To resolve the Romans Vs byzantines issue (among others like idk franks and burgundians or goths and Spanish) you could add a mechanic that asks you towards which civ to evolve by reaching a certain age.
For example aoe1 Romans could choose to become either byzantines or aoe2 Romans by reaching dark age / late antiquity. In feudal or castle age Romans could evolve further into Italians or Sicilians… Goths could go either Spanish or Portuguese and so on.
Also I know that ages don’t reflect historical periods but there are some key references for sure like gunpowder being available only in imp.
I imagine periodization something like this:
Stone age: 2500000 to 10000 BC, from the first homo sapiens to agriculture
Tool age: 10000 to 3000 BC, from neolithic to writing (I include copper age since I don’t know what else “tool” could represent)
Bronze age: 3000 to 1000 BC, from the first political entities to the Greek dark ages
Iron age: 1000 BC to 400 AD, from archaic Greece to the affirmation of Christianity in the Roman empire (I include classical antiquity in it because otherwise no antiquity in aoe lol)
Dark age / late antiquity: 400 to 700, from the migrations age to early Muslim conquests
Feudal age: 700 to 1000, from Carolingians to the Christian schism
Castle age: 1000 to 1300, from crusades to the Mongol empire
Imperial age: 1300 to 1600, from one hundred years war to the eighty years one
Of course everyone had their pace like Germanic people and Japan being in iron age while middle ages already started or I imagine South Africa and meso America… What is available to who in which age could change based on these civ differences.
Tatars makes sense in some way. Hindustanis less so.
Not sure why the AoE2 Persians are exactly supposed to represent since they have all the gunpowder units. That implies they include the Early Modern Persians too.
But giving them Steppe Lancers and maybe even Kashiks would probably be a good idea.
I don’t like having a choice mechanic.
The transition between the AoE1 and the AoE2 part should also be as seamless as possible.
So no Dark Age where you are suddenly limited to just the Milita and also suddenly have completely different civilisation bonuses.
I kinda knew people would only talk about civilisations again.
Getting hung up by surface level things.
You are right. Now that you mention it, AoE3 it’s the better option. A joint game would need to remap EVERY unit AND tech ID and that’s way easier to do in Bang than in Genie. In Genie, It’s a lot of remaping to do manually. In a few minutes you could write an script that automatically does it in Bang. And, given that FE probably has all 3D models, it wouldn’t be that hard to port said units.
I think that should be done in a real modern engine.
The Bang engine is already old and there is basically no one out there that knows how to use it.
It would be a lot more better to make a new game in Unity or Unreal Engine so it’s easy to heir new developers instead of having to teach people how to work for the Bang Engine.
That wasn’t directed towards you, just generally most people talking about Civilisations.
I know there will be one guy that will post about the Gunpoweder Age mod for AoE2 again.
Branching civilisations feels gimmicky and often has strange choices.
Just personal preference.
To smooth out the transition I want to remove the Dark Age and replace it with the Late Antiquity.
I even thought about removing the Feudal Age or merging it with the Late Antiquity but directly jumping from Ancient units to Castles and Knights feel a bit too fast.
No I mean if you’d want to expend the concept beyond AoE1 and AoE2 into the AoE3 time frame.
Hindustani in AoE2 are not the same as the Delhi Sultanate like the Teutones in AoE2 are not exactly the same as the Holy Roman Empire form AoE4.
Also the Deli Sultanate had a mustily Hindi speaking population, only parts of the government were speaking Persian.
They also had a lot of Turkish speaking soldiers, but that doesn’t make them a Turkish civilisation, does it?
Even if you want to go only from Stone to Age2 Imperial, Bang is the better option because it’s easier to remap every tech and unit. Remember, you’d ĥave to remap EVERY tech and unit. That has to be like thousands of individual items. Age1 and Age2 being in the same engine is completely irrelevant because it’s the amount of work needed to be done what’s relevant. I vote for Bang. I’d even wager that’s easier to add new Ages in Bang than in Genie
You think changing a few numbers in AGE is harder then redoing a 3D model and then porting that into a completely different engine and then try to redo the values in that engine?
It’s not like they can just drag and drop the 3D model they made to generate the sprites into the AoE3 engine and it works.
Not only do they have to convert all of them they likely also have to redo some parts manually because the models from AoE1 and AoE2 were never made to be rendered in real time in an engine where you can potentially see them from every possible angle.
They might also be to hight detailed and not optimised at all because they were never made to be rendered in real time.
It’s also relevant that it’s in the same engine so it feels the same.
If you try to recreate the same game in a different engine (ignoring that it’s also a different dimension on top of that) then you have to put a lot of effort into making the small little things behave the same way.
Not good even if you balance units, upgrades pulling in from Iron age to Dark age. The maps, standard resources, unit costs, tech costs and worth are appropriate for the common 3 age advancements which leads to 50-60 mins of gametime. 7 or 8 ages will need much bigger maps, much more resources, much bigger pop limit and could potentially lead into 3-4 hrs of gametiming. Depending on size and distribution of the maps and the improvement on units moving from aoe 1 ages to aoe 2, the games will tend to either be fully aoe 1 (army aggression) or fully aoe 2 (boom fest). Similar to maps like michi or forest nothing, this could be fun for the casual players but not for competitive RTS.
This is more like mod thing or totally new game. This is not something that devs should spend their time unless they want to make new empire earth style game.
Then do it. I’m not trying to sound mean. In Starcraft 1 and 2 I made a few scenarios because I wanted them really bad. I also did some AoE2 scenarios because I wanted them. In Il-2 1946, too. Perhaps your mod becomes popular, like Rome ad Bellum
RoR is a different game within the AoE2 so would this game mode be.
Also it’s up to the devs to decide what they want to do.
This thread is more like a thought experiment on if and how this game mode would be doable.
The idea is not from me, I saw multiple people that wanted or even expected such a gamemode from RoR.
Can you even increase the number of Ages with a mod?
If I’d make a mod I’d make the AoE1 vs. AoE2 mod first. That sound more doable even if increasing the number of civilisations is technically not officially supported.