They only hype when they have a turd on their hands

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I think I’ve finally figured it out.

When the devs have something good on their hands, they don’t hype it up. The more they hype up the next unannounced dlc, the worse it likely is.

BfG. All we had to go off of was steamdb updates. I guess you could say the new years post promised “surprises” but that was nearly a year beforehand. I don’t think BfG was everyone’s cup of tea, and it being the 5th anniversary DLC was unfortunate timing, but this was a high effort project, and it being a separate mode seemed to strike just the right balance and was well received by most.

TMR. With exception of the “elephant in the room” comment on an update a few months prior (and that was more targeted towards persians than the DLC as a whole) and the roadmap a year before that implied we’d get another civ split, we basically got no hyping for TMR. Yes there were the accidental leaks, but that doesn’t count. Sure TMR seemed to be a bit low effort with two civs and only 15 scenarios, and armenians being based more on cilician armenia was…a choice. But compared to the rest of the DLCs i’ll talk about, relatively minor complaints.

RoR. technically I think it was announced as it had a name, but no one really understood what it was. months and months of vague hints. not to mention there was an interview where isgreen said all the campaigns were moving over, and two years after release that is still not the case. I will say personally tho, RoR doesn’t feel terrible, just confused and somewhat pointless. IDK who this was made for. It’s its own mode at least, so you can opt out mostly.

V&V. A Campaign focused expansion with polished scenarios inspired by filthydelphia’s custom scenarios. downright lies. at least V&V is just a scenario pack you opt to not purchase

V&V2 (no i will never refer to this abomination as anything else). Months of hype. screenshots showing what could only be tanguts and jurchens with even a modicum of research. Cysion saying this wouldn’t be a chinese split. Tanguts, Jurchens, and Khitans will be changed in the ghengis khan scenarios. 5 new civs, get on the hype train. new castles, new monasteries, new skins, attack animation synchronization, aoe2 renaissance is around the corner. BE THE MOST HYPEDEST EVVUR!!!

we get three antiquity 3k non civilization civilizations, splitting the chinese that we were told wouldn’t be split, with mobile game hero garbage, a tangut-khitan chimera civ so egregious zhou tucker wouldn’t touch it with a 10 ft pole, and just as the icing on the cake, now that we know there isn’t, inexplicably, a tangut civ, they can’t figure out how to change the tangut civ in “into China” due to “technical issues”. The moment we learn they employed every trick in the book to mis-direct us a tangut civ was coming, after like 50 civ swaps, literally the only thing from the previous patch post to be walked back, was tangut civ update in “Into China” is now not happening. Unfathomable coincidence. It was only there to further the deception.

TLDR, we now know the devs are lying about an un-announced dlc the moment they start talking about it.

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I’m pretty sure that was supposed to be the Chinese DLC before they delayed it.
My theory is that they originally didn’t plan to do the 3 Kingdoms and just Khitans/Tonguts and Jurchens but the scope of the DLC increased so much that the Mountain Royals was done before despite being planned as a later DLC.

Kipchaks and Cumans are 2 different civilisations yet they were joined into one.

Tanguts and Kitans are also not the same yet they were joined again.

The problem with steppe people is that they were rearranging into new groups and confederations constantly. They were nomadic so they were not bound to once place.

I can understand why the devs don’t want every single different variation of steppe people to be their own civilisation.

They never lied.
People in the community went and overanalyse ever pixel of the screenshots they gave us and ever word in the changelog.
There were clear hints fro 3 Kingdoms civs but most people just ignored them because they didn’t fit their expectations.

I think this DLC is pretty much the opposite of V&V.
V&V was a low effort cash grep to fill the void between DLC which had 0 civilisations, 0 new units, 0 new heroes, 0 no anything.
The 3 Kingdoms is clearly the most effort they put into a DLC ever.
I wouldn’t use V&V as a general term for things we don’t like, that’s kinda stupid.

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I personally prefer the the term Tale of the Dragon 2, but yes, I agree

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The Kipchaks and Cumans had a federation with each other.

Khitan and Tanguts were neighbours

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The Poles and Lithuanians had a federation too.
Also the Mongols conquered half of the world. Doesn’t make every civ Mongols.

I don’t think that the Cumans should have Kipchaks as units nor do I think that the civ they are adding to the game makes sense as the Khitans.

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Logic is coming back to me recently and I feel good about that. I’ve been doubting reality after seeing the strange behaviors of WE, those that could not have been made by a company of its size.

For example, why do they so adamantly refuse to communicate and suck at marketing so much, compared to all other games with similar or smaller playerbase.

Now it all comes together.

They are not stupid or eccentric. They are incredibly smart just like the other companies, maybe too smart.

Ir’s just that they need to cherry pick the hype-creating parts for communication and marketing and this has become harder and harder due to crappier and crappier work.

The AOE3 community has sensed this long ago. People were kicking their front doors, trying to spoonfeed them on how to make our money. Why would you just show two flags when some quick screenshots would work miles better? Why ignoring the game for a whole year, dropping advertising and even bugfixing, when there was an upcoming DLC? Why? Why sabotage your own business? Why gaslight your customers? Why? It does not make sense!

And a year later it makes sense all of a sudden: because the two flags were the only work they have ever done all along. They know how to communicate so well. They just cannot.

EDIT:
If this DLC was indeed Jurchen, Khitan and Tanguts with proper campaigns, marketing would be a no-brainer: a few screenshots would create tremendous hype. And this is what they tried to do: all screenshots tend to hint that way. That’s the best they can do.

But they are also careful and smart so that they sit on the border of “lying” and will never be really caught lying (like “hiding” some 3K assets in the screenshots, but not spotlighting them), so that the “rational” people can still come and white-knight for them.

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Cumans and Kipchaks were both Turkic tribes of the Pontic Caspian Steppe. Turkic confederations would often have “inner” tribes and outer “tribes”. Cumans and Kipchaks were the dominant tribes of the Cuman Kipchak confederation. Not remotely similar to combining tanguts and Khitans.

“china is not being split”, proceeds to give us a chinese split.

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The Chinese are still in the game and represent all of the Chinese people.
China was not split into 3 Kingdoms.

The same way Italians were not split by adding the Romans.

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Domt ask me what I think about Poles and Lithuanians

The Cumans and Kipchaks were equal in the federation tho, its not like Mongols conquering everyone else

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The Bohemians were part of the Holy Roman Empire.
This game is about civilisations and not political entities.

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This line of reasoning in incomprehensibly absurd. those new…kingdoms…are chinese states. we now have 4 chinese factions in the game. If Hindustanis kept the name “indians” no one would be saying “oh they didn’t split the indians”. This is basically trying to argue they aren’t splitting chinese because they say they aren’t.

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And for all this they’ll charge you at least $20 box or possibly even higher.

I’m not going to buy this DLC, not going to be fooled.

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They lied. Cysion explicitly told us there isn’t a Chinese split and all 5 civs are “Chinese neighbors” and guess what? They added Shu, Wu and Wei which are all literally Chinese splits, their culture isn’t distinct from “Chinese” and they don’t fit the game’s timeframe.

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I feel like such a doomposter because I only comment when bad things happen, but they legit could have made something great, the best expansion for DE, not exaggerating. And the worst part is that the devs knew, otherwise they wouldn’t have teased the Tanguts, and have Cysion say the new civs wouldn’t be a Chinese split. I don’t understand their rationale…

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Dont ask me what I think about the Bohemian civ design

But at least we have quite a few conflicts that put them against the wider HRE.

Also theres Great Moravia

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These are smart people with a strong legal team. They carefully choose words that could deceive as many people as possible, yet not really crossing the line of “lying”.

But when even they themselves need mental gymnastics to hide what they’re really doing, we consoomers should think twice before saying “hey it’s fine”.

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The Hindustani can’t even train the former Indian unique unit while all the other Indian civs can.

Did he say that?
Or is that your interpretation?

He said that there won’t be a split of the Chinese “like with the Indians”.
And indeed, the Chinese are still here.
The 3 Kingdom civs are a lot more like adding Romans despite having Italians.
Or well Poles, Bohemians and Bulgarians despite having Slavs.

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He said its civ “around” the Chinese

These arent around the Chinese

They are the Chinese

Also so funny he said theres so many great stories to tell in China… And its all about the same conflict in a few decades

Haha… So funny

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Not really. They had a confederacy and were functionally the same people for most of their history. The Tanguts and Khitans were not only completely different culturally, ethnically, and linguistically, but were entirely unrelated politically. Apples and oranges.

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It’s way worse. There are obvious cultural differences between Slavs (East Slavs, lets say), Bohemians, Bulgarians and Poles.

Romans are also bad, but they had a distinct culture and were relevant for a long time, unlike 3 Kingdoms.

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