Joan de’Arc - Just French with a hero unit
Order of the Dragon - Just HRE with reskinned and buffed units
Zhu Xi’s Legacy - Just chinese with reskinned wonders and some new units
Honestly they had so many potentials and ideas… Order of the dragon could be a faction with hungarian, serbian, croatian units. Zu Xi could be chinese with different dynasties like jin, liao, khitans… the civ varients feel like wasted
Pretty sure these end up being relatively lower effort additions to justify the price.
Some of them do see a bit more efforts like Zhu Xi (still really bad name BTW) and Ayyubids. Some obviously require much less effort. The Order of Dragon is probably the one with least (pretty ironic that this was considered the only historical one at the announcement and had high expectations).
Disclaimer:
Ah, I never expected that much, so now I can’t say I’m disappointed! The OotD is still kinda cool, not so original but I like it. The Ayubbids are the best though, I agree.
Yah… i expected much more, shouldve lowered my expectation the moment they revealed the names
Depends on what you mean by interesting.
If you consider gameplay, I would strongly wager that French and Rus are more similar to each other in gameplay than Zhu is to China.
Agree, they wasted big potential here
For china landmark it is definitely not “just a reskin”. You’re using the wrong term as they are completely new.
HRE is closer to reskin. But the other 3 civs all have unique gameplay and unique units.
And you’re using the wrong term as well. They aren’t completely new. They are existing models that have been retextured, or had parts of their existing textured altered. There are minor adjustments to their models, sometimes, none at all. The pagoda has different tiered levels, which is quite literally a copy paste of that section followed by moving that bit up in any 3D program. But the others are mostly just existing buildings + some assets put next to them. They’ll sprinkle cute throwaway assets like statues, stone fences, or anything to try and hide that those assets weren’t new; but it doesn’t make them new. They’re still just old assets.
Moving the mesh around still necessitates a new UVmap, so textures need repainting.
Like I get that they’re not brand new models. But does that alone make them bad? Surely if there’s a better thing that can be done from scratch, it’d be easier to point that out than say “they’re re-using parts of other models” which is something that happens across the industry all the time.
Logically, you’re going to convince more people with “this other thing is better / more accurate” than trying to put down asset re-use, which is nearly always a smart thing to do so long as it’s appropriate in-context.
This is such a vague statement that it needs to be explained that context is extremely important here. If you kitbash an entirely different model out of pieces of other models, then yes, the UV would have to be redone.
In the instances of what has been done so far in for example, ZXL, that is not the case. The pagoda example I gave, of which is just a tier higher or lower, can reuse the exact same UV, as you want to use the exact same textures on all tiers. The only exception is if you want to add height dependent decals, which would cause duplicate patterns to show. This is clearly not the case with this lazily put together mess.
Have you even looked at them? They are using entire models, with very minor (if any) modifications. The real difference lies in the decor and random small assets put next to them, not the actual model itself.
Reusing assets is an industry standard. Yet it is done when it makes sense. AoE4, in my opinion, was at its best when it kept its uniqueness. The entire variant civilization opted to throw that in the trash. Fine, I can accept that. But, making “new” landmarks that are so hastily put together is just another whole level of laziness. For the literal most part, they are just vague reskins–many maintaining green tiles, of which no doubt were meant to represent the “Jade” in the suppoused orientalist Empire of Jade name.
It is a mess, Gorb, and not in a sensible and good way. When I wanted new civilizations in AoE4, it meant the whole package. Not this.
They are just recoloring the models and calling it a new unit… this is just copy paste not reusing to make new models
So the devs only care about competitive gameplay than aesthetic design,… then just make another game like AOE 2 will all civs sharing same unit graphics
Here is my worry.
For all AOE games, the devs spent some efforts “gilding” the common RTS gameplay with some historically relevant themes (e.g. the “Protoss shield cavalry” for Gujarats in AOE2. They could safely call it “arrow-blocking cavalry” but they still found a name that existed in real history).
AOE4 also started doing a good job in this respect. And the update earlier this year which adds more unique units does even better. And it still does pretty well for the Byzantines and Japanese. Then it suddenly dropped the ball. It’s not going backwards. It’s directly going to the outer space.
Names and historical backgrounds don’t matter that much? Sure. But that’s because you can safely design any gameplay mechanics given any historical background. It is never a problem. You simply need to slap a historical name you just googled out onto the game mechanics. Done. Does not take long.
I can safely change the entire English civ in AOE4 into Nubians without touching any gameplay. Archer bonus because Nubia produced good archers. Farming bonus because Nile flows through the land.
AOE1 Japan (Yamato) is a cavalry civ. AOE2 Japan is a melee civ. AOE3 Japan is an “expensive but strong unit” civ (sounds familiar?). AOE4 still not very clear, but all can be justified from history.
Even for the “fantastical” AOM. We know the Greek cyclops is a melee unit and the Norse troll is an archer. What if (let’s assume) Greeks really needed an archer and Norse really needed a melee unit? You just swap their functions. You don’t have to give the cyclops to the Norse, or invent something that never existed in Greek or Norse mythology.
In Civ 5 English is the spy civ. In CIv 6 French is the spy civ. They found stories to justify both.
There are endless examples. You can start with either a historical concept or a gameplay design but end up with a good mix of both.
Again, it is easy, easy, to come up with some better historical themes for the exact same civ design. I can do this in 15 minutes.
This is based upon the Teutonic Order (not Order of the Dragon because there aren’t many options if you choose to represent a faction with 20 people):
Villager → Brethren
Spearman → Order Spearman
Man-at-Arms → Teutonic Sergeant
Landsknecht → Halbbruder Swordsman
Archer → Prussian Archer
Crossbowman → Order Crossbowman
Horseman → Order Horseman
Knight → Ritterbruder Knight
Boom. No need to design any new unit. You can still do the same HRE unit reskins.
Not every single name fits perfectly well. There are also duplicates. Needs some polishing. But at least there is some historical relevance and some variation.
But they don’t even bother doing that. They just reskinned EVERY, SINGLE unit and put a “gilded” in front of the name.
The thing is, once they found out they DON’T need to take care of the historical aspect of the game when selling it to “the wider audience”, it’s easy and natural not to pick it up forever. Because that will be more cost-effective. This time they can get away with a real historical faction name with “gilded everything” units. Next time they will not waste the time thinking about historical faction names at all (wait, don’t we already have that?).
(The saddest part of this is, again, it’s not a difficult thing to do, and you can always safely justify any gameplay given to any civ/unit name/model with references from history, but they still ignored it.)
Yes sure we all know the “wider audience” care more about gameplay and don’t give a s**t about historical relevance. They don’t care about the entire setting either as long as it has good gameplay.
But you know what else the “wider audience” don’t care about? RTS itself.
If you are so eager about appealing to the “wider audience” you should not have made a historical RTS in the first place. RTS is a niche. Historical RTS is a niche of a niche. Maybe breaking away from that niche as much as possible does grant you more money, but I am not getting a single share from it. As a loyal fan to the niche for a long time (even in its heyday AOE was not as popular as the Blizzard RTS, and RTS in general was not as popular as many other genres), I will stay here complaining about it.
So it’s been a long time since I had to unwrap anything (texturing isn’t really my gig at all), but I was under the impression that the entire mesh was unwrapped.
That said, now I’ve had some sleep, it’s very plausible they’d re-use parts assuming the parts can overlap on the texture map. But I still think that’d require some technical work unless their model format can automatically handle it.
And yes, I’ve seen all the screenshots folks have posted. I had the pagoda extension in mind when typing last night specifically.
Of course, I understand this. Two “proper” or “full” (however we’re calling them) civs a year seems to be the standard there.
If that was the case we wouldn’t be getting new civs. The variants are a different matter. If people want to call them lazy they can I guess, but they’re still meant to be a version of the parent civ.
For me, the Ayyubid, Byzantines and Japanese are good new civ additions. I see Joan of Arc and Zhu Xi Legacy as two new builds for the French and Chinese to play, with new landmarks and mechanics, which as they still have historical similarities, I view them favorably.
The one that I do have some problems with is with the “Order of the Dragon” variant.
You said it: Due to its historical simile, I also expected more units or names related to the countries that the troops of this new civ mentioned (Hungary, Wallachia, Poland, Bohemia, etc.), but no, all its units are a Reskin of HRE units, which although they look nice for a Mod, the problem is that they practically don’t even hide it and they simply put “(Placeholder)+Unit Name”, that is: Spearman → Gilded Spearman, and so on.
I generally see Age of Empire as a way to learn and teach history at a video game level. Even with Civ Joan of Arc, I even think you could create custom campaign scenarios. However, I don’t see where this Civ Order of the Dragon can be used in some custom scenario, nor that it deserves a campaign, or that history can be learned from them.
It gets worse, while other variant civs at least explain one or two historical aspects on which their variant is based, in the Order of the Dragon, they have bothered more to reflect how “unique” their new mechanic is that they have forgotten to explain the part in which that relates to “orders”, dragons, Hungary, or any historical simile.
I still hope that with the names of the passive bonuses and unique technologies it at least has some history, if not, I’m really going to feel totally 100% disappointed with the Order of the Dragon civ (And now I’m 70% percent dissapointed).
Civ, which by the way, will be available as an enemy in Ranked. If so, I’ll probably stay away from AoE IV ranked for a while.
Onl,y on model for make a new aniamtion for a new flesh unit or to make it easy to bring new building but this is lazy. Only a paintbrush with minor tweaks. No even the japanese hype can save this one gorb.
another thing is that most ppl that came here to take control around aoe 4 was that wider audience that beleive a game made for the niche of the niche belonged to the wider. Add the fact that we got an useless engine for the job which caused serious troubles on launch and still dragging down bcuz the enigne is not good for rts. nothing of this should happened but that wider audience allowed that those thing happened. part of it has on ms execs
It’s funny you keep saying silly things like this, like CoH wasn’t a genre-defining strategy game for its time.
Every engine has problems. The Bang engine has problems. What matters is how the game is managed, what is prioritised before release, how fixed the release window is, and so on. The initial impression matters a lot, and the fact that AoE IV is a ton better now than on release isn’t going to help that initial impression.
(just like how the DE versions have plenty of bugs, polish issues, and so on, and have needed extensive support to get to where they are)
That said, people intentionally lying about the game can’t going to be helped nomatter what. So I try to ignore them. Emphasis on “try” 
The variant civs are here to stay, most people enjoy what’s been shown so far, and will probably end up liking most of them if not all. You don’t need to play as them if you don’t like it for what ever reason.
The game does not revolve around you or me but to all of us so this will give a civ for everyone to enjoy which is the point.
All you can do is to provide with feedback, so that the next expansion becomes more the way you want it to be. But this is a great expansion content wise for AoE4 and I can’t wait to play it.
Staying at the OP topic, I disagree with the statement, that Ayyubid is the only interesting variant.
If I view it as what concept is exciting, and what brings something new to the table (which is my definition of interesting), then actually Ayyubid is one of the less interesting ones. It might be the most refined, the most civ-like, and even the best “manufactured” one, but far from being the most interesting.
Joan is more interesting to me as a hero-based civ. Although I would appreciate it more, if she was a general-like unit, who buffs like crazy, but have no personal DPS. Also the cannon thing wouldn’t be a concern anymore.
The order of the dragon is also a lot more interesting to me, since it excites me where this elite roster could lead in the future design-wise. It’s a major disappointment though for me, that there is a gilded Landsknecht. It should be a unique unit from the Central European region instead.