Roman Pantheon Concept

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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Disclaimer!

  1. This concept requires the Celts to be released first. That means I explicitly don’t want the Romans to be the next pantheon.
  2. The Roman pantheon is not the same as the Greeks. The Roman themselves thought the Greek gods where the same as their gods but they also thought the Germanic, Celtic and Egyptian gods where the same. Jupiter was not just Zeus but also Thor.

Major Gods

Jupiter

As the main god of the Roman pantheon he is impossible to ignore. He is focused on expansion and construction.

Bonuses:

  • Military Barracks units can build Military buildings, fortifications and Town Centres (But slower then Architects)
  • Buildings slowly regenerate HP
  • Architects cost -10 Wood
  • Can train 1 Aquilifer at the Military Academy that boosts all nearby units but debuffs all units globally when he dies.

Juno

Wife of Jupiter who is often jealous of her husbands affairs. She is focused on economy and Auxiliary units.

Bonuses:

  • Town Centres work 5%/10%/15%/20%/25% faster in Archaic/Classic/Heroic/Mythical/Wonder Age
  • Starts with goose scout (make noise when they encounter an enemy)
  • Auxiliary Barracks units have 50% higher train limit
  • One additional Vestal per Age.

Mars

He was not part of the Capitoline Triad but of the Archaic Triad which predated it. He is one of the most iconic Roman gods and of very important because of all their conquests. He is of course focused on war.

Bonuses:

  • Architects can be promoted to Velites. And those can the promoted further. Architect → Velites →Hestatus → Princeps → Triarius
  • Destroying enemy buildings gives you free Slaves

Age up Mechanic

Unlike other pantheons the Romans don’t age up by researching a technology at the Town Centre. They instead build a Temple for the god they are aging up with. Using one Architect they are slower at aging up then other pantheons but they can use more to age up faster.

Their normal Temple is replaced by “Temple of major god”.

Each Temple has a unique bonus they give when you sacrifice an animal.

Once unlocked you can build more of each Temple. Additional ones just cost as much as normal Temples.

Favour

Romans primarily gain favour by sacrificing animals. The amount of favour they gain depends on what animal they sacrifice at which Temple and how much food they have. So it can be worth waiting for them to fully fatten.

The 2nd way to gain favour is by having Vestals working at a Temple. But they are limited in number.

Military Units

Military Barracks:

  • II: Veles (Skirmisher and Scout. Good against Archers)
  • II: Hestatus (All round Infantry with charged ranged attack)
  • II: Princeps (Heavy Infantry with bonus damage vs. Infantry)
  • II: Triarius (Elite Infantry with bonus damage vs. Cavalry. Get stronger when allied units die nearby.)

Hestati are you main unit. They look like the typical Legionary when fully upgraded. The Principes are the there to break the enemy lines with their bonus against infantry and good hack armour while the Triarii are the last resort back line. They get stronger when your other units die so you should try to keep them out of the fight until the end.

Velites are your Scout and Skirmisher unit. They are fast and your main counter against enemy Archers.

Military Academy:

  • III: Eques (Cavalry, naturally good against Archers but without bonus damage)
  • III: Centurion (Infantry that increases movement and attack speed of nearby Infantry)

Centurions are essential to make increase the efficiency of your Infantry. With the help of Centurions they can march faster and hit harder. Their aura gets increased with Heavy and Champion upgrades (Medium is free).

Castellum (Fortress):

  • III: Scorpion (Good against Infantry and Archers. Does pass through damage)
  • IV: Onager (Good against buildings)

Auxiliary Barracks:

Units depend on what foreign gods you choose. Like the Age up Options there are 2 per age and they are different for each major god. Their numbers are limited but they cost less population so you can’t completely focus your army on them but it’s beneficial to add them to your army.

  • II: Toxotes
  • III: Hoplite
  • IV: Hippeus
  • II: Celtic unit
  • III: Celtic unit
  • III: Camel Rider
  • IV: War Elephant
  • II: Throwing Axeman
  • IV: Huskarl

Yes some of those units are unlocked later then they are for the original civ.

Economy

Villagers

  • Slave (Can not build buildings beside Farms, Houses and Drop off buildings)
  • Architect (Cost 70 Wood, chop Wood Faster but all other resources slower. Build as fast at Atlantean Citizens)

They start with 3 Slaves, 1 Architect and 1 Veles as a scout.

Slaves can be stolen by enemies. When enemy units stand next to Slaves for n Seconds they turn into Freedmen for the enemy player. Freedmen can build farms, houses and every civilisations drop of buildings (Economic Guilds function as universal drop off).

Buildings

  • Have 3 drop of buildings like Egyptians but they do cost Wood
  • Instead of one Temple they have a full page of different Temples depending on which god they choose

Livestock Pan

  • Limited in Number (1 per Age)
  • Slowly generate free Herdables
  • You can choose between different ones
  • Default herdable are geese that also function as scouts

Road

  • Build in a line like a wall
  • All units walk faster on roads, including trade
  • Enemy and allied units get half of the buff
  • Can be destroyed by enemies

Heroes

Vestals

  • Limited in number
  • Limit increases by 1 per Age (2 for Juno)
  • Can buff buildings (different then Pharaoh)
  • Can generate favour at temples
  • Can pick up relics
  • Can not fight

Building buff

  • Drop off buildings: increase nearby worker work in a short range (no extra resources like Egyptians)
  • Military buildings: reduce unit cost
  • Livestock Pan: generate herdables faster
  • Town Centre: boost nearby construction speed
  • Dock: reduce unit cost
  • Markets: reduce trader cost
  • Fortifications can not be buffed
  • Unfinished buildings can not be buffed

Flamines

  • Main Hero units
  • Limited to 1 per God you choose
  • Have abilities based on the Gods you choose
  • They all have the same base stats (unlike Greek heroes)

Minor Gods and Myth Units

Roman mythology was more focused on people and less on Monsters but there are a lot of local myths from ancient Italy to find enough myth units.

I will look into that later though.

Romans need twice as many Minor Gods because they have additional foraging gods for their Auxiliary Barracks. Those are all already existing gods though, including major gods.

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Is fun as a concept but I doubt any official design will not even come close to this design.

-Gods chosen from other pantheon would need a serious rework (especially if you wanted majors like Isis or Poseidon as “minor”) to make sense with their mechanics and would be seen by the community as extremely lazy and that they didn’t want put effort into making god portraits. Building temples for Age up is also probably not making the cut

-Which myth units would you use?

-Architect as a villager is weird, and slaves been able to be freed would probably mess to much with raiding and implies other civilization have somehow more human rights than them.

-Roman auxiliaries were usually specific support corps with an specific composition, not taking exact units from other militaries (did Romans used throwing axeman?)

-giving then the ability of creating herd animals to fatten and then sacrifice them is going to pretty slow

-I don’t think this kind of game really supports road as a building

There’s lot of other potential Roman-only Minor Gods you could choose

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Also, Roman Syncretism were more “cultural genocidal” and less “your god is part of my pantheon”, in the same way the Christian Church did later: You pagan scum stop worshiping that filthy “X” god with that name and instead worship “Y” patron watered version we did for you

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They are not chosen like normal Minor Gods as they don’t provide an Age up, no myth unit and no god power.

Not sure what they should provide on top of a human unit. Them providing one of their Myth techs could be a good option. This would work for Major Gods too.

I’m not an expect on mythology so I don’t know many.

I know, but in this way it would be cooler and easier to implement as a mechanic.

A cool gimmick that might easily work in the AoM engine is giving them Roman shields instead of their original ones.

You find free herdables in the beginning which allows you to get free favour from the start.

Also the favour you get doesn’t have to be linear with how fat they are. It could be fully fattened only gives 50% more. The exact value needs testing.

I think it would because why not? I thought about another building that boost nearby movement speed but why not just make it road shape if it’s supposed to be a road? It would technically just be a building without collision that provides a small aura.

Yeah but there should probably also be the well known ones like Neptune or Pluto as options not just the ones that don’t have Greek equivalents.

Mostly but they accepted some foreign gods like Apollo or Isis. Even London had an Isis temple.

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I see what you mean about Interpreta Romanum but Jupiter-Zeus goes way beyond Jupiter-Thor. The Romans borrowed their entire mythos from the Greeks, even tracing their lineage to a a hero from the Trojan cycle, and millennia worth of literature has treated the Greek and Roman gods as synonymous.

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In my opinion, for the Romans to work as a full pantheon or civilization in the eyes of players, they need to avoid reusing units or directly overlapping with the deities of existing or future pantheons.

Fans have already complained many times that adding Romans would just result in “Greek 2.0.” and is just a variant. Variant this, variant that. That concern is understandable, a bit overstated, but a legitimate issue that won’t go away.

Luckily, I think the Romans actually have more than enough historical material to support a distinct identity. There are extensive sources that the developers could draw from to create a unique roster of military units rather than relying on anything borrowed. For example these two links:

and

That is a treasure trove of Roman’s homegrown juicy info the devs can get their hands on.

Imo, to improve the chances of the Romans being accepted, the Atlanteans should gradually move toward a more clearly defined cultural identity of their own. This would mean slowly moving away from their current Roman inspired look. Some units like the Murmillo could remain for nostalgia, but they could also be redesigned over time with a stronger Atlantean theme in their armor, weapons, and even naming. Realistically, that may not happen, so it is fine if the Atlanteans keep what they have. Point is… is that they should not take any further Roman concepts if a Roman civilization is introduced.

As for the gods, there are many options. While figures like Jupiter and Mars are the obvious choices like you stated in your OP, they also invite constant comparisons to Zeus and Ares. Because of that, if I can suggest an idea (if you are okay with that) is to highlight less commonly used actual Roman deities such as Janus or Sylvanus as major gods. Plus, them being major gods won’t affect “gameplay”. And I seriously doubt nitpicky historians would complain why Janus and Sylvanus were chosen over say Jupiter and Ares. This would immediately help the pantheon feel more distinct even though the developers could still differentiate Jupiter from Zeus through visual design if they chose to pick him as a major deity.

For myth units, the Romans are not as limited as people assume. There are several creatures recorded by writers like Pliny the Elder that could be implemented. The Romans should also have priority when it comes to using griffins. Their mythological creatures are not as widely known, so including a recognizable creature like the griffin would help balance the roster since griffins held symbolic importance in Roman culture.

Overall, the Romans can work. They just need to be treated as their own civilization rather than an extension of the Greeks in my opinion.

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I agree that, rather than having Mars, Pluto, Jupiter and other later Roman gods as the main deities, I would prefer to focus on well-known pre-Roman deities, for example Janus and Quirinus.

Therefore something that is more connected to the Aeneid of Virgil.

Before the Roman Empire, Quirinus was a distinct deity, separated from any other god; only later on, during the Roman empire, he became just another name for Janus or Mars.

So, if I had to choose three major gods, I would pick Janus, Quirinus, and a third deity connected to wildlife (Silvanus, Vertumnus etc.).

Objectively, a Roman pantheon is unlikely, and a pantheon based on pre-Roman Latin peoples such as the Sabines, Volsci, Aequi etc. mixed with Roman elements would be cooler in my opinion, although still unlikely.

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Maybe incorporate some later documented Italian folklore as well? Much of it dates to pre-Christian period.

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The Roman army is one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic, in all of human history. Making that feel unique isn’t hard. I don’t think anyone is afraid of the Roman army to be a copy of the Greeks.

I don’t think that the Atlanteans are that Roman anymore. Yes they use some Roman names but their units are based on gladiators and not Roman soldiers so there is no risk of mixing them up with the actual Roman army. Having a fish and a fisher based gladiator as Atlantean units makes a lot of sense tbh. The other Atlantean units don’t really look Roman at all.

The entire Atlantean architecture also doesn’t look Roman at all. It looks more American then anything European.

I thought about that but those gods were never that important. It would be really strange to have a pantheon without the officially most important god as a major god.

Also Ares and Hera are not Major Gods for the Greeks so having Mars and Juno as Major gods wouldn’t be that similar.

Quirinus could me a Major god because he was important to the early Romans though.

The Aeneid was written during the reign of Augustus long after the early days of Rome. Almost all important gods in the story are ones that have Greek equivalents. One of the biggest plot points is Juno being mad at Aeneas and supporting all his enemies.

I don’t think so.

It’s only a certain part of the community that is very anti Roman. There are a lot of Rome fans out there and AoE/AoM hasn’t offered much for them yet. The “average” player out there doesn’t nitpick about Pantheon similarities.

On the other end people that actually have a deep knowledge about Mythology know that Romans and Greeks were actually different in many ways.

So it’s only the people with a surface knowledge of mythology that would be upset about the Romans and the Greeks being “too similar”. That faction is unfortunately pretty overrepresented in places like this Forum.

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It’s true that Aeneid was written during Augustus’ time, but it tells the story of a pre-Roman era, when the Latin peoples fought against Aeneas and the Trojans, and the prominent deities across those lands were the early, pre-Roman Latin ones.

But it’s just a preference of mine, and in my opinion, a fictional Roman civilization heavily incorporating elements from pre-Roman Latin myths would be more unique and interesting.

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Don’t get me wrong. I want to see early Roman or even Latin and Etruscan elements being featured in the Roman civ but it’s hard to avoid gods like Jupiter that were always important to the Romans.

The early gods are less widely known so I don’t think they make good Major Gods but as many as them as possible should be minor gods. Gods that where directly copied/imported like Apollo should be avoided.

Not sure what is the best way to depict them though because the Romans didn’t really depict their gods in a humanoid way until after they started adopting Greek traditions.

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The major issue is that in AoM gods are real, so having overlapping gods in Roman and Greek pantheons might be weird… Human characters would believe Jupiter and Zeus are totally the same dude, while the two thunder geezers would look at each other awkwardly and ponder whether their followers are delusional or do they have a point and the pair has a split personality disorder…

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The human characters in AoM are not the same as in real life. In real life the Greeks also believed that half of the Egyptian gods where the same as their gods.

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Yeah but Egyptian gods are still seen as distinct in the modern popular imagination, which can’t be said about the Roman ones :frowning:

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Yeah, but they are Gods, they can change form to appeal to other peoples or represent a different aspect of their personality according to what their followers want from them, you can also have mirror matches with no problem in the game, and historically both parties in a war could still worship the same God. It’s also like how different Abrahamic religions fight between them about how their version of the same God is the real one and he is supposedly helping them both.

Also it is funny how you described part of the plot in the book series of Percy Jackson’s Roman arc, where the Gods develop Schizophrenia because of this as part of Gaia’s plan.

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I mean it could actually make a funny plot point that the characters are not sure if both gods are the same or not.

Since I think the Aeneid would be a perfect base for an AoM campaign there would be Greeks as enemies but that includes all the main characters from the campaign becoming enemies.

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We already have Romans at home.
The Romans at home: Youshi?

Ensemble Studios considered including Romans, apparently for the original game; that is, before The Titans, they were going to be Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, and Romans; But as we all know, it wasn’t like that. This is because they very quickly realized how ridiculously redundant it was to include Jupiter in a game like this, where there were already Greeks and their pantheon. I know you don’t think so because you wrote this with all their gods, but seriously, don’t you think it’s silly that of all the games, this is the one where you think it’s a good idea to put Jupiter when Zeus is already there? I know the game can be redundant in several concepts, such as the sun god. We have Ra, Amaterasu, Helios, and now Huitzilopochtli, the first three being the sun itself in their respective religions. And it wouldn’t be surprising if the Norse goddess Sol existed in the game’s universe (Frey was already part of the AoM gods 20 years ago, only now they represented him). So it’s not ridiculous to think about including redundant gods, but it’s one thing to have an equivalent from a different religion and quite another to have the same god with a different name.

They’re going to put Jupiter in, and he’s going to be Zeus wearing glasses with a fake cartoon nose and mustache, and a red toga with a sash that says “I’m definitely not Zeus.”

It’s also ridiculous considering the Romans claimed to worship the same gods as the Greeks, and Ensemble Studios thought the same, which is why they scrapped the idea.

And yet they didn’t give up on it. In The Titans, they reused many discarded concepts, like the satyrs and the Romans they wanted to include, which led to the creation of the Atlanteans. The names of the human units are in Latin: the Arcus are legionaries with bows, and the Destroyers, Fanatics, and Murmillos are Roman gladiators, the latter having their names in Latin (and in my opinion, they should change the names of the Destroyers and Fanatics to Retiarius and Dimachaerus, respectively).

And I hate to break it to you, but it seems you missed the hint. In Retold, they further Romanized the Atlanteans’ appearance, taking advantage of the graphical improvements. In other words, I doubt they’ll add Romans when they’ve already made the Atlanteans look like Romans.

In other words:

You: I want Romans, Mom.
WE: We already have Romans at home.
The Romans at home: Youshi?

They’re not the Romans you wanted, they’re not the Romans many wanted, but they’re the Romans we have, so whether you like them or not, you’ll have to make do.

On the other hand, it’s not very common for DLC content to cross over, not just in this game, but in others in general. What Total Warhammer does—making DLC ​​for DLC—isn’t normal.

I say this because it doesn’t seem feasible to create a Roman civilization as DLC that requires another DLC to function. Companies avoid this to prevent content being locked behind a paywall for those who don’t own it, and that doesn’t seem like what they want to do. Just think about it: all the DLC content is related to the base game in the campaigns, but the campaign content itself isn’t related to each other. Ajax met Yan Feifeng, Yasuko, and Tlacaelel, but these three don’t know each other (I was going to mention Iztaccihuatl, who is more relevant, but she can’t meet anyone else).

Just imagine buying a DLC with a new campaign, but you don’t have the Chinese and Aztecs. Since the campaign requires them to play, and they’re not going to be given away, you either buy them or you’re stuck with an incomplete campaign.

I say this because there’s always someone who doesn’t want to buy DLC because they’re not interested in a particular faction or because they don’t like how it seems to play. While I don’t agree with that (I’m referring more to people who just want to play with their favorite faction and nothing else), I understand. You’re not going to spend money on something you don’t want, and they can’t force you to. It would be unfair to make you buy extra content that requires you to buy even more extra content to play, especially if you don’t want it.

That’s why the daily matches only pit you against gods and maps from the base game, not from the DLC. For those who are interested, it would be frustrating not to be able to play their daily match because that day they’re supposed to play in Setonakai and their enemies are Fuxi and Quetz.

Furthermore, it might be because I don’t like Romans, but I do like Atlanteans, or because I’d prefer the developers prioritize using their time and resources on other things like Persians, Indians, Yorubas, and/or pre-Islamic Arabs (I know I’m alone in this, but I want djinns, Bahamut, and Kujata).

And even if they don’t do anything I’d like, I’d prefer they prioritize creating new factions distinct from those already present instead of making the Atlanteans again with a different name.

It’s completely unnecessary, and while I know many people don’t like the Atlanteans because they aren’t typical Romans, I personally like them. I found them a creative (more or less) way to include Romans without falling into religious redundancy with the Greeks by using alternative Greek deities. At least I don’t need the Romans; in fact, I think they’d be superfluous.

What I wouldn’t mind is if they “invented” a new civilization using disparate parts and named it a mythical civilization, just like the Atlanteans. For example, they could create the Hyperboreans.

Okay, not the Hyperboreans as such, because the Atlanteans were already too much of a rehash of Greek mythology. But they could introduce a mythological civilization and get creative by inventing or adapting deities, themes, and units, although I’d leave that to the final decision.

First: Adapt civilizations that actually exist or existed.
Second: Invent new factions based on mythical cities or civilizations.
Third: When they run out of ideas, add Lovecraft’s gods.

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AoE2 allows scenarios where opponent civs belong to the DLC you don’t own (like Khitans in “Xie An” or Romans in “Alaric” and “Attila”). Isn’t this possible in AoM? It’d even make sense from a marketing perspective – people otherwise uninterested with a DLC might reconsider buying it if they are intrigued with a cameo appearance in another campaign.

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You wrote a pretty long post for someone who didn’t put much effort into actually researching things.

The Atlantean army does not at all even remotely resemble a Roman army. The Atlantean units are mostly based on gladiators and then throw in some random Latin names for some other units.

If you’d know about Roman religion you would also know that it’s not a copy of the Greek religion. They did often adopt aspects from other cultures but that isn’t limited to the Greeks. Many aspects of early Roman religion were Etruscan and not Greek.

Both of those things were already discussed in the thread before but you either ignored it or didn’t read it.

The latest AoM campaign didn’t have the full Chinese and Japanese in it but it used Chinese and Japanese units in some places like in the Underworld mission.

So yes, pantheons you don’t own can appear in the campaign.

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In that case, one could argue that if the early Romans were more similar to the Etruscans than to the Greeks, it would be a better idea to include the Etruscans directly.

It’s like the people who ask for the Macedonians. They are certainly very different from the various Greek states of their time, but since they decided to use the Greeks as a general concept, regardless of their anachronistic elements, and given that the Macedonians shared the same Greek religion, it would be redundant. I say this because quite a few people have requested them, but it’s not possible because the Greeks already included fill the Greek niche by being generic, instead of the Achaean niche they are supposed to fill.

The Atlanteans are similar to the Romans; certainly, their troops are gladiators instead of Roman soldiers, but they already covered the Roman framework with that. And I maintain that using Roman gods under other names would be redundant, and using deities from other pantheons would raise the question of whether it wouldn’t be a better idea to use the civilizations to which those pantheons originally belonged.

The same could be said, for example, with people who ask for Mayan gods; the same thing happens with them and the Aztecs, but in reverse.

The Roman gods that are popularly known are reinterpretations of Greek gods; the Aztec gods are reinterpretations of Mayan gods, only here it is the Aztecs who are popular.

What would be the point of including Mayan gods like Kukulcan when Quetzalcoatl is already there? Not to mention that, as they’ve done before, they borrowed creatures from other mythologies to complete the Aztecs; in this case, they stole the Mayan chaneques and the tunculuchu.

I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well, but the factions are trying to be quite generic in many aspects: Greeks from indeterminate times who feel Greek, Egyptians who, rather than actually being Egyptian, look like what people perceive as Egyptian.

In the case of the Atlanteans, they took Roman gladiators and gave the arcus legionary helmets.

There you go, the Romans are there, because nothing is more Roman than legionary helmets and gladiators.

And if the Romans are a melting pot of many of the cultures they conquered and assimilated, then many would argue it would be a waste to take all of that and incorporate it into a single faction instead of including all the others from which it draws.

From what I know about video game development, I believe that everything we’re discussing and can comment on regarding these kinds of things was already considered before they even started creating the faction. We could suggest civilizations, their reasons, and how they would function in gameplay, and there’s nothing wrong with that, since they often get ideas from what the public tells them. But it wouldn’t be surprising if they had considered exactly what you’re suggesting, but ultimately decided it wasn’t a good idea and discarded it. Again, the Romans were discarded more than 20 years ago. They were considered for the first version of the game, but the idea was scrapped, and with the expansion, what they decided to do was incorporate Roman concepts, but not the Romans themselves. There must be a reason why ES wasn’t completely convinced, and it seems the same thing happened with WE and the other studios behind Retold. I’m sure that one of the first things they considered for Retold was Romans. It’s something the fandom has always wanted, and they are Romans. I may not like them, but it’s something many people love, so they must have considered including them, and yet it hasn’t been implemented. Perhaps the developers don’t see a way to include them that would convince them. Maybe they thought the public would perceive them as Greeks/Atlanteans 2, electric boogaloo.

Perhaps they came up with an argument as simplistic and foolish as mine: “the Romans are a copy of the Greeks with a different name,” which is possible because it already happened 20 years ago. Or maybe they’re already working on them right now (although surely in a completely different way than any of us could imagine). Who knows.