Very interesting concept. One I would honestly love to test if there was one.
Honestly, I wondered many times ever since the oldest AoM, why we can’t pick any god as our major god and why we can choose only out of 2 gods for minor god each age. For example… Odysseus (/Ithaca) could have some campaign where he could have Athena as a major god and other gods including Zeus, as a minor one.
The same as you suggested Apollo for the Trojans - it’s natural it should be their major god.
But it feels like a total conversion mod as it would remake the whole game (considering also the other changes you mention). Still… I would rly love to see it.
I’m not against the idea of variants civs or gods, but not if they implement them like they did with aoe4, as that was what made me quit the game for good.
Like, I get it that AoM is basically pure fantasy, but there still have to be some sense of coherence in a DLC.
For example the romans can be a decent variant civ of either the atlanteans or the greeks, which is fine (although there would be ground for a standalone civ).
But for example, you can’t release a DLC with the romans, and the the Army of Arkantos, if you understand what I’m saying.
I would instead prefer to get new major gods for already existing civ, like freyir, which was a fantastical addition.
Also, variants might be nice, but if people are still waiting for Chinese, Aztecs or some other expected civs, you might want to be careful on how you advertise them…
I don’t think AoE4 introduced the concept of variant civs, I think Age of Mythology did when it created the Major Gods as variants within each culture. Making culture variants on top of the major god variants would be too much for me.
I think we deserve a full fledged new civs rather than variant civs that has the same architecture & unit styles of the pre - existing civs. After the catastrophe that is the AoE 4 DLC, I’d rather they stay away from variant civs. I want my AoM as AoE 4 free as possible.
I don’t like any of the Variant civs in AoE4.
All of them are pretty bad choices.
But I do like the concept for including smaller cultures. The only game in the series that has a feature build in for supporting smaller cultures is AoE3(DE) with it’s minor civilisation system.
I think it’s really sad to know that some cultures will never be represented in AoM because they are too small to offer enough uniqueness and enough popularity to make them worth a full pantheon.
The best examples are Nubians. They worshipped more or less the same gods as the Egyptians and were heavily influenced by them, but they were clearly their own culture.
With the current system they would never have the chance to be represented in AoMR as more then just Mercenaries.
This is not an “or” question.
Of course we want new fully fledged civilisations!
Variant civilisations offer ways to explore things that are impossible with new civilisations or would never be financially viable with new civilisations.
I don’t think that it would work the make Trojans into a full civilisation but they would work perfectly well as a variant civilisation of the Greeks.
Why a catastrophe? Because you didn’t like it?
According to Worlds Edge it was the best selling Expansion in the history of Age of Empires.
Yes, because I don’t like it. I was already mad when I bought the game, because the graphics “artsyle” didn’t match with the trailer from their beta gameplay. Then when the DLC came out with their new variant civs, I realized that the game was never for me & I dropped it. The DLC for me was the final nail in the coffin, that’s why it is a catastrophe, and that’s why I hope that AoM doesn’t go down that path.
Variant civs don’t work with the existing structure of age of mythology, but adding to existing pantheons and full new civs will be the way to go.
Given the AOE 2 has like 30 new civs age of mythology has a lot of life on it.
What they really need to add is a toggle like in aoe 2 that makes all techs available. So if your playing Kronos you get access to all oranos and Gaia techs and bonuses.
Variant civilisations would be added to existing Pantheons but they would have more differences compared to the other options in the Pantheon like more different unique units.
Variant civilisations would be God Packs like Freyr just offering more unique human units, maybe less unique minor gods in exchange, depends.
Amazons for example could be a selection of all current Greek Female Minor Gods plus some new ones for Ages that don’t have 2 Female options.
If the Amazones are added after a new Major God like Demeter they might share half the Minor gods with that one and would get their uniqueness from all human units being female.
All AoE2 civilisations have less unique content then a single Major God in AoM, that is not really a comparison.
You could make argue with AoE3 but even there there are a lot more common features between civilisations, especially all the European ones.
AoE2HD got a lot of new civilisations in each DLC and even AoE2DE always offers at last 2 (RoR is an exception because it includes all of AoE1).
AoMR will have 1 Pantheon with 3 Major gods per DLC, it would take like 20-50 years to get to the same number of civilisations as AoE2 depending on the speed civilisations are added.
There are already people arguing that there should be no additional DLC after the 2 already confirmed ones, that would mean only 1 new pantheon after the Chinese.
Without Variant civilisations we will certainly never see Nubians in the game for example. They are to similar to Egyptians.
In AoE2 the full tech tree mode removes all bonuses and unique technologies and only leaves unique units.
That would make no sense for AoM.
No idea how that would work at all.
You want a combined pantheon thing. I don’t think that would have many fans.
AoE2 would also never ever get this feature nowadays if it wasn’t already part of the game since forever.
In AoK it kinda made sense since there were no regional units.
Now you have a Stable full of stuff if you play on all techs.