Which factions do you think should be added to Europe in RoR?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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  • [Celts]
  • Belgians/Belgii [Celts]
  • Boians/Boii [Celts]
  • Britons [Celts]
  • Celtiberians [Celts]
  • Gaels [Celts]
  • Gauls [Celts]
  • Picts [Celts?]
  • Aquitanians/Aquitani
  • Lusitanians
  • Turdetani
  • [Germans]
  • Franks [Germans]
  • Goths [Germans]
  • Norse [Germans]
  • Saxons [Germans]
  • Vandals [Germans]
  • Etruscans
  • Ligures/Ligurians
  • Messapians/Apulians
  • Oscans/Samnites
  • Picentes
  • Umbri/Umbrian
  • Veneti
  • Elymians/Sicani/Sicels
  • Nuragiacs
  • Dacians
  • Thracians
  • Illyrians
  • [Greeks] Achaeans
  • [Greeks] Aeolians
  • [Greeks] Atticans/Athenians
  • [Greeks] Bosphorans
  • [Greeks] Dorians/Spartans
  • [Greeks/Macedonians] Epirotes
  • [Greeks] Italiotes
  • [Greeks] Massalians/Phoceans
  • [Greeks] Siceliotes
  • Aesti
  • Balts
  • Bulgars
  • Huns
  • Magyars
  • Scythians
  • Slavs
  • All of them!
  • None
  • I don’t know
  • I don’t care
  • Other(s)

0 voters

Second poll, how many civs do you think should be to this region? (still exclusively in Return of Rome, obviously)

  • 1-2
  • 3-4
  • 5-6
  • 7-8
  • 9-10
  • More
  • None
  • I don’t know
  • I don’t care

0 voters

Okay, let’s get started with a new round of polls for new civs, this time for RoR (keeping in mind that it is very possible we will never see any new addition to this game mode). Since Western and Northern Europe came first in my poll regarding which region should be focused on in the next updates (and because I personally think this region should receive some love), I’ve decided to start with it. Don’t worry if there’s another region you want to see some love being given to, I have at least three additional polls planned at the moment.
Now some clarification, aside from the usual:

  • What about the square brackets? Well, as you may have guessed, they’re umbrella civs. When an option in the poll is in square brackets, it means it’s a possible new civs that some may see as an umbrella. When the option isn’t between square brackets but is followed by a name that is, it means this civ could be covered by the bracketed umbrella, whether it’s a new civ (Celts, Germans or Scythians) or an old one.
  • You may be surprised by the fact that all possible civs from the German umbrella were of little relevance during most of the Ancient Times, including the Roman Classical Era, and only became prominent during a time period that some would argue was not part of AoE1’s time period. On the other hand, tribes that were quite relevant earlier (especially the Cimbri, Teutons, Suebi, Cherusci and Marcomans) are not listed. That’s on purpose. I thought that while some people would like to see Late Antiquity be represented in game, and in this case a German split (assuming Germans are even represented in game) would probably be in order considering how relevant and different some of those subgroups are in this time period. On the opposite, I don’t think many people would be interested in seeing the German tribes from the early Roman Empire or even the Roman Republic be represented separately.
  • I had to make some choices. I first planned on including the civs that fit under the Greek and Celt umbrella that lived in Anatolia and present the Scythians as an umbrella civ, but I reached the 50 options so I decided to remove those to keep them for the West Asian poll. There are also a few other options that I considered, such as Helvetians, Armoricans and Vettones, but I think they are already sufficiently covered by other options. Yes, I know technically Vettones are neither Celts nor Lusitanians, but I still think they would have been redundant. Obviously it’s possible that some people would have voted for them and that no one would be interested in the Nuragic or Turdetani civilizations, but as I said I had to make choices. Obviously I may have forgotten extremely relevant civs, and in this case I’m sorry, all I can say is that I am only human.
  • Obviously, just because I put a civ in the poll doesn’t mean I want to see it in the game. It’s still the case even if I prioritized it over a civ that you may personally see as more relevant (especially if I did it because I forgot about its existence rather than because I consciously chose to push it to the side).
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The Alans should be one of the factions added. Or the Scythians, if you want a more general civ.

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AoE 1 tends to go for umbrella civs.
So Celts and Germanics are a good start.
They do sometimes go for specific civs too like Palmyra or Minoans.
So I think the third civ should be the Scythians or Huns.
An architecture style in Aoe 1 has at least 3 civs, so this seems to be a good start.

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I voted Huns but I’d prefer xiongnu to differentiate them from aoe2 later counterpart. Also sarmatians are missing instead of Magyars and Bulgars.
For Germans I voted only goths because they all seem to be late antiquity civs which imho pertains more to aoe2. Goths had some important stuff happening during the third century so still in aoe1 timeframe while vandals and Franks were doing very little by that time. I would have added alamanni/suebi if there was an option.
I think Picts belongs to aoe2 since the first time we were told of them was about 300 ad and the first kings in the 5th century. Britons, Gauls and Celtiberians are needed to represent pre Roman Europe.
And dacians for sure since they’re one of the main enemies in the Trajan campaign lol!

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A lot of these answers feel too granular to me. Even having separate Gauls and Britons might be a bit excessive, although I did vote for it.

Likewise I think I’d only want one German civ – although calling it “Germans” feels too modern and therefore awkward. I think Rome at War went for “Germani”, which is a bit metter, but I’d maybe (emphasis on maybe) call them Goths, Teutons, or Alemanni, but use them to represent all Germans even though the name wouldn’t really encompass that.

I don’t think there’s any need for more Greek civs, but Greeks are a bit weird – they have a very limited tech tree, when they could justifiably have an almost complete one. (I think the only units that Greeks didn’t use were Legionaries and Centurions, those being specifically Roman.) Persians are in a similar situation – the lack of chariots is very odd, as is the absence of hoplites when every other civ gets them. Anyway, I digress…

Nice to see Scythians are winning!

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Alans and Sarmatians both fall under the Scythian umbrella. As I said earlier, I first planned to split it but I was over 50 options which seems to be the limit on those forums, so I decided to keep the split options for a future West Asian poll considering the Pontic Steppe is often seen as a part of Asia until the Russian conquest (plus the umbrella extends to Central Asia). I agree that those two civs were more relevant at the time than Magyars and Bulgars, but I thought people may still want to vote for the latters (which happened to be true for the Magyars) so it wouldn’t hurt to remove the Scythian split as long as it appear later.
As for the Huns being named Xiongnu, I’m not sure the evidences that the two names actually refer to the same people are entirely conclusive and Europeans only heard about the Huns anyway. The Xiongnu will also appear in future polls anyway.

Far less than in AoE2, I think. But yeah…

I agree, they can appear as umbrella civs at first. They may still be split later (especially the Celts).

I think the Scythians and/or Huns should have their own architecture style separated from the Gauls and Germans. The third civ with the “Barbarian” architecture style could be the Thracians or Dacians (which are both quite high in the poll but we don’t necessarily need both of them as separate civs from the start as they are close enough to represent each other).

I actually agree, Goths are the only civ that may fall under the German umbrella which I would be okay to see added to the game as its own thing. As you say they were already relevant before the migration period (though it seems the Franks sent raids as far as Hispania at the time), but they also have the particularity of being part of the Eastern Germanic group, which among other differences with their Western cousins were far more cavalry focused. So I think we could have the German civ represent the Western (and possibly Northern) German groups while the Goths are used for the Eastern Germans (Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, etc.)

On an unrelated note, I realise I had a bia for “AoE2 civs ancestors/predecessors” while making the poll (especially regarding OG civs from AoK), or rather I may have thought people may want to vote for them considering I myself wouldn’t want most of them. It especially shows with the Norse and the future Eastern European civs, while I forgot a few German tribes that were relevant during the migration period (at least more than the Norse). It includes the Alemanni and Suebi, but also the Frisians and the Burgundians. Lombards/Langobardi could also have been an option, but considering they didn’t take part to the great migrations/invasions until it was over, I don’t think they would fit.

################ is a latin word used by Caesar and Tacitus, I think it fits perfectly. Germans is just the modern form, which would be better is a matter of debate, so I think you have a point there, but I don’t think the other options you suggest would work.
Goths, Teutons and Alemanni are all tribes part of the far bigger Germanic umbrella (we’re actually not even sure the Teutons were Germans, but that’s another matter), so it would be weird to use any of them to represent the whole umbrella. Furthermore, the Teutons disappeared by the end of the 2nd century BC after the Cimbrian War (I think the forums will censor me if I tried to say what the Romans did to them) and I think the Alemanni were far from the noteworthy Garmanic people even during and after the migration period. Only the Goths would really fit, but with them being Eastern German as I said earlier, I don’t think they should encompass Western ones.

I agree with all those statements! I think the Celts can be released as an umbrella first and then split later, though, otherwise we may have too many civs at once or spend too much time receiving updates for the same area considering other European civs should be added to the game.

I actually agree, but I wanted people to have those options. I can’t help but notice that some of those have received votes (especially the Spartans/Dorians) so it seems I wasn’t entirely wrong, so I will probably keep proposing Greek/Macedonian splits for the West Asian poll…
And yes, I can already say some of the suggestions will be very controversial.

Yeah, that’s one of my favorites so I’m glad seeing them far ahead! Although I think presenting the Celts and Germans both as umbrella civs and their split but not doing the same for the Scythians may have influenced this result xD

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aoe 2 tended to go for umbrellas too, until we got all european and indian possible civs.

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The Indian civs are still big umbrellas though, since they represent a plethora of empires, kingdoms, dynasties and cultures.

Agree with the Europeans

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Just wanted to point out that Bulgars, Magyars AND Balts now all have one vote each and the Slavs are still at zero, for some reason I find this extremely funny.

(also I realise I brainfarted yesterday night because I couldn’t decide whether I should write Nuragians, Nuragic or Nuragics and I ended up with Nuragiacs without noticing…)

(also also, I brainfarted again by putting the [Greek] umbrella before the split civs names while I did the opposite with the Celts and Germans, I would love to pretend it was on purpose but it would be a complte lie)

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Celts and Germans are fine as a start, still better than having nothing at all north of Rome!
Scythians and sarmatians were two different things, the latter sort of conquered the former in Roman imperial age so Scythians would be more iron age while sarmatians are classical and late antiquity (they were finally absorbed by Huns and Slavs i think around 5th or early 6th century ad). Scythians in Attila 2 are technically an error probably due to Romans calling everyone coming from the steppes either Huns or Scythians like they used “goths” for many different Germanic tribes.
Alans are too late imo, they belong to aoe2, didn’t achieve much before 300 ad despite being there.

About xiongnu not necessarily being what we know as Huns is true. I just think Huns are too late for aoe1 since they start to be relevant only in mid 4th century (I use either Diocletian or Constantine to separate aoe1 and 2) so xiongnu was just to represent pseudo Huns in aoe1 without having Huns again. I think in a similar way adding Huns in aoe2 called for Romans, adding Huns in aoe1 would call for Byzantines (among others, practically introducing late antiquity in aoe1 too) where the byzantines of aoe1 would mostly be the Romans of aoe2. I can’t imagine either Romans, Greeks or Macedonians doing a good job at representing Constantinople in the 4th or 5th century ad lol.
Bulgars came in late 5th/early 6th century while Magyars are even later, towards the 8th or 9th century ad, so to me they’re out of aoe1 timeframe, being basically successors of Huns and sarmatians.

Lombards are out too imho cause yeah they were there already in 2nd and 3rd century but didn’t make their big move until mid 6th century. Same for vandals. Lombards would be a civ to add in aoe2 along with vandals for sure.
As you said quadi/marcomans and Cimbri or Teutons would be a good split from Germans.
And Frisians I think belong to aoe2, beginning around 4th or 5th century ad, while Frisii (probably Celts), who are people that may be unrelated to later Frisians (who were maybe Germans, correct me if I’m wrong), yes they could be in aoe1 even if I don’t know if there’s enough historical accounts about them. They disappeared in late antiquity due to a natural disaster in Frisia or because of Saxon invasions iirc.

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I honestly would rather have a single specific civ than a umbrella, like have Gauls instead of just a generic Celts. You can always add more stuff later easily, whereas splitting is always bound to be a mess.

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Umbrella civs work better, because you can cover more with them and you don’t have to be so specific with that civ. Also knowing devs there won’t be high chance that they will add many civs to RoR so it’s best if they have bigger group, which covers more than one specific civ.

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They don’t, just look at AoE 2. People are complaining about those all of the time.

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Fair enough. I wonder why it censored that word for you but not me. I’m not sold on it because (a) it’s very similar to “Germans”, and (b) it’s not commonly used in English and I imagine lots of people would mispronounce it “german-eye”. But probably it is the best choice. I could ramble a bit about why I suggested Goths, Teutons, or Alemanni, but I won’t bother since you’ve talked me round to Germani anyway.

Although maybe I can’t object to “Germans” on the grounds that it usually refers to people from modern Germany without also objecting to “Britons”.

I guess so, although it’s no weirder than some of the civ choices in AoE2 campaigns (e.g. everyone from west Africa is Malians), and less weird than many in AoE1DE (e.g. Goths are Greeks).

Interesting. I guess this depends what “Germans” means – i.e. is it a group defined by the Romans, or a language group.

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I love Sparta, and want to have they from many years before but to now I never see any game get this civil can satisfy me.

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Yeah, the fact that therer are no UU or UT also means that it would be less work to split it later without having a Hindustani situation.
That being said, I think only the Celts should be entirely split to the point of not having a civ named Celts by the end. Imo maybe the Goths could be split from the Germans but a German civ should still exist.

I’ve seen the Scythians name be used both to refer to the Scythian kingdom and the wider culture group which Sarmatians, Roxolani, Alans, Saka, Massagetae and so on. Wikipedia states that " the Sarmatians were part of the wider Scythian cultures", but “Scythian cultures” leads to a page called “Scytho-Siberian world”, which makes things more confusing. Anyway I think the Scythians can be used to cover those other civs at least for a time, but I plan on adding them to a future poll no matter what.
(and I agree that Alans are too late, but I still think I should let people vote for them if they want to)

I don’t think having a short period of time covered by both AoE1 and 2 should be a problem, I think it works better than an arbitrary turning point between the two of them. The first game can end in 476 and the second one can start in 394 or even earlier without it being the end of the world. Everytime we talk about the Huns in AoE1/RoR there are people to say they fit AoE2 better and everytime we talk about them in AoE2 there are people to say they should never have been included because they fit AoE1 better. To me they fit neither and both at the same time, they only existed during this brief overlaping period in a grey area between both game.

I would find it really weird to have the Byzantine in AoE1, not only because the division of the Roman Empire happened late in the timeline, but also because from a historiographical point of view they tend to only be called Byzantines starting with the reign of Heraclius. I know this is nitpicky and based on arbitrary reasons, but I know it would bug me nonetheless. However, I can understand your argument, at first glance it looked like a slippery slope fallacy but I know the community well enough by now to know it’s not unfounded xD
Note that there’s also the fact that Byzantium actually existed during this time period and it was an entirely different state and people xD

I don’t really want any of those civs in the game either, so I won’t argue with that. I think you’re incorrect about the Vandals, or at least you worded your sentence poorly implying Vandals made their move at the same time as Lombards. When Rome fell the Vandal kingdom was quite a big deal, and by the time the Lombards invaded Italy, the same kingdom was already over.
Also, I don’t think Cimbri and Teutons would be a good fit consodering the lack of informations we have on them outside of their (relatively brief) war with Rome. As for the Marcomans, maybe I should look them up in more details but they feel far too generic to be worth splitting the Germans for them imo.

Most probably because I used the singular version of the word and it ends in -us rather than -i. That’s… I guess it should have been expected xD

I’d rather see those instances as temporary placeholders. One can dream, after all x)

Well, to be honest, Caesar used it to mash all peoples from beyond the Danube and the Rhine together, so it can be quite deceiving. Especially since it actually means “of the same race/family”. Modern hostoriography use the name for all people part of the Germanic linguistic group, I think.

I’m not actually in favor of further Greek split mostly because it would be an endless task, but should it happen, then good for you x)

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What I meant is that both vandals and Lombards were around since Marcus Aurelius (beginning of barbaric invasions) but they start making significant impact after aoe1 current timeframe, vandals in early 5th century and Lombards later.

I’m not that into it tbh but I think the two are different enough to have their own civ at one point. Sarmatians were a mix coming from central Asian steppes (as you said roxolani and others), for Scythians I’m not sure, maybe they were more East Asian like Turkish Mongols or Huns? But maybe with some Iranic people as well idk.

My argument here is that Huns currently fit better aoe2 because aoe1 is more about iron age (it already does a poor job when coming to classical antiquity, go figure late antiquity lol) and it would be clumsy to see hoplites fighting at Adrianople or the catalaunian fields. But I also think in future aoe1 should expand into late antiquity and match the Yamato extension since they’re in game. Same argument for vandals, maybe franks etc.

At first glance sure but I’ll give you context. Byzantines in aoe1 would just represent late Romans of aoe2 once late antiquity will be introduced in aoe1. Christian monks instead of pagan priests for example. The overlap will be as you said between Alaric and Heraclius (technically you should go until 750 because of Yamato but that’s a bigger stretch because then you’ll need to have Muslims in aoe1). I call them byzantines just to differentiate them from pagan Greeks and Romans like they call them Romans to differentiate them from byzantines in aoe2 but if you go past the “Romans are not medieval and byzantines are not ancient” feeling, it could actually make sense. In that way you could give byzantines in aoe2 a proper byzantine campaign (which is after Heraclius in my book) while having something fancy as a belisarius campaign for aoe1 byzantines! Romans in aoe1 already have Trajan while aoe2 Romans could get stilicho, aetius or majorian. That would be the overlap but that’s not different from early modern overlap of aoe2 and 3, that’s actually cool I think.

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On that I would agree, though I have to point out Roman campaigns in Rise of Rome went as far as the 5th century. Though to be fair, I think this expansion was not really good at portraying the period it extended into and an entirely new game may have been preferable…

I’ve only ever seen the Scythian described as an Iranian people even in modern historiography, and as I said they are often used to encompass ALL Iranian people from the Western Eurasian Steppe (Pontic Steppe and Central Asia near the Caspian Sea) but I may not have enough information.

I would go as far as saying by certain aspects it focuses more on the Bronze Age than Iron Age and sometimes conflates the two eras, but yeah it’s particularly awkwrd past the 4th century BC imo. As I said earlier, it may have been better to cover it in a separate game xD

Uh… Does it means the Western Roman Empire, Kingdom of Soissons and Romano-Moorish Kingdom would all be Byzantine too? It would feel even weirder xD

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Iberians, Thracians. Gauls/Celts, Germans, Scythians.

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Celts, Germans, Gauls, Iberians, Scythians. Please add them, they would make the ROR experience so much better!

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