In all honesty, we all know the Three Kingdoms factions are not civilizations. They are very much chinese, short lived polities who also are wildly out of the timeframe, in a small brief time window in the ancient era. They do not represent anything else, this can be easily seen in their AI leader list, or history sections.
I understand people wanting them ‘‘gone from the game’’, i really do, but i do not think it’s fair for people who want to play with the civs to do so, or cutting them off in Chonicles mode.
Reception of the civ names has been almost universally mixed or poor. People either dont care, or they hate it quite a bit. but this has already happenend before in this franchise; and in fact until this announcement it was the last time i was active in these forums. Because i like many others care about historical authenticity of the game’s setting. There are those who are excited for them mechanically, and i think a rename preserves their enjoyment in the game too. There are already rename mods and posted rename suggestions on other websites, but i want to bring it up here because i genuinly think its the best way to go about it.
When it happened? When AoE4 announced the civ variant concept, people were rightfully very upset with fantasy names like ‘‘The Sultan’s Army’’. The devs of that game took that feedback to heart, renamed them, and Sultans Ascend became an extremely sucessfull and well recieved DLC. I think we as a community must stick to reasonable requests, rather than wanting content stripped from the game in any way, even if said content might be wonky.
Renaming the civs as such, for example:
Wei → Xianbei
Shu → Bai
Wu → Wuyue
And other small localization changes would genuinly adress most people’s concerns and allow for a much more sucessfull DLC and a better future for AoE2 as a whole. These are actual peoples with long histories, true civilizations in AoE terms, and more more fitting of the game as a whole.
As it was said back during the AoE4 renaming request discussions: If you personally do not care, do not dismiss people who do care; let people care about things!. Because it affects their enjoyment of the game, will affect reviews and sales of the game, and affect everyone in the end. People who care love AoE2 and Age of Empires as a whole. We do not want the very concept of civilization shattered. And this will not affect the campaigns; civ rename triggers have existed for decades. Would this make this DLC be perfect? Not for many people. The patch still has major bugs after all. But i think it would be very helpful in a way that woudlnt affect anyone negatively.
That’s just my two cents anyways.
As a last note, i’d like to mention that the Wei civ already is almost entirely Xianbei themed (hence the term ‘‘Xianwei’’); its castle is built in Northern Wei style, its wonder was built in the Northern Wei dynasty, and the Tiger Cavalry is designed in a late medieval way rather than the Three Kingdoms tiger cav (Whose design you can see in other games, including AOM). None of the civ names are vital to their design or closely linked to them in gameplay.
