Asian Maps https://aoe3homecity.com/en/maps/set/asianrandom
American Maps https://aoe3homecity.com/en/maps/set/americanrandom
African Maps https://aoe3homecity.com/en/maps/set/africanrandom
European Maps https://aoe3homecity.com/en/maps/set/europeanrandom
Historical Maps https://aoe3homecity.com/en/maps/set/historicalmaps
What is your favorite set of maps?
I like African and European maps the most because I live the natives and outlaws from those maps and I am having a hard time picking between those two.
My unfulfilled dream has always been to see more Native American tribes, technology and new voice recording. I’ve dreamed about this since I was a child.
Mechanically, the Europeans are more interesting with the royal houses, but aesthetically the Africans are very well done.
I feel like the euro royal houses are overdesigned. Competitiveness-wise they probably are the most balanced considering most of them are retooled ESO-C maps, but dunno.
I feel like african maps hit a sweeter spot where the natives are more interesting without having to rely on gimmicks. Visually they look a lot more appealing as well.
The treasures on the African ones are way better too. They have cool guardians and mostly decent loot. There’s a good mix of historical references and fun ones like the hungry hungry hippos or lion king references.
The Euro ones have a few interesting guardians like the beast of Gévaudan, plague doctor, and heretic. But most are recycled stuff like wild boar that is clearly a warthog or pikeman but grumpy. And for the most part the loot is pretty bad too.
Are they? I’d be interested in the proportion that fit this. I haven’t counted but I feel like Africa has a larger proportion of retools from ESOC.
Haven’t seen this take before tbh.
100% about the stupid recycled warthog and other North American guardians.
The historical maps also have some great features. Personally, I think they should have more replayability, like the co-op mode in SC-2, where you unlock new abilities and units as you level up, and you can introduce mutators to make it more challenging.
yeah I’ll admit that maybe I got them the other way around, particularly considering all those maps with the Windmills gotta be new cuz I don’t see those being retools of old features.
I just did a quick count and 8-10 of the 24 African maps are from ESOC retools. 8 of the 38 European maps are ESOC retools.
now there are plenty of retools or reimaginings of maps (i.e. Acropolis from AoM) that weren’t included in ESOC or were designed from other age games and I may have miscounted because there were a few maps added to ESOC in its final iteration that I may have forgotten.
I prefer the historical maps simply because we’re finally playing in European conflicts…
The real issue is that the other minor factions, especially the American and Asian ones, have received almost no new content over the years. Meanwhile, the royal houses and African kingdoms are much more in line with the definitive edition.
With all due respect, I firmly believe that we still need more European maps, and we’re also missing royal houses like the Dutch Royal House, which should include units like the Blue Guard and the Red Lancer; the Spanish Royal House, which should include the Royal Halberdier and the Walloon Guard; the Stuart Royal House, which should include units like the Jacobite Warrior and the Highlanders; the Portuguese Royal House of Braganza; and the Serbian Royal House.
You’re absolutely right, I thought the same thing at one point. They should update the South American Native alliances of the Mapuche and Tupi and add the Muisca, Quechua, and Guarani. It would also be great if they added the Tlaxcalans and Yaqui from Mexico and updated the alliances with the Aztecs, Mayans, and Zapotecs. Let’s not forget that many of them only have one military unit and very few technologies, not to mention that all the Native American alliance factions lack the large ability button that the European royal houses have. I agree with what you said about the European Native alliances being more in line with the Definitive Edition, while the Native alliances are stuck in the vanilla version.
My experience with Euro maps is ~80% of the treasures being gold or XP. Maybe that’s not actually the case but it just seems like there’s less variety than the other maps.
It’s really not the case. There’s a fairly even number of each type.
A lot of work went into those for nobody to play them.
At least four or five more tribes would be great. I suggested the ones you mentioned some time ago: Minor factions of Pre-Columbian origin
