Suggestions regarding the upcoming Chinese Campaign DLC

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Based on the existing information, it seems that this is just a pure campaign DLC and there will be no new civilization for the time being. However, since this is a Chinese themed DLC, as a Chinese player, I will provide some suggestions for a win-win situation for both players and game developers from the perspective of Chinese players.

  1. Redesign Chinese civilization and Zhu Xi, enhancing the differences between the two, because in many ways, Zhu Xi seems to have become the overall superior replacement of Chinese ontology civilization, while Chinese ontology civilization lacks specificity.

  2. Remaking the unit model of Chinese/Zhu Xi civilization, the current model is full of historical errors and rough considerations, especially the palace guards, which are full of characteristics pieced together from different eras (Chinese knights also have too many Qing Dynasty elements that should not have appeared). At the same time, please use higher resolution textures for the Chinese unit model. As the first civilization, there is already a significant gap in the level of refinement between the existing model and the unit models newly released in the DLC (especially compared to the unit models of Japanese civilization). Meanwhile, the Chinese units of AOE4, especially those from the castle era, lack a metallic texture. All the textures that should have been silver metal armor are filled with comical and unnecessary player colors, making the metal armor pieces full of plastic texture.

Summary: Since this is a paid Chinese themed DLC, I believe it is necessary to update and remake the Chinese/Zhu Xi civilization at this special time point, which will greatly increase DLC sales. Believe me, Chinese players are generally willing to pay for this.

Next, I will provide some correct approaches for remaking the Chinese civilization unit model for developers’ reference:

thought process

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ERA2 Palace Guard

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ERA3 Palace Guard

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ERA4 Palace Guard

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archer

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Knight/Lance Cavalry

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I hope they add a new chinese variant, most if not all the playerbase are multiplayer focused

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A single concept art image cannot complete the modeling of three eras.

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Just to give modelers a reference idea, although the possibility of modifying the model is small, it would be great if they happen to have this plan.

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According to what they said, the new campaign is about Hua Mulan and has nothing to do with the Song Dynasty. Also, why are the unit cards using the art style from Total War: Shogun 2?

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I don’t think so. Hua Mulan isn’t even medieval
 besides, we saw an image of a Song general, and to connect it to the Jin-Song Wars


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That image is indeed from the MOD of Total War, and my purpose in choosing this image is to help developers and modelers provide a clearer and more authentic Chinese unit appearance upgrade strategy.
Also, I would like to ask, what is the source of the information that the campaign theme is Mulan?
However, there are many people on the official released image of the new DLC, with a soldier standing on the far left, so this should not be Mulan’s story.

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The trailer hinted at the presence of female generals or soldiers, but if that’s not the case, then it could be Yue Fei or someone else. However, I don’t think your suggestion would be of any help to the game. What I’m saying is, the studio behind Age of Empires IV doesn’t pay attention to most of the community’s input, and their productivity is extremely low. No matter what you suggest, it’s all futile; they won’t even know about it. This year, we only got a lousy campaign DLC, and at the end of the year, two half-baked factions. For several years, they’ve been dragging things out, and there are still unresolved issues from the past. Also, based on some observations from the community, the devs might not even play Age of Empires IV themselves. All their changes seem to come from esports feedback. You might have noticed that they changed the Japanese heavy cavalry shields to wooden shields, but if they actually played the game, they’d know that when upgrading to the great sword, the idle animation still shows the samurai holding a naginata. And since they upgraded to a great sword, they start gripping the blade of the sword with bare hands. This is exactly why I never choose to upgrade my samurai weapons to the great sword. This issue hasn’t been fixed since the Japanese faction launched, and the update speed and productivity just keep disappointing me with AOE4. Given the failure of AOE4, AOE5 has to be fast-tracked into development.

By the way, based on the analysis from Discord in the spring, there are no variants, only a campaign. Regardless of any new campaign units, even if there are entirely new units, they probably won’t appear in skirmishes because there’s really just one campaign.

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have to say there is another game is better than AOE4 , its an rts civilization game : Rise of Nations: Extended Edition , but its outdated , if you understand what i mean .. if that game have a truly sequel , that should be great ( not that rise of nation 2 trash )

anyway , thats impossible , because the bighuge was gone 
 no one care and no one remember , no one want another rise of nation game at all .

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The whole point of the Insider Program, and these forums in general, is to make requests for the game, which has been shaped over seasons by fan feedback. Dismissing the comments as useless is the same as calling for the forums, the fandom concept or the Insider Program to be useless, which I disagree with. Nobody forces you to be in the program, you can quit whenever you want.

If the developers don’t fix one or two aspects that we think could be improved, that’s still opinions, not a universal one.

Personally, the changes that have been made in the recent seasons have been positive, especially the latest one with the samurai shield to a historical correct one. The bug fixes, especially for the latest exploit, have also been completed in a fairly efficient time.

Okey, back to the topic.

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Bed Crossbow or Siege Crossbow for Chinese

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Considering that some levels of the campaign will take place during the Tang or Song dynasty, it would be good to consider a siege weapon more suited to that era.

The Bed Crossbow was a siege crossbow that, like Western ballistae, was used to fire at guards on walls or towers, or from high positions and fortifications to fire at attackers.

Currently, it is a special siege unit for the Chinese, present in Age of Mythology for the Chinese civilization.

The Japanese in AoM have another variant of the Bed Crossbow, called the Oyumi.

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Suggestion

In AoE4, the Bed Crossbow would be the East Asian version of the Springald, currently for 5 civs:

  • China, Mongols, and Japanese.
  • Zhuxi and Sengoku.

Future civilizations, such as the Jurchen, Khitan, Vietnamese, and Khmer, would also have this model.

It is important to consider this model because a unique unit, the Khmer Tower Elephant, had this type of crossbow mounted, unlike the Western version.

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You wrote a lot of things that look useful, but in reality they are mostly meaningless. You cannot whitewash problems caused by the studio itself with vague phrases like “positive fixes.” The fact that they have to repeatedly go back and forth making so-called fixes is precisely because of their own lack of competence. This is a basic issue of logic.

Secondly, I didn’t even reply to you in the first place—I don’t even know you—and what you said wasn’t really on point. Even my previous comment was directed at the thread itself.

The reason I said this thread is not useful is that the Spring DLC itself has never clearly stated that it contains variants. The general description only says that it is a campaign DLC adapted from Chinese history. Furthermore, all the unit cards and unit types posted in this thread would not provide any meaningful information that the developers could realistically adopt. Rather, I don’t understand why anyone would assume the developers would look at or adopt content that contains such clearly specific unit references.

Since the release of Age of Empires IV, have its units actually been historically accurate or historically aligned? That’s exactly why I say these suggestions are useless. First of all, the unit composition and the underlying gameplay structure of Age of Empires IV already impose limitations. Secondly, the units shown in this thread are modified from Total War: Shogun 2, whose unit roles and categories are fundamentally different from those in Age of Empires IV.

Among all the units shown in those images, which ones actually fit within a realistic development schedule? Which ones should be used, and which ones should not? If the developers were to adopt such suggestions, would they also need to investigate the campaign’s historical background again and adjust their development pipeline accordingly? Would they need to create detailed new models for them as well?

More importantly, why would the developers need to consider so many community suggestions when they are simply making a campaign DLC? Don’t they already know what they’re doing? This isn’t even a major faction DLC planned for the end of the year.

Like I said, your requests may look reasonable, but there are simply too many of them. Everyone has different demands, and many of them ignore the unit composition and structural limitations of Age of Empires IV itself. The developers are not going to adopt these suggestions, and frankly they don’t really care about them.

In fact, I even feel that the developers may already have developed some resistance toward continuing to work on Age of Empires IV.

Instead of doing this, it would be far better if the entire community could unite and, based on the current situation of Age of Empires IV—its overall design and framework—collect and synthesize the opinions and ideas of different player groups. Then, within the limits of the game’s framework, balance and consolidate those suggestions into a single, reasonable proposal and post it in the Age of Empires IV community. It could cover issues ranging from PvE to PvP, from small details to larger design concerns.

Rather than what’s happening now—where one person throws an opinion here today and another throws a different opinion somewhere else tomorrow, each thinking their idea is perfectly reasonable. With such a messy and fragmented forum, the developers won’t even bother to read it.

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Yeah me too
A Chinese variant plus an overhaul/balance/rework of both Chinese Main Civ and Zhuxi Legacy are very much needed!

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I’m going to count that as an insult.

I’m not doing that. This is a thread to discuss the future campaign, that’s why I’m commenting on that specifically. And I already mentioned why in my original post, so I won’t repeat myself.

And neither did the other user, but you quoted them just to criticize the game and the post’s requests as meaningless, a criticism I don’t share. I’m against what you say, so that’s why I quoted you.

I disagree; many of them are good ideas.

Calling someone meaningless is an insult; there’s no justification. You’re just being rude and depressing. I can’t support your claims in any way.

Consider that if you took the time to do it, nothing stops others from doing the same, LOL!!!

If you are going to call meaningless an entire post by someone who made an effort to seek to contribute something to the development of the game, I doubt that your goal will be achieved, given that you do the opposite of what you propose.

Discouraging people does not create unity.

And when someone doesn’t like you, you’ll call them meaningless and tell them all about your trauma.

That’s how reality works. You can’t expect everyone to agree.

And it has nothing to do with the forum; that’s how human societies normally act, unless you live in a comunnism dictatorship.

Oh, they read us.

There are many ideas from fandom concepts and bug fixes that have been implemented in the game, so they read us.

Probably they ignore the most toxic comments, spamm or trivial discussions, like normal people do in Twitter, Facebooks, and other social media.

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The only variants i see for China right now, at least for Material for addapt, could be 2:

1) Song

Considering some siege weapons predating cannons: (1) Flamethrower (Pen Huo Qi), (2) Flying Crow, (3) Axe Cart, (4) Huo Huo Pao
 also great Crossbowman with “Synchronized shot”(Volts version) ability. However, I’m not sure what they could do to further differentiate it from China and Zhu Xi, maybe another basic mechanics, and new landmarks, none from Ming dinasty period obviously.

2) Ming

Considering the absurd number of unique units this dynasty had in its late period: Rattan Swordsman, Qian Pikeman, Lang Xian, Barefoot Militia, Wolf Troop, Shenji Battalion (Muskeeters), Iron Troop, Guanning Cavalry, Whiteshanks Spearman
 which couldn’t be included in the base civilization, it makes for a very good variant. Instead of imperial officers, they could have a trade tax system, new unique buildings (Dragon Kiln for Blue Porcelain, Silk Workshop, etc.).

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Yes, China could have two very good variants Song and Ming


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Well, they kinda limit themselves with the Dynasties system

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WOW Hey buddy, thank you for your support. Actually, I didn’t want to argue with him at first, but I have to say your rebuttal was very powerful!

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This is obvious because the evolution of Chinese dynasties is completely different from the linear relationship of another civilization developing from the Dark Ages to the Castle Age. Chinese dynasties may be enemies of each other, or even conquerors of foreign tribes, such as the relationship between the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. Even if they are not enemies, there is no direct inheritance relationship, such as the Song and Ming dynasties. In short, it is really strange to fit different dynasties into one civilization.

Age of Empires 4 has begun to introduce specific dynasties of certain civilizations as an independent faction, but for Chinese, it is an overly abstract concept to fit four dynasties into one civilization. This design is more suitable for SLG like Sid Meier’s Civilization, rather than RTS like AOE.

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I can’t agree more, we can even imagine this: China and Zhu Xi changed to the Song and Ming dynasties.
The positioning of the Song Dynasty: infantry, crossbows, economic tax officials
Ming Dynasty’s positioning: cavalry, gunpowder, scientific and technological officials
According to this logic, if AOE4 can live as long as AOE2, the Chinese variants of subsequent DLCs can be released according to the dynasty.