Suggestions for The Return of Rome DLC

I am pretty sure that voices will stay same, but we may get female villager then they need to record those voice lines again.

5 Likes

Gates and India Lydia and Etruscan civ

4 Likes

Female villagers are a must too

1 Like

Anyway i just saw this dlc is for the aoe2 :pensive:

2 Likes
  • Land trade unit.

  • No resupply time at trade destinations.

  • Gates.

  • Villager meat/fish gathering goes to Granary rather than Storage Pit.

  • Fish traps, or some other system to keep fishing boats useful after fish have been depleted.

  • More differentiation between civs. Particularly cosmetic stuff like more architecture variation and different unit skins. I’d rather have more differentiation between the current civs than have new civs, personally.

  • Ability to mix AoE1 and 2 units and buildings in the scenario editor.

This is just an AoE bugbear of mine in general


  • Give Wonders some sort of benefit in games where they’re not a victory condition. Passive resource generation, like a Feitoria? Extend pop cap? Universal armour bonus?

  • Same goes for Artifacts and Ruins. AoE2’s Relics giving passive gold generation was a great idea.

5 Likes

While I know this might be a bit of a strecth I also want them to revamp the Byzantines:

  • Change the civ name to Romans

  • Make Legionary and Centurion as their UU

  • Replace their Knight line with Cataprachts

I would like to keep this mechanics

There won’t be Age of Empires II civs or techtree. There’s already a Roman civ in AoE I

1 Like

say, have they said whether there will be unique units to each civ in this DLC?

I already know they would separate AoE I civs with the ones from AoE II, I just want them to also revamp the Byzantines as well.

1 Like

(Edit: I have made some changes to this post which was slightly based on some of the first responses that I got from other users, but I mostly did it because I wanted to remove some things which would no longer be relevant with the newer text. Therefore any fallacies that other users have pointed out for this text does no longer apply in this updated version).

Except for renaming the [Legion] unit to the “Elite Swordsman”, the two earlier versions of the Swordsman line could also be renamed in order to exclude modern sword terms that wasn’t used back in the time.

Here is my suggestion for renaming the two earlier [Bronze Age] versions of the Swordsman unit line:

  • (1) “Swordsman” → (2) “Veteran Swordsman” → (3) “Heavy Swordsman” → (4) “Elite Swordsman” (Alternatively “Imperial Swordsman” for the final upgrade).

instead of:

  • [Short Swordsman] → [Broad Swordsman] → [Long Swordsman] → [Legion]

The later upgrade for the [Ballista] could be renamed as well, because “Helepolis” was actually the name for Greek siege towers and did not refer to a siege weapon that fired either bolts or rocks.

  • [Ballista] → “Advanced Ballista”

Putting aside the renaming of some units, maybe the “Mangonel” also known as the “Traction Trebuchet” in modern terms could be added as a new trainable unit from the [Siege Workshop] building, which will be available to all or some civilisations and serve as a long range siege unit. This siege engine was apparently thought to have originated in ancient China and started being used during the “Warring States period” (475 - 403 BCE) and later spread across Eurasia during the 6th century CE.

I also want to highlight that the Magonel was not a torsion engine like the Onager and Ballista as some would like to believe, which used the tension effect of twisted cords to shoot projectiles whereas the Magonel operated on manpower pulling cords attached to a lever and sling to launch projectiles. A website known as “Brewminate” goes into detail about this: (Torsion Siege Engines in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds – Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas)

If you keep scrolling past the image of “Trajan’s Column”, the one with the stone sculpture, on this website and start reading the text right below the next image, that is to say the 5th image, you will skip immediately to the description about the Torsion Magonel Myth.

Who exactly is confused by this naming convention and how could a veteran who just finished training be a veteran?

2 Likes

Even if some people won’t get confused by the current names that these units have, the term “Short Sword” and “Broad Sword” were not exactly used historically speaking, but are apparently later modern terms for the classification of swords.

On a website called “Arms-n-armor” (What is a short sword? – Arms & Armor) they go into detail when it comes to the historical point of view of categorising swords in comparison to modern interpretation, which can lead to confusion when talking to one and another about the terminology of swords.

(
) and how could a veteran who just finished training be a veteran?

I don’t really known what you are trying to say with the other half of your sentence. Nothing in my previous post implies that there will be two upgrades for the Swordsman where it will be upgraded to veteran status two times. I have double checked the text that I have posted and there is no errors in it concerning this matter.

I typed too fast, I wanted to write “soldier” the first time. What I meant is that after the upgrade, every unit from this line that you train will already be a veteran right after training, which makes it a little bit weird.

Ah! Then I understand what you are trying to get at. I went back to edit my previous post where I changed the place for the “Veteran Swordsman” and “Heavy Swordsman” (I chose to replace the “Long Bladed Swordsman” with this name) upgrade. Does this Swordsman line upgrade that is shown below make more sense to you?

  • (1) “Swordsman” → (2) “Veteran Swordsman” → (3) “Heavy Swordsman” → (4) “Elite Swordsman” (Alternatively “Imperial Swordsman” for the final upgrade).

Has anyone actually genuinely misinterpreted it this way? To me it seems basically unthinkable that they would - especially for the Long Swordsman, since using “long” as a synonym for “tall” is very old fashioned.

No, “long sword” in that specific medieval context is a very recent development - it didn’t have that meaning when AoE1 was originally released. “Long sword” literally just meant a sword that is long at the time, and was often used for one-handed weapons. If I recall correctly, during the 2000s some medieval German swordsmanship manuals were translated into English, and that’s when a very select group of people started using “long sword” as a technical term. Of course, those people started insisting that only their meaning was correct, but that’s not really how language works.

This is really clunky, worse even than the AoE4 unit line names.

2 Likes

It seems that I wasn’t thorough when I wrote about the “Long Sword” in my previous post, but I have corrected this blunder now. Or rather I have chosen to remove my description of the “Long Sword” now since it is no longer relevant in the updated post.

This is really clunky, worse even than the AoE4 unit line names.

I have replaced the name “Short Bladed Swordsman” with just “Swordsman” now and gone back to “Long Swordsman” instead of “Long Bladed Swordsman” in my first post. After thinking through some things afterwards I think that just renaming the [Short Swordsman] and [Broad Swordsman] is enough.

Even celts had swords which were called longswords despite being much smaller than later medieval ones, but compare with others swords of that time they were much longer.

Also I see no point to change these original unit names.

“Long sword” as a specific term means the medieval weapon, but it can also simply mean “long(er) sword”.
Especially in the ancient setting where there was no standard nomenclature for weapons.

Like kontos can be translated as lance but “lance” as a term is a medieval thing and “lancer” mostly refers to the modern unit. But you can still call an ancient cavalryman with kontos a “lancer”.

2 Likes

Thanks a lot for your insight @ArrivedLeader22 concerning the “Long Sword”, it seems that I misunderstood some things about it and didn’t know that it can also be used in a different context aside from being the sword that was used during the Medieval and Renaissance period.

I also appreciate it that you both approached and responded to my post in a different way. I realised that I wrote some things in my post in a weird manner, but that doesn’t stop people from being either the judgemental or dismissive type. That sure has been a recurring theme for me ever since I made my first post on this forum.

1 Like

I would like to be the insider for this DLC. How to register ?