What civilizations do you think shouldn't have been added in the first place in AOE2?

Well, just curious how others think about that many civilizations in AOE2:DE.

Do you have your own thoughts of civilizations that shouldn’t have been published in the first place?

For example, civilizations that you may think

  • “was this civ really meaningful in history? Why did they add this? Should’ve added XXX instead of this.”
  • “why are Portuguese and Spanish separated instead of being Iberians though they’ve been right next each other and even languages are similar?”
  • “why do they make constantly civs based on country like Lithuanians rather than ethnicity?”
  • “why is Cumans needed though they’re also a kind of Turks?”

… etc. Anything that you have in your mind. :slight_smile:

Huns.
They were not ven a civilization to begin with, never built anything, and disappeared right after Atill died.

The Huns were not even that much “Hunnic” to begin with, since most of Atilla’s horde was subject tribes, and not the Huns themselves.

11 Likes

AOE2 Conquerors expansion - Huns
The forgotten expansion - Indians(should have been mughals)
African kingdoms - portuguese
Last khans - tatars bulgarians cumans

Tatars are same as mongols tibet would have been a better option.
Lithuanians should be called balts to represent all the baltic peoples.
Generic Indians should be 3 civis minimum.
I would preferred to see a bantu civi or couple of civis to represent africa better.

In conclusion
AoC replace huns with inca
Forgotten rename indians to mughals add chola for inca
African kingdoms rreplace portuguese with bantu
Last kahns replace tatars with tibetans,rename lithuanians to balts

3 Likes

Bantu would be the same stupid umbrella as Indians. You can’t represent South Africa with one civilization with different cultures, army etc.

8 Likes

The devs should’ve added Hephthalites instead of Huns if they really wanted to add an early medieval civilization.
Goths are fine imo. They’re the same early medieval, but they have a bad civ design and they are far from being historically accurate. They didn’t have famous infantry or access to gunpowder.
Indians should be divided into 4 civilizations: Rajputs/Delhiite/early Mughals (current Indians), Tamils, Sinhalese and Bengalis (Palas).
Italians make sense as an umbrella civilization, only Venetians were different than others.
Slavs divided into 2 civs in Definitive Edition: Slavs(East Slavs) and Bulgarians(South Slavs). Only West Slavs are missing (Poland+Bohemia=Wends). They were different from Bulgarians or Slavs (Slavs and Bulgarians are already very similar in the game: Boyars, Orthodoxy, civilization design)
Portuguese are fine as a civ, but it’s silly they made into the game in African Kingdoms (Yes, they had connection with Kongolese, Ethiopians, Arabs and Swahili states like Kilwa or Zanzibar, but they still weren’t Africans) Kanembu would’ve been better, simply because there’s still a hole between Berbers, Malians and Ethiopians.
Tatars are fine because it would be weird to represent the Timurid Empire (Bombard Elephants are still missing) with Mongols also the Turkic umbrella is enormous=different cultures, army, role in the history. Current Turks represent the Seljuks and the Ottomans. An early medieval Turkic khaganate would be unique enough in the game, in my opinion, for example the Göktürks or the Uyghurs.

4 Likes

Goths should have played how the Huns play, with Heavy Cavalry and Cav Archers, and a Raiding Cavalry unit, or just the Huskarl at the Castle as an anti-Archer unit.

3 Likes

Only one civi representing each area already, so bantu is not so bad.

4 Likes

tbh, the Saracens, I think this is the most broad of all the umbrella civs which just also makes it impossible to insert any more Arab kingdoms into the game as “the Saracens” are basically supposed to be all the Arab civs at once, which is really bad considering how different a lot of them were, and how they ruled different territories over different time periods and even fought with each other. Considering the Shia Sunni schism is also a dominant factor in the history of the time period it is even worse that they are all presented as one entity in the game.

You could at the very least add the Ayyubids and Fatamids as additional factions and alongside “the Saracens” who would represent the Rashidun/Abbasids/Umayyad caliphates.

2 Likes

Saracens is the civilization, not the religious group they belong to. AoE2 does not care for religious differences or nationalities, only different cultures.

The Arabs were so efficient at conquering and replacing the natives, that being represented as only one civ is more than justified.
They all speak and act very similarly, and their culture is very monolithic and hard to break apart.

You can have a Syrian Arab, an Egyptian Arab and an Algerian Arab in one room, and most people could not tell the difference, specially if they were all Medieval, and likely under the same Caliphate.

8 Likes

I take this obscure thread and flip it on its head

Mesos should never have been added. FAR TOO many fictional units. Mayans meta is literally a unit that only belonged to aztecs. Siege, arbs all garbage. It would have been just as realistic to give them unicorns.

China and Japan should never have been added. Representations are far too inadequate. Nevermind massive tech mogul china. Japan was far superior to pre school European civs. Just the population size alone would eradicate britons.

But yes let’s make yet another thread with the sole intent of targeting and complaining about historical aspects of AOE which is practically a fictional universe. There is likely not a single civ that is accurately depicted. But let’s complain about “your civ” and how only it is “not right”

You aren’t going to change a single thing with a thread like this. It is purely for complaining

3 Likes

No.
In fact, they were quite fragmented and tribalistic, when compared to almost any European kingdom at the time.

In terms of weapons technology, Medieval Europe had the advantage over Japan too, with better armour, polearms, crossbows, ship designs and siege engines.

5 Likes

I think it is very hard to make this kinds of comparisons, at these things depend on which particular century we are looking at. It is also kind of a meaningless topic, many of these civilizations have limited or non-existant contact with each other, forget about waging war to each other.
I think it’s far more productive to discuss the civilizations from a gameplay perspective, instead of these meaningless discussions on a elements only loosely inspired to history.

Gameplay wise, I think there are too many civs. I’m not saying that I want anything removed at this point, but imo it would have been better not to exceed 30 civs or so. Civs like porto, italians or slavs feel bland to me (irrespectively of their strength).
I was kinda disappointed by the fact that DE brought 4 new civs all focusing on cavalry, I think it would have been better to have some variety.

So you make a completely wrong assertion, and then back away.

As expected.

1 Like

Huns may represent the Avars and the some nomad barbarians in the east Europe.
Tatars may represent the Turkic people living in the central Asia, for example, the Uyghurs.
Persians may represent the Iranic agricultural nations living in modern Iran and Afghan.

They might be the bad designs in the beginning, but they still found their own value in the end.

1 Like

These are exactly my same sentiments about the OP of this post. Civs are basically what makes the Age of Empires franchise fun. They can’t have all the civs purely accurate.

I don’t think there are “too many civs” to be honest. It’s just that some civs need a little rework to have more variety. AoE 2 DE civs aren’t wholly unique as a civ with each civ just having some different bonuses and unique units.

1 Like

A lot of misconceptions here, but that is basically a European view and has little to do with reality. In a region where the religious differences were in some ways more important they actually amounted to the same thing as civilistional differences. Not to mention there were even differences in ethnic and cultural identities between the different states. The Ayyubids were of Kuridsh origin, yet Salahadin is presented as an Arab in the AOE2 campaigns. This would be like depicting William Wallace as a Briton. The entire Fatamid identity was also created around their absolute rejection and hatred of the Islamic Caliphates ruling Baghdad and Damascus, and their society and military and religious institutions were all different. They even took side of some Christian kingdoms against the Abbasids.

If the game can represent the Franks, Goths, and Teutons, all of which were of Germanic origin, instead of for example having one overarching civ called “the Germans”, then it can represent the different states that existed alongside each other and often competed against each other during the same period in the Middle East and North Africa.

Yes I too am bothered by the completely unrealistic tech tree of the meso civs. I mean War Galleys? Really???

1 Like

You know complaining is a perfectly legitimate pass time activity. :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Franks, Teutons and Goths became very different societies in teh Middle Ages, Arabs did not.
Arabs had a centralized and majorly uniform culture in the Middle Ages, which was precisely why they were so efficient at projecting power and conquering more land.

As a civilization, there was a much distinction in a Caliphate as there was in the Roman Empire: You were basucally an Arab/Roman, or a second class minority.
And those empires made sure it kept that way for as long as they occupied the territory.

AoE2 is not about states or kingdoms. it is about varied and different civilizations.

Easy answer, the game is called Age of Empires not Civilization.

The civ should have somewhat of an imperial history in the aoe timeframe. Ofc some names are rather confusing because they cover ethnic groups as well. Celts were the last civ of AoK that was added and then made the name of Britons which was the first civ a bit overlapping. Then alike in TF fanmod there was Slavs and Indians added which are ethnic names and not really empires creating some confusion if they are the Rus or the Mughals. But except those you can somewhat always refer an empire to a civ and alike is with Lith. That is why we will never have Sami civ or Frisian, they were never an empire.

And btw Tatars are not Mongols, they are different. Tatars are turkic, Mongols are not. That is why the western world, the game and the civ names are coming from, are having names for Mongols, Huns, Tatars, Cumans.

1 Like