Yamato DLC concept

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Disclaimer

This suggestion does not mean that I don’t want other DLCs like an African DLC for example.

The game also really needs a Continental East Asian (Chinese) architecture set because the current East Asian one looks very Japanese. Also it’s the Architecture Set with the most civilisations now.

Concept

This DLC would introduce 3 new civilisations:

  • Yamato
  • Emishi
  • Silla

New Regional Unit: Yabusame

  • Replaces (Heavy) Cavalry Archer for Japanese, Yamato and Emishi (not for Silla)
  • Slower then Cavalry Archer (same speed as Knight)
  • More expensive then Cavalry Archer
  • +1 Range compared to Cavalry Archer

Yabusame is the art of mounted archery. Technically not the name of a unit but it was chosen as a unit name in AoE3 so this name should be familiar to a lot of players. They are called Yumi Horse Archers in AoMR but that name is a little long in my opinion.
This is a reference to Samurai, especially early Samurai primarily fighting as mounted archers.

Yamato

They are a playable civilisation in AoE1 but their campaign falls out of the timeline for the game taking part from 210-740 AD, long past man popular AoE2 campaigns like the Attila the Hun, Tariq ibn Ziyad (Berber) or many Historical Battles like Tours, Bukhara or Dos Pilas.
Their campaign would focus on the wars against the Emishi around 800 AD.

It is supposed to represent Japan during the Yamato into Heian periods until around 1000 AD.

Bonuses

  • Free Spearman/Skirmisher/Scout for each Barracks/Archery Range/Stable if pop space is available (yes that can give you a Spearman in Dark Age)

Team Bonus

  • Fishing Ships +5 LoS

Unique Units

  • Naginata Warrior (Castle): Infantry that does AoE damage, strong against Cavalry
  • Miko (Monastery): Female Monk and Archer. Can attack at range, heal units and pick up relics. Benefits from Monk and Archer upgrades (similar to Warrior Priest)

Unique Technologies

  • Castle Age: Mounted units +1/+1 armour
  • Imperial Age: Archer Line and Miko +1 Attack +1 Range

Available Technologies

  • All Blacksmith technologies
  • Parthian Tactics
  • Lou Chuan

Missing Technologies

  • All gunpowder units
  • Thumb Ring
  • Paladin
  • Hussar
  • Gambeson
  • Husbandry

Concept

Their main eco bonus is free trash units with every military building. This allows them to be more aggressive in Feudal Age. On water maps their Fishing Ship LoS bonus can help them find Deep Sea Fish a lot faster.

They have pretty good cavalry (including Yabusame) with additional armour but they are missing Husbandry so they are slower. Since they are also missing Paladin and Hussar they don’t come close to the top European Knight civilisations.

Their foot archers have high range and attack but miss Thumb Ring so they are not the best when it comes to DPS. They are better then Vikings though.

Emishi

Emishi were people living in the North East of Japan that were slowly conquered by the Yamato people between around 500-800 AD.
They were famous for using guerilla tactics and Mounted Archers. They were the ones that introduced the idea of using Mounted Archers to the Yamato people.

Bonuses

  • Archery Range units move 10% faster
  • Hunters don’t need to drop of food (but work 5% slower)
  • Stable Units +1/+2 attack in Castle/Imperial Age

Team Bonus

  • Buildings except walls and Towers have +3 Line of Sight (Thracian team bonus)

Unique Units

  • Emishi Warrior: Infantry that can move though forests (at half speed and can’t attack from within the forest)

Unique Technologies

  • Castle Age: Mounted Units regenerate 25 HP per minute when no enemy units are within 10 Tile radius (Puru civ bonus)
  • Imperial Age: Stable Units get 10 Gold for each military unit killed

Available Technologies

  • Husbandry and Bloodlines
  • Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics
  • Hussar
  • Lou Chuan

Missing Technologies

  • All gunpowder units
  • Fortified Walls and Guard Tower
  • Plate Mail Armour, Plate Barding Armour and Ring Archer Armour
  • Paladin

Concept

Their main eco bonus is that hunters don’t need to drop off food. This makes going for deer or chicken early very easy and makes it viable to use farther away hunt but at the risk of having villagers far away from the TC.

They are specialised in guerrilla and raiding tactics. They hit hard and then disappear to recover. Their Hussars can even generate some gold in the late game, but not when killing villagers.

Silla

Now that Koreas are the civilisation with the most gun powder units in the game they have become very unsuited to represent early Medieval Korea.

Bonuses

  • All technologies cost -50% less but take 2x as long to research (excluding Town Centre Technologies)
  • Cavalry can garrison in buildings
  • All arrows fired by units and buildings fly twice as fast and are being fired 9% faster (Does not include Skirmishers and Scorpions but does include the Galley Line bolts and Lou Chuan arrows)

Team Bonus

  • Mongonel Line -1 minimal range (old Korean team bonus)

Unique Units

  • Hwarang: Melee cavalry with charged ranged attack

Unique Technologies

  • Castle Age: Hwarang can heal other units
  • Imperial Age: Mangonel Line +1 range (old Korean UT)

Available Technologies

  • Blood Lines and Husbandry
  • Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics
  • Fully upgraded Towers (no Bombard Towers)
  • Hei Guang Cavalry
  • Siege Onagers
  • Siege Engineers
  • Lou Chuan

Missing Technologies

  • All gunpowder units (no Fire Lancer, no Rocket Cart)
  • Gambeson
  • Champion
  • Plate Mail Armour
  • Hussar

Concept

Their many eco bonus is the cheaper but slower researching technologies. For the drop of buildings that’s pretty convenient since they usually only research one technology at a time but it might be worth building a 2nd blacksmith or university.

Their main military bonus is faster arrows. This has a similar effect as ballistics and makes arrows harder to dodge, in combination with ballistics it becomes even stronger. This also affects their defensive buildings too. Pretty helpful against cavalry in particular.

They also have fully upgrades Hei Guang Cavalry which pairs well with their UU Hwarang that can heal them after the fight.

They take over the old Korean Onager team bonus and UT giving us the old long range Siege Onagers back.

Thoughts

The concepts are not 100% finished, it’s about getting some ideas out there. You can never know if they are perfect without testing them anyway.

All the civilisations are very definitely Medieval unlike the three Kingdoms. I’m not suggesting ancient civilisations here. The Yamato are out of place in AoE1, they belong to AoE2.

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I think Japanese civ is enough.

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Me too,

Yamato is already on RoR and AoE I, one that started it all, a great classic!
However, it could be part of Chronicles with their own DLC

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The Yamato campaign in AoE1 is very clearly within the timline of AoE2, it ends in 740 AD long after the fall of Rome. The last 4 missions are all after 500 AD.

The entire campaign takes part after Three Kingdoms btw.

Yamato is a medieval civilisation and has no place in Chronicles which at this point only had BC civilisations and nothing AD in it yet.

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So japanese tatars/mongols and koreans?

Sorry none of these should ever be added to this game.

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The Emishi are not related to any existing civilisation at all. They are absolutely not Mongols nor Tatars at all.

Also Koreans are by far the worst civilisation to depict a none gunpowder civ in the game. If you want pre 1000 AD Koreans in a scenario you have to either disable half their units or use an entirely different civilisation.

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Yes, technically Yamato is an Iron Age civilization (like the Romans or Palmyran Empire) since it predates 800 CE… the Japanese in Age of Empires 2/4 also represent the Japanese from the Heian period to the end of the Sengoku period (794-1615), so including Yamato is somewhat redundant, unless it appears in Chronicles dlc and have a remake of the Yamato campaign from Age of Empires 1…

2 Likes
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Or you can limit them to castle age and remove the uu ship?

Emishi are the influence for samurai its fine as a unit.If aoe2 adds tribes like in aoe3 then they can fit.

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Of course, the Koreans in AoE 2 also represent everything from Silla and the Three Kingdoms to the Joseon Dynasty before the Imjin Wars…

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And Fire Lances and Rocket Carts. If you limited them to Castle Age they are also significantly weaker then Imperial Age civs so that’s not really an option.

How much would be left of the Koreans if you remove all of that? Better to use like the Shu and rename them to Koreans at that point. But then why have more then like 3 civilisations in the game anyway if you can just rename existing civilisations and disable half their units.

The Emishi did fight multiple large wars against the Yamato, they aren’t just a small tribe.

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No, is not. Please stop lying and research better.
In a case. Yamato Period is part of Japanese Antiquity not Medieval

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What is your definition of the Middle Ages that doesn’t include 500-700 AD?

The Huns fell apart before 500 AD and have been in the game for 25 years. So how is a civ ranging into 710 AD too early for AoE2?

And what is your definition of a lie? A lie is wilfully stating things that you know are wrong to reach a goal. So either I lied or I didn’t do my research, both can’t be true.

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No, is not. Please stop lying and research better.
In a case. Yamato Period is part of Japanese Antiquity not Medieval

Middle Ages were not developed at the same time in the world. A lot of civilizations around were before while other were pretty ahead. Even more, Yamato is not a Civ is a Period of Time, (Jidai in Japanese), a period is a fraction of something.

Did you go to school?

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I remember the devs in their last (nonchronicles DLC) used this argument to justify including three certain kingdoms yet parts of the community could hardly stop ridiculing it and instead insisted on hard (eurocentric) timeframes.

So which is it?

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You said this again. If I don’t “know” the “truth” how can I lie?

The Middle Ages are inherently a European concept so applying them to the entire world has some issues in general.

AoE2 doesn’t define Middle Ages by what technologies civilisations have access too it defines it by what time they existed in. Aztecs, Mayans and Inca don’t have Iron weapons, but that doesn’t make them Bronze Age civilisations. They existed at the same time as the ingame Spanish so they are in the game.

Yamato coexisted with many ingame civilisations too.

The Asuka period from 538 till 710 is certainly as “medieval” as anything else going on in Asia at the time.

The Three Kingdoms are certainly not medieval by any definition and therefor are a very unpopular addition. The argument that they were technically advanced enough to be “medieval” definitely didn’t make people happy at all.

“Yamato” is not just a time period, there are Yamato people and a Yamato province.

You apparently didn’t if you don’t even know what the word “lie” means.

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The Yamato existed during the European medieval period, which is the only one that matters when it comes to this game’s time frame.

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Im not justifying them, I am still angry at them

They have been making hideous decisions with all the franchise.
Speaking about II, they have already f…ck up the game timeline, even more the time they brought Huns and Celts. II was supposed to be about Middle Ages. Even the Fall of Rome gets off its timeline.

There is already a Prehistoric and Antiquity game that covers all of this, Age of Empires, the very first. Same with AoE Online, even AoM. II is already a cluttered Frankestein Monster mess will all of these Game Variants, Heroes, and Anitiquity Stuff.

A lot of problems we definitively could evade if they sticked with I and making all RoR, Chronicles and Three Kingdoms for that game. Now, they are not capable of choosing when a Civ should be or not be playable on Ranked/Multiplayer.

On the other hand, Is not an “argument to justify” is simply the reality

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Exactly!

Thats the key point there. We could not deliver in saying that Yamato belongs to Middle Ages, cause is another special there

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Yamato is just another name for Japanese, there’s absolutely no reason to separate them from the current Japanese. I agree with Emishi but if you want a third civ you should go for Ainu or Ryukyuans.
I’d also suggest Hayato but we know too little about them.

Yamato is not a time period, people in Japan still call themselves Yamato to this day. It’s like calling yourself Anglo instead of English.

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Which current civilization did they interact with? Japanese has always been one of the most isolated advanced civs ever