Shall the Atlanteans be reworked as a variant civ of Greeks in Myth Retold?

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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I know that many of you may say no.

For me, AoM is a nostalgia, but I think that some settings of Atlanteans in AoM Gold & EE is not reasonable.

The greatest unreasonable is the pantheon:

  1. According to Plato’s writing and the Fall of Trident, the Atlanteans’ Patron God was Poseidon, whom cannot be worshipped in the game
  2. the “titan gods” probably had the “native” Greek origins while some Olympians might actually not (some archaeologists suggested that Poseidon might have Berbers origin, Athena might have Egyptian origin, and the Twin Apollo and Artemis were from Asia-Minor). Shouldn’t the Olympians be more suitable for the Atlanteans who supposed to have colonies in N. Africa and Egypt?
  3. More importantly, there are now 2 civs worksipping “Greek gods”.

The distinct “Atlantean” setting with the Greeks created the argument of the Atlantean military units (using Roman units) . There are already many discussion posts on the topic.

Last is the myth units. Some Atlantean myth units comes from the Native American myths (like Stymphalian Birds, it actually comes from eudocimus) Should it be better to leave some “American” civ in the future?

I would like to suggest the following remake of Atlanteans civ:

  1. Mainly Greek Patheon, but replace Zeus with Atlas
  2. Building is okay. Not need to use Greek one.
  3. Hero is okay. Not need to have Greek Heros
  4. Military use Greek one, because it is very odd to see more advanced “Roman army” in the game
  5. Myth unit mainly use Greek one (actually Manticore of Apollo is from Persian myth)
  6. Favor gathering is okay. Not need to follow the Greeks
  7. God power mainly use the Greek one
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The Titans are mythologically older then the Olympic gods and Atlantis is also mythologically a much older civilisation so those fit together relatively well.

There are of course some inconsistencies between vanilla AoM and The Titans because they didn’t know they were going to add the Atlantians in the future.

The campaign explains why the Atlantians give up on the Olympic gods and decide to worship the titans instead.
So maybe the Atlantians are only supposed to represent the Atlantains after the AoM campaign? The descriptions don’t really match with that though.

Reworking some details in the AoM campaign to make The Titans campaign make more sense. Like adding Atlantians as a civilisation to some missions.
The main issue is that you play Atlantians in the first few missions but those missions are Tutorial missions so it would be confusing to change the civilisation when you arrive in Troy.
Not sure what would be the best way to fix that.

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I just want atlanteans vills to be the same as the other regular vills, so getting similar gather rate as the other vills, taking 1 pop and no donkey.
It’s silly and lame that atlanteans don’t need drop-off points and their vills gather or build much faster.

Atlantean citizens also have cons, for example they are much slower than regular vills and take 3 pop, so walling the map is much harder for atlanteans, this is one of the reasons why their lategame is so ridiculously bad (weaker buildings and useless lategame techs being the other ones).

In the end the “citizen” is a flawed design that should be reworked, my suggestion is to replace atlanteans citizens with normal vills and possibly replace manor with regular houses too.

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In think the citizens are a really cool idea and concept and they make the Atlantians play more unique which is cool.

I do think that 3 pop is a little too much, they should be reduced to 2 pop and 33% less cost, train time collection rate and HP.

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The main point is, the Atlanteans are controversial, given that they may or may not exist. The only consensus we can get, is that their Patron God is Poseidon, and they might have built a Mediterranean empire.

This means that the players would expect to have Poseidon as one of the major god, and the options of setting the other major and minor gods/godness lies on the developers’ reasonable explanation. They can make a mixed mythological planteon for the Atlanteans.

But as you point out, the game is not campaign driven. This weaken the point they choose the “titan” as their plantheon

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Posidon wanted to awaken the titans in the Fall of the Trident campaign though so it was already about the titans back then.

I think the Titans are fitting for the Atlantians because they are the older gods for the older civilisation.

I personally also think that the Atlantians were a bad choice of civilisation but they have been there for decades now and they do have many fans.
They are obviously going to be a part of AoMR and they will also obviously not fundamentally change.
The game is relatively close to release so I think most things are already set in stone anyway.

It’s to late to request any big changes now.

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Yes, actually I know. Just babbling my view

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I want to play the same civs as I have in the past so no major rework with civs replacing old stuff with other stuff.

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okay since everyone is posting his own opinion regarding this topic my personal opinion is this:

i really liked and still like the idea of having fantasy cultures and atlantis basically is a myth so it fits well in this scenario. i also liked the style of the buildings and most human unit designs.

but i agree that the hole titans feel out of place. they need to be there cause they are important for mythology, cause they are a major part of the campaign and they don’t fit to any other civ really (at least what i am aware of) so its okay for me personally.

but what i really never liked and didn’t understand (and still don’t) is the choice of most myth units…
but atlanians are here no exception. its a problem nearly every civ has in AoM. - except for norse i think.

behemoth shouldn’t really be an atlantean unit similar to leviathan for egypt.
stymp.bird should be greek (at best instead of manticore and i like and want to see manticore)
satyr also feels out of place also as a heroic age unit.
lampades aren’t really connected to hecate and hecate is strongly connected to greek and as far as i know sometimes is a goddess and not a titan. (instead of lampades empusa should really be hecates myth unit if we stay with hecate for atlanteans)
argus is quite made up similar to prometheans (i think every classical age myth unit is quite made up) even tho there are enough other myth creatures to choose from.

the consistency is, again, a very big problem for AoM regarding this stuff its like a kid who goes to an icecream store and instead of choosing one flavour like strawberry they choose 3 and mix them up. for AoM its like mixing proven and fitting myth units with myth units from other cultures with totally made-up myth units.
i wouldn’t mind if they would go made-up myth stuff but then go full made-up myth stuff but whatever i g##############
so yeah i kinda feel you original poster. and i partly agree some stuff has to be looked at and at least changed partly. but overall for the majority we can assume there won’t be any major changes since ppl are used to it like last recent poster wrote… even tho they couldn still change a couple things since they already want to attract new players from generations who didn’t grew up or knew of AoM. but its still mostly a remaster and not a remake…

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The Greek civilization was a ‘placeholder’ for Atlanteans because there was not yet any Atlantean faction actually in the game. It was later added in the expansion.

That is why they literally had the Greek civ playing as Atlantis. And things like the Poseidon statue.

Mythological speaking, Atlantis was considered even older than Ancient Greece, so Poseidon would not exist for them yet, even if they had an equivalent idea of a sea god.

However in the game, the fictional Atlantis that still exists along the other civilizations (Ancient Greece, Egypt, Norse, etc) would no longer worship the Titans. Thus it makes sense they would worship Greek/Olympian gods. The story was a fiction about Poseidon betraying them and seeking to release Kronos to defeat Zeus.

The Olympian (and other gods) previously defeated and imprisoned the Titans; also worshipping titans would likely be viewed as an affront to the Olympian gods, it would bring disfavor.

My understanding was that after Atlantis was mostly ‘destroyed’, Kastor was trying to rebuild Atlantis but couldn’t do it in infertile lands. They found an ancient sky passage which brought them from infertile Norse lands, to more ‘fertile lands’ (they didn’t even know it was Greece). Under belief that they had been saved, and that the current Gods were not favoring them, they were then tricked by Krono’s servant to fight all the other factions and worship the ancient Titans. Yet, in doing so, they fought and weakened the power of the existing Gods (including Olympians) that were keeping the Titans imprisoned. Titans like Or@nos or Kronos were either dead or imprisoned in tartarus. So the whole story begins to be made up from then on. You end up fighting to weaken all the existing gods, then realizing you were just tricked to weaken the Gods enough so that Kronos can escape. After a few lesser creatures were released (as well as probably just fictional creatures in hel like the Cerberus and the Ice titan, etc), they began to destroy everything, and you have to restore order. You then have to fight to restore the God’s power (undo the damage that you just did), and defeat the titans that escaped from hell (tartarus). In the end, when Kronos makes his way out, Gaia (a titan who usually favors humanity) offers help and was summoned to defeat Kronos. After this, the original order was fully restored, and they probably rebuilt on that island, but never as powerful as the original Atlantis was.

Mythologically, Prometheus also helped the humans by giving them knowledge and fire, but was only portrayed as evil in the game, so most of that factionalism was made up; Kronos would probably try to destroy humanity and the existing Gods (as he was father of Zeus,but failed to eat him), and Or@nos (Titan of the Sky) could be neutral but would likely side with fellow titans.

(and for some reason writing ###### is censored even tho that’s the Titan’s name and the actual spelling used in the game)

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If you speak of mythologically… Well, accordingly to Plato’s Critics, it is POSEIDON who crafted Atlantis, and the Atlantis was divided into ten kingdoms which were ruled by POSEIDON 's five oairs of twins. This means that in the beginning the Atlanteans had workshipped the earlier gods is totally incorrect.

I can accept the story of the New Atlantis that the Atlanteans later turned to workship the Titans. But you cannot say that because of the issuing reason, the Atlanteans use Poseidon & Olympian gods as the substitue of their originally workship of Titan gods

To further your knowledge, if stick to Greek mythology, the Titan regime is better than the humanity regime (actually the humanity today (refer to ancient Greece) was not the first humanity)

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The problem with the Atlanteans in Retold is that they don’t look aquatic enough. They resemble the greeks and romans too much.

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The bad thing is how in the Campaign the atlanteans is still Greeks in everything and then in The New Atlantis campaign they are all diffirent and the backstory of their units (like Citizens and automatons) talk about how they where always part of the Atlantis.

They really should’ve changed to fix this and make the Atlanteans be a proper Campaign-only faction of Atlanteans that workship Poseidon and olimpic gods.

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I think it should have been directly called “Titans”. Especially as the “civs” are now called Pantheons, then “Titan Pantheon” makes a lot more sense.

The thing is that this civ design has nothing to do with Atlantis actually. The human units are Roman gladiators. The myth units are mostly Greek. The gods are Greek. The buildings are Mesoamerican. If you show it to someone on the street, none would associate it with Atlantis.

If you were to design an “Atlantean” civilization, it should stereotypically have a lot of aquatic elements and have a lot of naval or amphibious power.

The only connection is the Atlanteans (according to the game’s own lore, not mythology or Plato) worshipped Titans after the destruction. Then this pantheon is more Titan than Atlantean. They existed well before the Atlanteans worshipped them. Arkantos switched his god all the time in the campaign instead of remaining “Greek” so it’s normal to have the Atlantean people with a “Titan pantheon”.

The Greek could be renamed Olympian in that case.

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The buildings are mesoamerican inspired, the units are roman gladiators, the gods and most myth units are greek. Those points are all true.
I could add more.
The point is that a lot about the Atlanteans don’t reference the actual myth of atlantis (or Platos book, if you prefer that) and where they do reference it, it’s only in descriptions.
The main exception to this are the wall upgrades being metal, and the walls being made of (or coated in) metal, which is directly pulled from Platos description, who specified that several buildings were partially or entirely coated in metal, including the several layers of city wall, with one layer coated in copper, one in bronze, one in iron, and the innermost one in ###########
Plato also described temples, palaces, and large houses being decorated with ornamentals made of various metals, including silver, gold, and even more ###########
And that last part is being shown on textures of the buildings as well.

The units being Roman Gladiators has become pretty obvious in Retold, but in the original games, due to aquatic-looking elements like scale armor, finns, etc, their Roman origin was only really obvious with the Murmillo, because of the helmet, and the Destroyer, because of the shield.
And while the buildings based on Inca architecture, as evident by the trapezoid shaped roofs, they aren’t exactly Inca buildings. You won’t find that they match 1:1 even in a direct, side by side comparison. They are clearly based on them, and look similar, but there are still differences.

If it was up to me, I’d add a campaign only major god called Poseidon (SPC) that is basically Atlanteans worshipping Poseidon. Meaning Atlantean buildings and human units, but Poseidon statues, god powers, and myth units, and then swap regular Poseidon for Poseidon SPC for Atlantis in Fall of the Trident.
(Except for Arkantos, in the first two missions, since those have Tutorial functionality and are meant to prepare for the Greek gameplay in the trojan war missions after. And in the last Mission, he’d have to worship Zeus, for story reasons, so Arkantos would still never command Atlanteans directly.)
Also I’d change the Llama caravans for dwarf elephants, (because Plato said Atlantis had elephants, and large animals living on an island for long enough evolve into smaller versions of themselves, the phenomenon is called insular dwarfism. Sicily once had elephants the size of large dogs.) and turn the citizen donkeys invisible. (Being slower, more effective, costing 2 pop, not needing dropoff points, can stay, but I think the donkey looks silly and it seems strange to me that every civilian has a pet donkey they bring everywhere.)

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The main problem with the Atlanteans comes from how the Titans campaign is just worse in almost every way.

In the Fall of the Trident things kinda made sense. You had the Greek armies besieging Troy and then returning to discover the Plot of Gargarenis.
At every point it makes sense that you command a relatively large army.
Then you go though the underworld and encounter Amanra, who also has an army. On top of that you regularly find local allies in the missions themselves.
All makes sense somewhat.
Then you go to the Norse lands. After some time of being tricked by Loki you ally with the local clans. Also somewhat makes sense.
Back in Atlantis you get helped by the Norse and Egyptians in the final fight.

In the New Atlantis campaign things are really strange and happen way to fast.
You are fighting for survival until you find New Atlantis, a lush island that happens to be close to Atlantis but somehow just has a small Greek town on it. Like why was that never colonized by Atlantis before, how did they just go past this island to settle in the Tundra of all places?
Generally what happened to all the other Atlantean colonies after Atlantis sank?
It kinda makes sense that they can conquer the island because there is only a small Greek town there.
But then you go invade Greek? Like how did you suddenly go from barely surviving to having a large enough army to rival the Greeks?
And not even that, you can simultaneously siege Greek and send 2 armies to Egypt and Scandinavia?
The Atlantean army goes from struggling against raiders to being able to maintain a siege against the united forces of the Greeks, Egyptians and Norse without even using their complete army?

And of course the whole thing about Kastor happily worshipping Kronos despite clearly know that it’s a bad idea.

The Atlantean people existed before Atlantis did, right?
And since the Titans ruled before the Olympian gods in some degree it’s correct.

Also AoM lore is not equal to real world mythology.

Yeah I hate it that AoMR and AoE3DE did not include any of the new civs in their old campaigns like AoE2DE always does.
AoE2DE reworked every appearance of a wrong civ in any old campaign, in some campaigns even the civ you play as got completely replaced.
I know that AoE2DE civs are more similar to each other but it’s really stupid that the Fall of the Trident just pretends none of the Expansion content exists. Not even using it for decoration in the background, they still just use the campaign exclusive “Walls of Atlantis” instead of any actual Atlantean architecture.

I can see why they don’t want to replace the Greeks in the Greek part of the campaign with Atlanteans but it’s just confusing that they don’t exist at all.

I completely disagree with this.
The donkey makes a lot of sense because it’s basically a small ox cart, a mobile drop of sight.
Also explains why they cost 2 population instead of 1.

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It was just very hurried and forced.

You need to add and showcase the new gods. You need to fight diverse enemies. You need to collect the prequel characters one by one like every RPG story. But you cannot reiterate the same journey of Arkantos. What else can you do?

Basically the dilemma of most forced sequels.

And the AOE series never had good story writers that could write compelling original stories (just look at every campaign story that is not based on history). The AOM and Titan campaigns and the first three acts of AOE3 campaigns are essentially the same story told five times.

AOE2DE is the last stronghold of single player contents, in the era of pvp everything…

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It’s kinda sad.
AoE3DE and especially AoMR have a lot of technical capabilities that AoE2DE doesn’t have.
They can tell much better stories and have much better campaigns but they barely have any content.
There has been no new AoM nor AoE3 campaign since The Asian Dynasties.
Neither AoE3DE not AoMR offer any new campaigns, just a bunch of new Histrionical Battles in AoE3DE an 1 Mythical Battle in AoMR.

AoE2DE DLC always offer 3 new campaigns, something AoE3DE fans can just dream of.

I really hope they add campaigns in the new pantheon DLCs and not just 3 Mythical Battles.

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It’s too late. They have been in the game for over 20 years. Besides, ancient gods and Titans are way cooler.