The oddest thing about the DLC: devs changed their stance on civ splits

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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TLDR: after splitting civs for decades, the devs are doing umbrellas again.

Long version:

Ever since The Forgotten released back in 2013, many people complained that the Slav and Indian civs covered groups of peoples and kingdoms that were way too broad in scope, or “umbrellas” as we call them. If you were active back in the day, you will remember there were many, many discussions about this topic…

Eventually, and thankfully, the devs listened and “split” those civs, adding new ones that would have been previously covered by Slavs and Indians. Nowadays we have Bulgarians, Bohemians, Poles, Gurjaras, Hindustanis, Dravidians, Bengalis… And yet there are even more civs that could potentially be split.

For example, in a recent podcast, Cysion himself mentioned the Saracens and Vikings as potential civs to be split. So considering all this, and other splits like Burgundians and Franks, and Italians and Sicilians, it seems that the current devs know bunching up different people groups together into one civs is not ideal, and medieval history can be better represented by doing away with umbrellas.

At least that’s my observation: they like civ splits. Makes sense, right? They’ve done multiple of those, and seem to care about history… At least until now, when they changed their philosophy overnight. Now, I know there’s a lot of outrage around the 3K civs, but looking at the “normal” new civs, I noticed they have problems too, especially the Khitans.

Their castle is based on a Tangut castle, their camel catapult unique unit is based on a weapon the Tanguts used, and both of those appeared in the teaser images, so many believed the Tanguts would make it into the game. But no, the Tanguts were, for some reason, lumped together with the Khitans. I thought doing this sort of thing was bad? There’s a reason Slavs are different from Bohemians and Gurjaras are a separate civ from Bengalis. Otherwise, why split the Slavs and Indians in the first place?

Imagine that, let’s say, they add an Aragonese civ one day. But instead of having a normal unique unit, they have a Gallowglass and a Scottish castle. Makes no sense, right? They are completely different groups, and normally the devs would not lump them together, but I guess they decided to make an exception for reasons unknown.

Adding to this, splits were meant to separate different ethnic groups with unique militaries and histories, so that a civ wouldn’t be a thematic mess. But the 3K civs are all “Chinese”, so what is the split even for? If they were all one civ, like the Han Dynasty or something, there’d be nothing off about it. Thematically, it would make perfect sense. Are we getting West, East and Middle Francia now?

If only the new civs were the Jurchens, Khitans, plus Tanguts, Tibetans and Bai, I guarantee you the community would love the DLC, I’d even say it would be the very best one for DE, not counting DotD and DoI, since those are part of the base game now.

But no, the devs changed their stances on everything. Theme? We have ancient civs now. Civ design? We have hero units now. Umbrellas and splits? We split a civ that doesn’t need to be split, and create a civ that needs to be split on day one.

I’ll stop rambling because this is too long already, end of post.

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You mean Franks, Burgundians and Tuetones?

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Not the same… Burgundians are a big stretch for this game, but Franks and Teutons are distinct enough. West Franks and East Franks, not so much, not to mention their division is political instead of cultural, just like the Three Kingdoms.

But I guess you can make any civs you want now, so whatever. Let’s have Franks, and the West Franks too as separate civs, why not?

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I’d say just because they did a mistake once you don’t have to repeat it again.
Maybe they could even decide to move 3k to Chronicles if there’s enough request though I’m not sure.

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Its just so sad when theres still so much ground to cover

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In this situation I feel it’s more like, they identified a mistake, corrected it, and then when everyone least expects it, they make said mistake again. I find all of this very odd.

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They have different scopes even though they once were “one nation” (and that’s a stretch because Burgundians were NOT Franks).

Franks represent the early Franks (throwing axeman) and generic medieval France.
Teutons represent the HRE and Teutonic order after 1000s.
Burgundians is an addition I never liked, but it has a focus and identity, which is late medieval Burgundy and also covering the Netherlands.

If they were called “west/east/middle Francia”, then their scopes become too narrow, and there were not enough differences between them in such a short time period (less than a century, like the three kingdoms).

In fact choosing civs that somewhat geographically overlap but chronologically separated is a good idea. You could focus on very different aspects. In fact most AOE civs have a very strong and focused identity, represented by their bonuses and UUs, and sometimes narrower than what their name suggests (eg Britons is by all means post-Norman England).

Spanish and Italians were once Goths in some sense, but their in-game representation have distinct identities (exploration age and renaissance) from the Goths (migration period Germanics). It would be much worse if they chose to split Goths into Visigoths and Ostrogoths. You cannot give Visigoths a conquistador. They’ll feel very similar.

Even for the whacky names that overlap with each other, the civ designs themselves have clearer identities: Slavs are in fact apparently Eastern Slavs or Rus, and their UU and bonus is very different from what Poles or Bohemians offer.

Now the three kingdoms each lasted for a few decades. Too short to develop any real cultural identity. They cannot represent anything outside the three kingdoms era (less than a century) either.

They could simply make civs that represent Southern, Southwestern and Northern Chinese minorities, each had much interactions with the three kingdoms, so that they could cover a wider scope, have more identities, and fit much better into the civ roster. Then mix them with the base Chinese civ for the 3K campaigns.

Sidenote: why did people welcome the split of India? Because those are very different cultures. Now imagine if they instead made 3 Rajput kingdoms that fought the Delhi Sultanate between 1200-1300.

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