I already made it clear multiple times, but I don’t like AoM Atlanteans in either concept or execution. They’re modern conspiracy theory Atlanteans with Greek gods and a suspiciously Andean architecture, and they’re better than the three base civs in every way the old devs could think of. Them getting Greek gods doesn’t sit well with me especially now that Freyr exists, and them being based on a myth doesn’t sit well in general. Obviously the game is based on mythology, but Greeks, Norse and Egyptians are still real people. Why should Atlanteans be the exception?
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@RatcicleFan That’s true, but what’s done is done, and it’s too late to remove them. The real question is: since the door is open, will there be new civs or new elements drawn from myths that never existed? The first thing that springs to mind is the Cthulhu mythos, but there are others.
I like the Atlanteans as a concept. But there are a few things I do criticize about their execution.
Especially when it comes to immersion and the narrative. Maybe in the future, when there are more and better modding tools and methods, there may be fixes to that. The developers won’t bother to adress a single one of those criticisms.
I think Cthulhu mythos is way too recent for the game, I would rather not touch it in AoM. They can always make a separate game about it.
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Because it takes work, imagine if they added Malta and the United States to AoE 3 DE and never changed the campaigns by including them as playable civs in these campaigns… they are still the Knights of Saint John (who are still customized Spanish civ) and the United States (which is not the civ of the multiplayer, but British without longbowmen and with heavy cannons instead)…
Maybe that’s why, because they want something more mythological, remember that first they were going to be Romans, but then they wanted to expand the lore of AoM more with the Atlanteans…
Yes, both are right… Cthulhu is very modern, but something like Lemuria (Dravidians plus Madagascar Kingdoms), Zealandia (Maori and Malays) and Mu (Polynesians) might be better for the game…
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Lemuria is just as recent and also a reference they already removed from Retold. Zealandia faces the same problem on top of not being the purported homeland of Maoris. It’s just the name of the (very comparatively recent) tectonic plate New Zealand. Those are all modern conspiracy theories or modern terms for things unrelated to Age of Mythology’s setting. You’d just be making my problem with Atlanteans even worse.
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Well, it was just an idea, so that the Atlanteans would not be left alone and stranded… Lemuria could be like the civilization preceding the Atlanteans and Zealandia and Mu simply mythological civilizations neighboring them…
Wouldn’t Mu be a Turkic/Mongolian thing though? Or at least I remember people suggesting something similar to represent Turco-Mongols.
No, it’s from the Pacific… it would be like Atlantis but in the Pacific, a large continent that sank after the rise of the sea after the Ice Age in 10000 BCE and that gave rise to present-day Polynesia, Hawaii and Easter Island…
Mu is the name of a lost continent whose concept and name were proposed by the 19th century writer and traveler Auguste Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu, which was located in the Pacific Ocean. To make such claims he relied on the translation into Spanish (later discarded as fanciful) of the Mayan codex known as the Tro-Cortesian Codex by Brasseur de Bourbourg. He placed it in the Pacific Ocean and maintained that this civilization lost thousands of years ago spread its advanced technology throughout the world; which would have allowed the construction of the great pyramids that are scattered across different continents. He also maintained that, like Atlantis, this continent would have been destroyed 12,000 years ago by the gods as punishment for being a decadent civilization.
Later this concept was popularized and spread by James Churchward, but unlike the previous authors he maintained that Mu was located in the Pacific Ocean.
Another possible explanation for the origin of this legend is that in prehistoric times the Earth was covered with ice on much of its surface due to the last glaciation, this caused the sea level to be 100 meters below the current level and consequently many coastal lands that are now submerged, whereas at that time they were above sea level. This means that when the glaciation ended 12,000 years ago many coastal villages were submerged, which is the most probable origin of the legend of the universal flood.
At present, the belief in the existence of this supposed continent is only supported by occult or New Age groups, who support their claims on some discoveries, such as that of Yonaguni.
According to the supporters of the existence of Mu, the references supposedly found by Churchward about a land beyond the great eastern sea, the Pacific Ocean, homeland of a great solar civilization, cradle of the ancient culture of the Indus Valley, became an important discovery for Mu, added to that of Le Plongeon; and Churchward’s hypothesis would be confirmed, since the hieroglyphics of the Indus culture were surprisingly similar to those of Easter Island, near the best-known location of Mu.
It is also said that a large number of Buddhist texts have been found that mention a land that, apparently, was located in the Pacific Ocean.
It is also alluded to the existence of a fairly compelling piece of evidence. It seems to be the series of clues of an alleged massive emigration that occurred thousands of years ago from the eastern Pacific area, near the South American coast.
These clues (which were isolated facts) would suggest that several ancient civilizations would have a common origin in Mu. These are ancient Egypt, Assyria, the Indus Valley civilization, pre-Incan Peru, Easter Island and, to a lesser extent, pre-Mayan cultures. They would share artistic, architectural and linguistic similarities (all of them used a hieroglyphic writing system), common beliefs (of a solar type), and Egypt, Assyria and the native Easter Islanders would preserve a fairly similar legend: in Egypt and Assyria it was the original myth of Atlantis, and in Easter Island there is the memory of an ancient homeland called Hiva, which sank due to a cataclysm, and which produced an emigration to Easter Island.
The testimony of the Aymaras of Peru and Bolivia constitutes another evidence of this common memory, since they also refer to this lost land and in the same location, although in this case the island-continent is called Atl-Antis (ancient land), whose name cannot be denied the enormous similarity with Atlantis. This does not make sense, since Mu and Atlantis are two different continents.
The sinking of these lands, however, seems to have been caused by the imminent collision of this island with the South American plate, which is continuously sliding on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, giving rise to the sinking of Mu under the crust and the formation of the Bolivian plateau, which was formed quite recently. However, since the appearance of Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago in Africa until today, the Nazca subplate has slid only 500 meters under the American continent (at a rate of 2.5 cm per year), which invalidates this theory.
Michel Desmarquet in his book Thiaoouba Prophecy (1993) reports that Mu (Lamar) was colonized 250,000 years ago by extraterrestrials, who would be ancestors of the current Polynesian race, brought the dog, the armadillo and the pig. They were very spiritually and technologically advanced, they founded 19 cities, 7 of them sacred and in the capital Savanasa they built a pyramid 3 times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. 200,000 years ago they expanded into New Guinea and Southeast Asia (western Mu), also into Central and South America not far from Lake Titicaca. In Tiahuanaco a huge port was built, at that time there was an inland sea (now Brazil) that connected to the Atlantic Ocean. They arrived in Atlantis 30,000 years ago and in Europe 17,000 years ago. They influenced the Greeks (the Greek alphabet is the same as that of Mu), in North Africa they gave material and spiritual knowledge to the Arabs (Arabic numbers come from the Mayan-Atlanteans of Mu), they built the Great Pyramid in Egypt (every time they considered that a new colony had the potential to be great, both spiritually and materially speaking, they built a pyramid). Then, about 14,500 years ago, a volcanic cataclysm, in which mountains were created throughout America, destroyed the continent of Mu. The splendor of this civilization was never seen again.
All the similarities of cultures and legends argued to support this hypothesis are compatible with the theory of the arrival of man to America through the Bering Bridge during a glaciation, whose fusion gives rise to the legends of continental sinking in the cultures on both sides of the Bering Strait.
The first to propose the existence of the Mu continent as a possibility was Colonel James Churchward, an officer of the British army in India. It all began when he became friends with a high priest of a Hindu temple who had in his possession some clay tablets that had been kept and forgotten over the years by Hindu priests. Over time, Churchward and the Hindu priest were deciphering the existence of a mother civilization that had grown, flourished and suddenly declined. Churchward continued to collect data from this enormous puzzle, resulting in an extensive image of Mu narrated in the book Mu the lost continent.
However, another version of the story, much more skeptical, says the following: That everything would have been caused by a translation error.
Now, Mayan writing was somewhat similar to Japanese or Egyptian writing, since it used ideograms that also had phonetic value: therefore it lacked an alphabet. What the Spaniard had found was a set of symbols that, when read aloud, sounded like the letters of the Spanish alphabet.
Brasseur understood that the codex narrated a volcanic catastrophe that had destroyed an entire continent. Its name was expressed in two symbols that corresponded to the letters “M” and “U.” Mu was born.
Just four years later, Colonel James Churchward appeared on the scene. Churchward claimed to have discovered in the vaults of a Hindu temple a whole library of tablets written in an unknown language. In them he had managed to decipher the entire history, science and philosophy of Mu.
Later, Churchward would write a dozen books about Mu. In them he would turn Mu into the Atlantis of the Pacific, attributing to it an antiquity that oscillated between 25,000 and 20,000 years. Mu displaced Atlantis as the origin of all known civilizations, from the Egyptian to the Mayan, including the Atlanteans. The wisdom of Mu had originated both the Bible and the principles of Freemasonry. Its inhabitants had gone so far as to make revelations about Jesus Christ, who was only to be born many millennia later.
Churchward’s books are still being republished and offered on the Internet. On some “energy tourism” pages, Lemuria and Mu appear to embody “the spirit of Hawaii.”
They really need a project where they remake the entire game, maybe they can have the story be Retold with improvements…?
They where already taking work remaking the things, they already had the Atlanteans assets to make things right, a privilege that the original did not.
AoE3 is an example of what NOT to do.
AoE2 always remake the campaigns to add the new civs.
True, but AoM uses the same engine as AoE 3 and the civs are more asymmetrical, that’s why I say it takes more work to correct the campaigns… they didn’t do it with The Titans in AoM, they didn’t do it in 3 DE and they didn’t do it in AoE 4 either (which still have the same mechanics and balance since the game was launched in 2021)…
What you talking about? The Atlantis in The Fall of the Trident campaign are all decorations, there is no need to change any gameplay at all. You would not play literally as the Atlantis faction, you would play as the Greek Poseidon with the atlantean skin. (because you are supposed to play as greek)
Didn’t do what? Remake the entire original campaign with the expansion? Well, of course not. Thats what the RETOLD project is.
3 DE is so bad that the campaign don’t even work.
This is just another aproach. They used the Starcraft2/Warcraft 3 strategy of creating a different dataset for the campaigns so they are ‘frozen’ in time and never changes. (I don’t like this strategy for the AoE franchise)
Personally, I think the Atlanteans should slowly push itself away from being Greek and Roman and mold into something that has its own unique design instead.
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Over the course of several small patches that each make small and subtle changes that add up over time?
Less Roman armor design, less incan architecture, that would be doable (and very welcome if you ask me).
I don’t think you can do much about Gods and myth units in that way. Giving the Atlanteans different, completely made up gods and myth units would have to be a mod. Especially because of the story told in the campaigns.
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Well, if it’s something aesthetic it could be… in the end it would only be the first and the last two missions of FotT…
It works, just a bit outlandish and very far-fetched… you play with Knights of St. John (customized Spanish), John Black’s Mercenaries (customized German) and the United States/Falcon Company (customized British) against the Circle of Osseus (which is a mix of German units and buildings and the British tech tree)… then in The Warchiefs it’s the Black Estate (Hauds and Lakotas with revolutionaries) against other civs (British, Germans and again the United States from the original campaign)…
Yes, in AoE 3 I don’t remember if the patches affect the campaigns since they are campaign-only civs, but I think they do, but in specific cases… in AoE 2 and AoM, as they are the same civs as in multiplayer, yes…
Yes, but what kind of architecture do you think of? I can’t think of anything other than Tartessus architecture, and at most, Mayan because of its proximity to Yucatan (but that would leave us without the possibility of seeing Mayan mythology)…
Considering that Atlantis is supposed to be positioned on a geographic crossroads between Africa, Europe, and the Americas, cultural influences from all three regions would make sense. They shouldn’t just be Greeks or Romans living in pseudo-Inca buildings.
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While I’m not against taking inspiration, the criticism it’s facing is the copying and changing it slightly to not make it obvious.
We can tell they took inca architecture as inspirations. That doesn’t have to go entirely. But maybe it could be mixed with elemets of other styles, like what you mentioned.
You shouldn’t be able to look at an Atlantean building and identify it as andean. You shouldn’t be able to look at an atlantean soldier and identify it as roman. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be influenced by them at all.
It just can’t be on the nose as it is right now.
Get what I mean?
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Yeah, thats it. Its not someone hard or that it would take a lot of work.
Currently, the story of the game is still broken, we go from FoTT atlanteans being literally Greeks and then suddently in The New Atlantis they are totally different and the lore of the units and buildings talk about a Atlantis that we never saw.
I’m talking about it literally not working. It was full of bugs and the AI not worked in a lot of missions. I hated replaying the campaigns, the 3 DE is a very subpar product.
And its much better playing the campaigns on AoE2 and AoM and having your factions play exactly like you do in other modes.
The AoE4 looks like you are playing a different game.