Some things I want to see in AoE2 in the future

[xWHIT3W0LFx]

Here is my list of the things which I want to see in AoE2 in the future. I have linked the most important forum discussions for each of the various points. The following things are not only requested or desired by me, but also by many other people.

high priority:

• regional monks
  There were already several threads about this topic and I think most of us agree that regional monks should be implemented as soon as possible. Most of the graphics are already in the game and also it shouldn’t be too hard/time consuming to implement.
  
  There are some other inconsistencies with kings, trade carts, etc. too, however fixing the monks should be top priority.

• a consistent and responsive user interface throughout the whole game
  The current UI is not very intuitive and also consists of different styles. This should definitely change in the near future.

• more campaigns for existing civs
  The quality of the campaigns added with the last two expansions is absolutely top notch, I love them. I also love the fact that we got new campaings for existing civs. I hope that this trend continues in the future.

medium priority:

• unique castles for every civilization
  For the sake of consistency every civilization should get it’s unique castle model. It’s a little weird that only the new civs get them and it could also be sold as DLC (at least I would buy it).

• elite unit upgrade skins (client sided)
  Small but visible changes to the unit graphics, such as a golden chest plate, a better helmet, etc. . I would also think it would be cool if you could unlock the elite skins via challenges that you would have to complete for each civilization.

• a way to access challenge scenarios like Mongol Raiders and Barbarossa Brawl via the UI
  In update 40874, it was promised that there would be “a home for all scenarios and leaderboards.” At the moment, however, it is not possible to play the challenge scenarios via the user interface.

• rename Slavs to Rus’
  With all the slavic civs being added to the game lately it just doesn’t make any sense to keep calling them ‘Slavs’.

• Central European architecture for the Bohemians
  Central Asian architecture for Persians
  Or maybe decouple the architecture set assignment from the data file to make modding easier?

• a nomadic architecture set for civs like Mongols or Huns

• more eye candy, terrain textures, unit skins, music etc. for future DLCs
  The LotW and DotD DLCs added barely any new scenario editor stuff. This is a bit disappointing, as the older DLCs always had lots of it.

• sinking animations for every naval unit
  Right now only some naval units have fully animated sinking animations while the others are using generic ones.

• possibility to change corpse decay time in the settings
  It would be nice to have a slider in the settings menu to alter the decay animation duration for decaying corpses and projectiles.

• corpses decaying to skeletons
  In the original game corpses decayed to skeletons before they disapeared from the battlefield. I can understand that this could be problematic with the chinese version of the game but this could easily be circumvented by a cosmetic DLC (like the enhanced graphic pack), which is not available in China.

low priority:

• official wingless Hussar, Magyar Huszar mod
  Maybe as event rewards for a possible DoTD event? (Those would be event rewards that people would actually use instead of the banana ball projectiles)

[Szaladon]

I actually agree with everything here. The low priority point 1 and 2 might be controversial. Changing Bohemians to Central European would improve architecture set distribution which would be nice, though if you follow the logic Slavic people => Eastern European architecture set then the way it is now is fine. Don’t mind either tbh.

There’s a monk skin for African civs too:

[xWHIT3W0LFx]

Yeah you are right, i changed the priority list a bit.

[Szaladon]

In the sense controversial that I don’t know if people would like that or not but considering how angry the Czech community is, I wouldn’t surprise me that they’d change it like they did with Vietnamese.

[EvilLordMrF]

I like the African monk a lot!

[CelticKeeper]

Brilliant Post sir! I completely concur!

I agree with 99% of all your requests, the only aspect I disagree with is the Persian Architecture. I think the sandstone buildings fit them beautifully.

Here are some examples of their sandstone structures:

Persia Izadkhvast_Castle draw bridge

Persia Izadkhvast_Castle

Persia Izadkhvast_ruins_Old town

Perfect Persian Castle. Arg-é Bam

Falakolaflak Castle

Meybod Caravabserai

shah-abbasi-caravanserai front

shah-abbasi-caravanserai interior.

In turn I would rather suggest that we desperately need a new Architecture set for the Byzantines.
Something akin to the folowing will be perfect:
[Steam Workshop::[IA] Catbarf's Byzantine Buildings V2 (WiP IA Version)]
Byzantine Architecture.

[CelticKeeper]

Since we are on the topic of what we wish to see added to the game, here is my list of conent that I wish to see added to this brilliant game. (We will be happy to pay for dlc content containing these requests):

Civ appropriate castles and eventually Civ appropriate units for each civ.

Events/rewards.
Please make event trophies and rewards/unit reskins civ specific. I don’t want to choose only one trophy for all of my civ TCs.
I want to have the Steppe cav archer trophy for all the steppe tribes, the Turkish Bombard trophy for the Turks only, The Teutonic Knight trophy for the Teutons and so on.
I don’t want Amazon arbs for all my civs only the Mezzo civs.

I want events celebrating the cultures of each civ. For instance a ME civ event that includes rewards such as all dark age houses become Berber tents for ME civs(and African Huts for African dark age houses + Steppe tribdes dark age houses become Yurts , All Mongol houses should become Yurts), all ME trade carts become camels with baskets attached to them containing spices, silks and rugs. Add a reward that allows all ME civs cavaliers to look like the AoE3 Mameluke cav found in the Saloon.

Make a civ event for the japanese that allows each reward to unlock a AoE3 Japanese unit such as the Yumi archer line added to Aoe2, the Samuri line added to aoe 2 , make the AoE3 Ninja the AoE2 Japanese champion as well as the entire cavalry line. It will be perfect for civ event rewards.

Units to be ported from AoE3 DE:
Mamluke for ME cav
All the Japanese, Inca and Aztec units, Spanish pike line, some Chinese units, the Mayan spearman for the AoE2 Maya halb, the Husa and Ethiopian spears and archer and all of the desert outlaws, and many more!

Any DE3 unit wielding a sword ,spear, club , mace ,lance ,bow should be added to AoE DE2 allocated to correct civs.

If you really want to connect AOE2 to events of today, give us a Plague event, with rewards such as a ‘‘Plague doctor’’ Profile Icon and give the Mongols a unique tech (Biological Warfare) that allows their trebuchets to slowly drain the HP of any unit located within 3 squares of the impact point by 1 HP per second for 10 seconds. Depicting how the Mongols flung rotting ,plague ridden corpses into enemy cities to infect the besieged.

General additions:

Add some more special units to represent the knightly,chivalric Crusader orders , such as a Templar knight or a Hospitilar knight to the Franks/British/Italian/Sicilians , Templar having the option to convert 1 unit for every charge up and the Hospitilar having the option to heal 1 unit for every charge up.

Or perhaps add these as technologies that can be researched in the Church ‘Templar Order’ & ‘Hospitilar order’ that will grant the already existing knights of the British/Franks/Italians these abilities.

In turn the Islamic civs:Saracens, Turks, Tartars can receive a tech in the mosque called :Jizya tax, for every knightly unit they convert, you receive 5gold.

Perhaps add a technology called Falconry that adds +1 LOS to knights.

For Japanese/ME.
Add a Japanese unit into the barracks , a ninja , that is invisible to the enemy on the mini map. Pop limit of 5 . The Hashasshin (ME) / Shenobi (for Japan) unit can be a stealth unit that has a weak attack but has a large attack bonus against Trash units and kings. Max allowed Hashasshin / Shenobi pop = x5
Becomes visable/spotted when within LOS of Towers,outposts,castles.

Civ Architecture alterations

Please give the Chinese and Koreans their own Castle Architecture, the Japanese castle really doesn’t do them justice.

And for the Mongols + Huns we need Yurt houses and nomadic architecture.

Georgia: New Caucasian set

Armenia: Caucasian ,ME Hybrid set

Byzantines+Sicilians Medi (Dark+Fudal), ME (Castle+Imp) Hybrid set

Or something like this will be perfect: [Steam Workshop::[IA] Catbarf’s Byzantine Buildings V2 (WiP IA Version)]

Current civ alterations.

Vikings.

Have their longboats be able to attack as well as transport units (Infantry only) (loses transport ships but they have non attacking Longboats in feudal age.)
I’d enjoy raiding coastlines and rivers using longboats to transport infantry and skirms to the shores of my enemies.

Byzantines.
Have Byzantines lose Hand cannoneer, bombard cannon and bombard tower.
Change civ unique tech 1 to : Justinian Reforms - Sword line +1 Melee armour.
(Optional) Enables the technology of Varangian Guard in Imperial age.
In Imperial age , Byzanitne army gain access to a special unit in the Barracks called the Varangian Guard. - Expensive , slow moving but difficult to convert with a limited build amount. Since the Byzantines are a Defencive civ, the Varangian Guards can have a high attack boost when in the vicinity of a TC or Castle but outside a certain radius from these buildings the VG should loose the strong attack bonus and just be as strong as a normal Champion.
(Highly loyal guards of the Emperor)

Unique tech 2 remains Logistica.

African ,Mezzo,

African and mezzo civs should only have canoe navies. Able to fire arrows ,fast ,agile and only using 0.5 pop space but they don’t have access to Gally line ,nor fire ships, nor cannon. Gallons. All canoes can carry/transport 3-5 units+attack.

Region specific Random map options.

Please provide us with an OPTIONAL setting where you can select specific random map biomes based on region , for instance:

Arabia- Desert or Grass

Black forest: Oak forest (Northern European), Pine forest, Autumn , Winter (Snow)

Costal: Oak forest, Pine forest, Bamboo, Autumn, Cyprus trees (Grecko),Winter(Snow)Dessert,Jungle

Mediteranian: Oak forest, Pine forest, Bamboo, Autumn, Cyprus trees (Grecko),Winter(Snow)

Rivers: Oak forest,Pine forest, Bamboo, Autumn, Cyprus trees (Grecko),Winter(Snow),Dessert,Jungle

Gold Rush: Oak forest,Pine forest, Bamboo, Autumn, Cyprus trees (Grecko),Winter(Snow),Dessert,Jungle

And so forth.
This option should be togolable in the options section for those whom do not wish to use this.

[AgeOfAwesomenes]

I don’t get why they should port aoe 3 unit into two. Couldn’t they make some unique unit for the civs you we’re talking about

[UpmostRook9474]

@xWHIT3W0LFx

unique castles for every civilization
For the sake of consistency every civilization should get it’s unique castle model. It’s a little weird that only the new civs get them and it could also be sold as DLC (at least I would buy it).

@CelticKeeper

Please give the Chinese and Koreans their own Castle Architecture, the Japanese castle really doesn’t do them justice.

The current east Asian castle actually not the real Japanese style. It is a product of the imagination to a general Asian fort based on the Japanese style by the dev designer.
You can check the looks of real Japanese castle, or better visit there one day. They are really more decent and beautiful than the current one in the game.
I had been there so I sure that Japanese also need its own castle if we want unique castle skins for other Asian civs.

Kumamoto Castle (熊本城)

Osaka Castle (大阪城)

Himeji Castle (姫路城), so-called most beautiful Japanese castle

Shogunate in AoE3, based on Himeji Castle

[Mahazona]

Other than renaming slavs to rus everything else is good.

Maybe add the beta content like the beta byzantine uu old cuman wonder skin as scenario units.

[CelticKeeper]

@AgeOfAwesomenes

I don’t get why they should port aoe 3 unit into two. Couldn’t they make some unique unit for the civs you we’re talking about

They 100% can and I do hope they do. I just added that because in the past we had a DE3 event and one of the rewards was that the handcannoneer get a skin of the de3 musketeer, and I hated it, since the de3 musketeer is way to far outside of the timeline thus for me the skin / reward is useless, in turn all the units I listed above are units in DE3 that would work 1000 times better than the Musketeer , so if they want to be lazy and use already existing assets, they can use a lot of DE3 units (Anythin just so we can finally replace the 14th century European skins for most other civs) but Ideally we would want beautiful created skins such as the new Crusader skin. I would love a propper Knights Templar skin for the Frankish Paladin and British Cavalier.

The current knight and Paladin can be used for Spain and Portugal and the current '‘great helm’ cavalier will be perfect to keep as the Teutonic cavalier with the Teutonic paladin being replaced with the latest Crusader of DotD.

Every civ their own accurate units, perfection.

[CelticKeeper]

YES! that is so beautiful I so wish to go visit Japan one day. Every civ should get an accurate castle, yes, as well as the Japanese. Every civ has such uniqe cultures and architectures, they all deserve to be accurately present in game.

Al though I have to admit the current Japanese castle quite closely resembles Matsue Castle.

[Mahazona]

@CelticKeeper

I would love a propper Knights Templar skin for the Frankish Paladin and British Cavalier.

Proper templar skins would look great on the master of the templar and reynald hero units.
Giving heroes historically accurate skins would be a great addition in the future.No more joan skin for jadwiga and archers of the eyes can finally become african black bowman.

[RankWarrior1975]

high priority:

new architecture sets.

[UpmostRook9474]

@CelticKeeper

Al though I have to admit the current Japanese castle quite closely resembles Matsue Castle.

Definitely wrong.
No fences, No Y-stairs, no lanterns, etc.
Check more Japanese castle as you can and please obvious the point of their style seriously, then you can notice that they are just different from the current in-game east Asian castle.

[xWHIT3W0LFx]

@CelticKeeper

I agree with 99% of all your requests, the only aspect I disagree with is the Persian Architecture. I think the sandstone buildings fit them beautifully.

I think the Central Asian architecture would fit them way better. I mean if you search Google for ‘medieval persian architecture’ you literally get a lot of pictures with buildings having these domes, archways and blue elements.

@CelticKeeper

They 100% can and I do hope they do. I just added that because in the past we had a DE3 event and one of the rewards was that the handcannoneer get a skin of the de3 musketeer, and I hated it, since the de3 musketeer is way to far outside of the timeline thus for me the skin / reward is useless, in turn all the units I listed above are units in DE3 that would work 1000 times better than the Musketeer , so if they want to be lazy and use already existing assets, they can use a lot of DE3 units (Anythin just so we can finally replace the 14th century European skins for most other civs) but Ideally we would want beautiful created skins such as the new Crusader skin. I would love a propper Knights Templar skin for the Frankish Paladin and British Cavalier.

I don’t know. The AoE3 units have a different art style and I think that they doesn’t really fit into AoE2. I’d prefer if they would add AoE1 units and buildings to the scenario editor (when talking about recycling some existing stuff).

[xWHIT3W0LFx]

Yes, absolutely agree. The problem is, creating architecture sets requires a lot of effort especially because of the destruction animations.

[MatCauthon3]

I Like your list @xWHIT3W0LFx, and like that you agree that unit skins should be client side.
@CelticKeeper most your list is good as well, but it’s unrealistic to think that we would ever get civ specific unit skins, even if client side, there is simply too many civs for that to be possible.

[RustyCrow6939]

They should made the AOE online, using the AOE2 as the based to build up a real DE edition.

[KarstHillFort77]

Well, the current East Asian castle might not be real Japanese style, but it’s still way closer to Japanese style than to Korean or Chinese style forts.

I suggest to keep the current castle for the Japanese civ while make a new generic East Asian castle for Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Mongols. The current castle doesn’t do them justice at all.