Hello everyone! this is my second post here ever, I draw maps and other nerdy stuff and today im bringing you:
The AoE 2 universe, full world map with all the civs if they existed all at once at the same time, up until the Three Kingdoms expansion.
I know many pople really enjoy these, and that some pople really hate them xD either way i really appreciate all interactions just as much.
Do you think this map works fine? what do you think should change? Do you think the 3 kingdoms civs are where they are or why they are there? Do you noticethe huge hole in the middle of asia and it made you cringe?
You can also take a look at the an older version of the idea in my previous post, if you watch to check it out, cringe a little, give support or leave any comments :3
By the way that this map, the new one, has a playable version in another strategy game, i dont get any money from it though, its just a playable scenario, but yeah, you can play this map
-Burgundians need a chunk of Franks, they don’t own ANY Burgundy territory in yourmap, and Switzerland is Holy Roman Empire (never own by Burgundy).
-Irak and Syria to the Saracens better
-Goths either where the Huns are, or at the very least between Toulouse-Catalonia in the Mediterranean to represent their first settled Kingdom, definitely not in Galicia (Suebi main settlement)
-Remove the three kingdoms or with dotted lines inside Chinese, Chinese doesn’t make sense like that
-Finland and Estonia should be blank, they are not Vikings at all.
-India should probably have more blank spots in the middle
Historically, the map of the Three Kingdoms looked very different from how pop culture portrays it.
Wei (Red): Controlled the vast plains of northern China — the real power bloc.
Wu (Blue): Formed a long, narrow state along the Yangtze River. It barely extended its influence into the deep southern regions at the time.
Shu (Green): Was basically a mountain basin kingdom, holding just a few key cities in the west.
But in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (the literary version), the map is adjusted so that the three states appear roughly equal in size and strength — purely for dramatic balance.
After all, it’s hard to build tension in an epic if one side completely dominates the map from the start.
The actual Three Kingdoms period in China only lasted a few decades at most.
The power gap between the states was enormous, so dividing the era neatly into “three equal kingdoms” is really just a literary device, not historical reality.
Dravidians shouldn’t include Sri Lanka (even though they’re used to represent Sri Lankans in the campaign). Sri Lankans are Indo-Aryan, not Dravidian.
Cool map. I feel like this handles the overlaps and differences in time periods well. It also deforms the map enough to give all euro civs a spot but without going too overboard with it. Cool to see that Asia is kind of filling up these days.
It’s always hard to decide how to put all civs on one single map due to the overlap. The Late Antiquity civs are major headaches on where to put them.
The way I’d do it for Burgundians is follow the Carolingian inheritance : West Francia to the Franks (the medieval border between France and the HRE would barely move for centuries), Lotharingia to the Burgundians, East Francia extended to the east to the Teutons. Italy up to the Papal States to the Italians.
Not sure about Arles (the orange part) but it can go to the Burgundians too as it was called the Kingdom of Burgundy, making the whole naming process very confusing (the Kingdom, Duchy and County of Burgundy barely overlap if at all )
Sure Switzerland wasn’t controlled by Burgundy and Charles the Bold learned the hard way it’s unwise to attack that country, but all the part about town militias would make Burgundians an acceptable placeholder gameplay-wise. In Late Antiquity Burgundians were also in modern-day Switzerland around 450, after having been near-destroyed by the Huns further north on the Rhine (put in story in the Ring of the Nibelungen).
But you’re free of picking your rules for your own map, maybe I should attempt doing mine at some point.
Burgundians in game are also used to represent Germanic Burgundians in the Attila campaign, and looking at the map that overlaps with Arles, so I guess?
But by that logic Malians and Ethiopians should cover pretty much all of Africa, given how bad of an umbrella they are in the game. Celts and Goths have the same problem, which is why I want those 4 civs reworked/split.
I guess i could look more into this burgundian issue, since im erally not familiarized with their history.
The Goths are literally impossible to place “in the right spot”/
I did china like that on purpose, not because i dont know the three kingdoms were chinese… China was a very divided land at times in history, so i guess it would make sense to place all different chinese biding for power equally.
and yeah finland and estonia proabably shouldnt be viking, even though it is undeniable that those places were visited, raided, traded, intermarried and probably even colonized those areas as early as in the vendel period around 600 ce. or you could go all the way to the other end of the eras aoe2 in based off of, and see the danish and swedes visiting, interacting and finally invading and controlling such regions.
That is actually quite interesting, i am by no means well versed in the threee kingdoms era history and i didnt know about the Wu real location and expanse.
In my logic to do the map i first looked at where were these kingdoms or states governed from. The wei obviously were the most powerful ones looking as they controlled the main cities and old capitals of Xi’An and Luoyang. But i also had to consider the broad chinese civ, and since they had camels i figured i could place them near the Tarim, but seeing how they now turned it into the land and water civ it shouldve always been, i totally see how i screwed up there xD the main chinese civ needs access to the sea lol.
anyway i gave the chinese Xi’An as their capital since its the historic capital, which left Luoyang for the Wei.
We could say the Wu represent all the chinese states below the Yangtze led by the Wu.
and by the same logic i gave the Shu the whole tarim, and i did the me thing for all the others, capitals, areas of influence
Thank you so much, this might my favorite comment ive ever gotten on an AoE map.
Distorting the map is something i love to do, i did because its a game map, but i think it came out really pretty,
t compact horizontally because i made it for a game that only allowed me to upload a square, i then kinda just stretched it so it would work in a more horizontal layout.
Its “All AoE2 T3k civs in a map”, not “X period of time and all AoE2 civs T3K that existed at such time”, they absolutely belong here.
So… anyoone interested in seeing an improved version? do all the fixes needed… or least those relatively possible.
burgundians, goths, and chinese are the best candidates to be fixed
Juat FYI, you don’t have to write a separate message to everyone you want to reply, and forums in general aren’t too fond of one person speaking multiple times in a row. If you select part of the message you want to reply, you get the option to copy quote. You should probably use that instead of multiple posts.
Where Winds meet seems to be a success and is settled in 10th century China. It would have been a good start for the East Asia DLC, even if the Jurchens were an empire only later.
Good setting for a Chinese campaign
Setting for a Jurchens civ campaign, under the name of Liao empire
A setting for a Khitans civ campaign, under the name of Tangut (future western Xia empire).
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