There’s this good concept art for Zimbabwean architecture. Swahili and Kongolese would be pretty different though so I don’t know what would be the best approach to take. Swahili would be more Islamic, Kongolese more made of fibre/wood materials before the 15th century when you have stone buildings such a Kulumbimbi. So a generic set (maybe lumping in Benin+Yoruba as well somehow) wouldn’t be very accurate but I’d rather that than not have these civs.
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Yes, but it’s still better not to risk it…
Of course, the Balkans will have their dlc sooner or later…
Right…here it is xd…
Yes, from Rurik (in the 9th century) to Ivan IV the Terrible (in the 16th century) all are valid options…in fact Ivan IV appears in the Rus campaign of AoE 4…
Age of Empires Campaigns coming to Return of Rome - Age of Empires
We will be officially bringing the Ascent of Egypt tutorial campaign, plus three AoE campaigns to Return of Rome, including The First Punic War campaign. These campaigns will launch in future updates to Return of Rome, similar to our Co-Op Campaign content rollout. More details about their release will be available soon.
Now is your opportunity to vote on the other two campaigns you’d like to see return to Rome! Voting is live and will remain open until the 2nd of June:
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- Ave Caesar
- Enemies of Rome
- Imperium Romanum
- Glory of Greece
- The Rise of Rome
- Reign of the Hatti
- Voices of Babylon
- Yamato, Empire of the Rising Sun
You, the Age community, are at the heart of everything we do, and we are committed to continue to earn your trust. Your input plays a crucial role in shaping our future updates. We’re currently preparing a series of hotfixes to address immediate concerns with further support coming soon.
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Although it makes me noisy that we have to choose which campaign to include…it hurts me to have to leave some out, I wanted them to include all…I ended up choosing Glory of Greece and Yamato, the Empire of the Rising Sun simply so that the 3 most representative civs of ancient times (Egypt, Greece and Rome) had campaigns and Yamato so you can fight with the 3 original eastern civs of East Asia:Yamato,Shang and Choson…then we would be left without VoB (goodbye The Holy Man snif),The Reign of the Hatti and the others The Rise of Rome campaigns…
That seems fine to me…
I think the Swahili could potentially share their architecture set with the Somali, since they had some similarities.
The Ethiopians should also have a new architecture set, which they could share with the Nubians. The other suggested civs may fit the the African set (which would be renamed West African/Sahelian). Although I’m not sure what to do with civs like the Kanembu/Kanuri or the Kongolese, since they were more isolate.
None of the above
How would an Oceania/Pacific civ even work lol. I would love to see it thats sounds awesome dont get me wrong, but just, how?
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Meso civi with a uu ship.If eagles can be a incan unit no reason why polynesians cant have them.
@Apocalypso4826 I’m thinking of making a thread about the various architectures of Africa just to share what I’ve learned with anyone who wants to know. However, I think it will take me a while to gather descriptions and images.
@laptopper This concept art is really good. You’re right that the Bantus would be different from each other, I also have this concern if there should be a single set for them or several.
Yes, Swahilis may share architecture with Somalis, one that would have Islamic elements like domes and arches, as well as being heavy on stone; however, Swahili also used coral as a material and each city was somewhat different from the others.
Kongo and Zimbabwe are more similar to each other in that they use wattle and daub as the main material (and both used stone at some point as well), but Kongo also used vegetable fibers and had rectangular houses with gabled roofs, while Zimbabwe and most of Bantu had round houses with conical roofs. Both always used thatched roofs, however.
Benin architecture is so detailed that I prefer to leave the description to the thread I intend to make. And yes, you are right that we would have to have Yoruba along with Benin to justify including a unique set for them.
@StoreyedPlate74 Kanembu could use the same set as the Malians, with the proper adjustments. There is very little material evidence of them, but we do know that they used baked mud bricks and square domed buildings.
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I voted Lowlands. I like the history of Frisians resisting being subjugated. But I’ve always wanted a purely generic playable civ, with all the units and techs but no bonuses or unique anything. Coat of arms could be a white circle or vanilla flower. But also I expect a few balances to be worked out after Romans have had some time.
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I think having a new regional unit that is like the Eagle, but has less pierce armor and is a trash unit would be more interesting. To compensate for the lack of a Knight-type unit, all Oceania civs will have something benefitting their skirmishers so they don’t struggle against archers.
I don’t understand the fascination with obscure and relatively historically irrelevant small civilisations. On the other hand, I’m a super fanboy and I buy every DLC regardless so gimme more civs!
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It is a bit difficult at this point (43 official civs just for AoE II) not to try to think of the long term. Indeed: do we want eventually 50 civs? 75? 100?
On the one hand, it is always more diversity and experience for the historical players, who are most of the people who would purchase a new DLC.
But on the other, it makes for a game harder to read for new comers. It is also harder and harder for devs to come up with new ideas on how to make a civ unique without making the legacy civs we all know and love feel blend. Of course, they can just keep changing the old civs, but this would go against the initial spirit of DE, which was supposed to be: ‘let’s balance everything existing once and for all, and then add new content adapted to that state of balance’. It took a bit of time, but I think devs did a marvellous job with that, mostly.
Moreover, more civs also means more mechanics probably, some of which generated a lot of passions (one-time techs, charged attack, etc.). And I think quite understandably so, as we want to have AoE II keep its identity, which very much means its core mechanics, without adding anything too ‘alien’. Not that I don’t like change, but then I would rather play another game.
Another issue with always adding more civs is the cultural representations which belong to AoE II. Of course hot topic, and in a way a lot of things are already inaccurate from start (Aztecs with trebuchets, etc.). I will just keep my opinion to this: I don’t think we should dig for civilisations so much that we start cutting existing civilisations which are a legitimate representation of a continuous culture into tiny pieces, like some here want to do with Germans (Teutons), Slavs (which was too broad to start with, but is now fine representing eastern Slavs), Italians (I guess Venice would not be the worse, but we already have Sicilians, Byzantines, and now Romans), or Chinese (which is broad indeed, but China was unified during a large part of Middle Ages, and this does not mean Tibetans, Jurchen, etc. can not be represented). Adding Burgundians was already sort of borderline. Moreover, there is a number of civilisations that did not form kingdoms/empires or even states, or that were centred around completely different activities than warfare as it occurred in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. And so it is fine not to add them to the game. For instance, I think Polynesians did marvels in navigation, and formed a number of original and interesting civilisations at an era we call Middle Ages. But does it make sense to them to AoE II? I don’t quite think so. It may seem eurocentric to some, but I think it’s fine having a game mostly centred on Eurasia, including the Middle East, the Mediterranean and India, which does not exclude kingdoms and empires from all over, as much as they were somewhat centralised states and went at war. So I am only happy the Malians and the Aztecs for instance are part of the game, and cultures like the Chimu or the Kongo seem like they could be appropriate additions.
All of this to say: knowing which new civs to add is a tough, tough call. This actually encouraged me to write another topic, to suggest non-civilisation possible DLCs.
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I disagree, I mean the basic mechanics of the game stay there since it’s classic like chess. It’s just an issue of adding variety to a system that already works (aside from technical issues).
I don’t really see the problem in it but maybe I’m short sighted.
There are still many major, powerful empires which aren’t in the game though, including ones much more powerful than some which exist in the game. These include ones which might not be that well known to most, but that doesn’t equate to them not being powerful. So I wouldn’t worry, there’s plenty left without resorting to smaller, less powerful civilisations.
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What architecture do you think Hausa should get in theory? Would they go with Yoruba+Benin or with Malians?
Africa needs 3 expansions at least with:
Somalis, Nubians, Kanem-Bornu
Swahili, Kongolese, Shonas
Hausa, Songhai, Benin
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Yet you failed to mention any. I am very curious if there was any civilization in history with a more powerful empire than all of the ones we have in AoE.
I’d switch out Songhai with the Soninike personally, the Songhai age of prominence was in that weird spot at the end of the timeline where i think they’d fit better in aoe3. The Soninike, however, would be more appropriate i think, and would even give more diversity to the enemies in the Malian campaign imo.
I prefer the Songhai for the much better campaign potential, also the predecessor Gao Empire was founded in the 9th century. Songhai makes 0 sense in aoe3, because they failed to modernize their army, they were literally stuck in the Middle Ages, but the Soninke is also a good option, if there is a 4th slot.
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Why are we calling them Soninke when the term Ghanaians is way more recognizable?
I didn’t “fail” to do anything, I just didn’t intend to list all possible civs (I’d be here a while), just to say that there were many
Picking empires only from Africa alone we could have Songhay, Ghana, Oyo (Yoruba), Kanem/Bornu and Ajuran (Somalis). None of those are in the game yet. Obviously there are loads from Asia as well, plus the Americas, and even at least one empire left from Europe (Serbs) (and also Georgians if you see them as European).
If you’re curious in more I could list more. There’s none left to add which were more powerful than all those currently in the game (none are more powerful than Mongols at their height), but there are plenty that were more powerful than some or even quite a lot of the civs we have already
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