What is the issue here exactly for you? You don’t need to play with the variant civilizations. Just stick with the “real” civilizations as you put it. The game does not resolve around you or me but to all of the players in the community, and the fact of the matter is that most of the community feels excited to play as both the two new civilizations and the variants.
I don’t get this with you people, just because you don’t see a reason to have them in the game, does not mean the whole community feel the same on this regard. And it’s simple just don’t play as the variants and your problem goes away.
AoE3 did a better job by making Shaolin Temple a ‘third party’ NPC group, players need to control the Holy Site to ally with them, to be able to produce a limited number of Shaolin units.
Just like in real history, the Shaolin Temple aided Chinese dynasties and local governments multiple times, but they never became an essential part of an army, and never became a part of the government.
In other words, they would function as shock troops or what is known as an irregular army.
As I understand it, or at least as it appears in the promotional image, the Shaolin Temple Landmark would function like the Rus Kremlin: producing monks in groups, at a specific cost, probably for defensive functions. If it works with charges, or the units have a time limit, I wouldn’t know, but it would be good as a balance to its historical defensive simile.
At least I see it as you are building a temple for the monks, in exchange for them helping in case of need, which in theory is what happened with the Shaolin monk sects.
Historically, in larger scale conflicts, Buddhist monks with knowledge of Shaolin martial art were helpful as irregular defensive troops against the Wukou Pirates between 1500-1600 AD, right around the Sengoku era.
Armor and weapons.- If someone wonders why they use blunt sticks and without armor, it is because the religious beliefs of these monks prevent them from using any weapon other than a staff, and being ascetic monks, on top of irregular troops, they cannot afford chain mail.
Zhu Xi opinion.- One of Zhu Xi’s biggest criticisms of Chan Buddhism was that they did “nothing” for society, and even indoctrinated their disciples not to even worry about the death of their own parents, friends or family, and only meditate. The monks of the Shaolin sect at least did “Something” for society, and protect people, so in theory they were useful for the Confucian vision.
It is a multiplayer game lol what are you talking about… just because I don’t play them doesn’t mean they won’t be diluting the civ pool with near duplicates of civs we already have. Can’t wait for the people who just play French to mix things up with… hero French. Also the names are embarrassing and make no sense.
And how is someone else playing a variant civilization an issue for you? How does that effect your game-play in any way other than meeting them on the battlefield?
What’s wrong with having more options with civilizations for people to choose from which is exactly what the variant civilizations will provide according to people who are under NDA have explained to us. I suggest stop thinking only about yourself and try to have a more open mind about this whole debate regarding the variants.
The naming of them and the historic authenticity can always be talked about and debated, but what these variants bring to AoE4 is more diversity and fresh game-play for us to enjoy and that what matters the most when it comes to SP and MP content.
The campaigns I am sure will continue to be heavily inspired by historical stuff.
Because they aren’t really adding variety since they are very similar. The civs that are easiest to play are already seen the most on the ladder. Adding in a slightly different version of these civs is just as likely to hurt the civ diversity as add to it. The nice thing about where the game is now is that each civ feels pretty unique.
As far as names and historical accuracy, sure, gameplay is more important for most players but why can’t we have both? There are countless other civs that are not yet represented in the game that some of these mechanics could have been utilized for.
Even you admit that the naming etc isn’t great. Hopefully it is fine and they are a lot of fun to play and don’t feel too similar to existing civs. However, the awful names and massive lack historical accuracy still have a negative impact on realism and immersion. My point is that we shouldn’t have to choose between reasonable historical accuracy and variety in multiplayer. The reason they have done this is that they care more about money than the quality of the game and I think they should be called out for it.
I’m going to trust the information on the official website as well as the people under NDA that says in fact the variant civilizations are not the same as their original civilizations, and that they play a lot differently from them as well, instead of listening to your assumptions based on no facts at all. You can argue that one person can’t be taken too seriously, well how about 3 people under NDA saying the same thing? That should at least provide certain validation on what they are saying perhaps there is a truth around it?
First of all, all the variant civilizations are designed around either famous historical people of that time or a group of people so regarding historical authenticity we are getting just that.
On top of that we are also getting two completely new civilizations that are also heavily inspired by history and they seem to provide even more uniqueness and variety to this game.
Yes I have expressed similar thoughts regarding certain names for the variant civilizations, however what matters is that I can look past that and see what else they bring to AoE4 and that’s all that matters.
I’m sure they will be fun and play quite differently from their original civilizations, that I’ve no doubt! Names can be debatable as that’s really subjective, some people care and others don’t and besides they have already listened to feedback and changed the Chinese variant name.
Again, the variant civilizations are NOT historical inaccuracy because as I previously mentioned in this post they either are centered around famous historical people and/or group of people of this era. How can you despite this still say otherwise? Just because they aren’t a totally “new” civilizations like the Byzantines & the Japanese doesn’t take away the fact that they indeed are inspired by history and they are ideas from original civilizations already in the game that already are heavily inspired by history.
You have every right to dislike the variant civilizations but don’t start spread around false information and lies, just state the fact while the variant civilizations aren’t an interesting idea to you and that you want to see more new civilizations like the Byzantines and Japanese in the future, you are still looking forward to play as all of the 6 new additions to this game or that you are not looking forward to it, that’s totally up to you. Either way everyone gets something they want which should be the main focus here.
And finally games have to take certain liberties at times in order to create a fun interesting game for us to play, if we want 100% history authenticity go watch a documentary. At least AoE4 tries its best to give it to us, while at the same time taking certain liberties to make it fun as well.
I’m not sure if they have shown every unit yet but something that BeastyQT has confirmed several times during his talk about each new civilization is that there is a lot more that they have but that isn’t talked about or explained in the short summary of each civilization.
So perhaps we also haven’t seen all of the units as well as new technologies and other changes.
I think not. Officially, those UU shown are only the promotion of the Civ, but since the page has limited space, unique technologies, or certain unique units, are not mentioned.
As far as I know, when the original game came out, on the main page where they describe the civilizations, at least for the Civs that had more than 4 unique units, they did not always reveal all of these, they usually only mentioned up to a maximum of 3, and sometimes Sometimes if they are related to Landmarks, they will mention one or another.
For example:
China.- there is no information from the Palace guard. There is an image that includes it but there is no mention that it is a unique civ unit.
Mali.- There is no information about the War Scout, and there is only a brief mention of the Sofa.
The same can happen with:
Zhu Xi Legacy: There is no information if they keep the Nest of Bees or not, or if it will have other unique siege or unique units.
Joan D’Arc: There is no information on whether they will preserve the Arbalestier or Cannon. Only the Royal Knight is the confirmed unit that they share with its parent civ.
I suppose that the unique units are the most importan distintive of Ayyubid with Abbasid Caliphate, so I think they dont have more unique units, but two of them dont have a promotional image, so we only speculate how the manjuk or the other economic unique unit are.
There is a horse archer for the campaign in the Teaser Trailer of Age IV. I suppose is a new unique unit, but I dont know if is for the campaign, or is gonna be a new unnit for Abbasid or Ayyuvid. Since ayyubid have Desert Raider, i suppose is for the abbasid. But only time will tell.
I sincerely hope they will rename this civilization. It is just wrong man, there is nothing to this as a faction and it has no bearing on the actual representation in game either. I don’t want to pretend I’m some developer’s OC fanmade historical civilization and it takes so little effort to change that perception in just respecting what civilizations are, in these games.
Follow the Ayyubid’s footsteps and use the existing Jin in the campaign and just turn them into that. The Manchus deserve some recognition, and I’m certain there are no plans to make an actual civilization for them either. Turn the Dynasty systems into Liao → Jin → Yuan → Qing. It’d help explain the new units in a much better light, and the lands they encompassed would include the very same buddhist landmarks included in ZXL. I can understand the practical issues with renaming or changing JdA as much as I detest it, and the OOtD is an unfortunate pick for a faction as well, but it is at least a historical one.
ZXL is a tragedy. If you can put in the effort to change it from the obvious orientalist made up tragic name of Empire of Jade, then you can put in the effort to turn this into an actual real civilization as well.
I must sincerely question why it is that an asian faction cannot get a real and proper name, despite getting two shots at it. Why are they getting less effort and attention than other civilizations?
Simply put, there is not much positive information about China on the internet or media, mostly negative, biased, and hostile information. If there are more negative images, then the things of this country will not attract much interest, players will not pay high attention to the civilization in this game, and Devs will not be very diligent in improving this civilization, except for the things they make to attract Chinese players. On the contrary, Japan, which is unpopular in East Asia, is loved by most Westerners and meticulously crafted by Devs. In the Middle Ages, Japan, which was unknown and backward in East Asia, gained powerful cavalry and advanced gunpowder weapons in the game, which was seriously inconsistent with history and was clearly a perfect processed product for sales.
I don’t know why Westerners would believe those biased information about China.
They are educated citizens in developed countries, don’t they have their own independent thoughts of the world?
Do we have a way to contact the developer and tell them ? I really think that the most important problem in this DLC is ZXL, you’re poiting it out and bring, according to me, a good objective solution.
As you are Age Insider, can you talk about this real problem to the Insider’s part of the forum ? I didn’t see a single post talking about something else than “asking for a beta” for this DLC, is there a kind of censor ?
We cannot ask anything, but devs will email us and give us the beta version.
They won’t email all insiders at one time, but choose their prefer ones to send, and after that, they repeat this process until all insiders get the beta.
And yes, we cannot tell or indicate others any information about what we see in beta.
Utter silliness. I’m sitting here hours away from the 44th and 45th civs in AoE2 and I really don’t care about the Armenians or the Georgians - I’m already overwhelmed by the options, even despite how samey as AoE2 civs are. It’s taken over 20 years to get to this point anyway. AoE4 can take its time, and variants are a fun way to give more content and options without overwhelming.
I’m excited for variant civilizations because they’re a different take. I like them as a celebration of subcultures, as a new way to play on an already-known base civilization (a Chinese that can rush a bit better? Great!), and even as a test of mechanics. “Representation” can come over time - even AoE2 doesn’t have a civ for every people in history yet.
(On the point of mechanics, I’m least excited about Jeanne d’Arc - as much as I love the dear Saint and it fits as a subcultural variant, I’m hopeful the use of hero units doesn’t take over the game over time. As long as it’s not too far different from the use of several Samurai Bannermen or Prelates or a Khan, we’ll be ok.)
Depends if the poster is on about China historically (which has a fair amount of data available about it), or China now, and is trying to claim some kind of Sinophobic bias in modern society.
Which would be weird, because why include the Chinese at all in that case?
For the variant’s name: they already renamed it once. I don’t see them doing it again. The variants are specifically not meant to be civs as we understand them - they’re deliberately a bit more ahistorical. So appeals to make them historical are going to fall flat.
The developers have specific design goals for these variants, and now more than ever are likely aware of any negative sentiments. But at the end of the day some folks are going to dislike this content - fairly - nomatter how it’s presented. I’m sure the devs know that. Just like I hope that where a historical approach is warranted, the devs continue to improve it.
The campaign in the expansion, for example, will be a great benchmark there. As will the dev’s dedication to increasing faction diversity with unique units, map “feel” with Gaia, and so on.
Ayyubids was by far the most widely accepted variant, and it isn’t even close. Do you even keep up with AoE4 are you just saying things? Your entire point was that people get angry regardless (so why even bother!! wow, so wise), yet there is a clear and direct example of doing it right. Are you going to try and gaslight us into believing people genuinely didn’t like the Ayyubids rename? Are you going to lie, Gorb?
They should correct ZXL and it is not even a question.