This is my personal opinion not an objective list.
I’m only talking about the 3 Kingdoms civs (Shu, Wei and Wu), not the Jurchens or Khitans.
Good
Interesting and diverse tech trees
Interesting unique units
Interesting regional units
3 civs feel connected to each other though shared characteristics
The hero units seem balanced and look like they won’t be dominating the gameplay that much
A few of the units can nicely be used in scenarios with other contexts
Bad
The civs stretch the timeline too much
Medieval Generic units look out of place
Japanese buildings look out of place
I keep mixing up the names and I’m sure I’m not the only one
They are kinda too different to all supposed to be representing the same civilisation
Wei maybe could be used as a stand in for the Xianbei but not really
Shu could maybe be used as a stand in for early medieval China but not really
Wu could be Yue/Cantonese people but that’s not really a civilisation
Maybe Shu could be used as stand in for the Bai/Dali but also not really
Ugly
The civs only make sense in one scenario (3 Kingdoms)
No other civs are in the same setting
We will never see them fighting other civilisations other them each other in any scenario really
The hero units make them really only represent one very specific kingdom at a very specific point in time
We already have a place for ancient civs, it’s called Chronicles
The Chronicles units and ships would be less out of place for the 3 Kingdoms civs then the medieval ones!
I might have missed some points but this is a personal list.
Things like stratching the timeline doesn’t border me too much since Huns and Aztecs are already 1000 years apart from each other anyway.
Spartans, Athenians and Achamenids feel mostly out of place because of their mechanics and the naval rework and not because they feel technologically to much behind the AoE2 civs.
Hoplites fighting Knights is wrong but so is Vikings fighting Janissaries or Jaguar Warriors. Most matchups make no sense.
one thing i dont really like the new civs is that they feel very streamlined into their unique units. Making it hard to go into others things. And they get bonuses for their regional units even if its not a focus of theres ie. traction treb discounts for wei? and there being 2 unique techs that give the lou chuans extra proj.
You’ve got almost everything correct(except I think Wu is good for Yue/Cantonese and Shu for Nanzhao/Dali), especially you are the first to see the problem with Japanese buildings.
I didn’t read your thread before making this post.
Yes I mixed up Wu and Shu. Well that kinda confirms my other point, their names are too confusing. Well I only mixed them up the 2nd time. I think Shu is more fitting for a general Chinese civ with it’s Archer focus.
I have seen other pople complain about the architecture too.
Japanese architectures do share some features with Sothern Chinese buildings. They take wood as core structure, but that didn’t fit Northern Chinese buildings which massively add bricks and stones to core structures.
yes i think shu is the exception. the wu and wei have the hei guang, but its basically unique unit. Like i know it plays similar to the knight but its just the fact its a new variant and they just want to give bonuses to them. The wei hp bonus is just different frank bonus (ofc it has lower base hp but higher % increase).
What i was mainly referring to is wu has 2 ut, it affects 4 units, 3 of them are regional or uu. Wei has 3 civ bonuses and 2 bonuses are for 4 diferent units, all 4 are regional or unique units.
Some people care about the timeline, some don’t. But let’s be objective for a second here… Where should the line be drawn? Should there be one in the first place?
Now, the game’s timeline has been pushed back 200 years to the past (it used to start with Alaric’s rebellion in 395, now it will probably start at 190, with the Chinese warlords rebelling against Dong Zhuo, perhaps even further back if they include the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Lots of rebellions…)
This means that now things like the Parthians and Marcomanni fit inside the game. Considering this, pushing the timeline further back wouldn’t seem to bad. For example, the Parthians fought the Seleucids, so their inclusion can’t be bad, you can even make a campaign about their rebellion against the Greeks. Furthermore, the Seleucids fought the Macedonians, who conquered the Achaemenids, who conquered Egypt, and now we’ve reached the Iron Age, in our medieval game.
I think the original premise of “400s - 1600s” is already a good one and most of the time followed.
The Huns and later the Romans were exceptions. Their time of significance in this period is too short, and most people would agree they are not the best choices.
The Goths campaign is too early, but the Goths civ lasted all the way into 700s. I don’t want to count Crimean Goths because they are not the focus of the Gothic civ design.
All the other contents added so far follow this definition.
Classical Antiquity is technologically not really less advanced then some Early Medieval civs already in the game.
Greek armies look similarly well equipped as Vikings to me. Ancient Celts had similar techniques for forging swords as the Medieval Japanese (the folded steel thing).
Before 500 BC the technology becomes too primitive.
Just put everything 500 BC - 500 AD into Chronicles and everything 500 AD - 1500 AD into normal AoE2.
Make 3 different ranked queues for only Chronicles, only AoE2 and mixed.
Mixed means you can end up in Chronicles or AoE2 only lobbies too if the person you matched with is not on the mixed queue.
If you are on AoE2 or Chronicles queues you can be matched with mixed people but they will be forced to apply to your choice.
Romans, Goths, Huns and maybe Celts are moved to Chronicles. The 3 Kingdoms obviously too.
This way the Chronicles queue would start with 9-10 civs right away.
Outside of ranked you can just play whatever you want anyway.
Since I personally don’t play ranked the game has essentially already been extended to 500 BC anyway. Any civ from 0 AD to 500 AD is just bridging the gap.
At this point, let’s just make the game span from 3100 BC to 1850 AD. Technically, for gamplay purposes, all the units are just dudes with melee weapons, or dudes with ranged weapons, or dudes on horseback.
Muskets are too technologically advanced? A random skirmisher can kill a musketeer with javelins because it’s a videogame. Field cannons? Just a beefed up scorpion, if you think about it. So what if we have Sumerians versus Napoleon? His hussars wouldn’t be too different, from a gameplay perspective, to war chariots. So what if the Sumerians, Egyptians and others only had bronze? It’s just a metal, they made the same weapons and tools as everybody else. Aztecs didn’t even have metal weapons and yet they are in the game.
Maybe 10 or 20 years later, when no people still play AoE2, they will release a DLC to latest AoE game named “Return of Classic” and add those civs to special ranked pool.
I think the difference from Bronze Age to Iron Age is much bigger then from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
The same with Middle Ages to Early Modern, that’s also a bigger jump then Antiquity to Middle Ages.
For me it’s more wrong to have Sumerians and Romans in one game like AoE1 then having Spartans fight early gunpoweder.
It’s also more wrong to have Aztecs in the same game as Gatling Guns like AoE3.
RoR is basically a different game. You reload the entire game when switching to RoR. Chronicles does not give you a loading screen because it just changed the lobby presets.
But in general. The timeline of human history doesn’t have any big “walls” in it.
I’d love to have all of human history in one game like Empire Earth did. Every time period makes sense to be next to the time period before it and after it.
So ever civ has some chronological overlap with some other civs.
Sumerians → Babylonians → Persians → Macedonians → Romans → Franks → Saracens → Mongols → Koreans → Japanese
We don’t want Sumerians to fight Japanese with gunpoweder weapons but there is a legitimate reason to want to be able to access both in the same game.
So the perfect solution would be to have civilisation sets like Chronicles for the 4 major time periods:
Bronze Age
Classical Antiquity
Middle Ages
Early Modern
But let us have crossplay between those time periods in custom lobbies and scenarios.
There are many settings at the border of those time frames that make a lot of sense. Macedonians and Romans can be to getter but so can be Romans and Goths.
Well, in that period technology and warfare advanced more quickly than in any previous era. Aztecs and Gatling guns are only separated by like 350 years.
You wouldn’t want a game where WW2 Germany fights against a modern army with drones and 5th generation stealth fighters, right?
But both things happened within the life span of many people.
Technology has been advancing a lot faster since Napoleon.
Arguably the technical progress between 1818 and 1918 is even bigger then 1918 and 2018 if you think about it.
No one would use a muzzle loader in WW1 but people still run around with Mosins and Maxims in Ukraine.
I don’t think the number of years passing is important. It’s the change of technology that is.
That’s why I mind the time differences in AoE1 and AoE3 more then AoE2 even with Chronicles.
For firearms and more traditional ground combat maybe, but everything else is radically different, from the role of computers, missiles and nuclear weapons the differences. It’s hard to decide.
In any case, the Gatling guns are more like an anomaly from an already kinda controversial DLC, in general the game is mostly focused from the 16th to the 18 Centuries.
Maybe 10 or 20 years later, when no people still play AoE2, they will release a DLC to latest AoE game named “Return of Classic” and add those civs to special ranked pool.