Which factions do you think should be added: Early Modern Era edition

Before voting, keep in mind that the question isn’t “Which of those civs do you want in the game?” but rather “Wich of those civs would you like to see in an Early Modern Era themed dlc?” (Early Modern Era being loosely defined here as mid 15th to late 16th century), so maybe take this into account if you think a civ you like would be better represented if it’s in game appearance was more based on its earlier history.

  • Assamese (Kamata Kingdom, 1257-1587 ; Ahom Kingdom, 1228-1826)
  • Austrian (Archduchy of Austria, 1453-1804)
  • Azeri/Azerbaijani (Qara Qoyunlu, 1374-1468, Aq Qoyunlu, 1378-1503)
  • Baloch (Khanate of Kalat, 1512-1955)
  • Bavarian (Duchy of Bavaria, 6th c.-1623)
  • Cham (Kingdom of Champa, 192-1832)
  • Chimu (Kingdom of Chimor, 10th c.-1470)
  • Deccani (Bahmani Sultanate, 1347-1527)
  • Dutch (Dutch Republic, 1579-1795)
  • Edo (Kingdom of Benin, 1180-1897)
  • Flemish (County of Flanders, 862-1797)
  • Fula/Fulani (Empire of Great Fulo, 1490-1776)
  • Gujarati (Gujarat Sultanate, 1407-1573)
  • Hanseatic (Free City of Lübeck, 1226-1811)
  • Hausa (Sultanate of Kano, 1350-1805)
  • Jolof (Jolof Empire, 1350-1549)
  • Kannada/Kannadiga (Vijayanagara Empire, 1336-1646)
  • Kanuri/Kanembu (Bornu Empire, 14th c.-1893)
  • Kazakh (Khazak Khanate, 1465-1847)
  • Kongo/Congolese (Kingdom of Kongo, 1390-1914)
  • Lao (Kingdom of Lan Xang, 1353-1707)
  • Malagasy (Kingdom of Imerina, 1540-1897)
  • Mapuche
  • Mon (Kingdom of Pegu, 1287-1552)
  • Muisca (Muisca Confederation, 15th c.-1540)
  • Odia/Oriya ######### Empire, 1434-1541)
  • Papal (Papal States, 756-1870)
  • Purépecha/Tarascan (Purépecha Empire, 14th c.-1530)
  • Shona (Kingdom of Mutapa, 1430-1760)
  • Siamese/Thai (Ayutthaya Kingdom, 1351-1767)
  • Sinhalese (Kingdom of Kotte, 1412-1597 ; Kingdom of Kandy, 1496-1815)
  • Somali (Ajuran Sultanate, 13th-17th c. ; Adal Sultanate, 1415-1577)
  • Songhai (Songhai Empire, 1464-1591)
  • Swahili (Kilwa Sultanate, 957-1513)
  • Swede (Kingdom of Sweden, 1521-present)
  • Swiss (Swiss Confederacy, 1291-1798)
  • Tlaxcaltec (Tlaxcala, 1348-1520)
  • Tuareg (Sultanate of Aïr/Agadez, 1449-1900)
  • Tuscanian (Republic of Florence, 1115-1569 ; Grand Duchy of Tuscany, 1569-1860)
  • Uzbek (Uzbek Khanate, 1428-1471 ; Khanate of Bukhara, 1500-1785)
  • Venetian (République de Venise, 697-1797)
  • Vlach/Romanian (Principalty of Wallachia, 1330-1859 ; Principality of Moldavia, 1346-1859)
  • Yoruba (Oyo Empire, 13th c.-1896)
  • Zapotec (Kingdom of Zaachila, 1400-1521)
  • I don’t know
  • I don’t care
  • Other(s)
  • ALL OF THEM!
  • None

0 voters

Second poll, how many civs do you think should be included in such a dlc?

  • 1-2
  • 3-4
  • 5+
  • None
  • I don’t know
  • I don’t care
  • ALL OF THEM I SAID

0 voters

So, as I said earlier, the idea is to have a dlc based on the last two centuries covered by the game (maybe extending slightly further for the first time, but I don’t think it would be necessary) and would make the junction between AoE2 and AoE3 (probably without going as far as Return of Rome, though). It would probably include new techs and unit upgrades for the Imperial Age (handcanoneer upgrade maybe?) and obviously a few new civs.
I actually wanted to make this poll pretty much since as far as I wanted to do the one about Late Antiquity, but I think it will be the last one until after the next dlc after Return of Rome is released unless I have a really inspiring idea.
I hope I covered every civ that people would like to see in here, I decided to discard some of those I put in my previous polls for various reasons even though they could make sense here (not enough interest from the playerbase in general, a civ glory days clearly being somewhere earlier in the Middle Ages, no real relevance before 1600, etc.) Anyway, have fun and stay civil please!

I suspect a lot of people will respond to the former question regardless of the intent of the poll. I was divided on this myself, as I think that Dutch would “fit” in an early-modern DLC, but don’t think they should be added. It would be strange to me to add many of these in an Early Modern DLC vs regional-themed DLCs (focused on Africa, America, Asia, Caucausus…). Especially those that have been around for a long time and didn’t have the connections to gain anything tech-wise from the Early Modern era (e.g. Zapotecs). So I hope they don’t make any DLCs centered around a specific timeframe, but maybe interesting discussion can come out of this.

Well, despite what I said I added many of those civs because they were relevant in some form or another during this time period. For the meso civs, it’s often because they came into contact with the Spanish during this time period and it was often the end of their civilization, but I’d rather have one who either put some fight and/or had its golden age in this short time period… So to answer your remark about Zapotecs and such, my personal candidates for Latin America would actually be Mapuche or Muisca. It would also bring South America to two civs, just like Meso America, and maybe it would come with a new architecture set (though the devs have been reluctant to create entire new sets since DE came out, even though we had one with every dlc from HD). It may be seen as a bit hypocritical to include in the poll all those American civs on the brink of destruction while I chose not to bring the Aragonese, for instance, but I wanted to have all areas of the world represented as much as possible (with the exception of USA/Canada and Oceania, because even though stuff probably happened there during this time period, they didn’t yet have much contact with the outside world) and I had to make some choices. European states about to get swallowed through feudal politics isn’t exactly the same thing in my mind as entire civs doing their last stand.

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I think making a DLC on a geographic basis is more intuitive and needs fewer caveats (myself and many others seem more prone to think in terms of “which civs [that fit the timeframe] could be added from this area?” rather than “which civs from this timeframe should be added?”). But that’s a fair response, and it works for the purposes of the poll. And I grant that this is at least an interesting twist relative to the dozen or so “New DLC Polls” we’ve had.

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Gujarati? wasnt there a DLC with them recently?

Yeah, I wanted to try something new, plus Return of Rome may already be kind of breaking the mold by adding the Romans. The Conquerors and the Forgotten didn’t have a geographic theme (actually the Conquerors didn’t really have a consistent theme because Koreans were forced into it and the Huns didn’t really fit with the other three, and Forgotten’s theme was somewhat meta) and non geographic themes may bring new opportunities I think. Besides, I remember the Renaissance being one of the idea for a possible expansion when Sandy Peterson was still in charge.

Gujarati are part of the broader Gurjara umbrella, which is why I don’t think they will be added into the game unless the Gurjara are broken apart. I don’t really think it should be a thing (despite maybe being the broadest DoI umbrella, I think Gurjaras work pretty well the way they are) but afaik the Early Modern Era was a time of prosperity for the Sultanate of Gujarat so I thought I should include into the poll.

I only had 8 options, but:

Chimus, Tarascans, Kongolese, Muisca, Siamese, Somalis, Songhai, Swahili, Deccanis, Kanembu, Cham, Edo, Hausa, Kannadiga, Oriya, Shona, Sinhalese, Zapotecs (Mixtecs would be better) and Assamese need to be added.

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Well, you can’t have all of them in the same dlc now, can you? x)
I ended up deciding to put Zapotecs rather than Mixtecs because I saw the former requested more often than the latter and it seemed it was easier to find informations about them. Besides, I had to remove a lot of candidates because the poll was already quite huge and I couldn’t fit everyone in it.

I think many (perhaps most) of these civs are already covered effectively by existing ones. Those that aren’t I don’t really know enough about to judge. Adding more African civs, and possibly American civs, makes the most sense to me, but “Early Modern” feels like a weird theme for an expansion. (Also I’m not really that excited about the idea of any new civs being added, and would rather the existing underperforming/unbalanced civs get fixed first.)

One that he deliberately decided against:

  1. Huns were strong at the very start of the Dark Ages, so it drove home the fact that this was NOT a “Renaissance pack”, and we wanted to make that clear.

(From this interview about The Conquerors on AoK Heaven.)

Of course, Sandy deciding against something 23 years ago doesn’t mean anything really…

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iirc, it was among the expansion ideas that were discussed AFTER the Conquerors.

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Unlike dark ages which would get very little content, most DLC content would fit into this cathegory of “Early modern civs”. I think its a bit redundant

They could also adapt this HD mod that adapted AoE 2 to the pre-modern period until the Napoleonic wars… the units that in aoe 3 are different units, would be improvements of the basic units…

Fair enough. Obviously I don’t have an encyclop-edic knowledge of things he’s said – just your comment reminded me of that interview.

(Oh dear, had to misspell encyclop-edic to get through the censor…)

I’m not sure what you’re suggesting here – a separate early modern game mode, or a fifth age?

Note sure what you mean, I had to scrap a lot of potential civs for this poll and there are still some in it including among the most voted ones which I think should rather appear in another dlc.

Dutch relevance started when AoE II basically comes to an end.

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I want to say this censorship situation is getting out of hand, but it’s sadly nothing new…

I think a fifth age would need to rework the entire imperial age (wonders shouldn’t exist before the last age and in theory we need two buildings from the same age before we can go to the next one, knights and militia lines getting two upgrades in imperial only to get another age afterward is weird, etc.) plus it would completely change how economy works in the game… It’s only a handful of reasons why I think a fifth age would be a terrible idea. I guess a separate mode like many hope Return of Rome will be would be a better solution, but it would probably look like AoE3 lite…

Yeah, I know that… And yet I couldn’t not put them into the poll, for several reasons but the main one is probably to have all the OG civs from AoE3 in AoE2 one way or another. Flemish would probably be a better idea to be honest, even though any of those two would necessitate to replace the Burgundian’s Flemish Revolution with something else.

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I agree entirely. Unlike the situation with AoE1, I’ve never seen anyone complain about AoE3:DE not being good enough or sufficiently well-supported, or ask for AoE3 in the AoE2 engine.

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Or can you…maybe that’s what they meant by…the biggest content update in DE history
:astonished: :exploding_head:

I want this as well, although I don’t view this as something that has to compete much with new civs being added. Balance can and should be done in parallel with other projects. Where appropriate, I’m always going to advocate for what we might call “Traditional DLC content” (more civs, heroes, Editor units/objects) for the foreseeable future, especially since the alternatives seem to be high-cost projects that add things I don’t really care for (Xbox port, Return of Rome).

H
/S

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Odia and Kannada are a must have.

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I would love to see both of those civs for sure, but I think when (if ever) Kannada are added, they should come together with Deccani.