you can honestly ask this question about 3/4 of the civs. If we’re really pedantic, then only two civs would be actual civs (civitas) - Romans and Byzantines. Most other would be barbarians according to the inventors of this term.
Some people see ingame civs as ethnicities and that’s fine but inconsistent by now. I always saw civs as empires because that’s the name of the game.
That is also incosistent since 1999.
Seeing the ingame civs as only empires limits them to a very specific entity and timeframe. The ingame Franks are a good example as they´re not just the Carolingian empire but all Franks at the start of the game’s timeframe up to the Frecnh at the end of it.
how would this differ from celts castle with the UT gameplay wise
The Hautevilles campaign is not about the Vikings.It’s about the Sicilians and the First Crusade.
The Victors and Vanquishers scenarios are:
Ironside = Vikings in the Western Med
Finehair = The unification of Norway
Ragnar = Set in northern Europe
Karlsefni = About Iceland, Greenland, Northern America.
None of them have to do with the Balkans, Eastern Europe, or the Black Sea.
For people like me who do not want a Vikings split, the best possible DLC could be one with new civs that are Vikings-adjacent. i.e. Kievan Rus (Slavs+Vikings) and Novgorod (refurbished Slavs like the former Indians) and add often requested civs like the Vlachs and the Serbs.
We might get news about AOE II in August or perhaps September, since October and November are likely already reserved for the AOE IV expansion.
I think if Sicilians aren’t enough of a “Crusader civ” then Latins / Outremeriens could serve as an umbrella for Crusader states in the Levant, Malta, Cyprus, and the Latin Empire.
That’s in AoE3, but I always thought it was a fantasy campaign history… If you’re telling me it’s a real historic event, I’m gonna change my mind about AoE3 XD
That’s also why I love this game, we can learn so much thing by playing it.
Sicilian are more of early crusader, while Malta / Cyprus are the crusader type with that very famous helmet type we all know. Matching the cliché “DEUS VULT” guys.
But the cool thing about Order of St John is how they lasted longer than other crusader orders. They went up to the ungpowder era, had a navy, had a terrirotry covering mutliple mediteranean island.
They could definitly fit in a dlc having Venice on it.
New Victors and Vainquisher app update 11 minutes ago.
You know they really gave VnV a lot of update for the past weeks, it definitly tells me a “big” thing is coming.
So far I still can’t tell if it’s a totally new scenario to be added, or if it’s a localization to be added, but it’s definitly not just “bugfix”.
I’m impatient to find out if it’s a new localization or new scenario or both !
Nah, it was just a joke
Isn’t El Cid sorta mythological/folklorey?
While searching things for my mod project, I read that the Thirisadai and Turtle ship got their “heavy warship” armor type renamed “Capital Ship” armor since Last Chieftain.
It also seems that since LC, no unit got a non 0 attack value on that specific armor class anymore.
Why is this detail relevant for what’s to come ?
Because Capital Ships are not a name legit for a Turtle Ship nor a Thirisadai. Capital Ships armor would have been more legit to add to the Leviathan, to Heroes ships. So renaming that armor class from Heavy Warship to Capital Ship hints that at some new ships behavior in the futur.
The armor ID is id 2, which is a very, very, very old armor ID, and for it to receive a fresh new naming, with no more units having bonus against them suggest they’re preparing to add some Flagship units to the game. The fact that Turtle Ships and Thirisadai still got those armor is probably something that will change in the next big update, either by beeing entirely removed from them, or beeing spread to more ships for a specific purpose.
I doubt it’s “an idea they dropped during naval rework dev”, because the string name was changed. You generally don’t change an armor naming unless you want to use that. We can see the Leitis armor class beeing used in BfG and had not been renamed. And as today attacks / armors names are visible upon mouse hovering, the reason for a rename is that it’s going to be something visible, not just a recycled attributes in order to add a bonus to a civ.
But then, capital ships ? Hm, that’s special. I doubt it’s gonna be Hero ships only, simply because hero ships would have been named hero ships and not Capital Ships.
It’s more plausible that it’s gonna be some scenario units, for campaign, but here again I’m not thinking it’s worth the money spent to rework that armour class naming / usage if it’s just One single unit. They could have use that armor class without renaming it and kept it as “heavy warships” if you see what I mean.
If you need an example to understand what is a Capital Ship, I’d say it can be two things. One beeing the leading ship of a fleet, like Nelson’s HMS Victory, or it could be a very spcecific battleship type.
It would be more plausible for it to be a new ship type, unique ship / regional ship. The Galleass is candidate for the classification as Capital Ship, Turtle / Thirisadai too in the sense of they’re not meant to be heavy / big / bulky, but “key role” players.
But when you think of a Capital Ship, you think more of things like Ship of the Line, and yes, they started to appear during the middle age. It was not the type of ship we all know as “Ship of the Line” with the 1st Rate, 2nd rate, etc ship types. It’s more the type of ships that ended the Meditterranean suppremy of the Galley type ship mounted with fore-artillery.
The renaming is definitly not related to the “unique ships” so far, otherwise the Caravel and the Longboat should also have received those classes, so again it’s pointing toward something new to be added.
If we consider Vikings to be the next theme… I honnestly see no Viking ship to be eligible to be classified as Capital Ship.
So far, it’s all that I can think of, it’s confirming nothing except that the team was working on naval armor renaming with LC release. (which introduced the naval reowrk, and the addition of the Catapult Galleon)
My friend calls me an entity, a Discord bot, but never a chatbot…
Yes, in the AoE 2 era, after the fall of Acre, they settled in Cyprus (1298-1523), so they would be “Cypriots” (and would use the Latin or Frankish voices in the game)…
Yes, or it could be a replacement for the barracks, like in AoE 3, with a cluster of healing tents… and the unique unit would be the Hospitaller Knight from AoE 4 (which functions like the Warrior Monk from AoE 2)… and the civilization bonuses would be:
Civilians +30% HP and +10% speed
All healed units +30% faster
Yes, but I mean after the Viking Age…
Yes, the Viking rework should come with a Norse or Slavic DLC.
Yes, but they would still be variations of the Franks…
Well, the siege of Malta did happen in 1565…at least it wasn’t like the Chinese campaign against the Aztecs in 1421 lol…
They also had colonies in the Caribbean (that connects with the Blood campaign in AoE 3 as well)…
It would be useful if, when they added the Maltese in the Mediterranean DLC, they had also included them in the campaign, like they do in AoE 2…
More or less, it’s based on a folk song from the 13th century (the second song is what we see in the King of Valencia scenario), but there’s also the Historia Roderici from the 1190s which tells of El Cid’s victory over Count Berenguer (which we see in King of Valencia) and then Yusuf (in Reconquista at the end of the campaign)…
Definitly gonna use that in my project then ! I was fearing the St-John were too nich in the mediterranean area, but no it seems they spread way further !
There was a class of very big longships called… Dragon Ships. “Drakkar” in the Anglicized version. Apparently they could have up to 120 oarsmen (60 oars), making them VeryLongBoats.
They would, but one civ for all Latinate colonies in the east is more acceptable to me than adding separate civs for specific holy orders. Maybe it could be added alongside a Saracen split so that the DLC doesn’t consist solely of civs that spent most of the medieval era as Muslims. Let’s say Outremeriens/Latins and Nubians on the Christian side, and Andalusians and Kurds on the Muslim side, making it a 4 civ DLC. (I’ve designed more in my current project, but it might be better to trickle civs slowly over time.)
What makes a Capital Ship beeing a Capital Ship is more the role on the warefare, like a roman Hexareme, or a 1st rate ship of the line, or a Lanterna oared type ship.
The vikings were not in a “fleet fashion” per say, they had no Flag-ship.
And the Drakkar is the one we tend to already ingame, the difference between a Drakkar and a Longboat is really thin, thin enought for the French name of the unit to be Drakkar infact.
Technically it’s the “all drakkars are longships but not all longships are drakkars” type of thing, most longboats were smaller snekkars and skeidas.
I know the difference is just in size rather than anything else, but they could always out a scorpion or an onager atop the board I guess.
I wonder if they’ve actually added any new civilisations that require so much work on V&V.
Could be a new mission to showcase the rework of a civ, or simply a new localization for the game. But there is also the possibility of a new mechanics impacting the game so deeply that VnV needs so much love. (I honnestly think it’s localazation and/or new civ rework introduction gameplay like they did for the chinese)
adding any other viking civi would affect three of the scenarios in v&v directly.
Not necessarly, the missions were community made at first, they not necessarly benefit from adding rework onto them. But it’s true depending on what rework would be done, a rebalance would be good.
We’ll see, but as VnV rely a lot of heavy trigger custom steup, I really think it’s more about a new mission to showcase a civ reworked, or maybe just some new scenarios added to VnV.
I’ve watched a video yesterday about some rumors that started 6 month ago approximatly. It seems that World’s Edge hirered some Unreal Engine specialized guys to work on a new Age of Empire thing using Unreal Engine.
The AoE3 fans also noticed some Steamdb works on their deposite, without any real official announcement yet. We know AoE3 had an announcement about cancelling the dlc in january 2025, but they never said “we’re not going to do it”, just that they felt the announcement of the dlc too early just “for them to be part of the show”.
That dlc was about Poland and Danemark, and I doubt that they’re doing another dlc if they do a dlc work, as in, why would you not continue smething you already started ?
Danemark in AoE3, Norse in AoE4, viking type garrison flag in AoE2. The more it goes the more it points toward viking shared work all across the age of empires saga.
The Unreal Engine topic is definitly hinting that a new thing is getting done on it. As someone who worked with UE4 and 5 myself, what I can tell you is that UE is perfect for cross-platforming. That’s probably the reason why they picked it at first, they can publish on everything directly without any portage what so ever. And there is also a lot of other strong point with UE series but it’s not the topic of the thread.
If we take the “more surprise to come” that the team gave us about the “what’s on the horizon”, what a better surprise could they give us than a 5th Age of Empires announcement in last august ? The AoE3 dlc return is kinda also pretty fair to guess, so they had enought time to spend on ps5 release, and other main content etc.
Some new main app update on steamdb today, I wish we can have something to study this week with a july patch and some teasing images !
