Trojan/Hatti Pantheon

The Hittite Mythology is relatively well known to historians but not very well known to the public.

The Hatti Empire was one of the biggest Empires in the Late Bronze Age and the biggest rival of the Egyptians.
But unlike the Egyptians or Babylonians their culture was already almost forgotten in the Classical Antiquity and only rediscovered in modern times.

There is just one of their cities that is Wilusa, more commonly known as Troy.
Not all historians agree with this identification of Troy but it’s mostly accepted nowadays since there are a lot of similarities.
Since AoM is not fully historic, and Troy already appears in the campaign, I don’t see an issue here.
The main deity of Wilusa was said to be Apaliunas, which sounds a lot like Apollo the main deity of Troy according to Homer.

The Hatti pantheon was know as the “thousand gods of Hatti” and they indeed had a huge variety in gods.
Their religion had a lot of influence from different cultures, Hatti, Hurrian, Hittie, Syrian and a lot of Mesopotamian/Babylonian.

In AoMR this civilisation could be a mix between the historic people of Hatti and the Homeric Trojans. They would be a lot more real then the fictional Atlanteans anyway.

Their favour generation could be centred around animal sacrifice while their army would focus on strong Chariots.

What do you think of the idea of making the Trojans a playable civilisation?

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No. There simply isn’t enough written down to do them justice, and you would seriously struggle to string together enough myth units and abilities that would be relevant to them.

The other issue is that people don’t know about them, so you have no popular lore to draw on. The original AoM civs work because they are culturally significant and people have a fair idea of what to expect of them, and what imagery they already have in mind. This is an advantage shared by, for example, Celtic and Aztec pantheons.

Obscure pantheons with primarily fictional content not based on existing mythological lore simply won’t work.

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The game already has Atlanteans that are purely fictional.

Do you go around into every thread that suggest a civilisation other then your top favourites and write about why they shouldn’t be added?
You think that will increase the chance of your favourites being added.

I really dislike those kinda posts. They happen all the time. Every time someone suggests any new civilisation someone comes and says how much more important their favourite civilisation is.

No, I’m just responding to your post. I’m not really interested in having an argument about this.

99% of people will not be able to name a single Trojan god, and a Trojan pantheon will not be added.

If you post other suggestions I will certainly read them. I read the Mesopotamian suggestion, which is far better and has a much higher chance of being added as the second new pantheon, but as I said in that post I think it has too much overlap with Egypt in terms of things like probable unit roster, and also geography.

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Yes because people know Atlantean gods.
AoM is not a historic game so they would have a lot of freedom with representing the Trojans in interesting ways.
The Trojans in the Iliad worship Greek gods but it wouldn’t be to hard to change that up in ways that people would still recognise.

Yet in the same post you suggest the Celts and don’t see and issues with them overlapping with the Norse.

Just because I suggest a civilisation doesn’t mean I want them to be the second one being added.
It’s almost guaranteed that the developers have already started work in the second DLC in some degree and have long decided what civilisation to add.

Do I always have to add a disclaimer to any civilisation suggestion that I don’t necessarily want this civilisation to be prioritised.

I made the thread to discuss ideas.

“It’s almost guaranteed that the developers have already started work in the second DLC in some degree and have long decided what civilisation to add.”

Oh, that’s almost certainly the case, yes. I’m guessing we won’t see the Chinese until next year, though.

They are promised for this year.
The 2nd DLC is supposed to release next year.

I honestly doubt the Chinese DLC will be released this year. The game is released in September and will have a few months of balance and bugfix patches, followed by (supposedly) the Arena of the Gods they advertised - unless that’s been scrapped? Either way, I expect there to be a lot of issues to iron out.

It’s possible we’ll see China rolled out by December, but that seems unlikely to me given the way post-launch issues/support for these games tends to go, and especially if they end up having to re-do a load of AI art for them…

It depends on what state the Chinese DLC currently is in. It could be almost finished already and just held back to make the Premium Edition a better deal.

They said 2024 in their website so we have to wait and see if that will be true.
The USA were also pretty soon after the release of AoE3DE despite AoE3DE having a very rocky start. AoMR is already in a better state now then AoE3DE was on release.

I was today years old when I learned the Trojans had their own pantheon separate from the Greeks.

I absolutely agree that it would make sense historically, but the Trojans in the Fall of the Trident campaign would have to remain Greek, because from the Dialogue between Kemsit and Gargarensis, it’s made obvious that the fall of Troy was important to prevent Zeus from interfearing with their plans. (which he did, but via Arkantos, rather than Troy) Atlantis isn’t getting any Atlantean elements or even hints either. And when I voiced my disagreement with that decision, I got hard pushback, meaning I may probably be the only one with the opinion that Fall of the Trident Atlantis should have elements or hints towards the Atlanteans, for the sake of consistency. (Which is different from turning them into the titan-worshipping version from the Titans expansion alltogether)

Also, from a marketing perspective, how would you generate hype around a Trojan pantheon DLC?
Giving them their own campaign would pretty much have to connect with the Trojan war, which would then directly contradict Fall of the Trident, and integrating them into Fall of the Trident, as I said before, and learned from own experience, only results in backlash.
I mean, of course if it has its own pantheon and heroes and myth units, there is cool lore that could be adapted, but that’s not gonna be connected to any names or concepts some random person may recognize. Or at least I assume, given that I didn’t even know it existed until today.
It may be percieved as another fully fictional culture, but this time with Persian and Summerian copy paste, rather than Roman and Incan.

On the other hand, it would be a chance for that culture/pantheon to be represented in pop culture for the very first time since that culture itself was alive (again, I assume. How would I even know if it was otherwise?) and inspire many more, depending on how unique and cool their look and lore is…

Yes, for me they could include the Hittites but it would have to be 60-70 years before the Trojan War (Fall of the Trident) and that you resist several Wilusa/Troy (Greek) skirmishes throughout the campaign to end in a war with the Egyptians of Ramses II at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BCE…

We know enough about Hittite, Hurrian, and Luwian mythology to create a full roster of gods and monsters with plenty left over.

Yes, no, maybe, depends on who you ask or we don’t know for sure.

Or simply said that it’s just a theory that the Mythological Troy is based on the real world Hittite city of Wilusa.
There is a lot of evidence for that but we can’t know for sure.
We also don’t know if the ruins we found are Troy and/or Wilusa.

They could change since you don’t play as the Trojans.
The main reason why the first few missions require you to play as Greeks is because they are tutorial missions and also because Poseidon.

It would be cool if they were replaced but I don’t expect that to happen.
Nor do I expect anything Atlantean to appear in the AoMR Fall of the Trident campaign, even in the last 2 missions.
If all the enemy Atlanteans are replaced by Atlanteans then Tory would probably be replaced by Trojans.

That wouldn’t be that easy.
It depends on how the Trojan civ looks like.
Is it mostly based on the Hittite Empire or will it have a lot of Homeric influences letting the Trojans appear more Greek.

They could make Apollo one of the Major gods of the Hittite civilisations that then represents Troy.

That is a big problem of the Hittite Empire.
They were really important in the late Bronze Age but their empire collapsed and the region they ruled over saw a lot of changes in civilisations of the millennia.
The ancient Greeks already didn’t know anything about them anymore.
The only hints we had to them were in the Bible for a long time. Then over time historians found Indo European names in Mesopotamien texts that they didn’t know the origin of.
Only like 100 years ago the remains of the actual Hittite Empire were discovered with a lot of written documents. To that point that we were actually able to translate the language and therefor even know parts of their mythology and many of their gods.

The civilisation is also playable in AoE1. So it has been with the Franchise since the very first day.

They would be a relatively cool option for a prequel campaign indeed.

I would not add the Battle of Kadesh since this is AoM and not AoE. This game is about myth not history.
That battle is also in AoE1DE btw.

The problem the Hittite Mythology has is not that historians don’t know enough, it’s that there is very little popular recognition of it.

The idea that Wilusa, Troia, and Illion are three names for the same city is backed up by a significant amount of evidence and is today widely accepted as an established fact.

It’s believed Apollo was adopted into the Greek pantheon from Wilusa. And we are also pretty sure that the name Alaksandu, the name of their king identified as the historical version of Paris, was a Hittite rendition of the Greek Alexander, showing a Greek influence in the royalty of the city, if not the entire ruling class.

So Wilusa was heavily interconnected with Greece culturally and religiously, enough that Wilusan kings had Greek names and Wilusan gods were adopted by the Greeks.

I agree with that but not everyone does.

He is clearly coming from Asia so him being from Troy would make a lot of sense.

You think they should rather be a variant civ based on the Greeks?

You also have the Trojan War in AoM and also in AoEO… so I don’t see a problem with putting the battle of Kadesh back in AoM; it would only be one scenario in the start or the middle of the campaign, then you can continue with other mythological scenarios fighting against Egyptians and Babylonians…

Interesting, would you give them a hero system more like the greeks with characters, or more similar to the egyptians/norse, with a generic hero unit?

As for general bonus, maybe they could have an unique fortress, that combines with barracks and towers, and which is able to train chariots and powerful heavy infantry (like aoe3 Russian blockhouse) to represent their fortified cities and martial prowess.

The Trojan war, as described in Homers Illias, is one of the most important references for Greek Mythology for popculture.
When it comes to the Battle of Kadesh, I never played AoE1 and I’m not a history professor.
So, to me, it’s basically the battle of who-dropped-the-Scrabble-letters-here.

Edit: Not saying that’s a reason not to add it. If it’s a cool bit of history with some interesting myths around it that could be spun to be true in the game, it would be awesome to learn about. I’m just saying, there’s not a lot of familiarity here for everyone.

The Battle of Kadesh took place in the 13th century BC between the Egyptian Empire led by pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire led by king Muwatalli II. Their armies engaged each other at the Orontes River, just upstream of Lake Homs and near the archaeological site of Kadesh, along what is today the Lebanon–Syria border.

It is generally dated to May 1274 BC, as accounted by Egyptian chronology, and is the earliest pitched battle in recorded history for which details of tactics and formations are known. It is believed to be the largest battle ever fought involving chariots, numbering at a total of 5,000 to 6,000.

After being outmaneuvered, ambushed, and surrounded, Ramesses II personally led a charge through the Hittite ranks with his bodyguard. They broke through and avoided the capture or death of the pharaoh.

The battle is considered to have ended in a stalemate.

Description in AoE 1 DE:

According to the Egyptian records, Ramesses, in haste to engage the enemy, drove his division ahead of the rest of his army. Believing the reports of two captured Shasu nomads, who claimed that the Hittite army was still far from Kadesh, the pharaoh was unprepared for a Hittite attack. In fact, Muwatalli’s forces were nearby and, crossing the Arantu (Orontes) River, they ambushed the pharaoh and his smaller force.

In the initial clash, the Hittites had the advantage, catching the Egyptian Re Division- each unit in Ramesses’ army was named after a god- in the open and routing it. The pharaoh himself became surrounded in the fighting and, according to his accounts, survived only by finding that the god “Ammon’s grace is better for to me than a million fighting men and ten thousand chariots be.” The pharaoh personally led several charges into the Hittite ranks with his personal guard.

The Hittites, meanwhile, believing that they had defeated their enemies, stopped to plunder the Egyptian camp. This proved disastrous for the Hittites, who succumbed to an Egyptian counterattack from the Path division, which had arrived in time to prevent total defeat. As the Hittite army fled back across the river, the larger and heavier Hittite chariots, which carried three men, were overtaken and dispatched by the lighter and faster Egyptian chariots. Despite this rout, Muwatalli chose not to commit his reserves to the battle, instead keeping them in the city of Kadesh.

There is no historical consensus on the outcome of the battle. The surviving records from both civilizations claimed a great victory. The city of Kadesh remained under Hittite control, however, and Ramesses retreated to Egypt. The Egyptian pharaoh would return to Canaan in the following years and skirmish withe Hittites, but neither power could decisively defeat the other. Sixteen years after the clash at Kadesh, the two kingdoms signed a peace accord known as the Eternal Treaty. Remarkably, it is the only ancient treaty from the Near East in which each side’s version survived the ravages of time. Discovered nearly a century apart by archaeologists, the Hittite version of the alliance (recorded on clay tablets in Akkadian), and the Egyptian version (carved with hieroglyphics into stone) serve as an inspiration for modern nations.

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Depiction of Ramesses II slaying one enemy while trampling another, from a rock-cut relief at Abu Simbel…

Map of the battle in 1 DE

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Minimap of the battle in 1 DE

The player’s starting forces.

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Id prefer it to be a minor pantheon… More like a Greek clone with some seperate unique units perhaps done with triggers or something.

Age of Empires Online did stuff like that (Sea People for example were a clone of the Greek civ with some alterations