Someone mentioned that the new “civs” are all in the history section. So I went to take a look.
Before getting to the topic at-hand, I looked at the Three Kingdoms civs, and a Three Kingdoms mini-section. First, all the sections about the “civs” is about the characters, nothing about the actual civs themselves (not surprising, as there is nothing to say when they are all just Chinese).
What is kinda funny is the three kingdoms section even admits these are not separate civs, and are just continuations of the Chinese.
But as to the title. I checked the Jurchen and Khitan sections. They are the only two civs in the game to have recycled art that does not depict them. The Jurchens use pictures of Chinese soldiers from the Art of War section. And the Khitans use pictures of Mongols from the Genghis Khan campaign.
I guess that does match the sloppy lack of voice lines…
Then Microsoft had copied “civilization variants” from Age of Empires 4 into Age of Empires 2.
This 3 Kingdoms DLC seems to be a disappointing upon a closer inspection for precisely these reasons. I can not understand, the sloppy handling of the Jurchens and Khitans. And let us not forget the deletion of the Tanguts and, to a lesser extent, the Xianbei. A real shame.
I hope, that the developers make a “2th China DLC or precisely says a Reconciliation DLC” with a historically accurate portrayal of the Jurchens and Khitans, and not borrowing from the Chinese and Mongols. But the given realities of Microsoft so far, the likelihood of this happening is slim. Unfortunately.
The AoMR beta had some pretty major differences compared to the release version despite being relatively close to the release. Including redoing every single god image.
I would hold my horses until the actual release of the DLC in 3 weeks.
Plenty of time to add new images and voice lines.
On a positive (?) note, somewhat related to this topic… The wiki acknowledges that people are calling the weird, unfinished Khitan civ as “Khitanguts”. Can we count this as a win of sorts? Pyrrhic victory?