Well going by the “so you liked Dynasties of India?” teaser, it’s going to be one of a few things:
A China split DLC. A big Asian civ that represents various groups, though unlike the Indians I can’t see the Chinese being renamed.
A Slav split DLC. Like the Indians were, the Slavs are an umbrella civ. They have already been split to a degree but this could see the last few civs they represent being added and then the Slavs renamed to something that makes it clear they are “the Russian civ”.
A DLC that, like DoI, focuses on somewhere more “obscure” than Europe or West/East Asia as far as western-centric knowledge of medieval era history goes, so maybe Africa or the Americas.
A big Asian DLC featuring civs from various parts of the continent, including more Indian/South Asian civs that DoI missed out on.
With the “elephant in the room” comment on Persians a lot of people now think we’ll get a Persian/Armenian/Georgian DLC which I would absolutely welcome but I don’t quite know how that would tie in with the “so you liked Dynasties of India?” comment, unless they partially split the Persians and give us the Afghans, which wouldn’t quite be the same as what they did with the Indians.
I’m hoping the “So you like to have DLCs? We’re taking notes” means more along the lines of a bigger set of new civs. 2 civs are cute and all, but let’s try to get a bigger group at once.
East Asia is one of the areas I can think of with plenty of candidates for such a size. And frankly it’s an area I want to personally see get fleshed out, due to the Chinese or Mongols having to be used to cover a bunch of civs from that area in campaigns (e.g. Jurchens, Khitans, Tanguts).
Although perhaps it is like “add extra civs, but also a rework” and it is Georgians & Armenians with a heavy rework of Persians like the Indians got into Hindustanis.
I hope this is what it means. I want a potential Caucasus expansion (which is probably the next one, tbh) to be a conventional size, with four new civs and an architecture set instead of just two with preexisting architecture sets. Caucasus civs would not fit any preexisting architecture sets at all (the Georgians could have the Central European one, but this isn’t ideal), so the right thing to do would be to finally introduce a new architecture set after 4 years.
Imo you’re comparing apples to oranges. From the medieval timeframe up until the 20 th century and now, india was essentially united, first by mughals, then british. This never happened in europe. Hence to the foreigner, india is easier seen as one entity, compared to europe. IMO two sub-civs would’ve been enough, representing the hindu and muslim influence respectively.
To OP: I think tibet and nepal would be a nice addition, with the introduction of an “everest architecture”. The caucasus would be nice too, with a balkan/byzantine architecture set. My 2 cents.
I wouldn’t exactly call being second place “losing”. Also, I haven’t seen the polls you’re talking about but Africa would probably rank higher if Asia was split into several parts. I also made a poll a few monthes ago, and aside from Caucasus the Eastern Steppe was the Asian region with the higher number of votes, yet ranked behind both Central and East Africa.
The Mughal Empire was founded in the 16th century, it’s already outside of the medieval era despite being covered by this game. I think the only time during what is usually seen as the Middle Ages when India was almost united (though some parts still resisted) was the Delhi Sultanate during the first half of the 14th century and it didn’t last.
Uneducated foreigners may think India was a politically and culturally united country during this time period, but I personally like it better when a historical game challenge my misconceptions about history rather than confirm them, so I don’t see how it’s an argument.
I think it would be a cool idea to release DLC containing campaigns and civs created by modders. A lot of cool mods have been created that could become full-fledged AoE 2 content. Here are some examples:
########: Croats civ & Tomislav Campaign
Dharma expansion: Tibetans, Nepalis and Siamese (and more) civs
Thrones of Iberia: Castile, Leon, Aragon and Moors civs & Scenario
Nono, you misunderstood me. I’ve written that the idea of one india is easier to accept than one europe, because it has been united for so much longer, for centuries.
The game is build around western stereotypes, afterall. Aztec religion wasn’t the most developed yet they’re a monk civ, the germans kingdoms were fractured and devided into oblivion yet they’re the teutons and essentially represent all of medieval germans etc. Hope you get my point.
If the game was focused initially, say, on asian and oceanic dynasties or japanese tradition - i agree. That would be a good compromise, the old indo-european pagan religions are all very similar and so is pre-shism christianity. Afterall, even in modern times (before meiji), to a japanese, there wasn’t much difference between a portugal christian and a russian orthodox, they were equally european gaijin.
By the way, there’s been many new votes today and now the difference between Asia and Africa is only about 1% of the votes! Maybe with more time the dynamic will be reversed?
