Except it was neither centralised (competing warring states with different leaders) nor culturally uniform.
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The only civs which shouldn’t have been added the way they were added are in my opinion those excessive umbrellas like Slavs, Saracens or Indians. To me to be honest, the Slavs just represent the Kievan Rus and the Indians the Mughals. They might never rename them, but honestly, it would do those world regions justice to proceed this way.
I’m probably forgetting some other huge civ umbrellas but that’s what my thoughts are. I’m really happy so far with the civ choices we got and to repeat myself I’d love to see more.
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indians/chinese/slavs/italians, umbrella civs basically, why add one when you can’t represent all, just add separate civs (though slavs and italians do feel okay to me)
also the american civs, now the floodgates are open and civs with techs they shouldn’t have get the aztec wheelbarrow excuse
also Lithuanians should have been poles
and archer mayans?
I always thought it was weird that the Vietnamese were added, it was an awkward addition to the game.
The Viets relied entirely on guerilla warfare tactics in their wars (they didn’t even fight any battles). They only participated in a few organized battles during this period (and they were utterly curb stomped in nearly every one of those). They had no archers, only infantry and cavalry (yet their in-game specialty is archery range units and Rattan Archers are their unique unit). Elephants were documented in a single battle by the Viets and they were used as riding outposts for the Viet officers. We’re not even sure if these were war elephants, but the in-game Viet have access to battle elephants. The Viet armies in this time period would best correspond to the in-game militia, spearmen, and light cavalry. I guess it could have made sense to include the Viets broadly into the category of Raider civs that was originally planned for the Celts, Vikings, and Mongols. The Viets would not have organized armies until the introduction of later firearms and cannons. It’s just weird seeing the Vietnamese in game with archers, crossbows, and armored knights. Heck, they shouldn’t even be able to build castles. Their strategy was to abandon their towns and retreat into the jungles whenever they were invaded by foreign troops.
Where the **** do you get that idea about the Vietnamese army from? Reading propaganda too much?
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Not in the Middle Ages, they actually had an army that could face up to the Chinese on the field back then.
Que?
“Warfare during this 500-year period (938-1407) was characterized by a combination of amphibious and land assaults.”
This usually means a lot of Ranged combat, since you can only successfully disembark with good Ranged contingents covering your back, or at night and hidden like the Vikings did.
Boths Celts and Viets were settled civs by the Middle Ages, no Raiders like the Turks, Mongols, Goths or Vikings.
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I am Viet
I’m not saying Viets were pillagers. But in original AGE 2 design docs you can clearly see Mongols, Celts, and Vikings were going to be implemented as a special class of civs (titled for development purposese as Raider Civs) with unique mechanics and did not advance through the ages. This would have made sense for the Vietnamese. So I could see the Vietnamese fitting into this framework, but since Raider Civs were never implemented this way, I have to say that the Viets are just plain weird in the game.
Still, Vietnamese archers? Crossbows are mentioned only once in a mythical legend (aka a fairy tale) circa 200BC and do not reappear again until the Vietnam War. Archers? We have headcounts for cavalrymen, infantrymen, and freakin elephants! But bowmen? Nope. We have recovered swords, guns, arquebuses. Arrowheads? Nope.
It’s even a meme on the Vietnam reddit how dastardly incorrect the representation of the Vietnamese are in AOE.
My guess is taht AoE2 was supposed to start where AoE1 left off, in the Roman Imperial Period, in which Celts would have made sense as a Raider civ.
However, they decided to start it much later, at the Fall of Rome, and by then Celts likely did not even make much sense as a civ, but they also already had the Woad Raider, and Braveheart was a huge hit.
Raider civs, as per original plan, would have never worked in AoE2. They would either be OP or useless.
" Quiver and crossbow arrows from Vietnam or Cambodia.
Yes. A 20th century crossbow.
Nowhere does it say it is from the 20th Century.
Page 114 to 117.
Literally the top of pg 114.
You are correct, I withdraw my statement.
But yes, Medieval Vietnam was known for Archery.
I think the original 13 could’ve been expanded to 16. Like, why 13? Umbrella civs such as Teutons, Turks, and Saracens could’ve been Saxons + Prussians, Ottomans + Cumans (for example), and Arabs + Kurds (or whatever). Boom, now there’s 16 (nice even number) and no more umbrella civs.
Next, the Conq’s expansion… oh boy oh boy. Mixed feelings on that release, it added great features like farm queues and unique techs, but, brought the stupidity that are the Meso civs. First off, I have no problem with them, but the whole theme of the New World should have been regulated to AoE3. The game runs from year 0-1500, and the only contact the Aztecs and Mayans have until the Spanish arrive around 1500 are themselves. Not to mention the units perpetually running on crack cocaine or the rickshaw trade carts that have wheels which were unknown to them at the time. Set the bar for unrealism past throwing scimitars, in what was a money grab for the Latin American community.
Since then, there have been a bunch of DLCs which most of us weren’t around for until DE came out. I can’t comment of those too much aside from I think SE Asia got way more attention than other more relevant regions, and there are civs that had little to no contact with others which I don’t think should be in the game. Less so Ethiopians, but specifically Malians.
Other than that, yeah some better tweaking could’ve been done with the whole Lithuanian/Slav thing, or Magyars getting the Hussar UU but maybe they can fix that down the road.
I think, Indians+Arabs should have the same civ number as Christian Europeans, but of course that would bring revenue down. You could go see the aoe4 thread about "what if there are only 10 civs.
As for China…idk, they are actually diverse but they try really hard to homogenize themselves that it becomes awkward to split them.
Sinicization Process:
The Imperial Courts found out long ago, taht a people with a singular language, customs, tradition and allegiance; is easier to rule over, than several disparate tribes and nations.
Yeah, even the imperial courts were sinicized when they are not Han. I mean, what am I talking about? There’s even muslim concentration camps today!
The only regret is Tibet…they should’ve been a civ instead of various other less important ones.
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The Han have been very successful where other ethnic groups have faded into the darkness of History, precisely because they were very tenacious and ruthless.
They could be kind or cruel when they had to, and did not let others manipulate them, becoming the manipulators themselves.
Tibet should have been a civ in this game, that is true.
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You could argue the same way the other way round actually. Why does every history game solely have to focus on Europe? History isn’t European by nature. You know, if you would add more Western African civs, of course Malians would have somebody to fight against. That’s why I would like to see some more African ones as well as American ones. Those world regions are just barely touched.
To cite Sandy Petersen:
“Frankly, we thought the New World civs were the most exciting. Don’t waste your time flaming us about how they were stone-age savages. All you do is show your ignorance. Go read a book or something. We knew that the Aztecs were cool, had name recognition, and were defeated by a concatenation of lucky flukes. Maybe we’ll do India and Africa another day.”
http://aok.heavengames.com/gameinfo/conquerors-expansion
Forgotten just fulfilled what Ensemble always wanted to do. If they had kept adding solely European civs, that would have not been as exciting as the additions we got.
I’ve played this year for now more than 15 years and I remember vividly how people kept asking for African civs and Khmer. Nowadays, people (including me) are still asking for some more world regions to be considered like North America and South/Central Africa.
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The ideas of World History, and Game of Civilizations, are European, however.
Europeans were the first peoples to actually have an active interest on what happened before they showed up. This started in Ancient Greece, and has mostly remained until now.
It was traditional for many cultures to even erase any trace of what had preceded them, but not in Europe.
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They should split Chinese to Tibetans, Jurchen and Tanguts.
Tibetans is the most popular civilization that’s not in the game.
Jurchen could represent the East Asian heavy Cavalry and Gunpowder
Tanguts would be represent Chinese Siege engines: Flamethrowers etc…
To be honest 3 african civs are nothing. There are tons of options: Kongolese, Swahili, Zimbabweans, Uganda, Mossi, Benin, Ghana, Hausa, Songhai, Somalis, Kanembu, Nubians, Vandals, etc…
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