People on rddt and aoe groups are always moaning “rattan” “jungle” cuz think the Vietnamese were gentle and defensive civilisation. that was untrue. In reality, Vietnam notably under Lý dynasty (1009-1225) were aggressive and waged many wars against its neighbors. They also allied with Tangut XiXia and Jurchen Jin against great Song.
Vietnam Lý invaded Song China (1075-1077):
Lý forces captured Yongzhou (Nanning) and massacred all people in the city:
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They probably mean the Champa on which original Vietnamese was designed on, before the architecture set was changed to East Asians.
Khmer Architecture, Battle Elephants, Rattan Archer, Jungle, Defensive all fit perfectly for the Champa (South Vietnam) which was the dominant power in the region in the medieval era, while North Vietnam was for a long period of time a part of China.
I miss the old architecture for vietnamese. Is there any mod to bring it back?
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It’s a war game, so it’s weird people managed to think this way.
The problem here is that the devs implemented the Champa kingdom, but they also made the Le Loi campaign, which doesn’t fit for the Champa… So they quite put themselves in a tricky situation…
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The problem here is the dev probably didn’t do their research and thought Vietnam and Champa were the same kingdom. It’s like someone saying France and Britain are the same country, Spain and Italy are the same, Germany and Russia are the same etc…
That went too far…
My bad, I take it back
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its actually like saying “scotland and UK are the same” …
ironically your comparisons of the devs “fault” are as erroneous as you are making the devs seem…
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It’s almost like the common sense and conceptions about vietnamese history have a bias towards the Vietnam War (1955-1975). Defensive, jungle warfare focused on skirmishing, scouting and espionage actions.
Look at how vietnamese are presented in aoe2: inicial positions of enemies scouted, imperial skirm, skirm/archer UU. Coincidence?
I’ve no knowledge of vietnamese history, but a lot of people in the forums complained about how this wasn’t the main form of warfare back in the day. If someone could clear my mind about that - and clear the Vietnam War stereotype while at it - i would be grateful.
Majority of land skirmishes of Vietnam War(1955-1975) took place in South Vietnam which is Tropical Jungle.
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Originally Vietnamese were designed on the South Vietnam but ironically their campaign is based on North Vietnam.
green = champa
yellow = dai viet
I hope you got the idea. 
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Here’s the thing. Dai Viet was the former kingdom that passed down the traditions, culture, music, foods, languages… to modern day Vietnam. Champa on the otherhand, was a separate kingdom in the past until its total annexation into Vietnam (18th century). Champa has its own army, culture, history, and has little influence on modern day’s Vietnamese culture. The in-game “Vietnamese” civ was based on Champa that has nothing to do with any Vietnamese’s historical kingdoms. Imagine the Britons with Woad Raider, that’s how the Vietnamese was depicted in AoE 2
Oh that’s explains a lot. Thanks for the clarirication. Historical oversight during development, i guess?
I see.
Then which civ you think is Vietnamese in the game should be? North or South?
I guess the development team combine both of them because they don’t want to miss them.
If they chose the north one, the south would be represented by maybe Khmer.
If they chose the south one, the north would be represented by maybe Chinese.
Both of the results might be more disappointed than the current.
They use Chinese to represent so many civ like Jurchens and Khitans since 20 years ago, I don’t wanna see this mistake becomes bigger.
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If not Vietnam then which country will accept Champa?
Champa isn’t a bad choice for civ design since it was an independent entity from 192 to 1832 (~1600 years!)
Only problem is that it is named “Vietnamese” and modern Vietnamese kind of hate being represented by it. I don’t know why…
I recall Italians.
When it represents Milanese, Genoese or Venetian, it would keep the some of the tech tree and be banned the other part for making each of them all be Italians but also have some different. For example, Milanese would have Condottiero, Genoese would have Genoese crossbowmen and Venetian would have good navy.
I think the Vietnamese in game should be Champa. But neither Champa nor Khmer nor Chinese should represents any part of Vietnam. Simply because Viets are Viets and those kingdoms are not Viets. During the time period of AoE2 Vietnam had already established an independent kingdom namely Dai Viet (1054 - 1820) followed by modern-day Vietnam
You know the team will do this. This is the tradition of the game since they don’t be willing to add more Far East civ. Even Chinese, Japanese and Korean have no hero campaigns since they were introduced for such a long time.
It’s not unusual for a civilisation to represent and be based on more than one political/cultural entity, e.g. Turks represent both Seljuks and Ottomans, Persians represent Sasanians, Safavids, Khwarazmian Empire, etc. So Vietnamese representing both Dai Viet and Champa (as they do in the campaigns) doesn’t seem problematic to me. Although I can understand the issue if their design and tech tree is based solely on Champa and not on Dai Viet.
To be fair, Britons with Woad Raiders wouldn’t be any more historically innaccurate than Celts with Woad Raiders, and the game would be more historically accurate if Britons and Celts were more similar to each other. The name “Britons” isn’t really accurate either, but I guess it’s less unwieldy than calling them “English and Welsh”.
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This game has originally been about representative civis for a region/people so having Vietnamese instead of other more historically accurate names is not a huge issue.Take Indians they represent the mughals but have South Indian temple wonder and speak hindi.
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