The problem with those kinda comparisons is that they don’t include the larger picture.
There were a lot of countries in the late middle ages that very different things. Just looking at Western Europe is a bad comparison.
There are differences in scale. Even late medieval armies in Europe were not as big as Imperial Roman ones.
Even in Western European armies only a few people had good equipment while the Imperial Romans had a lot more unified equipment.
A lot of weapons and tactics evolved to counter other weapons an tactics used in the same area (one reason why the Mongols were so successful) that makes it very hard to compare armies that were not designed to fight each other.
Who would be stronger 1000 Vikings, 1000 Aztec Warriors or 1000 Early Imperial Roman Legionaries?
Two of those are in AoE2 already.
It’s hard to draw lines. The current line are the Huns. No civilisation in the game is older then the Huns. Yet the Alaric campaign predates the Attila one by a few decades.
If the Wester Roman Empire only represents the one fighting the Goths and Huns then it doesn’t really change the timeline.
But how knows that this DLC will bring, we are in for a few surprises I think.
The for most of the world line between Bronze Age and Iron Age as well as the line between Middle Age and Modern Age is easier to draw then between the Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Yet the Iron and Bronze Age are in the same game, AoE1.
The roman empire would’ve fought a variety of enemies to be sure. But some of the points made are applicable to non-european countries.
Scale isn’t always a good metric, having a larger army has its benefits but is rarely the be all end all. Battle of Cannae, Battle of Agincourt, Siege of Narva. There are more aspects. Also if the Roman Empire was present in the medieval period, the various plagues and sickness would’ve also done a number.
Weapons and armor were developed against the current threats, but having less armor or literally hundreds of years outdated armor, or less optimal weapons to fight armored opponents rarely ends well.
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t include this or that civ, we have a bunch of other stuff that isn’t historical, it is a game.
What I would do with a Roman civ in aoe 2 is probably replace the whole militia line with a Roman focused one. Late legionaries in the beginning and advancing into appropriate medieval ones late down the line.
I just wanted to say that it’s generally hard to compare armies across large distances in space and time unless there is a big technological difference.
Most of the medieval armour development happened between 1000 AD and 1500 AD not much changed between 500 AD and 1000 AD, yet there are a lot of civilisations in the game that represent that time period.
Also what percentage of soldiers just had chain mail in a typical army from 1500 AD? Chain mail was the main armour of Roman legionaries for most of history (the Lorica Segmentata was only used for a short time period and probably not even for most of the army).
The big technological difference should not be the limiting factor for adding Classic Antiquity civilisations.
There is of course a lot of thematic issues but that also exists for most none European civilisations. Basically every generic unit looks completely out of place for American civilisations and at last half of them look very wrong in Asia.
Just technology and equipment wise, ignoring skin colour differences.
I’m not saying that I’m in favour of suddenly adding a lot of Classic Antiquity civilisations to the base game but I’m just saying that there is nothing fundamentally stopping you from doing so.
Not surprising, that’s what we expected, isn’t it?
I still hope the AoE1 units will all be accessible in the Editor if they are already in the same game.
Having to make a mod for that would be annoying since you have to update it for every AoE2 patch and would be a lot harder to get people to play your scenario of they need a mod for it.
Why people cannot understand one simply truth - we can’t have two different tech tree in game! This is basic reason. You could make some adjustment to AoE 1 tech tree, but still it wouldn’t be even close. From other side you could totally remake AoE 1 tech tree, but would it still be AoE1?
That’s not what I mean.
Just add all the units to both data sets using the same sprites.
The units in the AoE2 Dataset could have more AoE2 like stats like Legions having the stats of a Champion or Composite Bowman the ones of a Arbalester or something like that.
Is it technically impossible to do that or are you talking about balance?
Balance is not really that important if people want this feature purely for fun. Not for ranked matches or anything like that of course.
A lot of people just want to casually play against AI or something like that, why don’t give them something new to play with. If it’s unbalanced you can adjust AI difficulty, handicap or team sizes yourself.
Huns can be argued to have existed untill the end of the 7th century same for Goths, the Visigothic kingdom in Spain was defeated by the Islamic forces and the Franks also fought them.
And the other way around too, though maybe the units should be rebalanced when ported to the other game. It would make sense yo have woad raiders and tarkans in the Roman scenari were you fight Celts or Huns.
That goes both ways for sure.
But it’s a no brainer to add all AoE1 units to AoE2 since there are a lot less of them.
The other way round you gotta be more selective.
I guess there is a few Unique Scenario only units that could make sense in AoE1.
Unique units:
Cataphract (Late Imperial Scenarios)
Woad Raider
Cho Ko Nu (Romance of the 3 Kingdoms Scenario)
Throwing Axeman
Huskarl
Berserk (As Germanic Infantry)
Tarkan
War Wagon
Ratha
Scenario Editor units:
Centurion (Late Imperial Scenarios)
Legionary (Late Imperial Scenarios)
Norse Warrior (As Germanic Infantry)
Sogdian Catapharct
Could add some nice flavour to some potential and existing Scenarios.
That’s true, even in the Russo-Ukrainian war horses are used…
Exactly… in fact,technically,in AoE 2 Rome (like Byzantium) defeated the Persians, the Goths and the Bulgarians in the ninth century and only lost to the Franks (of Charlemagne) and the Turks (from Manzikert onwards)…
Woad Raider, for the Celts, Throwing Axeman for the Gauls, Huskarl for the Goths, Berserk for the Teutons, Tarkan for the Huns, War Wagon for Choson and Ratha for the Mauryans not?..
I wasn’t going to get involved, but this is just preposterous. You’re claiming that technology “went backwards” after the fall of Rome, on the grounds that you personally don’t like medieval or modern art as much as you like Greek and Roman art. The superior beauty of Greek and Roman art is just your subjective opinion. Art being “more beautiful” in your opinion isn’t the same as art-related technology – or any other kind of technology – being more advanced.
I disagree, people in the middle ages couldn’t make the realistic ancient sculptures or monuments even if they tried, so it’s not subjective. That’s what reneissance was about, rediscovering the lost knowledge and culture. Let’s save the discussion about contemporary art for another time.
me too, and it would be technically possible as demonstrated by alreadby existing mods. I expect that to be added later on, when they can balance things well and logically, some civs on similar mods are a bit overpowered.
They would only lack gunpowder units, just like the mesoamerican civs, and they are competitive, and some different units for militia (also we could argue that Champions for medieval armies is just a made up term for the elite man-at-arms).
Mongols didn’t even use some of the technologies of the Roman Empire and they achieved a lot.
Throwing Axeman don’t have anything to do with Gauls, maybe some guys used throwing axes from time to time but it was far from being an important part of their warfare and military traditions, unlike Early Middle Ages Franks (which while not replacing the Gauls if you look at it from a genetic point of view, should still be considered as another people culturally).
Art styles changed and some technics were lost, but it would be entirely untrue to explain it as technological regression alone. A lot of advencements were made during the Middle Ages allowing things never seen before such as Gothic art. You could say that rediscovering things such as perspective was an advencement, but this is entirely subjective, some civilisations (such as the Egyptians) knew about perspective but deliberately chose not to use it in their art style for cultural reasons. Extreme realism is not artistic progress, it’s an artistic choice in which subjectivity plays a part.