The devs themselves are LITERALLY telling us to keep complaning if we don't like something (latest patch notes)

The fragile illusional consensus of “companies, devs and all parts of the community share the same interest” is very valuable, needs to be earned with great difficulty and maintained carefully. Once it was broken it took even greater effort to repair. Yet many companies seem to take it for granted

To add a small update. The reviews are going absolutely downhill. I checked again, and the recent ones over the last few days have all been negative. The overall reviews are a hair from dropping to 50% and recent is at 46%. That’s in the space of a few hours, not a week.

And to anyone thinking “It’s just Western players that want this moved to Chronicles”, or that this should be deemed a success due to more Chinese players, read this recent review:

“為了賺快錢而硬做不是獨立文明的三國,甚至天梯可以用英雄??徹底失去了世紀帝國的精神
然後女真跟契丹竟然沒有做戰役,製作組不知道在想什麼,快把三國文明搬去編年史啦”

Sorry. One moment…

“In order to make quick money, they made a Three Kingdoms that is not an independent civilization, and even the ladder can use heroes?? It completely lost the spirit of Age of Empires. And the Jurchens and Khitans didn’t even have a campaign. I don’t know what the production team was thinking. Move the Three Kingdoms civilization to Chronicles.”

This is, ridiculous. “Play it safe and we can get the Chinese market” well look how that’s turned out! This DLC is frankly insulting to people’s intelligence, and it’s been cottoned onto. Now every AoE2 public post is subjected to mockery for the bizarre decisions made here.

Treat Chinese players like normal human beings, with an interesting and diverse history during the Middle Ages, and everything will go fine. Now devs; remove these three civs from ranked and give players what they want. Including the Chinese players, who are asking for Tanguts, Bai and even Tibetans. You can add campaigns later, but for now, fix this so we can all go back to normal.

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I’m not. Imagine you play 20+ games a day of 1v1 ranked and 5 new civs come along to change things up. In addition to this, pros don’t care so much about historical accuracy and never really have. All they look at is things from a mechanical point of view. T90 arguably cares a bit more than the rest as he does his history segment during hidden cup. Hard to blame them when change in the meta makes the game more diverse and enjoyable for them.

If you want to be disappointed in anyone, be disappointed in the people who thought adding 3k to game, especially in the way they did, was a good idea.

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We’re disappointed that pro players are not vocal enough. There are enough civs for a significant meta shakeup, and Khitans and Jurchens were sufficient to do so. We could have gotten other, relevant, civs instead. We don’t blame the players, but the disappointment is there. And we are much more disappointed in those who made the decision.

Exactly, the pro players aren’t vocal because they, like I said, don’t have historical accuracy as their main concern. Disappointment usually occurs when something fails to meet expectations. I don’t know about you, but I was not expecting pro players to care about historical accuracy or civ choice as they rarely have in the past(consider Sicilians or Burgundians). However, I was expecting DLC devs to care and as a result they disappointed me.

While I do agree in principle…it is a bit rich when some do ask for specific stuff. Like “Can you split Vikings up?”

So some likely have areas they do care about, just China isn’t one of them.

Personally, I care about some regions more than others. BUT because I care about those, I understand when other people are upset with the representation elsewhere is off (within reason). Like if they botched a DLC about South America, I would care less about it than China…but I’d still feel bad for the people upset.

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That’s exactly it. There’s no other way that someone would say “Let’s add three civs based off of a fantasy novel” or “let’s announce them cancel a DLC”.

The leadership at EW is either a bunch of morons, completely detached from reality, or both.

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Just a quick question: Do I need the new DLC to make the pastures playable (including via the editor)?
I can currently assign them as buildings via triggers, but I can’t build or use them in-game.
Is this simply a bug in the scenario editor, or is it due to the fact that I have to purchase the Three Kingdoms DLC first?

It’s because only the Khitans are coded to use them iirc.

But if you change a civ to have them and not farms, I think it works.

Sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you mean. I tried deactivating the farms and activating the pastures in the Scenario Editor. I also assigned them the farms’ slot in the inventory list.
But when I click on them, they won’t build. Simply replacing farms with pastures via triggers doesn’t work either.
So, would I need to use the Genie Editor?

Yes, that would be the way to do it.

Ah, okay. I wanted to avoid that. I was hoping there was a way through the Scenario Editor.
It’s kind of annoying that there’s such a suitable object in the game, but you can’t just use it through the editor. You can do that with practically all other buildings, too.
I don’t understand why the pastures are so restricted to one civilization, and you can’t even properly use them for custom scenarios.

Good news, Pastures can be made available for other civs in the Scenario Editor, no data mod needed.

In addition to the effects you already use, you also need to research the internal technology “C-Bonus, Pastures” (ID 1008) for the player. Add the effect “Research Technology”, choose the player, type 1008 under “Item ID”, and tick “Force”.

EDIT: Actually, you don’t even need to enable the Pasture and change its train button location with separate effects. The technology does all that.

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I tried it out right away, and it works. Thank you so much for the tip. Now you can make nomad scenarios a lot more realistic.

Happy for you! But this thread here is to critique the 3k and the terrible direction the game is heading. I believe you should take it to another thread which would be more appropriate for scenario editors.

So, to stick to the topic: we are STILL complaining. Devs, your responses to negative reviews had 0 impact so far. Just some attempt at placation, with ensuing silence.

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Probably just another experiment. Trying something just a little different this time.

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I don’t think they are bothered by a few people that are actually complaining in this thread.

Well and that’s one of the problems. We, here on the forums, are the “super fans” that bothered to create their accounts and engage in discussion. And even then, take a look at some of the threads (I bumped 2 or 3) with criticism of 3k, and how many likes they got. It’s spectacular to see threads with 39 (from after the release) or 59 (right after the announcement) likes complaining about it. This means something. Couple it with low reception lately and dropping steam charts, and we have something to think about.

Average player count is dropping way too quickly compared to other months and DLCs.

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Makes me wonder where the “silent majority”, “wider audience”, “new Chinese players”, who bought so many copies of the DLC (best selling DLC ever!) had been.

Yeah, most chinese players hate this dlc. Imagine going to elementary school, high school, college (university) and being taught that there is no medieval period for China, but the dynasties that get closer to the european medieval period archetype of armored armies and knights (aka jianghu heroes in their case) are from the tang to ming dynasties.

Then out of nowhere you have this western corporation, acting all high and mighty, saying 3K ArE MeDiEvAL aNd AdVanCeD fOr ThEiR PeRiOd as if it knows more about the history of your own country than you. Then you notice the civs and the campaigns are fictional and based on a novel, not on historical records. So you go to your social media options like bilibili, weibo and baidu tieba to complain but get ignored. Even worse, when you go to western media, you get condescending answers and “educated” about “history” instead. All while the corporation that caused all this mess remains silent and shows no signs of remorse or an attempt to fix things.

Wouldn’t you be mad?

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