First they added the Goths and Huns but we were ok with it because they were one for the civilisations that destroyed the Roman Empire. So they felt kinda “Medieval” enough.
Then They added the Romans and we accepted that if the Goths and Huns are ok then the Romans must be too as long as it’s the very late Romans.
Now they added the 3 Kingdoms civs from like 220-280 AD. That’s so early that the Huns are still in North East Asia!
Does that mean that everything from 300-500 AD is now fair game to be added?
Would you want those kinda civilisations in the game (incomplete list):
I don’t want a new civilization added to the base game.
Due to sharing the same base tech tree, the civilizations will end up more and more similar, and to hide this, they will need to introduce endless gimmick mechanics and power creep. Plus, it will dilute the uniqueness of older civilizations.
Better to have 3 unique, balanced civilizations than 10 power-creeped, very similar civilizations.
Xiongnu would be have the priority as they were the main opponents of the Chinese kingdoms and dynasties from the 3rd century BC to about 5th century AD.
I agree that we could have Xiongnu and Xianbei, in the AoE1DE/RoR/Chronicles.
Actually the Khitans were the descendant of Xianbei as well.
I’d mix these two together into a civ that could be named to Vandals and have their UU named to Alani Raider. As the late Romans are legal, the Vandals would be legal.
Christian Nubia, including Makuria, Nobatia and Alodia, were fairly medieval.
Don’t get me wrong. I just want 1 Nubians.
If you are talking about the time frame, those have already been covered by the current Korean civ.
If you are talking about make every faction in a civil war their own civ, oh no.
I agree the AoE1DE/RoR/Chronicles could have a Scythian civ to represent the Eastern Iranians in central Asia. In AoE2’s time frame, that civ could be the Sogdians.
Apart from Scythians yeah they make sense, I mean they would have made sense even without the 3k since they’re all from 300 AD on, some a bit earlier but Sassanids were already coming from 224 AD anyway.
The 3k might have pushed it just a bit earlier for China like 180 AD at the earliest with the crisis of Han and the yellow turbants rebellion so basically now all late antiquity would be included in aoe2 arguably.
They were over by 224 so it doesn’t make much sense to add them imo. Maybe Kushans if you wanted something similar though they were already in decline.
No need to be passive aggressive… Late antiquity has always been there and it’s no classical antiquity.
But if I have to reply to you seriously I don’t think you can push it any earlier than 200 AD at worse and that’s already stretching it.
Romans have achievements from the 3rd/4th century on, Kushans have less information and were mostly disaggregated between Guptas and sasanians.
I’m not being passive aggresive, I am just surprised that you considered adding the Parthians unreasonable after all these recently added civs. I mean, why is adding Parthia wrond and adding the three kingdoms right? The Parthians were a military superpower that lasted for centuries with their unique culture and that fought several civs already present in the game. That’s more than we can say about the Three Kingdoms.
And even if you find them being in decline a argument against adding them (even if we already have the Romans), what is the problem about extending the timeline another century to include the Parthians at their peak?
I thought you were being sarcastic because well yours is a strange question to ask… You seem to assume I’m against the idea of separating the game’s timeframe (?) but that’s not the point, as I already wrote somewhere else it’s about finding a compromise, a century that can work better overall to cut the game’s starting point and the 3rd century imo is the best one at that worldwide (with some minor inevitable sore thumbs).
Late antiquity goes from 200/300 to 700/800 of course depending on region and a lot of other factors. From Marcus Aurelius to Charlemagne or in a narrower sense from Diocletian to Mehmet, whatever… You get the point.
Parthians are a civ that fought Rome at its peak like Scythians, Dacia, Caledonians, generic Germans etc. I don’t see the point in adding all these classical civs.
I’m not against adding a civ in decline like Kushans if you have a good story to propose for them, it’s just hard to find reliable info, that’s all.
I think the confusion may arise from the fact that you consider late antiquity as just part of classical antiquity instead of an independent era who has the right to exist in itself.
Personally I’m not 100% convinced for example that the 3rd century would work for aoe2 (I’m more ok with the 4th) but it’s not that it’s as crazy to think neither as some people here are assuming.
We still think history with primary school categories like antiquity, middle ages, modern era.
You ask me so why not the 2nd century? That’s cause the world was different, in China you had unified Hans, in Persia there wasn’t a feudal monarchy like Sassanids were, barbarian federations didn’t exist yet, Celtic native tribes were still in the process of Romanisation, Rome was still polytheistic and united…
To me you don’t see the same degree of change between the 5th and 6th century, specially if you look outside of Europe. We were already at the peak of the migration period rather than at the start of something new or at the end of something else.
Anyway this is a discussion about history, philosophy and other things that would need a paper. From my part I just see people very much in love with 476 but if I criticise that choice for a “universal” cut between two eras it doesn’t mean I don’t think there must be a cut at all, I think late antiquity works better as a more fluid concept by connecting classical antiquity and the middle ages than saying that classical antiquity ended abruptly in 476 or in 529 etc.
You can’t point a specific date but you can point more or less the beginning and end of a process so to say. Late antiquity in the west was the process of replacement of Hellenic culture with Christian one and the Germanization of Europe, a process that didn’t start or end in 476 but was already ongoing by then and didn’t end until the 7th or 8th century when Islam joined too.
China and India had barbarian invasions and religious/political/cultural shift too in that period do it seems better to me than to cut it in half in 476 because a kid was kicked from his throne in Ravenna.
But every opinion is respectable, even if someone told me we need to start the game in 800/900 AD. It would actually still make more sense to me than 476.
I was semi-serious/semi-ironic. I proposed the Parthians as a satire, but after thinking about it , I see absolutely no reason they are a worse option than the three kingdoms. I literally think they are a better option. The three kingdoms were just three Han states that appeared after the collapse of the dynasty of the same name. I find that similar to adding the Gallic and Palmyrene Empires.
No, I am perfectly aware that they are distinct time period and that the 3rd Century is a good place to separate them. The thing is that as you mentioned the 3rd Century is still a transition and I also used to consider it a good place to separate base AOE2 and Chronicles. But with this DLC, this separation no longer makes sense, now we have three Ancient civs using gunpowder. Yes I know some old civs like the Huns already had that problem, but I don’t think one mistake justified more.
I thought they were trying to make the game have more historical flavor by doing things like adding the dromon or all these new monasteries. But it is no longer the case after this DLC. I think there is no historical consistency left in this game, so even if I said adding the Parthians as kind of a joke, I can’t really find any counterargument against them after this DLC.
I actually agree with what you said here and I’ve had several discussions in this forum about that very topic back when ROR was announced and I think the previous start of the timeline at the end of the 4th Century worked. But the people in charge of this game have made it clear that historical accuracy is secondary at best, so any kind of historical discussion we make about whether the Middles Ages should really start with the crisis of the Third Century ,the rise of Islam or any other major event is simply pointless, since we’ve been shown that they don’t care that much about historical accuracy.
Xiongnu are probably Huns so they don’t really need their own civ.
Not sure if we should keep civ mixing. People aren’t particularly happy about the Khitans having Tangut units.
Not really since Korea is a gunpowerder civ that heavily relies on gunpowerder now. You would have to disable half of their techtree to make them work in that setting.
Not saying they should be added, just saying that the current Koreans are very bad at representing them. It’s like Italians and Romans.
The game box from 1999 states that “Rome has fallen” which is a reference to the Expansion “Rise of Rome” they released a year earlier.
I don’t think that was supposed to be the “Constitution” of AoE2 which sell never be changed, especially since they added the Huns just one year later that stopped existing before the fall of the Roman Empire.
You know, the current Huns have European flavor. Just that having Xiongnu still better than having Wei, Wu and Shu.
Tangut stuff should not be shoved into Khitans because they were never the same peoples or under a same dynasty.
Vandals can possibly be mixed with Alanis , because the so-called Vandal Kingdom was actually their confederation.
It’s different.
What I meant, the Korea had been first unified in the 7th century by Silla, which fits the traditional timeline of the game without a doubt. But sure I agree the current Korean civ deserve more earlier things. Turtles, Rockets and Wagons have brought the civ particularly to the latest centuries of the timeline. I’d like that Hwarang from Silla could be a new swordsman UU trainable at Universities specially.