The Kongolese

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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DIPLOMATIC CIVILISATION

  • Advancing to the next age is 40% cheaper if opponent is already in that age
  • All your units have +1/1 armour/pierce armour against units who are in the next age
  • You can build archery ranges in the Dark Age
  • Markets can train villagers for 75 gold

Unique units:

  • Nzadi Ranger: fast moving skirmisher available from the Dark Age. As the Kongolese don’t have any cavalry, this unit acts as your starting scout.
  • Freeblades: infantry-gunpowder hybrid that uses a pistol at range but a rapier in melee.

Unique technologies:

  • Castle Age: “Nzambi’s Covenant”: gain all monastery technologies already researched by your opponent(s)
  • Imperial Age: “Nzimbu Currency”: passively gain 10% of your opponent’s gold income

Team bonus: team bonus of all allies is 50% stronger

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Extra explanation:

The Kongolese bonuses are all about interacting with what other players are doing. The Kongo Empire was well known for its diplomacy and for learning from international contacts and getting the better out of the exchange.

The first two civ bonuses encourage you to take your time advancing through the ages. Ideally you should click the next age when your opponent just reached it. This gives you a great economic benefit and during the time you’re an age behind, you are better protected from aggression as even villagers receive more armour.

With the extra armour, a timed push with your army can lead to great succes, even if that means you’re fighting an opponent who is an age up compared to you.

As you stay longer in the Dark Age than anyone else, having an archery range early (after building the barracks ofcourse) that can produce your skirmisher/scout hybrid is an excellent fit, both offensively and defensively.

Lastly, the early slave trade is represented by the ability to “buy” villagers from the market. This is mainly to compensate for a later Castle Age time as you can already start booming in feudal if you wish so. Villagers “trained” through the market are much more costly though, to balance everything out.

The first unique unit who is acting as the Kongolese scout is already available in the Dark Age, if an archery range has been build. The Kongo has good archers and infantry to supplement this unit.

The second unique unit represents the European adventurers who came to Kongo early to seek wealth. It also represents the efforts made by the Kongolese to maintain good relations with the Portugese and other European nations.

The first castle technology is a tribute to Kongo’s early adoption of Christianity. This technology is completely free, but should be timed well to get the most out of it as it can only be used once.

The second technology again establishes Kongo as a trading empire. It should be noted that in a 2v2 this income is reduced from 10% to 5% (because you have two opponents earning gold), in a 3v3 to 3,33% and in a 4v4 to 2,5%. This tech should also be expensive.

The Team bonus is all about empowering your allies, and thus your team.

All in all, the Kongolese play as an extremely unique civ, without overcomplicating anything. It is a civ that will almost always try to go through the ages more slowly than any other civ and take full advantage of being “behind”. At any point in time, it is an economic powerhouse, able to start booming in feudal age. In the late game, it can “steal” all monastery techs for free and have a source of gold income that depends on how well the enemy is doing. All this makes the Kongolese an awkward opponent, but because of their team bonus also a great ally.

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this is usually completely useless. clicking up when your opponent is already in that age means you’ve probably lost the game. you still need to survive your opponent’s onslaught while you are waiting for the next age.

this probably won’t be enough. not least because units generally aren’t much stronger for a minute or so, as they are being upgraded.

so the way these two bonuses will probably play out in most cases:

-your opponent reaches the next age. He builds the appropriate military buildings/researches their upgrades
-you click up with 40% discount
-your opponent gets their buildings & starts making units from them/the upgrades kick in
-you reach the same age
-your opponent has a feudal age/castle age/imperial army. you have a dark age/feudal age/castle age army. you get crushed

interesting. however this will usually lead to people trying to do an archery rush, so the other two bonuses will no longer come into play. archer play usually leads to getting to the next age earlier

a ranged dark age scout will be super annoying to deal with/balance.

ugh, more mode switching.

by the time you get to this, your opponent will often have mined most of the gold on the map. it will be fairly weak in 1v1. In team games however it will be utterly broken
(if we ever get 11v11 or more, there might be a funky feedback look if everyone plays this civ: everyone researches this. someone in team A gets 10 gold, all opponents get 1 gold each, so everyone in team A gets 1.1 gold, etc etc)

cute idea. how does this work with stuff like “genitours available”, “relics visible”, “one free lama”? just nothing happens?

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Kongolese UU should be an archer with bonus against elephant units imho (historical justification: they hunted elephants)

Maybe this UU would also be allowed to collect food from huntable animals? Could be allowed in Feudal Age like the Sergeant.

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I think this is a problem in design because I have no idea what the civ does for itself.

Kongo has its own known military like cattle formations, powerful runner infantry, poisoned arrows and the inability to use horses due to tsetse flies.

This really feels like a civ that wants to be behind but AoE2 doesn’t really want to reward you for screwing up so royally. And while it sounds like a beginner friendly civ unless the age up includes 40% time reduction you are already dead!

2 Likes
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Isn’t Soninke more appropriate medieval name?

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For Mali, maybe, but not for Kongo but that would entail chopping out Jolof and others who had vastly different cultures due to location

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How is this supposed to work in a match that has more then 2 teams? Like a diplomacy game or a custom scenario. Changing diplomacy would make all of those bonuses very complicated.

Also a civ being almost entirely build around your enemies is pretty 1 dimensional.

I like this idea. Having the ability to train extra villagers in Feudal Age for a higher price is an interesting trade off. It would allow to stick in Feudal Age for longer.

This might be technically hard to pull of but could be interesting.

Pistols are too modern for AoE2. The game only has Hand Cannons. I know that some scenarios/campaings clearly take part in time periods where pistols already existed but so far the unit visuals all just have Hand Cannons and never Arquebus or Pistols.

Automatic switching between ranged an melee is probably not possible in AoE2, only maybe an attack bonus for when the enemy is in 1 tile range. Alternatively it could be a charged attack thing where they fire a shot at range before changing to melee.

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