Three Civs in one go or spread out over a year or two? I doubt they’ll be so fast and loose with Civs. Every iteration of AoM has only even done one Civ per expansion.
Yes spread out of course, 2 years seem quite realistic
The current devs had the chance to replace the Aztec voice lines but they never did. Which is the main reason I worry they’d use those again.
Norse have Norman kite shields.
And Aztecs are a popular request, nothing weird about that.
I was hoping for the Aztecs or a Mesopotamian pantheon.
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It looks like the majority of the players are very excited with this DLC finaly. Only a minority is disappointed and was eagerly awaiting the Aztecs.
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I think any new content will be eagerly gobbled up. The only thing they could do wrong would be straying too far from the original magic of AoM or make civs too similar/ homogonised. So long as they maintain the core values of original AoM, they’ll have an eager and loyal fanbase 
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They were near the bottom of my wishlist of potential civs, so I voted meh. It just strikes me that this was a very weeboo-minded decision to go with Japanese over all the other mythologies to choose from. Japan wasn’t really a developed centralized civilization until the Yamato period (250-710 CE). Compared to other civs in the game, it feels like they’re pulling from a much later point in history to make it work. Most of the cool and popular stuff people associate with Japanese warfare, like samurai and ninja, originates from the Heian period in the 12th century and didn’t become prominent until the Sengoku period (1467-1600 CE). Samurai in this game fits about as much as having full plated European armored knights. So the human military side of things would be a bit lackluster or even derivative of Chinese stuff, unless you shoe-in those medieval period units, which it seems they have. As for the myth unit side of things, they certainly had some interesting myth creatures. Some of the yokai have Buddhist influences (which started around 538–710 CE), especially with the Ashura as seen in the reveal video. So it’s not strictly Shinto mythology or early Japanese folklore.
What I feel is inconsistent is that they went out of their way to remake the Chinese civ with a focus on older mythology, deliberately avoiding Taoist and Buddhist influences, but then went the opposite direction with Japanese, pulling heavily from later Shinto-Buddhist mythology. That said, there is a pop culture element to this game, so I can understand that a Japanese civ wouldn’t be very recognizable if they hadn’t. I guess now if a pseudo-medieval Sengoku-era Japanese civ that fits that far outside the timeline is fair game, then I guess there’s really no reason to exclude Aztecs for being too late (1300-1521 CE).
If Japanese were picked for campaign reasons to give them Chinese to interact with, then I still think Hindus would have made more sense. But from the reveal trailer, it looks like all the civs (or at least Greeks and Egyptians) are going to be involved in the campaign somehow.
What I think the overall general disappointment is coming from is that we just had an East Asian civ with the Chinese. While they aren’t the same, they’re also still quite similar. It’d be like if we got the Aztecs that most people are requesting, but then they go and do Mayans as the next civ after that. People are going to be disappointed that other regions aren’t getting represented. I’m fine with Japanese being in the game, I just would have preferred that we had gotten them later down the line. There are many other civs/mythologies that would be better fits for this game. If they cut support for DLC after Japanese, I think many people will be upset.
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i agree with this. Old AoM wasnt really “lore-friendly” but it felt consistent (atlanteans excluded) with chinese they really gave the impression to be more consistent but with japanese they seem to break this consistency again which lets you wonder: why try so hard to make chinese consistent then??
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I feel like the number of disappointed people would have been roughly the same if it was the Aztecs.
Different people want different things so you will never make everyone happy even if you would release 5 pantheons at once, because then people would complain about having to learn to many new civs.
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I don’t think it would be the same, or even similar amounts. That is because Aztecs frequently dominate “which pantheon do you want” polls, often times with half the votes going to them.
When it comes to the most popularly asked for/wished/voted for pantheons, they are (or seem to be)
- Aztecs
- Celts
- Mesopotamians (Babylonians, Sumerians, Akkadeans, etc)
Japanese come at fourth or fifth place. Usually. I’m not saying there are no exceptions. Nor that the poll results I’ve seen is necessarily an accurate representation of what the AoM players want (after all, there are many people who don’t participate in polls)
But that’s generally what I see.
But you are right in saying that not everyone wants Aztecs. After all, they don’t get 100% of the votes in any poll. They frequently get 45% to 50% of the votes, but I’ve yet to see a poll where Aztecs get more than 60% of the votes, with more than three options to choose from.
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Doesn’t matter if it were the Aztecs, Celts or Mesopotamians people would have complained that it’s not one of the others.
Also just because something is higher in demand doesn’t mean it has no “enemies”.
Japan is one of those civs that almost everyone seems to be at least “ok” with.
If it was the Aztrecs then there would be a bunch of people upset that it’s not the Mayans.
If it was the Celts there would be a lot of people upset with having another Indo European pantheon and a civ that is probably to similar to the Norse.
If it was a Mesopotamian pantheon then there would be many people upset that it’s not one of the other Mesopotamian civs.
Japanese are very none controversial. They have their own unique mythology and it’s relatively straight forward what to pick there.
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I agree. People would complain, no matter what pantheon it was.
What I disagree with is that it’s the same amount of people.
And to avoid misunderstandings: I’m not one of those who complain about it being the Japanese because it’s not a different thing I wanted, as if that can’t come later.
I’m not one of those people who want an Aztec pantheon added no matter what. I see how popular the request ist, I agree it would be cool, and thus I’m supportive of it. But it wouldn’t ruin the game for me if they dropped support of the game without releasing an Aztec DLC.
The reason I voted “meh” is that the Japanese Pantheon hasn’t gotten me excited yet. Perhaps that will change, once more about it is revealed, like it happened with the Chinese.
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In the end we are both just guessing. We will never know who is right.
My impression is that most people seem to like the addition on the Japanese. Of course there are still many thing that need to be revealed.
A core aspect of every civilisation is the Favour generation and the Chinese were kinda more on the boring side.
My personal guess is that the Japanese will have a favor system centered around shrines. But how exactly it can work, I have no idea.
I’ve seen some speculation that the shrines need to be built a certain distance away from other buildings to generate favor, and will generate more favor when there’s trees, berry bushes or other natural ressources nearby, as long as they remain unharvested.
But that’s just that. Speculation.
There was nothing in the announcement trailer that looked like a shrine for favour generation so it’s really hard to tell.
Though they might have purposely hidden that.
They seem to have normal houses so it will likely not be like AoE3 where the houses are shrines that trickle resources when near hunt.
They did show a bunch of torii gates, which are generally built near shinto shrines in real life. But that could just be like in AC: Shadows, where they’re literally everywhere…
Yeah looks like decoration. But maybe they actually have a purpose.
Also they are kinda everywhere in real life Japan too. There are a lot of small shrines and temples everywhere so they have a lot of those gates standing around.
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I don’t agree with this. Introducing two East Asian pantheons back to back is not going to have the same reaction as those.
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- 60% of the world population lives in Asia so having 2/6 pantheons be Asian doesn’t seem like an issue for me. China alone has a higher population then the Americas combined.
- Having civs that are far away from any other civ makes interactions between civs kinda impossible. So giving Chinese a neighbour allows them to at least get someone nearby.
- It’s hard to have a “neutral” view on the topic because everyone has their own preferences.
- Many people don’t like the Aztecs for various reasons (too modern, preference for Mayans, dislike the human sacrifice aspect, etc.). Doesn’t mean those things have to be valid reasons but those are opinions people have.
- A lot of people seem to like the idea to have DLCs come out in themed clusters like 2 Asian civs, 2-3 American civs, 2 European civs and so on.
- Most popular is rarely the least hated. Often it’s the most popular things that actually have the most haters.
- The reaction seems pretty positive in general. You would have expected 0 complaints if it was the Aztecs?
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Overall, I think that whatever the civilisation, the vast majority of players will be very enthusiastic. A true fan of mythology is bound to be very happy, no matter which pantheon you choose.
Where there’s certainly a real risk of negative opinion, would have been to include the Romans for example (although I’d love to) who are already very close to the Greeks and Atlanteans on paper. And for a flood of negative opinion it would have been necessary to include an imaginary civilization a little like the Atlanteans (the lemurs for example or the myth of Cthulu, which appears in the Smite game by the way )
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