Hey all! There’s been a lot of talk on the potential addition of a Roman civilization added to Age of Empires 2 with the addition of the AoE1 port and was curious about everyone’s thoughts on this potential new addition.
Yes, Rome should be added.
No, Rome should not be added.
0voters
Sorry if you can’t vote for more than one, I can’t seem to get the multiple choice to work, so please just choose whichever reason is most compelling to you.
If you voted ‘Yes’ on the last one, please vote on this one:
Yes, because I think they represent an important part of early medieval history.
Yes, because I think they have a lot to offer to the game.
Yes, because I think they would be fun.
Yes, because (other — write in comments)
0voters
If you voted ‘No’ on the last one, please vote on this one:
No, because they are too early of a civilization for this time period.
No, because I don’t’ think they have much more to offer to the game than current civilizations.
I think the Byzantines are just a pretty great way to represent Romans already and theres just little justification for Rome with the Byzantines already in the game
And we could just add unrepresented civilizations since at the end of the day the ammount of civs we can add is finite. Africa is still very barren too.
Only thing I hope is that they finally get Greek voicelines for Byzantines and italian voice lines for Italians at the very least. A new early mediterranean architecture would be nice to have but I doubt it will happen
I agree. I think Byzantines are a pretty good representations of what Romans could offer. While I wouldn’t hate or like it if they added them, I agree a new African civ would a much cooler addition to the game personally.
Yeah, and especially with the wealth of existing Editor objects related to Rome, modders/scenario creators already have the tools to represent a an (older) Roman civ in a much better way than can be done with any other civ that isn’t in game yet. Whereas you have extremely limited tools if trying to represent any major African or American civ that isn’t already all the game. I’ll even admit that in lieu of adding all the American civs I might want, a few more units/Editor objects to represent some of them would go a long way.
There are obviously many potential civilizations that are more popular than the Romans to many users in the forum, such as Africans, East Asian dynasties, and Caucasians.
But we shouldn’t forget the premise that this time this civ is an important part of a business strategy to sell AoE1 content, and obviously there aren’t many candidates that reflect the theme.
At this point, the Romans are a better fit than the Nubians, Kongolese, Khitans, Jurchens, Armenians, and Georgians.
I’ll admit that there’s at least some method to the madness in terms of trying to “connect” the games as emphasized by the major anniversary, and as such I imagine this is a one-off in terms of civ prioritization, after which they’ll return to more standard type AoE2 DLC civs. Anywho, I’d thought there was supposed to be some announcement about that today, but perhaps it was just speculation.
I’m not really bothered either way – but I can totally understand why people are opposed to them being added, whereas I don’t really understand why people do want them added. I know, the poll (at time of writing) says it’s because “they represent an important part of early medieval history” – but AoE2 doesn’t really do an accurate job of representing early medieval civilisations, and I struggle to see how these Romans will feel “more Roman” than Byzantines already do, other than by having a fort rather than a pile of boxes castle. (The fort does look great though.)
If they could rename the Romans to Eastern and Western Roman Empires, I can see it being justifiable given the presence of Huns, Goths, Celts, Slavs, Persians and Franks (even though it definetly represented as France) in the game.
The Byzantine use of the Mediterranean buildset is terrible. We need the models from the Catbarf mod for Byzantines in AOKHD. On Steam. In this AOE2DE game.
The Throwing Axemen and Paladin bonus suggest to me they represent earlier Franks as well, perhaps moreso.
I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said. I’m assuming Romans will have the same Mediterranean building set, but with a different Castle (the leaked fort graphic that looks like Arbeia) and Wonder (no idea what). I do think Byzantines should at least actually have a Byzantine-style Monastery though.
Like others have said and like the voting poll indicates, the Romans (in the sense of Western Rome) were loooong gone before the first age of any of the civs available - meaning the second artillery is unlocked, they’ll get absolutely wrecked in the worst possible ways because there would be a thousand year time difference between the technologies available to them vs other civs. As History indicates, hand to hand combat is inferior in the eyes of gunpowder, and those duck-bill anti-infantry cannons may have some serious and unkind words with Caesar’s legions. This game isn’t an ancient war RTS, its essentially a “dark ages to renaissance” RTS. The Holy Roman Empire (not holy, more Greek than Roman, and barely an empire) is, historically, the direct continuation of Rome classic, so adding Rome classic would be like adding an Age 0.5 to the HRE. What would be interesting is some of the Roman formations being added, like the turtle shell.
Inaccurate good sir. The middle ages ENDED around the same time that EASTERN ROME fell. The fall of Rome Classic (western roman empire) kinda marked the beginning of what we now know as the “Dark Ages”, which predate the middle ages.
I don’t think they do serve any real relevance to early medieval history. The fall of Western Rome kinda marked the beginning of the dark ages (I don’t interchange “dark” and “medieval” like many do - dark predates medieval). Rome was a great empire, but it makes no sense to include them outside of a relevant timeframe. Example: The BEF from WWII was great, so were the medieval mongolians… But put them together and you’ll have a lot of mongolians turned to Swiss cheese. You’ll see similar results between Rome classic and the other empires, considering the difference between Age IV and the fall of the Romans is literally double that when compared to the BEF and Mongolians.
What? How is the Holy Roman Empire the same as Western Roman Empire, I understand and agree with arguments that claim the Byzantines and the Romans were the same people but HRE as far as I know is completely different from Romans.
He may have their Rome’s confused, because he said that Holy Roman (German) Empire was Greek. They probably confused it with (what is commonly known as, and is wrongly called,) the Byzantines
Roman politics, am I right?