Out of all the concerns that the fans have expressed, that was the one that had to be officially addressed and offer us reassurance that more Indian civs are coming?
That should rather trouble us than cheer us.
Have we really reached the point where our main concern and what we want from the devs to publicly address is if and when a second civ from India is going to be added in a supposedly assymetrical game?
Have all other regions and important states around the globe being covered already to even start speaking about it?
Is the game really going to be asymmetrical? Do we have unique units, bonuses, mechanics and designs for each civ? Or have they actually been following a 20years old model, marketed in a more fancy way?
I made a post some time ago but was brought down.
Do the devs have anything to say about the crude animations and unit movements that we saw? Have they improved the scale? Do they have anything to say about the miserable UI or the low unit textures that don’t match their environment?
Do you really believe that they just address ‘fan’s concerns’? What they do, is calming down the huge Indian market. India is a country of 1.4B people. Last thing I would want as a dev is angering my huge Indian market and having angry hindu nationalists asking to boycott the game.
Honestly, I did not like the Delhi as a civ either. I even commented on that thread, agreeing with the concerns. But it is what it is, they should have thought about this earlier.
I do not expect a new Indian civ anytime soon, nor do I want to, nor is it a priority or such an important issue that a microsoft’s spokesman has to come out about it. Particularly when the game failed to create a positive first impression for so many people -and not because of Delhi-.
These are not good news to me.
What I get from that is that some executives care more in securing a commercial success to be able to come in front and celebrate their victory after release rather than actually making a good game.
I have seen more important topics being discussed in those forums yet no microsoft spokesperson came out to say anything.
One article wont fix all the perceived concerns nor can not representing India properly fix all the other representation concerns of the world.
The latest E3 trailer does show some much smoother game play! I am excited to actually PLAY the game which will answer MOST of these questions. The one answer we didn’t have is if the subcontinent will be properly represented in the future - and for now we do.
So take it as a victory my friend if you were that concerned.
I am hoping with the reduced civ number Age 4 can avoid the civ bloat of Age 2. I would be quite concerned about the level of civilization bloat that would need to occur to justify a second Indian civ.
I think it can be pulled off fairly easily if they focus on the largest and most important empires of the era. The Chola were massive and need to be in the game in their own right.
Awesome work! I’m hoping now for the Byzantine Empire to be added with a playstyle of having East & West as two different playstyles in-game East being the Greeks and West being the Romans.
Oh please, the second Indian civ will probably be larger than the French and English combined. I fail to see how this will lead to a civ bloat unless the person is an ultra-nationalist.
I think you are getting me wrong. I don’t want not another Indian civ because I want another European civ or something. I just think “8 is good, let’s leave it at that”. With a not symmetrical game, frequent additions of civs risks either breaking balance or become much of the different variations of the same like AOE2 is. As for the English and French, sure they are small, but their empires have wielded a ton of global power, plus they have fought wars with each other for so long the content potential is huge.
Now they should consider our concerns about why Abbasids are speaking Persian ?
Abbasids are 100% Arabs and they hired some Turkish mercenaries, so we both Iranians and Arabs need an explanation on why those Abbasids units are speaking Persian ?
Yes, this is logical and this will add some flavor, but the majority should speak Arabic, and they should tell us what is the case, if the language for example transformed from Arabic to Persian or Turkish after aging, it will be completely wrong and un acceptable.
but what you said is absolutely acceptable and make sense.
The original AOK and Conquerors civs were OK. But too many similar and meaningless civs were added in later expansions. It made the civs lost their uniqueness and game impossible for any balance.
In terms of civ uniqueness and design, AOE4 should learn from AOE3 instead of AOE2.
If AOE4 has more than 20 civs totally, it will inevitably repeat the same failure.
I’d say its failure is simply that its core design with a unified roster of units and buildings did not age very well and makes for pretty unimaginative gameplay compared to having more unique units and buildings for each civ.
I think this weakness is more exposed now that they have continued to release new civs – there’s only so may combinations of the same units before things start running together. I don’t think it is the number of civs themselves that is the weakness. A game could plausibly have 20-30 civs, but the onus would be on the developers to find compelling designs to keep the game interesting while also keeping the civs feeling like they are from the same game.
I agree that if there are only 2-4 unique units in a civ, that civ is not nearly at the fundamental quality we have been accustomed to seeing in the Age series since Age of Mythology.
Just a couple of unique units would be a huge disappointment for me and create some pretty shallow immersion and gameplay. Hopefully there is more to be revealed publicly.
I completely agree. There are always some basic military units that repeatedly appear all over the globe – Spearmen, Horsemen, Bowmen, etc. It’s of course going to be desirable to assign those units to many civs. But the inquiry should not stop there at a simple cut-and-paste. The English Bowmen should have different stats than the Chinese Bowmen, who, in turn is different from the French Bowman. Perhaps the English bowman has longer range and the Chinese Bowman has a higher DPS but lower bonus to infantry, so it is effectively a better all-around unit. (I am making these up simply as examples.)
Horsemen around the world had different weapons and armor. Not everyone relied heavily on jousting spears, for instance. Some had swords and shields, and others had other stuff. Some horses are light and fast, others are much larger and can be weighed down with heavy armor.
Players are surprisingly resilient, and these types of changes create all sorts of fun little puzzles and strategies to ferret out, all while giving civs their own unique flavor. This kind of stuff is darn well necessary in a game that promises, like AoE4, to have a lower number of more asymmetric and interesting civs (as compared to, say, AoE2). Copying units and pulled from a huge universal unit roster works OK in AoE2, but that game is designed under a different philosophy that made far more sense in 1999.