. We have an Aegidus mod campaign and the two Coming of the Huns scenarios in the mods section, but nothing official

AoE3 lacks historical campaigns so it would be the perfect chance for them

54

Now that’s a missed opportunity. But I guess the Rome at War team don’t know much about other time periods.

55

Oh you mean a campaign and not a civ?

The opportunity is still there just not under the Chronicles brand.

In the original news about the DLC they implied that they want to hire more mod creators to make official DLC in the future. So you might actually get what you want.

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56

Another important quote, from the Steam page:

“In this inaugural chapter of a multipart saga,”

So yes, clearly more to come. But it also seems to indicate that this is historically the earliest of them. This DLC spans a century, the 5th. And who comes in the 4th century…

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I think we can put a strong likelihood on the next chapter focusing on Alexander the Great, meaning Macedonians are a shoe-in if this is the trajectory of travel.

The original mod had the Seleucids as a separate civ, so they are a potential candidate. Other possible ones are Egyptians and Mauryans. Especially likely with the latter, as they fought the Seleucids. Persians, Spartans and Athenians were also part of the picture of this story, but with them already included, it makes things easier.

Jumping forward to the 3rd Century and the major conflict of the time is between Carthage and the Roman Republic, another perfect setting and a perfect pair of candidates. The AoE1 campaign for Hannibal wasn’t all that impressive, perhaps second time’s the charm…

Second century hasn’t really got the long campaigns that earlier centuries are centered around. But the century after…the death of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. I can’t see this being missed, and is a good opportunity to include the Egyptians, considering the massive part they play. Some Gaul/Germani/Briton civ is possible as well to represent the forces Julius Caesar fought.

So my prediction:

Chronicles 2: Alexander
Macedonians, Seleucids, Mauryans

Chronicles 3: Rise of Rome
Carthaginians, Roman Republic, ???

Chronicles 4: Caesar
Roman Empire, Egyptians, a Gaulic civ of some sort

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57

Honestly, the only reason I hoped to see stuff like that under Chronicles was because I wanted such things all under one gamemode where they could cross over in skirmish and custom scenarios.

58

Interesting opions here considering you can play as Huns and Romans vs Italians and Portugese in the main game. Let’s be honest, nobody wants Ptolemaic Egypt except couple of history nerds on the forums, so it’s not gonna happen nad majority of players don’t care if their favorite civilization is “out of timeline”. Just give people what they want!

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59

The magic of the new civilisation sets is that they can do that.
You can use all Chronicles assets at the same time as all AoE2 assets in the editor and you can simply set you multiplayer lobby to all civilisations.

So if they make another spin off you will just be able to play those civs against Chronicles and normal AoE2 civs!

You can already see the civilisation set setting in the lobby right now, but since you can’t have Chronicles yet the setting is greyed out.

I wonder how many lobbies will allow or ban Chronicles civs.

That would make sense. But on the other hand people like variety.
After a DLC set in Greece do they want another one with a Greek civ again?

I personally think the nice thing about the civilisation sets is that you can have both thing:

  • Civs from every time period
  • Preventing anachronism

Just add a Bronze Age and Early Modern civilisation set and we can have all those civs in the same game and play them against each other if we want to but also prevent them form being chosen if we don’t.

This gives the choice to the players instead of forcing things onto them.
The Romans are one of the most loved and hated civilisation in AoE2. People like them but they also think they don’t fit into AoE2. Chronicles just completely avoids this issue by letting people choose if they want to allow those civilisations in their lobbies.

I think the Bronze Age is interesting and unique enough to be worth it’s own spin off and should not be forced into Chronicles.
Sumerians are as far away from Ancient Greek as the USA are.

I rather want to have cool Egyptians later then awkwardly squeezed into Chronicles Egyptians now.

2 Likes
60

The major areas of conflict for Rome in the second Century were Greece and Hispania. So they could get more campaigns for both theaters. The Hispanian DLC could be focused on the Celtiberian Wars, the Numantine War and the Lusitanian War. Maybe with a couple of final missions for the Cantabrian Wars that took place more than a century later, already in imperial times.
Since we already have a DLC centered on Greece, maybe it could be combined with the expansion on West Asia, so we could have a campaign covering the Macedonian Wars, the Roman-Seleucid War, the Achaean War and finally, the Mithridatic Wars.
I would also like to see a smaller scale campaign for the Servile wars, especially Spartacus.

And a DLC focused on just Caesar would be nice. The first act could be the Gallic Wars, then the second one about the Civil War and the final act could be focused on Augustus avenging Caesar’s death and finally establishing the Roman Empire. It could a very interesting campaign.

That would actually be interesting to see. Mechanic-wise it would be quite unique, with almost no naval warfare (so the antithesis of Battle for Greece) and chariots instead of cavalry

1 Like