Why there is not a crusader faction as variant civ in The Sultans Ascend DLC?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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The Sultans Ascend could be cool thematical expansion, but I guess, that developers do not want use AoE4 potential for some hidden reason.

Instead of Joan of Arc, Order of Dragon or “Zhu Xi’s Legacy” (BTW, what it is?), there could be the Templars, the Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights as variant civs, or 2 crusader variant civs + Ayyubids & one more variant civs for Ottomans / Abbasid - for example Seljuk Empire , as mentioned by @Veridamar

the crusader units are already in the game due to in-game picture from DLC steam page

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Joan of Arc “civ” looks interesting, the Order of Dragon and “Zhu Xi’s Legacy” were not revelead yet, but what do have these “civs” do with crusades and sultans?

I am glad that Byzantines and Japanese are finnaly comming to AoE4, but these civs are very interesting (that is, why they are demanded by players), Both have potential to have own campaign expansion in the future

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The Seljuks or The Sultanate of Rum would be a good variant as well

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Yes, I think, the Seljuks would fit perfectly into theme

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Because the DLC is a mess of different ideas with no sense of coherence.

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Because it seems that the variants aren’t meant to really represent something historical but just to try out gameplay concepts.

Having crusading military orders would have been much more fitting thematically.

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Honestly cannot fathom why, it was so obvious.

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I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the DLC originally was composed of just three new civilizations without a campaign. There was some discussion that pointed out this image, which features what could be seen as three of the civilizations in The Sultans Ascend.

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It is quite possibly a mess because it is the combination of multiple packs or projects. They likely restructured a bunch of plans, maybe as a result of the layoffs earlier this year.

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The gameplay concepts could by make within crusader faction too.

with Joan of Arc , I am sure, that they wanted civ with main hero, which is interesting concept.

the Order od Dragon and Chinnese legacy is not revelaled yet, but I guess that gameplay concepts for these “variant civilisations” could be use for Crusader or Seljuk faction too.

Even with Joan of Arc, just switch Joan of Arc for the Grand Master of the Chivalric Order, and “hero” gameplay concept could work for Crusaders too

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Vote with your wallets guys, if they don’t listen to us on this forum, they’ll listen when they got noone to buy this moshpit of a DLC.

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I pre-ordered this DLC already :smiley:

Even I am critical, I like the game, and want new content and support it (if this DLC would not be profitable, it will not be more DLCs in the future probably)

Sultans Ascend seems as good addition to me, I am looking forward for arabic campaign, and new civs - especially for Japanese, Byzantines and Ayyubids.

Even Joan of Ark with hero concept looks interesting.

The missing Crusader variant civ is missed opportunity, that why I guess that devs do not want to use AoE 4 potential for some strange reason.

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%100 right comment they should have added a crusader state to new civs since they are making a dlc about crusades

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Pretty sure they are bundling a lot of smaller (maybe previously independent) content packs into one.

Or vice versa: they need to brainstorm a lot of easier-to-make concepts to fill up the DLC.

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Yes by all mean vote with your wallet and destroy any chance of future content that you want to see in AoE4 just because you don’t like one of probably many expansions to come for this game. Great logic there!.. not!

Regardless if the theme of this expansion is done right or not, it’s still a great addition of new content for a great price.

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No idea, as another user says, it could be that after the loss of employees they had, getting the Crusades civ was difficult for them.

On the other hand, it also depends on how they are going to focus the crusaders in the campaign. If they are going to have more than one build depending on the crusader state we face, the reason could be there: Why create a civ whose army consists of soldiers from other already established civs (France, England, Armenia, HRE)?

Still, it’s not like the Crusader States lacked unique units either, as they could consider the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, and Turcopoles. The Teutonics are perhaps best saved for their own Civ in the future in some expansion of the Baltic Crusades.

Finally, with the appearance of the variant Civ concept, the idea of Crusader States with French architecture and French language no longer seems so strange, but it also leads to a certain problem with the content of the DLC: If these crusader states are a variation of “the French”, and they had already prepared the French variant of Juana, putting 2 variants of the same Civ in the same DLC sounds strange.

Anyway, as seen in the teaser, there are crusader knights in the campaign and some special Stone Tower, and some spearmen that I now notice have golden spears, so there are new models for this theoretical CIV. So if they dare to give it their own mechanics and something else, perhaps in the future they could be a new CIV. Winguard archer and Huihui Pao, for example, already official units, and are based on campaign unit models.The same thing could easily happen with some Crusader units for they french, England, hre, etc

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What I want to say is that there are not even many units in AOE4 that match the appearance of the Crusader era, and even the horses of the Crusader knights in the picture are wearing Renaissance plate armor.

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Who’s the white guy in the red robes. Looks like some kind of Jedi.

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Most units (including those in the “Dark Age”) have late medieval gears.

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The Order of the Dragon probably yes, Zhu Xi’s legacy I have no idea.

I don’t know, I’ve already put my mind at ease.

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The thing about crusaders is that they don’t belong to any one civilisation. Unlike the variants which are still modelled on the parent civ, crusaders came from all across Europe.

On top of that, maybe the devs wanted to save them just for the campaign?

A lot of discussion is revolving around the new civs and variants. Makes sense, they’re all we really know about. But the expansion is named for the campaign, so the devs obviously have some amount of faith in it.

It’s too early to tell. And regardless we’ll keep guessing based on what little we know!

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It can also be that they will add the crusaders units to some factions .