I want to immediately clarify that I am not Swedish at all, but I consider the absence of this race in the game to be unfair, and this needs to be corrected, perhaps with release of new DLC. The Swedes take a significant place in world history and its wars.
I consulted with ChatGPT and want to show the concept of what this race could be like. The AI came up with ideas about what real historical aspects of the Swedes could be translated into game mechanics. This is not a very meticulous concept, I donât believe in overloaded fan descriptions, because they will still not be carried out in detail (if at all). But I want to set a certain course.
No need to use all of it, just choose something.
Race bonuses:
Viking Heritage: The Swedes could have a bonus to attack and movement speed for their naval units, reflecting their Viking heritage and historical connection to the Norse seafarers.
Strong Lumberjacks: The Swedes could get a bonus to the speed of cutting wood and extracting wood, given their traditions in the timber industry and the use of wood in construction.
Economic Focus: Reduced development costs for economic buildings, reflecting their extensive trade and industry.
Improved Training: The Swedes could receive a bonus to unit training speed or a reduced cost of training them, reflecting their emphasis on education and military training.
Penalties:
Limited Access to Mounted Troops: The Swedes could have limited access to mounted units or receive penalties to their effectiveness to reflect the Swedesâ historical preference for infantry and naval forces.
Limited Weapon Options: The Swedes might have limited weapon options to reflect their historical desire for simplicity and effectiveness in combat. (whatever it means for game mechanics)
Team bonus:
Improved Troops: An ally gains a bonus to the attack and defense of their troops when they are close to Swedish troops. This makes their army more powerful and resilient in battle.
Specialized Units: The Swedes can train an ally in their unique skills and tactics (give their upgrades or unique units).
Unique units:
Chainmailers (GevÀrsmÀn): Chainmailers were the main infantry force of the Swedes in this period. They used spears and long swords, and their armor consisted of chain mail. In the game, the Swedes could have a unique chainmail with increased attack and defense, reflecting their experience and skills in close combat.
Swedish Archers (BĂ„gskyttar): Archers were an important component of the Swedish army. They used long bows and arrows to damage the enemy from afar. In the game, the Swedes could have unique Swedish archers with greater attack range and increased accuracy to reflect their historical archery prowess.
Drakkar Ships: Drakkars were ancient Viking ships that were used by the Swedes for maritime trade and military campaigns. They were light, fast and maneuverable. In the game, the Swedes could have unique longship ships with increased speed and attack to reflect their historical naval superiority.
And Swedes arent absent, they are just part of the vikings. When the world is so diverse and Europe has so many civs we just dont need the civs. Also calling it races is weird
I am 100% against the rise of AI, because it not only completely locks me out of fields Iâm actually good at, but it also lowers creativity immensely. I only ever dabble in AI for fun and absurdity, and never use it to do actual work. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer using computer tools myself to create things.
Nerathion, do not threaten me.
I sat with the AI for several evenings and discussed similar topics with it in different aspects. I rejected 80% of what it said, I Googled, checked, reasked and translated. This was a pretty solid work. This text is NOT written by a neural network. It was written by me.
In general, I do not like the toxic atmosphere with which I am greeted on this forum, threatening to be banned from the door, while not being moderators and, apparently, without even reading the text.
I am 100% in favor of this. I want to talk to actual humans, not AI. ChatGPT is one of the single worst inventions of modern society, up there with TikTok (sorry, not sorry).
He and many other people (especially myself) are fed up with AI-generated content. Itâs just so low-effort that it basically is spam. Itâs not a threat, but the truth.
You can literally create a concept on your own in a fraction of the time. Iâve literally done that dozens of times by now, absolutely no AI necessary. Just my own imagination and vision.
I donât believe you. Iâve dabbled with ChatGPT enough times to know how it talks. This is exactly how it talks.
We want high quality posts with some effort put into them, not people outsourcing ideas to unthinking machines. That isnât too much to ask.
Wow, this forum is toxic! Itâs not like I didnât expect that but still amazing. Once again I repeat - I wrote it myself and it took me a lot of work. The least thing that I care about is if you believe me or not. I wasnât even talking to some a disgruntled pack waiting for someone to tear apart. I am an accomplished person, writer, admin and designer. I wrote my post ONLY for developers. Everything else doesnât matter to me.
Iâm going to say again what I said in the other thread.
If you want to get the attention of the devs, post your own concepts rather than ones that are done with the help of AI. AI doesnât have creativity like real people do. Youâd be better off just coming up with stuff on your own.
Look, I do have an experience of that. When I was younger and full of enthusiasm, I used to spend many days inventing imaginary blocks for my favorite games. Do you know what happened when I wrote all this down and asked devs to implement? They told me: âGO DO YOURSELFâ Well, why did I do it?
In 2016 I spent months to create a mod for one game having an agreement with the developer that he would include that. And I did it, and fans liked it, I had thousands of DLs. And when everything was ready, do you know what he told me? âNo no no, I wonât take a single byte. Otherwise youâll say that youâre my co-author and take the project away from me.â
Since then, I donât take seriously the idea that developers will ever take us into account. I know FROM EXPERIENCE that the best thing that can happen is that the authors will pay attention and become interested in the topic. They will still do everything their own way. They wonât do it the way you ask. Like⊠never. Well, why should I waste energy on this? I put enough effort into this post, honestly. But I didnât invest so much of it that later they would trample on it again and I would regret that I did it. I left a request. Understand that. With a 99.5% probability, it will never be completed anyway. But I had a calling in my heart to say about it and I am absolutely sure that I did exactly as much as needed. Thatâs all.
Sorry about what happened to you. That was a crappy thing for that dev to do. But you should still strive to do your best regardless, and using AI to create half-baked concepts is not the way to do it.
This is YOUR position and your Tao. Do you like it? Then follow it. But DONâT FORCE your way onto me. You out of rights of doing that. So far, I see that no one has taken your awesome detailed concepts either. But Iâm not running to belittle you in your posts, proving that you did something wrong and thus ignored. Neither you nor I are paid any money for this. We do it because itâs our hobby. All we get for this sooner or later is ingratitude, ignorance, trolling and maybe a ban. Iâm already approaching 40 yo and I donât just think, I KNOW how it all ends. I know that for the devs we are just noisy pigs who can be easily shut with one click. Thatâs why I no longer put more effort into such things than itâs worth. Just pulling some attention - this is maximum of what we can do. If these requests are simply noticed and these races are somehow implemented, this is already good. You canât even count on more. Get rid of illusions and stop imposing them on me. Iâve had enough of them long time ago.
Oh yeah. One last thing if you want to understand smth. There is such a game - Diablo 3. And in it there is an stupid mistake in one of the languages, there in the description of one item it is written that it does the exact opposite. For 4 YEARS I continued to send reports about this to the forum and to technical support. We are talking about correcting 2 lines of text. Not a concept, not a model, not some complicated mechanics. But literally - 2 lines of text. For my constant messages about this, no one rewarded me, praised me, or said âthank youâ. For my constant attempts to improve this game, I was banned several times on the forum, and recently I was banned for 3 days on the entire Bliz account and they said that if I write to them once again, they will close me forever.
4 years! The mistake has not yet been fixed.
Guess what? Iâm not forcing anything on you. I appreciate what youâre trying to do. But posting AI-assisted concepts is only annoying other users, which is just as likely to get your account shut down anyway. Since youâre obviously concerned about the devs ignoring you, I suggest you just stop anyway, since Iâm pretty sure the devs will just ignore AI-generated concepts. I donât think they even check this forum for ideas very often, if at all, so all youâre doing is annoying other users. You can keep doing it if you want, and I wonât stop you, but if your goal is to be noticed by the devs, your efforts will likely be fruitless. Putting actual effort in would likely get you noticed, but since you donât want to do that, itâs better to simply do nothing.
Bit hyperbolic, Its hardly âtoxicâ, he is stating his opinion about what should and shouldnât be allowed on the forum. You are welcome to disagree with him and state your case. Toxic behaviour would be more like name calling, bullying or other anti-social behaviour.
Without any Numbers its hard to say If any of these Boni are good or bad, in First glance IT Just Looks like several existing civ boni mashed together.
Berber, byzantines,Saracens
Celts
Burgundians, Vietnamese, Chinese,
Aztecs, celts, goths, britons, huns, Inca,âŠ
The AI part aside next time Put some Numbers or more detailed mechanics and techtree into your civ concept. When it will be too OP/UP someone will let you know and you will probably get a better discussion going.
If you are actually worried about AI beacuse it locks you out of the field you are reportedly good at, then maybe you are not good enough in those fields. People used to fight progress in the XIX century based on the same premises, and thank god they were not listened to.
Back to the topic, IMO Swedes donât belong to AoE 2, their place is in the AoE 3, that is when there were really powerful.
Good point, this is why I have mixed feelings towards progress. The results are good, the mentality driving it often is not (dogma of innovation and science being always good).
I always say if AI can take down all those cheap fake popstars (their music has more to do with science than art anyway) leaving money and space for real artists then itâs not that bad after all. The problem is whatâs the point of trying to replicate humans? Feels like it will be easier to scam people. Where do you draw the line? And what is real art anyway?
Anyway as AI is right now the scary thing to notice is more about people willing to become robots than robots willing to be peopleâŠ