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

[L0rdc0nquest]

@iamborsar

Anyway I still love AoM, though I do not agree that Poseidon is not in Atlanteans’ pantheon.

The only problem I have with this is that reusing a god just doesn’t seem very unique.

@iamborsar

Some Atlantean myth units comes from the Native American myths (like Stymphalian Birds

Actually, Heracles fought the Stymphalian birds, so this doesn’t make much sense.

[TyrannoNinja]

I always found the Atlanteans being the new civ the original Titans expansion added a disappointment. Not only did the game already have Atlanteans as basically Poseidon-worshiping Greeks in the original campaign, but it seemed like a colossal waste of Ensemble Studios’s resources to have the expansion pack’s new civilization be basically an extension of Greek mythology. I would have rather have a new mythology from a different part of the world be added.

With that said, I think it’s too late to get rid of the Atlanteans that we got since they’ve been embedded in the game since 2003. There are plenty of players out there who are attached to them, even if you and I are not, and I don’t think they would appreciate losing a civ they’re so fond of.

[Trimyth1699]

I always thought they should slowly turn into the Romans.

[Kronos8982]

Given alot of replies it seems alot of people have not played the campaign. The Atlanteans are completely made up in the game, their civilization represents what formed after the fall of Atlantis and the Greek civilization that inhabited it had to rebuild and adapt to new challenges. They turned to worshiping the titans, who most likely saught new worshippers after Gargarensis failed to release Kronos. Asceticly the units are designed based off of Roman galdiators, but this does not make them in any way a “Roman” civilization. Its a civilization designed to worship the titans and explore more of the Greek mythology side of things, without making them just another Greek civilization.

[TyrannoNinja]

@iamborsar

Although I have raised out the criticism, I think it is natural to have controversy on what the Atlanteans should be because they are mythical civilisation. Everyone can have his/her ideas what Atlanteans look like (So if you see my post, I would say I am babbling)

FWIW, I think that, if we had to have Atlanteans as their own culture in AOM, they would ideally be portrayed as a tripartite cross between European, African, and Native American influences since they’d be positioned at the geographic crossroads between those continents. Their pantheon could likewise be a mix of gods from all those regions if they weren’t to be invented from whole cloth.

[Trimyth1699]

Since we will likely receive future expansions and the story will probably be expanded upon, I think there’s a possibility of introducing figures as catalysts for the rise of Roman civilization, such as Lupa / She-wolf, who nurtured Romulus and Remus. These two eventually founded, well, Rome.

Perhaps in the story, Kastor was stricken with grief and sickness. Political turmoil, blackmail, and backstabbing are now common. Given this state of constant chaos, Kastor and his loyal friends and family make one last-ditch effort to halt the imminent doom but ultimately fail. The people of the Atlantean civilization no longer believes in Kastor so they are casted out and exiled to the barren wastelands. Kastor, along with his adopted infant sons and able-bodied loyal servants, fend for themselves against the unrelenting wilderness but eventually form their own small community. As Kastor becomes too sick to care for his people, he is given a vision that a she-wolf, Lupa, will one day come and nurture his adopted sons so they may one day establish a new civilization: Rome.

Now imagine playing through some campaign missions from above. It would be quite intense!

During this time, the Atlanteans shed their original design and culture, transforming themselves into something entirely new, with different languages, weaponry, armor, and architecture. Meanwhile, Kastor’s sons grow into adulthood and create a massive kingdom named Rome which incorporates real Roman culture and design.

[Skadidesu]

@Kronos8982

Given alot of replies it seems alot of people have not played the campaign.

The campaign makes no sense.
There is no explanation on why the Atlanteans developed a complete unique culture and technology within 10 years of sitting in the Tundra, that makes no sense.

@Trimyth1699

During this time, the Atlanteans shed their original design and culture, transforming themselves into something entirely new, with different languages, weaponry, armor, and architecture. Meanwhile, Kastor’s sons grow into adulthood and create a massive kingdom named Rome which incorporates real Roman culture and design.

You want the Atlantean civilisation to be turned into Romans or do you want Romans as a new civilisation but have a canon explanation on why Atlanteans have so many Roman elements?
Because there are likely a lot of people very much against turning Atlanteans into Romans.

[WinnietheXi]

0% chance. You atlantean haters are just fighting over nothing

[Trimyth1699]

The latter.

I would like the Atlanteans and the Romans to be separate. The Atlanteans can shed their Roman-esque looks and incorporate their own unique design by whoever is the Director of Art Design in the studio.

And the Romans can start to use Roman designs into their civilization.

[TyrannoNinja]

If anyone in the AOM setting is ancestral to Romans, it would probably be the Trojans we saw in the Fall of the Trident campaign since the Trojan prince Aeneas is supposed to be Romulus and Remus’s ancestor. Although, personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Romans being a playable culture in AOM due to the sheer amount of overlap between their pantheon and the Greeks’.

[Lamplighter072]

Not at all. Variant Civ is the worst idea ever. It should not be implemented for any title other than 4.

[ArrivedLeader22]

@Skadidesu

There is no explanation on why the Atlanteans developed a complete unique culture and technology within 10 years of sitting in the Tundra, that makes no sense.

The core problem as you mentioned is they didn’t update the Atlantean parts in the Fall of Trident campaign. Atlanteans all of a sudden turned from Greeks into a completely unique civilization with detailed descriptions about their cultures and social structures.

Understandable in the era of expansions, but not now.

[Skadidesu]

I can see why it would be a bad idea to switch out the civilisation for the first 2 missions, since they are basically tutorial missions, but not adding any thing from the Expansion 20 years after it was released is kinda strange.
Using 21 years instead of 20 years old concent, lol.

At last add some Atlantean buildings as decoration, add some Atlantean units in scripted events, add some Atlantean stuff in the cut scenes and make some of the enemies in the last 2 missions Atlanteans.

[Armilus]

First mission, you defend the docks, no reason to even enter the city proper with anything. So the city proper could be Atlantean, but with Poseidon instead of Titans. It’s not the player controlled stuff, but a Neutral/allied faction. Same with the army that arrives. It could be Atlantean intstead of Greek.
Mission two onward could stay the same. Dream Level during the Egypt section of the Campaign could have the Enemy Arkantos is fighting as Hades be Atlanteans, but, again, with Poseidon.
Last two Missions has Arkantos worshipping Zeus and be helped out by Norse and Egyptian Allies. Enemies could be Atlanteans that Worship Poseidon, and even a group of Atlanteans that worship Kronos.

[Armilus]

The only excuse not to do it is player nostalgia. It has been that way, and was never changed in the past.

[Skadidesu]

It would be nice to have a Trigger to change Major God visually and not change the whole civilisation.
There is only a trigger to change the Architecture (that doesn’t work), one to change the entire civilisation and one to change the name of the Major God.
Well if the architecture one would work you could use a bunch of other triggers to enable all the Atlantean stuff and disable all the Greek stuff.

[TyrannoNinja]

I think it was supposed to be a retcon on Ensemble’s part.

[Armilus]

I took it as a retcon too. When you place the god version of Arkantos in the editor, the one who only appears in the cutscenes of New Atlantis, in the Gold edition or the EE, he speaks Atlantean. Not Greek, as his main and uber versions do. He doesn’t go “Prostagma - Ne” he goes “Skopos - Youshey”.

So Atlanteans were always meant to be Atlantean, but the developers didn’t create the Atlanteans before the Expansion yet, and adding them in after the fact wasn’t possible for technical and gameplay reasons.
Now, that all missions are done from scratch, knowing the Atlanteans are there from the start… Well, I said it several times already.

[MatM1996]

@Skadidesu

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.

@Armilus

(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.)

@Skadidesu

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.

@Skadidesu

I can see why it would be a bad idea to switch out the civilisation for the first 2 missions, since they are basically tutorial missions, but not adding any thing from the Expansion 20 years after it was released is kinda strange.

Yes, that is one of the reasons why you can’t play with the Atlanteans in the first missions of FotT… besides the fact that there are 9 missions for each culture (unlike the Greeks who have 14)…

@TrickishBook405

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.

Exactly that would be a summary of The New Atlantis…

@Skadidesu

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.

@ArrivedLeader22

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.

Yes, they prefer the campaigns to stay more or less like the original games… in AoE 2 it’s easier to change civs because they’re all more or less the same and it’s easier to balance the campaigns, but in AoM and AoE 3 you have to rework all the campaigns and it takes a lot more time and money because you’d have to balance the scenarios so that the players could beat them as well and they weren’t too difficult but not too easy either… for example in the original AoE 3 campaigns, in Blood, you’d have to include the Maltese from the beginning and then in Steel play with the United States civ with Amelia (which could be done, of course, but they’re supposed to be tutorial campaigns and so you can play with modified Spanish, Germans and British)… and in AoM the same, although here you’d have to balance it with the powers and mechanics of each culture…

@Skadidesu

There has been no new AoM nor AoE3 campaign since The Asian Dynasties.

You had Tale of the Dragon on AoM EE in 2016 that they are going to rework to release in December on AoMR…

@Trimyth1699

Since we will likely receive future expansions and the story will probably be expanded upon, I think there’s a possibility of introducing figures as catalysts for the rise of Roman civilization, such as Lupa / She-wolf, who nurtured Romulus and Remus. These two eventually founded, well, Rome.

@Trimyth1699

During this time, the Atlanteans shed their original design and culture, transforming themselves into something entirely new, with different languages, weaponry, armor, and architecture. Meanwhile, Kastor’s sons grow into adulthood and create a massive kingdom named Rome which incorporates real Roman culture and design.

@Skadidesu

You want the Atlantean civilisation to be turned into Romans or do you want Romans as a new civilisation but have a canon explanation on why Atlanteans have so many Roman elements?

@Trimyth1699

I would like the Atlanteans and the Romans to be separate. The Atlanteans can shed their Roman-esque looks and incorporate their own unique design by whoever is the Director of Art Design in the studio.

And the Romans can start to use Roman designs into their civilization.

@TyrannoNinja

If anyone in the AOM setting is ancestral to Romans, it would probably be the Trojans we saw in the Fall of the Trident campaign since the Trojan prince Aeneas is supposed to be Romulus and Remus’s ancestor. Although, personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Romans being a playable culture in AOM due to the sheer amount of overlap between their pantheon and the Greeks’.

Yes, I think that the Romans or at least Alba Longa could be Atlantean/Trojan colonies, but I would also like to include Tartessos to the west of the Iberian Peninsula… from the records that exist about them, they could also be an Atlantean colony…

[JordanEver]

@Skadidesu

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.

Oh god how bad the New Atlantis campaign is. Everything that the original campaign was good became bad in the expansion.

You have your protagonists teleporting all over the world, going from Greece, to Scandinavia, then Greece, then Egypt, then Scandinavia again, then Greece again and then Atlantis. What the hell was this…? In the original our journey was a monumental taks that lasted for weeks and months with our protagonists moving across the world and in The New Atlantis it’s barely an inconvenience how they can teleport anywhere.

I hoped they would remake the expansion campaign by how bad it was, but you basically said how the story don’t make sense.

Worse: you spend the original game preventing the gate opening at all costs BECAUSE OTHERWISE THE WORLD WOULD END and then in the expansion in 12 missions the gate is opened, kronos is released and is defeated and resealed IN THE SAME MISSION.

Talk about frustation of expectations… Kronos being released should be the theme of an entire game in itself.

@Skadidesu

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 really don’t understand why they did not remade Atlantis in the Fall of the Trident campaign. They used zero Atlantean architecture, not even in the final missions where you have Atlantis ready to be used with the new decoration. Then in the expansion suddently the entire Atlanteans culture and architecture is completely different.

@Skadidesu

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 can see this too, but this could easily be fixed with a campaign exclusive Poseidon faction that use Atlantean architecture and a custom skin atlantis style Hoplites and Toxotes to be used in the first 2 missions and then as a decoration faction.