Hi there, I recently got into AOE4 and really appreciated the cohesive civilization design. It inspired me to design a faction concept for Vietnam (which I had the fortune to visit recently!).
I stumbled upon Kameho88v2’s Dai Viet concept early on while doing some research into this. Turns out we had a lot of the same ideas - I ended up taking a lot of inspiration from their post, so big shoutout to their work! The image of the flag comes from the user “Seicing” from the AOE4 official forums.
Some notes before diving in:
Why Vietnam? Vietnam offers a unique opportunity to explore a civ feel that’s very different from any others in the game so far. Dai Viet in the medieval era is famous for its defensive guerrilla wars against Chinese and Mongol invaders. In AOE4 we can play into these tropes and create a faction that’s all about using traps, stealth, and scorched earth to stall opponents and set up a powerful finisher late game.
I’m a big Company of Heroes player (another game by Relic), and I loved the mechanic of reading your opponent, placing mines at key chokepoints, and getting high value trades out of it. The concept of “bamboo traps” functions very similarly to mines in COH.
A lot of the unique units, technologies, and stats presented here are up for debate. The ideas I feel strongest about are - traps/mines, Hideouts (weaker outposts that can stealth), scorched earth (reduced movement speed aura), and poison arrow garrisons. I believe these mechanics are core to the guerrilla warfare theme.
As always, super interested in hearing any and all thoughts positive or negative!
Interesting, I liked the presentation in a sketch similar to the one presented by the Age IV technology tree. I don’t know much about the medieval history of Vietnam, other than what I learned from the Age2 campaign. Thank you, you’ve made me a little more interested in its story.
Reading a bit about them, I see that they have had a lots of periods of change of dynasty during the Middle Ages: Some only lasted a few decades, and other times the country was divided into 2 or 4 parts or continued an expansive policy. In general, articles about the medieval army are either generalist (they only describe numbers of troops and nothing else) or they describe the army of a country in certain time frames, such as from one dynasty to another or in certain historical periods.
Do you know of any book, article or videogame that portrays just that medieval history of Vietnam, or at least explains how they fought? Because they must have been strong to be able to gain indepe###### from China so many times, especially the China of the Ming. My regards.
Not much to know about the saga, between 938 and 1945 it was divided by different dynasties and attacked and annexed by different foreign countries, both Asian and European…
During these 1,000 years there were many uprisings against Chinese domination, and at certain periods Vietnam was independently governed under the Trưng, Early Lý, Khúc and Dương Đình;their triumphs and reigns were temporary. When Ngô Quyền (King of Vietnam, 938–944) restored sovereign power in the country with the victory at the battle of Bach Dang River, the next millennium was advanced by the accomplishments of successive local dynasties: Ngô, Đinh, Early Lê, Lý, Trần, Hồ, Later Trần, Later Lê, Mạc, Revival Lê (Trịnh and Nguyễn), Tây Sơn and Nguyễn. At various points during the imperial dynasties, Vietnam was ravaged and divided by civil wars and witnessed interventions by the Song, Yuan, Cham, Ming, Siamese, Qing, French, and Imperial Japan.
Oh wow, I don’t know what to say! This is beyond impressive!
As they say, great minds think alike. haha.
But no, really the graphics looks top notch! And I do like your tweaks to the idea I had.
It’s always nice to see people coming up with similar ideas and refine upon each others. Afterall, it’s pretty hard to think and research everything. Quite often you simply just overlook things that could work really well, or just have to cut things because to many things!
Do you know of any book, article or videogame that portrays just that medieval history of Vietnam, or at least explains how they fought? Because they must have been strong to be able to gain indepe###### from China so many times, especially the China of the Ming. My regards.
If you want to learn more about pre-modern Vietnamese history, A History of the Vietnamese by K.W. Taylor is my recommendation. Vietnam: A New History by Christopher Goscha is also extremely well regarded.
Now neither of these books will tell you details of the engagements because those do not exist. However, the medieval Vietnamese armies looked and fought the same as southern Chinese armies contemporary to them. Small differences like the elephants gained by the conquest of Champa came at the very end of the medieval period. We do have some direct descriptions from the Early Modern (AoE3) era if you’re interested in that, Views of Seventeenth-century Vietnam: Christoforo Borri on Cochinchina & Samuel Baron on Tonkin is the book to look for.
Either of the two books (the third is just a translation with footnotes of two primary sources, not a history book) will give you an understanding of why Vietnam won those conflicts. But it wasn’t through any superunits or training.
And the guerrila thing is obviously just a trope based on the VietCong. Punji sticks, tunnels, civilian guerrilas, etc. all that was invented during the 20th century anti-colonial conflicts. Wasn’t used against the Franco-Spanish force that established French Indochina and certainly didn’t exist as a primary method of warfare prior to that.
It just makes for a distinct, if ridiculous and ultra-tropey, base for the civ. Think of it like the Strelets spam of Russians in AoE3, which was obviously not based on Strelets (an elite formation formed by people high up in the feudal hierarchy) but USSR’s conscript army.
Actually I based this concept off of the history of the period. Bamboo/punji traps were indeed used during the wars against invading Mongols and Ming dynasty. Same thing goes for poison arrows and the resistance/guerilla warfare mindset. Yes I leaned in to this theme because it created for a unique (albeit tropey) civilization identity, but it’s not based on nothing.
