"Q&A" from discord

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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today Tilanus from Forgotten empires, who also is behind Napoleonic Era, answered a few questions on discord. DISCLAIMER, this is not an official Q&A and seems to be his own take rather.

as for order i will make it Question: (if possible) , Answer: , and commentary: if i think i can clarify or add something.

African DLC

in regards to minor civilizations theming:

Tilanus: a small hint might be that American and Asian minor civs had their own theme, and African minor civs also got their own theme that is reflected in the DLC’s title :wink:

in regards to what are chosen someone speculated the following options:

Berbers
Egyptians
Sudan
Zulu

Tilanus: 2 of them are correct!

commentary: i think Zulu is the obvious 1 here, cant tell you with the others but id guess Berber

question: will they follow the same general design as other HC with 5 buildings/directions, or will they be organised differently?

Tilanus: Yes, 5 HC buildings aka sections. :slight_smile:

in regards to why Hausa and Ethiopia was chosen

Tilanus: of course we picked these 2 civs from a bigger pool of options, and as @BlueSharklet noticed we still found other ways to cover civilizations that weren’t possible to turn into main ones

Tillanus: we’d all love more and new civs, but at the end of the day we also gotta be realistic with what is possible to make with the available resources, civs sadly don’t grow on trees y’know! :sweat_smile:

Question: What intrigues me about the hc is why you decided to go for the Fasil ghebbi when there are a bunch of other options to choose from. The country is like a combination of 3 or 4 major architectural styles and a whole lot more unique cities so there has to be a reason why you went with this one. My guess is either it has something to do with the campaign or maybe it was just the most prominent during the time period :thinking:

Tilanus: That is relatively easy to answer. Gondar has been the capital of the Ethiopian emperors for most of the time (within AoE3’s timeline). Also it has a unique mix of different architectures itself. There are of course Portuguese but also Indian influences. It also features a series of the most popular and influential early modern architectural pieces, which is not just the Royal Enclosure but also the Debre Berhan Selassie Church or Fasil’s Bath, and that all very close to Lake Tana that has a very special place in Ethiopian culture. :slight_smile:

in regards to the berber units shown in pictures someone suggested the following:

3 possibilities

  1. They just put there to fill a little bit
  2. Minor tribe
  3. Full civ

Tilanus: It’s a bit of everything!

Commentary: i guess this suggest Berbers are a minor civ? might also see some of the units in the Hausa

Question: Are there new mercenaries too?

Tilanus: Yes!

general commentary on possible future DLC

Question: btw @Tilanus i know it is probably way to early to ask, but can we expect more content a kind to this in the future?

Tilanus: I’ll say this: there is always a realistic hope with sufficient support and success :wink:

commentary: buy DLC if you want more content

Question: Whats the weirdest serious civ suggestion youve ever read

Tilanus: I think Austrians is pretty weird if you understand what the German civ entails. :wink:

commentary: here lies the hopes of people who wanted Austria

Question: just dont add Switzerland pleas :grimacing:

Tilanus: ufftrag? :switzerland:

commentary: with previous comment in mind, yeah i wouldn’t expect to see these guys either.

Question: Pls add brazil come to brazil now pls pls

Tilanus: One of our main programmers for AoE3 is a big advocate for a Brazilian civ (spoiler alert: he is Brazilian), go figure! Nothing new to me! :laughing:

Question: And what about the Battleship? Can we finally build one?

Tilanus: No idea what you’re talking about! :zophy:

Americans

why was america added?

Tilanus: I think the US civ ticked many, many boxes for what’s fun and fitting for the game

Tilanus: but at the time when the US revolution was revamped we didn’t know there would be a US civ, so I hope that clears it up a lil why we have both. :wink:

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A big thank you to Tilanus.
Napoleonic Era is among the best mods of AOE3. I hope most of its ideas and designs could eventually find their way into the official game.

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If they ever do an European DLC it’s possible.

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it is i suppose, but based on this the 4 German factions he added seems unlikely.

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Happy they’re not ruling out more content.

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I’m happy there are advocates for the Brazilian Empire civ within the devs.

I’m also happy that they responded negatively towards adding the Austrians. It’s would be like having Nigeria added alongside the Hausa now. One is part of the other.

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I know we got USA but I much prefer they round out some more “old world” civs before adding the new world ones.

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Tilanus helped make the Napoleonic Era fan-mod? That’s a developer I can respect. That puts me at much greater ease when thinking about FE.

Also glad to see his comment on Austria. He understands the game and history. Still a little surprising coming from him though, considering the Napoleonic Era split the Germans harder than the eastern powers split Poland.

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Tilanus is the head dev of Napoleonic Era mod, which is also why it hasn’t really gone anywhere for the past long bit.

within FE i think he’s the UI design and possible game designer? i know he did a lot of the work on AOE2DEs UI.

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So I’m not interested in any European DLC anymore :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

All of south-central Europe will be one giant blur, and numerous nations will never be represented in this game. Austro-Hungary brought together many nations (Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians and many many Slavic nations), it was wonderful. But I can see that even the developers don’t want the Austro-Hungarian Empire in AoE 3…

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I don’t want Austrians, but I’d rather have them instead of Brazil, Mexico or civs like that. Austria is impossible, unless you completely rework Germans.

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Austro-Hungarian civ is possible - definitely.

Everyone stop talking about this proposal as Germans 2.0 because this civ would not be!

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They didn’t even give us a campaign or a 3rd civ, they clearly have no time to rework Germans, but I understand that Austrians would have different units.

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Austria-Hungary civ would be much more interesting than United States civ.

PS: I dreamed about the Historical Battle “Battle of Vienna”, in which we play defending Austrians and at the end of the mission we are given the Winged Hussars.

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i dont see how the battle of Vienna wouldn’t still be possible with poles, ottoman and slightly altered Germans.

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Addition of Austro Hungarian civ does not require reworked Germans civ. They could have Croatian Panjurs, Serbian Hajduk - these units are a mockery in revolutions. Then the Hungarian and Romanian revolutions would focus on their nations. Romanians having Panjurs and Crabats is a funny joke.

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According to you, Austro-Hungarian civ is “slightly altered Germans”???

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It requires, Germans have Uhlans, War Wagons and Austrian cards.

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The Prussians also used them

They were used before the game started …
A perfect match for the “archaic” HRE.

There are so many of them that there will be a problem with changing their names … (irony)

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if you had to make a siege of Vienna then what units would you need?

i would say current germans+musketeers would do the trick pretty well.

not to mention you probably would be the poles anyhow.