Due to the sheer number of possible civs, I’ve decided to split the poll into two parts. The first one includes the Pontic Steppe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Anatolia and Iran. Mesopotamia, Canaan/Palestine the Arabian peninsula and Egypt will be part of a second thread (possibly together with Africa). Please take this into account if one of the civs you wanted doesn’t appear in the poll.
Second poll, how many civs do you think should be to those regions? (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
0voters
Okay, first let’s adress the elephant in the room: Yes, I included a dynasty (the Seleucids) even though civs are usually more tied to a culture. I think in some specific cases especially when a hybridation of very different cultures happened (here Greek/Macedonians and Persians/Mesopotamians), the possibility of a civ can be considered at least for a poll. I know it will be very controversial, but I stand by it.
If you’re confused by the square bracket (especially if you missed the European poll), they simply represent umbrella civs that may be split into smaller entities, either new ones (Scythians, Celts…) or old ones (Greeks, Persians, the civ whose name shall not be written…). Note that I may have missed a huge number of possible civs because I don’t necessarily know the history of this region well enough. If there’s a civ you really want in the game that isn’t in the poll, don’t hesitate to vote for “Other(s)” but keep in mind this poll doesn’t cover the entire Near East and Mesopotamia, Canaan/Palestine and Arabia will be covered later. I didn’t forget about the Akkadians, Amorites or Hebrews/Israelites, they will just come at this point.
As usual, just because a civ is in the poll doesn’t mean I want to see it in game, and just because someone disagree with you on the matter at hand doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be civil. With all of this said, let’s vote!
I had to edit the poll because I forgot there’s one civ whose name is censored and I wrote it multiple times to use it as an umbrella for all Anatolian civs, which broke the entire thing. I hope nobody’s vote has been lost…
Yeah, I agree, I just put them in because people may want them as an early Turcic presence, especially since they have quite a fanbase asking for them to be added to AoE2.
Scythians seem like a very natural choice, but I don’t see any need to break them down further. I’d like to see them appear in a Cyrus the Great campaign, narrated by Tomyris (the Scythian queen whose army killed Cyrus), with most of the scenarios played as Persians but the final one played against the Persians as Scythians.
Medes seem like a good choice, since they’re not well-represented by the very elephant-heavy Persians. In fact, many of these seem sensible to me, and now I’m wondering whether I should have voted for more than I did.
Generally, I think RoR would need more generic and/or regional units added to justify many new civs being added – but I don’t think many people would object to that.
I voted for Scythians, Armenians, Huns, and Parthians.
As a Georgaboo (new word!), my not voting for them might surprise you, but I personally think that Georgia was much more relevant during the Middle Ages rather than the ancient period. Armenia was rather relevant in the Late Antiquity period.
Gokturks, rourans and hepthalithes are more aoe2 (they all get relevant between 300 and 700 ad), they would be a cool dlc (along with a Persian rework and campaign) expanding on the only scenario that currently depict central Asia in late antiquity: Bukhara.
I would also leave Huns in aoe2 for the moment because that would call for a late antiquity dlc (with another Attila campaign I guess) which in aoe1 is absent and better represented in aoe2 but xiongu and xiambei make sense. I use to separate Scythians and sarmatians in my mind but maybe I’m wrong.
As I’m favourable for an aoe2 Persian split I’m favourable to split aoe1 Persians into akhemenids (absent here), Seleucids and Parthians. Yeah they’re successor states, so are Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Minoans, Greeks and Macedonians etc. Yeah they’re dynastic but I don’t see any problem in a game that has palmyrans and I imagine one day having Republican and imperial Romans like in Rome at war mod.
I agree, but Persians can keep being called Persians and represent Achaemenids, Seleucids and Atropatene altogether. It can make sense to separate the Seleucids because they are a hybrid faction with hellinistic elements, and the Parthians are a separate culture which at some point took over Persia (it’s not even a dynastic name, the dynasty was the Arsacids), but I don’t think the other dynasties or states should be split.
I am a minimalist, I don’t assume that every culture and every small state will be represented, so I prefer “clumping” into wider cultural groups, so that a single AoE nation can represent a group of related cultures from the same region.
Cimmerians / Scythian / Sarmatians are a single group. Cimmerians and Scythians are technically different ethnic groups, but very closely related, and with very similar culture. Although you could say the same about the later horse-nomads, Medes, Persians, and Parthians, those became quickly civilized and became absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian ruling structures as an elite class, while Cimmerians / Scythians / Sarmatians kept their nomadic character. Sarmatians are again later culture in the same area as Cimmerian and Scythians, different but closely related group with similar style of life, maybe with more heavy cavalry compared to horse-archers. So I would take Scythians, as representation of all three, unless we have specifically Antiquity DLC (which would be interesting). Roxolani, Saka and Alans are closely related to Sarmatians.
Medes / Persians / Parthians
As mentioned before, Medes, Persians and Parthians were horse-nomad conquerors, who managed to conquer area of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and get absorbed into the ruling structures to form a caste of noble horse-lords. Medes destroyed the actual Neo-Assyrian empire, Persians utilized the instability of Medes, and Parthians are later arrivals who rose to prominence after Alex ######### ######### One nation for all of them (current Persians) should be enough.
Urartu / Hurrians – Urartu is a nation we know very little about, mostly how they fought with Assyrians for ages, only to be wrecked by incoming Cimmerians. Hurrians on the other hand is a different story and formed a famous kingdom of Mittani, which was already present (not as a nation) in the original AoE1 campaign. Since Urartu occupied a similar area as the earlier Mittani and Hurrians are larger culture group, Hurrians or the Mittani are a good pick. Don’t know much about them, but probably mix between ######## and Assyrians? Supposedly famous copper workers.
Pontians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Cilicians etc. are mixed Greek nations, where Greeks colonized and heavily influenced local people. Phrygians are IMHO different beast, and Greeks called various Anatolian people as Phrygians.
Dorians, Ionians, Cypriots, Aeolians… that’s just Greeks.
Elamites: Elamites are NOT Persians, but different people who were conquered by Persians (after they were badly wrecked by Assyrians). Elamites are much older, and their culture evolved in parallel to Sumerians. Elamite language is also a language isolate. They were quite rich and almost exclusively foot-archer based (according to Fields of Glory 2).
Phrygians: As mentioned before, Greeks called various Anatolian peoples Phrygians (as per Wikipedia). To my surprise however, Phrygian language is unrelated to the Lydian language, and Phrygian language is closer to Greek. While we could just decide to represent Phrygians as Greeks, the Phrygian cap is such iconic piece that IMHO Phrygians deserve their own nation, along with Lydians. In fact, Greek, Armenian and Phrygian form a related group of languages.
Lydians form a different ethnic group of Anatolian people, separated from Phyrgians and Greeks. In fact, Lydian language belongs to the Anatolian language group along with Lycian, Cappadocian, Luwic, as well as Hatti, who are currently in game, and the mythical Trojan language (which was probably Luwic/Luwian anyway). Given the prominence of the Lydians, we could take them to represent this whole group, bar the already present Hatti, which were situated on the East, and were not seafaring.
Huns / Heptalites / Xiongnu: Huns and Heptalites belong distinctly into the late antiquity. And we already have Huns in AoE2. Xiongnu are however much more interesting, as they represent the suspected proto-Hunnic people, who terrorised China (or the proto-Chinese). This would allow us to tell different stories in AoE1/AoE2:ROR about the ancient people and their conflict, and possibly even bridge the less known Xiongnu-Hunnic connection with a Campaign where they terrorise China, or where they raid China, get beaten, and set to migrate to the West, which could end with the birth of Attila or something similar. IMHO that would be AMAZING story to tell! And it would help us fill the East a bit as well, where we have only proto-Japanese, proto-Koreans and proto-Chinese (and I forgot about proto-Vietnamese from ROR).
You could make the same argument about all other diadochi states, such as Ptolemaic Egypt.
Hellenic people had very strong influence on the whole Mediterranean area, even states that they didn’t colonize or conquer adopted some Hellenic culture.
I tend to agree, a Scythian umbrella civ would most probably be enough especially considering those civs would quite possibly be very similar from a gameplay point of view. That being said, the Sarmatians are certainly the second best choice.
Those I think could be differenciated, though.
I agree.
Most of those existed before the arrival of the Greeks, though they were heavily changed after Alexander’s conquests. The Armenians in particular could be a good addition in my opinion.
Yeah, I don’t think a Greek split is unthinkable… At the very least, Greek peoples from outside of the Balkans could be represented as different civ, as they evolved through interactions with other people. One Anatolian Greek civ would probably be enough, though.
Yeah, I put them as a part of the Persian split because they come from Iran and are represented as Persians in Sargon’s campaign, but I have to admit with this logic I should have represented the Hurrians as part of the Hatti umbrella (and all Italic civs as Romans in the European poll).
Yes, I think those two would be the most important additions for western Anatolia.
Yeah, Xiongnu are most certainly the most relevant out of those three for the time period, though I suspect the devs may start with the Huns for brand recognition.
Absolutely, but the area they ruled over isn’t part of this poll
I have to admit the addition of the Seleucids would certainly make the Lagids necessary, even though for probably unrational reasons I find the idea of a Lagid civ more out of place than a Seleucid one in a game that isn’t solely focused on the hellenistic period.
By the way…
I always feel confused when you talk about Antiquity, because it’s almost the same word as the one we use in my language to talk about the entire Ancient Era, and even wikipedia seems to say they are pretty much synonymous but exclusively when talking about the western world. When does this period start in your mind, exactly? Because it seems it should include everything from Ancient Greece…
Reading how many different civs people want feels like people think RoR is going to be like AoE2DE for devs, which will get a lot attention. Trust me RoR will never have tons of new civs so it’s better to have some very important ones or civ with big umbrella terms which covers many different smaller factions.
Hopefully I will release it soon. I don’t know if I will have enough time today, so possibly this weekend
There’s two ways to look about this.
On one hand, AoE1 has never been as popular as AoE2 and it will probably remain the same for RoR.
On the other hand, AoE2 is stretching the limits of how many civs can be added, not necessarily regarding interesting concepts but more in terms of roles to fill, bonus to get without feeling redundant, interactions with all the other civs that can be added without utterly breaking the balance of the game. RoR is far from approaching this point, especially with the absence of UU (and to a lesser extent UT’s) making it easier to design a huge number of new civs because that’s one less thing to spend time on.
I don’t think RoR will reach AoE2’s number of civs anytime soon, but I think it’s easier for this game to receive # ## even 5 civs in the same dlc instead of the 2-3 we’ve been accustomed to for AoE2 since DE.
EDIT: Great, now the censorship is blocking numbers…
You are right. When I talk about Iron Age, I consider mostly the Near East timeline, which is from Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC to 500 BC. But in Europe, the Iron Age is dated later, around 1 AD in WE, 100 AD in Britain, up to 800 AD in Northern Europe.
When I talk about Antiquity, I take from the Iron Age (500 BC) to around 500 AD, so basically the Western Roman period, from the Republic to the fall of WRE.
But you could easily argue that the “antiquity” is just the late Iron Age of Europe.
?