They might have gained confidence after Victors and Vanquished sales that Campaign is the main priority.
Then they misunderstand their own priorities because the 3K ones are extremely repetitive, the story is both convoluted and oversimplified at the same time and all campaigns have the same final level.
Not talking about design, quality or whatever, just creative decisions that one can easily see are garbage, even before seeing them materialized. And unique hero voicelines can be a cool idea, the other games have them, but it shouldn’t replace entire voice sets for all civilizations in the DLC. If that’s the compromise for hero dialogues, then it shouldn’t have been a priority at all lol
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They are terribly short-sighted and lack a clear vision. Everything is for short-term sales numbers now. They keep breaking the consistencies of the game for one-time experiments and then making the inconsistencies even larger when they move on to the next experiment.
Now they put every effort into the part that “sells” (they think), and everything else could be cut, even the tiniest effort to maintain the cohesion of the game.
Expect them to chase the “pOpUlAr” more desperately with more cringe communications.
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The ironic thing is that they put all the work into something that requires the least mental effort.
Campaigns? Civ design? Consistency and theme of the game? All off the table now. No need for brainstorming. Just follow the #1 on the popularity list with the same cliche everyone had been doing since Koei.
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Now now, I’m sure the heroes say some amazing badass things that will blow our minds, while referencing the novel too! Like, uh…
“I have flabby thighs”, very insightful words from Liu Bei.
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Historical similarities…
Historically, the Hunnic Empire’s lingua franca has been claimed by some scholars to be Gothic, and it is not ascertained what Hunnic sounded like. In-game, the Hun units speak the same lines in Mongolian as the Mongols do, possibly because the physical description of Attila and the Huns by writers such as Priscus and Jordanes strongly suggested the Huns’ North-East Asian origin.
A number of linguists believe that Hunnish belongs to the Turkic languages, as research shows that some Hunnic names may be of Turkic origin. In addition, they suggest the Bulgar language was derived from Hunnish. Besides a Turkic origin, other assumptions for Hunnish classification are Indo-European, Yeniseian, Uralic, and unclassifiable.
Knowledge about Hunnic language is sparse: With only three attested words, possibly borrowed from the Huns’ Indo-European subjects, for two alcoholic beverages medos (cf. Polish miód “mead” < Proto-Slavic *mȇdu̯), kamos (cf. Paeonian kamon barley beer), and funeral feast strava (cf. Polish strawa “meal” < Proto-Slavic *su̯trava).
In-game, Gothic units speak classical Old (Diutisk) and Middle High German (Diutsch), which is also spoken by the Teutons. Historically, however, they spoke their very own Gothic language, which was related to Old Norse as much as to Old High German, and became extinct in the 8th or 9th century. A closely related language called Crimean Gothic possibly survived until the 18th century.
Well, they are Chinese after all (although Khitans speak Mongolian, since the Khitan language was very similar to Mongolian)…
No, it’s not. It’s also not difficult to find. The answer is laziness/rushed.
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In the end a voice pack is still more voice options than aoe1 had. So Im more focused on gameplay
I don’t even understand how people can defend this. Burgundy received its own language, despite being like 300 km away from Paris. Sicilians and Italians too.
It’s all “China was a rich and diverse culture, its history deserve more representation in aoe!” until they have to find 1 (one) language that is not mongol or the same chinese variant.
It is relatively well known because a gothic translation of the bible was discovered.
Huns speaking mongol is understandable, but other language have enough documentation to be represented in-game.
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Some people just have the instinct to defend every corporate decision.
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Hi everyone,
Like many of you, I’m not a fan of multiple civilizations sharing the same voice set. To make things feel more unique and immersive, I created mods that replace the voice sets of the Mongols, Byzantines, and Teutons with voices from Age of Empires IV. (The Byzantine version already existed — I created the other two myself.)
Alongside these, I also replaced some civilization icons with more realistic and historically grounded versions. I took a few of them from a topic here on the forum, while others I adjusted myself.
Unfortunately, the voice files for the newly added civilizations aren’t moddable yet. According to a developer on Reddit, it won’t be possible until those DLCs are fully integrated into the base game. For now, only civilizations from Dynasties of India and earlier can be modded. That means we can currently only create voice mods for the Chinese civ among the newer ones.
To do that, I used voice lines from the game Age of Mythology: Immortal Pillars and included that mod along with the others I mentioned. I’m still actively working on improving it.
Lastly, the Turks use modern-day Turkish, and like many other civs, the voice acting feels pretty flat and lifeless. So I picked the most fitting Ottoman voice lines from Age of Empires IV and created a more authentic-sounding mod for the Turks. I also replaced the civ icon with the Ottoman flag.
As a Turk, I can say with 100% confidence the voices are accurate 
You can find all of these mods by searching “Walena” in the in-game “Mods” section!
Yes, also… in fact in AoE 3 DE they also changed the voices of the native NA civs, but they are worse than the ones that were there, although in their defense, the Inca voices are different and more accurate than those of 2 DE…
Yes, it could also be due to documentation limitations at the time the game came out… I think they might eventually release a patch correcting the voices of many classic civs, giving them the voices from the DLCs…
Yes, at least we’re lucky that with fewer civs in AoE 4 and more documentation these days, it’s easier for civs to have more accurate voices…
Burgundians and Sicilians are historically different to have their own voice set?
Maybe…but Burgundy spoke French too (just like the Franks) and Sicily spoke Latin or Italian (just like the Romans, Byzantines and Italians of AoE 3)…
What maybe? Sicilians and Italians are more different than Byzantines and Italians? Maybe you are weak at history / geography. Either of the two will help understand.
True, but I mean that Sicilians had too much external influence for centuries from all sides to be able to speak any language they wanted… from the east they can speak Greek from the Byzantines, from the south Arabic from the Saracens, from the north Latin and Italian from the Italians, and even from the west Catalan or Castilian from Aragon and then Spain (since Sicily was a viceroyalty of Spain from the 15th century to the end of the Napoleonic Wars)…
Don’t lose track, remember we are comparing it with Byzantines.
Yes, in that case you’re right… in fact I’ve always believed that the Byzantines should speak Greek like their AoE 4 counterparts (they could even reuse the voices of the AoM Greeks)…