Alot of people ponder over these new so-called “Civilizations”. Way, Who and Shoe or whatever they’re called. Basically it’s just 3 political factions of the Han chinese from a way too distant time period.
Alot of people also asked it to be changed to something sensible like Tibetans, Tanguts and Bai. Real civilizations that have their own distinct culture and history. Possibly change the old Chinese civ to Han giving this expansion the same treatment as Indians in Dynasties of India.
Reason I don’t see this ever happening is western big-corporate marketing trying to appease the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It’s a big nono to imply that Tibetans or any other ethnic groups living in today’s China should be it’s own country. That’s a instant China ban and a big market closed.
Splitting up the Chinese into these civs and giving their own campaigns, promoting their own cultures and probably missions fighting the Han chinese or whatever might imply towards this for a state official… Or at least that’s what Microsoft is afraid of… That’s why we get the 3k and this civ mess.
Best bet to try fix these civs is through mods. An official change will probably never happen.
Whether or not Microsoft is scared to do it, it’s not something that would get the game banned in China/upset the CCP to include Tibetans/Tanguts/Bai.
First, the way things get censored in China isn’t by some big filter. And it’s not as simple as “CCP looks at everything”. It’s done on a reporting system by members of the public, and then it gets seen by several more layers of bureaucracy before finally potentially getting banned.
There is also nothing wrong with depicting the Tibetans and others as independent states within a Middle Ages context. The CCP has never given any indication it thinks that the Tibetan Empire, Great Jin or the Xi Xia were always under China’s rule, and in fact the current game already depicts this. With the Jin Dynasty appearing with the Jurchens civilisation. If there is some sort of problem with Tibet, there would be a problem with the Jurchens too, but there isn’t.
Not to mention, China relaxed its censorship significantly a year or so ago and now you can find some quite…racy material in quite a few games.
About the Tibetan question… the Manchus (Jurchens), Daur (Khitans), Mongols, Koreans, Vietnamese, Tatars and Russians (Slavs) are in the list of recognised minorities in China, and it causes no issue for them (and while some have their own country, the Manchus and Daur do not). Plus, the fact that there was a powerful Tibetan empire in the Middle Ages is in chinese school textbooks, someone posted some pages in the forums. This argument is widely inflated.
What might cross the line is if the Tibetan campaign was a repeat of Le Loi, having to fight a liberation war against chinese occupation. Bonus point if it includes the Dalai Lama, a title established in the 14th century. So this would be easy to avoid.
I think the issue is not how the chinese censorship actually works but how big western companies perceive it works and their unwillingness to take any risks.
Imagine pitching the idea of splitting the chinese civ into different ethnic groups to Microsoft marketing without raising the question about censorship.
The 3k is an easier concept to get creative freedom as a game dev.
HOI4 does have an independant Tibet while it’s hotter than AOE2 (WW2 instead of the Middle Ages, and you can notably play as Mao), it’s really not out of fear for the CCP.
They picked the 3K as the low-hanging fruit to court the chinese market, sometimes the easiest solution happens to be true.
The Romans were canonically in AOE2 (Attila & Alaric’s campaigns) + the 3K have other issue (all Han Chinese, countries instead of civs…). So it’s worse for them.
Yeah they represent the 4th century romans, but there was this outrage about how you dare put the romans in, it said even in the back of the game, rome has fallen, etc etc etc. People said to boycott and it was kind of the same outrage, and they did nothing and it eventuallly disappeared. I think theyll add some civs for free for the people who payed but i dont think the 3 kingdoms will get expelled from ranked, I dont even think 80 percent of people complaining play ranked.
No matter what people think about adding the Romans, I do think most would agree they are a very distinct civilization. Much unlike the three 3k factions.
The AOK box has been a bit overruled by The Conquerors that had a campaign that featured them as enemies, using the Byzs as a placeholder.
Another thing is the Romans were intended as a bonus for RoR, hey here’s this civ from Antiquity that still limped to the AOE2 timeline. They are not the core experience of the DLC (if anything the outrage was locking them behind the DLC so forcing to buy AOE1 again to get that AOE2 civ), while to add insult to injury the Khitans and the very-wanted Jurchens are what feels like an afterthought.
It’s not a “break up” of the Chinese. As Jurchens, Tanguts and Tibetans are not Chinese. The only reason Chinese is used to cover them in-game is because there is nobody else geographically close to them.
There was the opposite outrage. Then they were added and different people were angry. But it was nowhere near as many.
I think they meant the data that China bans mention of Middle Ages Tibet, Manchuria, Tanguts etc.
Funny thing. People were saying what you were saying on reddit. That the CCP bans games for this reason. And mods (which include several devs) were telling them not to spread misinformation. They know it’s not true.
Microsoft is so big that the CCP won’t care about a small game from a niche genre (yes it’s a pillar of the RTS genre but it’s nowhere near the size of GTA or big mobile abominations). What matters between Microsoft and China is mostly a side effect of policies between China and the USA, all those talks about tarrifs and banning chinese companies for safety/spying reasons and whatnot.
How many years did India was left the way it was before they decided to correctly represent them? And thats accepting theyre willing to do it, what im saying is they could change the name of the civs, but those 3 civ slots will not change, they could add some civs for people who payed, theres a lot of people who payed for the dlc. What has been your experience in ranked?
If anything that shows more that they can change things.
Removing a civ after years and replacing it with a different one is pretty big.
Given they are asking for more feedback (especially angry ones). I am guessing they are willing to do so. But want to either gauge strength of feeling, or what people want to see.
Replacing them with three different civs would be fine. People have only had them for a week, so no sudden “oh no. I got used to playing this civ” experience.