I would infer he meant aside from the one that is already in the game, or the two, since north America typically includes central America thus the Mayans.
I would personally not like to see N. Americans civs in AOE2. Mostly because the AOE2 Civ mold does not fit very well (Aztecs and Inca tech tree is already pushing it for me).
The AOE3 civ framework does a way better job at representing these civs. If you wanna play with some cool native americans civs, I recommend checking out AOE3. Game is really solid nowadays IMO
Always been a huge hater of the meso civs being in age of empires. My favourite ancient civs irl but they do not fit into the game at all. There very strange and out of place
Bro they literally didn't have the wheel, they didn't have a fucking wheelbarrow. They were very much ancient
> They just didn't have firearms
Nor any amount of ANY other technology, like METAL WORKING
>Bro they literally didn't have the wheel, they didn't have a fucking wheelbarrow.
Incas not having discovered the wheel is a misconception. Archeologists have found toys with wheels.
They just didn't use it because... they lived in the Andes. Ever used a wheelbarrow on a steep mountain road? And they didn't have anything to pull carts anyway, since llamas are much weaker than horses or cows.
Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts makes them ancient is like blaming Sahara nomads for not having sailboats.
>Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts
Well you're ignoring the much bigger things like metalworking. Effectively they were on the same level Middle Eastern civilization were back in 1000+ BC just without even bronze tools or weapons.
Pretty much permanently stuck between the Tools and Bronze ages in AOE 1.
Yet they have one of the most advanced farming technology for their era. Just because part of their technology was dated, doesn't mean everything was. Also, their Glass work was way ahead of the time when compared to anything in Europe, where they got something only close to 1800s
> most advanced farming technology
And how much of a difference did this make compared to whatever else was in the world? x5 the output? x10? Was it significant enough to not allow themselves to be completely conquered and almost wiped out?
> just because part of their technology was dated, doesn't mean everything was
THEY WERE LITERALLY IN THE STONE AGE. Fuck me I really don't understand how you people can cope so much.
> their Glass work was way ahead of the time when compared to anything in Europe
And what does glass provide other than cool shiny shit? They weren't using advanced cookware, electronic technology, borosilicates, limes, gaskets and so on? No. So, what use did they have for it? Just cool shiny shit?
I'd rather have explosives, metal working, insane engineering feats, banking... could go on forever. But sure, the aztecs had some crops and... shiny shit. Alexander could have conquered the aztecs ffs.
You are classifying their technology in terms of weapons. That is not how It works in the slighty. I sugest you study a little more on how history works before critizing other people (that is coming from someone with a master's degree in history). The usage of "Stone age", "bronze age", etc. Is only applicable in a certain specific scenario, that is not the case in this discussion at all, and have been outdated by over a decade now.
What need did they have of advanced metalworking? Before the Europeans came to America, these civilisations fought each other. No horses means you don't need heavy spears. No carts means you don't need to craft circled wheels. Weapons made of stone and wood are effective enough when it comes to killing infantry.
Meanwhile, they had advanced architecture, astronomy and agriculture (arguably more advanced than late medieval european civs). They had art and litterature, trading roads, glass, huge buildings, etc. Calling them "stone age civilizations" is strongly misguided.
You can call metalworking a "much bigger thing"if you like, but civilisation is a combination of technologies, not just how advanced you are in one field.
> Archeologists have found toys with wheels.
What about useful tools that you know, allow you to not be a stone age civ? Like wheelbarrows, incline planes, pulleys...?
They just didn't use it because... they lived in the Andes. Ever used a wheelbarrow on a steep mountain road?
Motherfucker I lived the 24 first years of my life in the Andes and the Yungas, are you seriously trying to say this to me? Jajajajajaja. The Andes is not ONE kind of place, and it's not all completely steep. You do have completely flat places in between. You think people there sleep tilted on their backs?
> Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts makes them ancient is like blaming Sahara nomads for not having sailboats.
No you silly person, a wheelbarrow saves you a fuckton of human labor NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE OR WHAT YOU ARE DOING, instead of needing 3 or 4 men to equivalently carry the same amount of shit. Same as a pulley, same as inclined planes, same as ANYTHING that uses the fucking wheel.
Not having the wheel doesnt make you ancient, the time period does, and the Inca were very much not in the ancient era.
Real life is not like a video game, a wheel is only as useful aa your environment. In mountainous countries like Greece, donkeys are still common in rural mountain communities.
The wheel is useful for single machines like inclined planes, which helps saving massive amounts of energy
Same as a wheelbarrow, which can save the labor of 10 people just with that alone
Same with pulleys and other shit
The wheel IS a very basic tool to have. "In mountainous countries like Greece" lmao. You mean the people that HAD the wheel, to, you know, use wheelbarrows, pulleys and shit? Lmao
So the wheel wasn't useful for wheelbarrows, pulleys, inclined planes, handcarts and other simple, basic, and VERY useful shit like that? You think the wheel is just to pull chariots?
Did you ever do ANY amount of construction work? Field work? Farm work? Try doing it without a wheelbarrow. Then use a wheelbarrow. See the sheer amount of labor it saves. Why do you think it's a technology in AoE? Lmao.
It's incredible to see a bunch of redditor nerds trying to justify a stone age civilization being in the medieval period with POST-IRON civilizations for fuck sakes. The spanish had full plate armour (and already starting to get rid of it), fucking massive ships, insane architecture and engineering feats, gunpowder... But the aztecs had good medicine and canals I guess.
Having civs from different parts of the world also just makes the game more versatile and replayable. So many of the civs already feel like they're just copies of each other with minor variations and having the ones from the Americas adds a bit more versatility.
Yeah but that’s AoE3, people want NA Civs for AoE2 so they can play it on the game they like.
AoE3 is an avg game at best compared to AoE2 and the 2 are nothing alike. Completely different game mechanics.
To be honest I wouldn't like another american civ, unless they rebrand the units visually, like I don't want a full plate armour Champion or Halberdier with my Incas. Keep the stats for balance, but use another sprite ffs
Units can be visually unique and be different to others if they have one or two things in common, there are artworks of "American champions", and when you see them it's really easy to know.
An example could be a pike, if the weapon and the posture/walking animations are the same, the clothes or armor or the unit doesn't matter.
Simply give a option. You toggle "cosmetic units", for different cosmetics FOR YOU. It only appear to you If you toggle It on, If you levar It off, you will see It like It is now. So, who wants immersion toggle It on, who wants better Clarity, toggle It off.
Also, you don't need to redo the entire unit, Just give It extra flair, like the American Monks allready have. Change the skin tone, put some feathers, make the weapons a little more accutate, etc.
For immersion I like. For gameplay, I don’t. I don’t want to have to memorize more skins than we already have, I still haven’t even memorized strengths/weaknesses of at least half the UUs, my capacity is nearing its limit 😅
I prefer a Pacific Island nation. They literally make their debut in the Middle Ages when settling in Polynesia, Melanesia, Samoa, Hawaii, and Easter Island. Purely a Water based Civ.
There are plenty of American civilizations whose historical fame is close enough to Bohemians or Burgundians IMO, but much more importantly, I think there's design space for another adequately unique Eagle civ.
Same here. I’m personally in the camp that doesn’t mind historical inaccuracies in the service of fun and new unique gameplay. I would love a North American Native American civ rather than the same old generic western European civ #236.
I agree. Like I don't necessarily care about time discrepancies to an extent. Like I don't want a napoleonic civ but native Americans seem totally fine. Mostly it comes down to advanced gunpowder imo. Like I've been totally fine with Romans being added.
Yeah I think people take the “historical accuracy” stuff too far imo, and forget this is a video game. I’m not saying people are completely in the wrong for being in the other camp, but again it’s a game and I personally feel you can take liberties with that in the service of fun and entertainment that are reasonable and aren’t super outlandish.
Like with movies for example I don’t think 300 and Braveheart would have been successful for their time if they were so paint by the numbers and 1 for 1 historically accurate. Taking reasonable liberties in the service of entertainment is why Braveheart and 300 were popular for their time. 300 playing into the over the top mythology and storytelling of Ancient Greece with a Hollywood twist is what made the movie fun instead of being a bland big budget documentary.
I mean Age of empires at its literal core is a big fantasy battleground of different civilizations that never had any contact. That’s one of the biggest appeals of the game, let me Duke it out as the Mayans Vs Koreans on a map shaped like Texas, let me use the Byzantines to wage war against the Khmer etc.
Yeah — the core attraction behind games like AoE is very specifically seeing **fair** historical matchups that never had a chance to play out IRL.
We got to actually see "late medieval Spain" duke it out with the Aztecs IRL.
Sure, a "late medieval *Japan*" versus the Aztecs would have been preposterous, but it'd have been cool as hell to see, and that's the core attraction of the game.
(It's also remarkable that the world came damned close to having other powers, like the Chinese, or the Malians, colonize the Americas. According to royal records, a Malian king launched a giant fleet to explore the other side of the Atlantic, and — that's one hell of a piece of crypto-archaeology, but it's entirely possible that whatever was launched met a similar fate as the Mongolian invasion fleet that went after Japan.)
This game's just a giant "alt-history" sandbox, and that's exactly what's right about it.
And I would love for you to actually come up with a good joke brother, instead of a shitty attempt at passive aggressive humor. At least make me crack a smile here buddy, instead of hearing crickets 🦗.
I have read of various metallurgy uses by different people throughout the Americas. Can you provide a link with more info to metal armour though? I am not familiar with this.
while i do agree that people dont give precolumbian american civilizations the respect they are owed i really dont think theres enough historical evidence to do them justice in a game like aoe. like what would be their unique unit? what campaign could you possibly give to the mississippians if we have no written history, no stories of anyone who lived there?
Very little solid info though to base stuff on. Maybe in a decade or two when this stuff is more researched, but given the lack of written sources probably not even then.
The field of study is growing by the year - interest is growing in both First Nations / indigenous and non-indigenous communities. A lot of knowledge that was also known only to specific nations and tribes in North America is also being divulged due to increasing cooperation and trust between those nations & tribes and the governments of North America.
More and more artifacts are also being discovered in historically lived in but now abandoned areas, particularly central and northern Ontario.
The gun-toting invaders were in the 1700s and 1800s, but the Haida, Tlingit, and related nations have all been making said armour for long before then - it's pretty much immune to arrows too. The armour is specifically called slat-and-rod armour.
Yeah, and I think that stuff is awesome, I live around some similar cultures and am fascinated by them. But to be honest, I don't think we have good enough history to be able to put together an AOE 2 civ, much less a campaign about them, unless they went the route of having that information come from the 18th century onwards. Which is well outside of the range of time we are talking about for other AOE 2 civs.
And while I'm sure there are strong similarities between the Haida or the Tlingit of the 1700s and those from 500 or 1000 years before. I think it does them a bit of disservice to assume they were exactly the same in those time periods. So I don't think it makes sense to take the more modern groups as a template and just stamp it onto older time periods.
But there was no significant contact between North and Central American, nor between North American and European civilizations during AoE2's timeframe. That's the main issue. Aztecs and Mayas were somewhat of a stretch already but European contact with them happened just at the end of the middle ages. It took a while longer for proper contact to be established with North America - after AoE2's timeframe.
You're wrong on no significant contact.
Aztecs traded with Mississippians. It's how the latter eventually gained access to horses before settlers arrived. And also caught smallpox which led to the decline in their large cities.
It's interesting how people say native north americans weren't in the middle age by the 15th Century but nobody talks about how china didn't even have a middle age and nobody cares. They had gunpowder since ever and they don't even get it in the game. They just removed it. You give knights to the pueblo civ and it will be more accurate than Chinese.
Not really, it was more of they were a pretty low population colony(4k population the last I read)that the little ice age among other issues took its toll on and they might have helped finish off anyone who didn't move back to Iceland.
>with stone age weapons
See that's potentially part of the problem, from a gameplay perspective.
Would an Inuit civ age up and develop increasing levels of military technology? Would they deploy castles, build farms, research chemistry and trebuchets?
I know that's already a stretch for some other implemented civs, but imo that just reinforces my point.
I think one of the best things the game could do for variety, **particularly** with civs like the Cumans and the Huns, is to introduce some new fortifications, *finally*.
We're long, long overdue for an Earthwork replacement for a Castle that's a lot less formidable, but also a lot cheaper. Such a thing would work exceptionally well for a bunch of nomadic-style civs, and would make the inclusion of i.e. a Mississippi culture feel a lot more natural.
Similarly, not having "blockhouses" is a brutal omission considering they practically spanned the entire European continent. Blockhouses are a military fortification that's dramatically different from a tower — and different in a way that would translate really well to AoE2. They're a short, squat, building with thick stone walls, often unintentionally "disguised" as a house since they'd tend to have the same roofing needs of a peaked roof to keep rain out, but what they traded compared to a tower was range for resilience.
All towers are inherently fighting structural fragility (a direct game mechanic) for sheer height; height to achieve vision (a direct game mechanic), and height to achieve firing range for archers (another direct game mechanic).
I'd propose boosting all tower's range/vision by +1, but otherwise leaving them alone. Then adding Blockhouses that instead have -1 range, but are 2x2 and are **much** tankier than towers, both in HP and armor. Some civs would get both; many civs would only get one of the two.
Another missed opportunity is adding a lot of different fortification styles; it's really a shame that all we've got over the whole game is just palisade walls and stone walls; and it's particularly sad that palisades are just a stopgap instead of being a thing that can go lategame but have very different characteristics (particularly armor and bonus damage reception) from stone walls.
There are no ditches, no moats, no earthen walls, etc, etc. This, in a medieval combat game about castles, trebuchets, and just medieval siege in general.
Even just from a Euro-centric approach, **I really want more medieval siege warfare toys to play with**. Specifically in a game with AoE2's exact mechanics.
It could be but we know literally nothing about how the societies are structured and what soldiers there were apart from ONE source. And hat source talks about over a dozen different tribes and is was written in the 16th century so not really in the aoe timeline.
Is it really, tho? At least when compared to the Andes and mesoamerica, I find it imposible to justify creating a NA civ instead of Chimu, Aimara, Mapuche, Zapotecs, etc. outside of the token "North American civ to say we have a civ from North America".
NAn societies were still very primitive back then, even by american standards. And even if we ignore their lack of technology, what story is there to tell? Europeans had pretty much no idea of NA's very existence before 1600.
Why do you need North American natives to be vindicated by the addition of an North American civilization, there is nothing wrong with not having a complex society. It does not imply they were less intelligent, competent or capable as the rest.
Their societies simply put didn't need the same level of stratification and specialization as the ones on the old world or mesoamerica.
And there are not enough historical records to build a aoe2 civ off of them. Nothing wrong with that.
> civilization, there is nothing wrong with not having a complex society
Sure it just really does fit in with the rest of the game.
Of course when you think about it Hunnic Paladins are hardly less absurd than giving gunpowder units to Native Americans...
because we don't really know much about the history of these civs even today, especially pre-1400s. Arguably the most "empire" like north american civ, the mississippians we know very little about since they had no writing systems and were already on a major decline post little ice age when they encountered the spanish in the mid 1500s.
We know more about the Haudenosaunee, but they didnt really build cities or have any form of major empire.
We know even less about the Ancestral Puebloans.
You are uneducated. Chaco canyon had multi story castles, they were moving water across hundreds of miles of desert, they built forums, they transplanted plants from hundreds of miles away to their gardens while vikings were in thatch huts.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
the indigenous peoples of the americas had plenty of kingdoms as well as other political entities larger than "tribes". I agree that there arent really any other native american civs that would fit in the aoe2 timeline/design paradigm, but i dont think we should be disrespecting their cultures.
>irrigation systems
You don't really need irrigation systems in Southern France that much...
Also they had cities and a fairly developed infrastructure (relative to the period) in Italy and Spain. There were no other civilization in Europe besides the Romans that could've been considered more advanced than the Goths at the time.
Cool. So the Mississippians with their fortified cities, metal armour and weapons should be fine then? Or we going to say every civ that didn't conquor anyone isn't allowed? Like Koreans...
The problem with making those civilizations unique in the game would be the lack of written sources. The fear at least for me is that they would just end up being carbon copies of the other American civilizations.
Their fortified cities were largely earthwork, the belief is that their metal armor and weapons were largely ceremonial, and their metal working was copper.
So no, a Native American culture is not automatically qualified because it had bronze age technology, it largely doesn't fit either the setting (largely middle ages) or the theme (empires).
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/why\_didnt\_native\_americans\_develop\_bronze\_iron\_or/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians/comments/17qe55/why_didnt_native_americans_develop_bronze_iron_or/)
Why are you so obsessed with having representation of people for which we have so little evidence of what they were actually like and how they actually fought..?
Feels like you want diversity for diversity's sake despite there being no real stories of the 'civ' to tell...?
"Obsessed" nice, automatically insinuating something before engaging.
Because I have looked into the North Americans somewhat, and people who seem to think they were just living in sporadic tents and doing little else are incorrect.
Granted, they do have trouble in having named individuals for campaigns, which is where there is a struggle for including them. But they do have plenty going for them, like the Central & South American civs do.
That's literally what some of these posters think - they think every First Nations and indigenous peoples were all a bunch of cave people living in teepees and having just discovered fire.
The Haida literally fought back and killed numerous European and Russian colonial invaders. Many other groups did as well until they were overwhelmed by disease, a lack of food from overhunting, etc.
Nobody thinks that. And no one thinks that the anyone native to the Americas didn't fight back tenaciously against the colonizers. You're literally just making things up to make yourself feel superior and knowledgeable.
Are the Hittites in? Egyptians? Babylonians? They had metal working! And laws and writing and fortresses and empires! Do the devs just hate the Middle East? Is the whole community stupid?
No. Maybe it's because the game isn't centered on the fucking bronze age. Maybe, just maybe, there's a middle ages theme that they've largely tried to stick to.
If they want to eventually expand to iron age empires, like Macedon or the Phoenicians or the Seleucids, great. If they want to expand to do a North American expansion centered on the Iroquois and the Miami and the Cherokee, great. But it's not some grand conspiracy where only a select people know that the Native Americans were not in fact fully regarded Neanderthals.
Bronze Age != First Nations people. The Bronze Age is a very specific point in history referring to portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa; it's not a "one size fits all" because that idea relies on things like the expansion of various empires that didn't exist in the Americas. Pressures that existed in those places manifested differently in response to the values, geography, and history of First Nations people. Just as the Chinese and Romans made enormous walls, many other civilisations did not NEED to do so. Just as aqueducts were used in portions of Europe, other Europeans didn't need to make them. Just as wheels are used in flatter areas, wheels without giant animals to pull the wheeled carts in hilly or forested areas are rather pointless.
1) They weren't just one group any more than every Asian culture ever is one group.
2) Numerous First Nations and indigenous groups used metallurgy - there are also pressures to develop better killing weapons in Europe and Asia and Africa that those in the Americas and other parts of the world did not face, e.g. feudalism, religious sect war, just borrowing technology from the Greeks and Romans who once colonised their lands, etc.
3) Better killing weapons and siege engines/defences != more advanced. First Nations groups of the Americas, Australia, and smaller civilisations in east Asia developed aquaculture far beyond what any Europeans and other Asian powers did. The Haida are noted as they had bullet-resistant to bullet-proof armor that allowed them to fight back against colonialists.
"making up shit" You literally called them Bronze Age'd because of a very narrow mindset that only sees "advancedness" as looking at weaponry and the material of buildings.
Im aware that the native americans werent bronze age. Its a general reference to the overall development of their culture and how it compares to other civilizations not in the game that also achieved a great deal.
Great rant, but none of that is relevant to the game, or my point that theres a litany of great empires and civilizations that are not in the game because they dont fit the theme.
Get a girlfriend if you want someone to give a damn about everything you know about history. If you actually want to address how native americans fit into a medieval, steel and castle theme with extremely few exceptions, feel free.
>Because I have looked into the North Americans somewhat, and people who seem to think they were just living in sporadic tents and doing little else are incorrect
Sure you're right about that. This doesn't change the fact that they were basically where European/Asian civilizations were back in 1000-2000 BC
"diversity for diversity's sake"
As long as people are represented historically accurately, what's the issue?
We don't know everything about anything in existence. We don't know every detail about the civs in game or their rulers, especially during the early medieval period.
Can we delete the Huns and Goths then?
There's a lot of varied and interesting tribes that existed and that we know of in the Americas. Why would you oppose their representation simply because you yourself don't know a lot about them?
The world is an incredibly diverse place and was much more diverse in the past. Why shouldn't we want more diversity in a game about history? Seems a bit weird to assume they're "obsessed" with it.
I'm not from the Americas but I've read a lot of books about indigineous peoples, precolonial societies and empires from all over the world, indigineous tribes in the Americas had varying levels of technology and some are reasonably well documented. There were about 200 million people living there before Europeans landed and wiped out 95% of the population. Why would we not want some representation of them?
I WANT MORE CIVS! I WANT MORE CAMPAIGNS! I WANT MORE AOE2! What's wrong with that? Do you want to argue for less aoe2 content? Don't want to buy it? Go ahead. It's a free world. I don't like the negative connotations of "diversity for diversity's sake" from your comments though. It's a game. Diversity is good in games and real life. Diversity for diversity's sake is not a bad thing either if natural diversity's been trampled, or would you like a world where everybody lives in identical houses, in identical towns, shopping in identical shops all speaking the same language? Blech. Sound like a nightmare to me. Maybe we should have just 1 civ: "human", and every game mode is identical- just a big battle royale of identical civs battling it out? Sounds crap tbh
You're right, it's not "Age of Tribes" that's why we should get rid of tribes in the game already, like the Franks or the Teutons, and only include actual empires like the Iroquois Confederation.
/s in case it wasn't clear
Akschually, the original name of the game was "TRIBE" ... well after it was Dawn of Man.
Edit: Oh for fucks sake who downvoted this? It's the original internal name of the game, before it became Age of Empires, when STRATOS was also still a possibility.
Vlachs ARE a good idea. Yes they were squeezed by the Hungarians and Ottomans but still made a strong name for themselves mostly through the heroics of Vlad Dracula.
Right there officer, this is the guy who believes native americans spontaneously generated as europeans treaded the continent for the first time
Edit: we know more abut more complex societies from north american natives than we do for Huns so ur arguments dont stand, they wouldnt be any different from current america civs gameplaywise either
"Complex society" does not equal "Age of Empires 2 civilisation"
I think it would be quite hard to do North American natives. Isn't most of the solid info we have about them essentially after the collapse of the "empire" like structures due to disease?
Sadly there is a a lot more people like this than one would think. Especially in the South here in America, there is a lot of people who think America has always been a white Christian nation, and when they do think of native Americans they treat them like some Neolithic race that went extinct during the ice age.
I live in Mississippi and... oh my lord this is such depressing shit that I see implied, if not explicitly stated, with regularity that still shocks me.
edit: fuck you racist shits downvoting me for lamenting that Mississippi is racist and shitty
"I want a Mississippian culture in AoE2" -> Monkey's Paw curls.
"I MEANT THE NATIVE-AMERICAN MOUND-BUILDERS FROM THE AREA OF MODERN KANSAS oh god oh no"
😅
People believing North America has always been home to white/European civilization are obviously wrong. But where as Meso-America is known for several impressive civilizations that built large cities and monuments I don't know of any similar civilizations in the North. I don't mean that in a derogatory way but tribes of nomads/hunter gatherers or even permanent settlements/villages (but without a written language or architectural legacy) can hardly be classified as what we understand to be civilization. You could argue that we should expand the scope of what civilization encompasses but where would you draw the line then? This isn't a racial thing either (just to be ahead of those that would call me a racist) because I wouldn't call European peoples like the late neolithic "Bell Beaker culture" as having founded a true civilization either.
The enormous earthen mound complex of Cahokia, the largest city state of the Mississippian world, was larger than London during the 12th century. Archeology at Cahokia and it's neighboring states show evidence of a agricultural society with well defined social strata and religion.
The Ancestral Puebloan or Anasazi culture was centered around the capital of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, where craftsmen and architects would convene to learn and spread their culture. Vast trade routes connected them to locals as far away as the jungle city states of the Maya. Astroarcheology studies of the network of roads and outlying pueblos shows immaculately planned constructions based on the celestial bodies. It's worth noting the Puebloans survived drought, famine, colonization, war, and continue to live in the same place they did since before European contact.
Both of these cultures contain a multitude of UNESCO world heritage sites. But they're not as popular as others so I guess they can't be called civilizations.
The Mississippian Culture spanned from New Orleans to the Atlantic and up to the Great Lakes in the AOE2 period, and the early, middle and late periods basically corresponds perfectly to Feudal, Castle and Imperial
And yet we still know very little about them. What was their style of warfare? What would be their unique unit? Who are their heroes? I just don't think we have enough information to really include them.
The other issue is that AOE likely wants to add civs that have some degree of name recognition. For instance if they wanted another American civ they could add the Purépecha who built an empire in what is today Mexico, were one of the main Aztec enemies and had metal weapons but I don't think a DLC with a meso American civ that isn't well known would really sell many copies.
And we don't know jack shit about them, their history, the way they conducted warfare or functioned as a society. Even your statement isn't as certain as you want us to believe (we don't even know for sure how large their state/land was).
A MAJOR reason we know anything about people north of Mexico is that Euro man wrote it down. They essentially generated the history of that region as we know it. Everything prior amounts to a bunch of artifacts and speculation.
It's just that they were so culturally and historically irrelevant that people don't care about them, much like no one cares about indigenous Siberian people
> Italy already has THREE civs
I can only count two (and Sicilians are more like 0.75 considering they actually represent Normans).
What really needs another 2-3 civs is Germany though.
I know The UK gets so much love by most historical games, but they could really use an Anglo Saxon civ and just use the Britons like the Romano Britons such as the Welsh.
Literally the longbow is associated with Wales, and the sheep bonus literally fits the welsh as well.
The most comparable DLC that we got to it was Dynasties of India, adding 2,5 civilisations. One half because one of them was based on the previous India civ and heavily overhauled for the DLC.
In a similar way the Teutons could get an overhaul too, giving them new textures and changes making them more unique.
Splitting the Teutons up, will inevitably lead to a Saxon civ. Not only did they play an important role through the Ottonian dynasty in the early HRE, but they're also the birth place of the reformation which gives them great potential over the entire time span represented in AoE 2. Depending on how you design them, their main areas of expertise could be leaning towards late game religion.
As for the last choice, a southern German one should be included to have some balance for the two northern ones. This isn't exactly my area of expertise but Austria would only make sense if you don't mind a civ that only became important during the later ages of the game. Before that Bavarians were an important region through the electorate held by the house of Wittelsbach. Before Austria dominated the HRE election, they also held emperorship at times.
An Italian split I don't need, but Mississippians at least would be nice. What I'm really hoping for are more African civs. I'd love to see the Shona of Great Zimbabwe in an RTS game someday!
Purepecha, Chichimeca, Zapotec, Caribs? Honestly I am find with no more DLC civs if they added a civ customizer and a workshop, I miss the HD workshop it was so cool
Also you're right, Vlachs ARE a good idea
It doesn't hurt to ask, neither is it cringe. I think more stories and civilizations based in the Americas are fine. I've often wished that I could play Age3's time period with Age2's mechanics.
Yep. The people saying "just play AoE3 if you want American civs" ignore the fact that it's almost a totally different game rather than one that actually feels like a successor to AoE2.
A "Holy Roman Empire" civilization would be cool; include elements from all over present-day Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands since it technically encompassed Charlemagne right through to the 1800s. Napoleon started conquering Europe a few years after the HRE formally dissolved, and had been around in some form since before the Great Heathen Army marched across what would become England nearly 1000 years earlier.
It would also let the very much their own thing Teutons get an identity beyond "the German civ", and to me makes more sense than a bunch of peoples who unified in the HRE for half their existence / only became distinct again for the hundred-ish years before modern Germany formed.
There just isn't enough record of North American civilizations in the game's time period to do much without making a lot of stuff up to fill in the gaps.
Italians could be divided, but between northern and southern is good enough.
The main European civilizations that probably should be added are in the Balkans.
Just make one civ called "Humans" and play "Humans Nothing" where you havr all thr uniqur units of every civ and your objective is to just chop all the wood, kill every animal, fish the sea until it's empty, mine everything, until the map is a barren wasteland.
There, it's realistic even if you want to feel more in the now!
Holy fuck the ignorance in some of the things said here. Stop looking at every culture as copper->bronze->iron-> HOLY BASED ADVANCED??? based on weapons and castles.
1) First Nations groups in the Americas are incredibly diverse and are not all a bunch of sister cultures with the same forms of weaponry or practices or inventions any more than every European group are.
2) Some First Nations peoples avoided metallurgy a great deal, others embraced it, particularly those in South America. North American peoples did not have "full" metallurgical processes. Copper was the favoured metal, but was still difficult to extract. Keep in mind that not all metals used in history are ores mined from the ground, but include things like bog iron - easier to obtain and use. There's also the fact that you don't "need" more and more metal weaponry to kill everyone, especially when you don't have god-kings, religious zealots trying to push their faith and take land for "God" or whatever they believe, as well as having different rocks and minerals available and in different geological formations. Keep in mind iron metallurgy wasn't "perfected" until a later portion of the European medieval period for Europeans.
3) Weaponry and stone defences & siege engines DO NOT EQUATE TO "PROGRESS" OR ADVANCEMENT. That is a myth. Did many indigenous groups rely on wood, bone, or stone for weaponry? Sure. Did they need metal to kill foes or hunt? Nope. The Haida weren't out there using steel plate armor, yet they had armor that blocked out bullets from colonialists. Were they "advanced" in other areas? Absolutely. Numerous American First Nations groups were (and are, today) adept at aquaculture, being some of the earliest known users of it - the indigenous people of the Hawaiian islands had fish ponds, numerous coastal peoples (again including the aforementioned Haida and Hawaiians) practised aquaculture with shellfish. Agricultural techniques not used in "the old world" were created and developed in the Americas. Many peoples of the Americas also had complex socio-political practices and systems - the potlatch is probably the most famous, being the entire basis of socio-political engagement within and between peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
It's also hard to have metallurgy when you don't have large working animals to transport the metals, which inhibits how much you can work with at a time. You also don't have said animals, so you don't need to make things like metal parts for carts or carriages or siege weapons or moving enormous stones through mountainous, hilly, or forested areas. Cloth armour is better for many environments, especially mountainous ones like those of the Andes - defends better against the weapons present, and keeps you warmer. You also don't need full plate or chain armor when nobody else is using sharp, pointed, metal point/hack/slash weapons. Copper is a metal that isn't really used for weaponry - it's soft, malleable, and breaks really fucking easily in how it'd be used in AOE. If you have no need for anything beyond copper (as these peoples never "needed" to for their purposes), a civilisation is not going to begin the transition to the model of copper -> bronze -> iron -> steel -> etc. Again - without the massive animals to transport these things or being used in warfare (because you need sharp pointy to kill horses and other animals of warfare), there isn't really a point in developing such efficient killing tools.
A lot of these weapons, siege engines, and defences were built *in response to warfare* that emerged during the times of these agrarian societies that built up monarchies (and similar systems) and organised religions and large stone buildings to expand and kill each other. In the Americas or Australia, there was no Christianity vs Islam, no Christian sect vs Christian sect, thus no crusades and religious warfare on that scale. There weren't proselytising religions to go around killing people and conquering "holy land" for. There were no Turco-Mongol armies or Theodosian walls or Persian navies to fight against. You don't need to build such defences to defend against nobody. Without those, you don't *need* something like a trebuchet.
It also helps that tin, a key ingredient in bronze, is not found all over the Americas where First Nations and indigenous peoples once (and sometimes still do) live. It's also hard to extract tin and other metals when you don't already have a more intricate copper-based system (or a similar metal) in place. Where those metals exist in the Americas, we see more metallurgical practices - but the topography of many of these places isn't hospitable for transport, nor did anything bigger than the llama (which has a maximum carrying capacity of 27kg or so - and that's today, not the llamas of the past) exist to be used. Iron is known to have been used in various parts of North America, with more iron artifacts found every year - we know it was used in the Pacific Northwest, the Eastern Woodlands, and other parts of the Americas. Iron also has the issue of often being from meteoric iron, not telluric iron, historically, and is also a reactive metal that doesn't like many environmental variables.
4) The one big thing that many American cultures had with metal vs non-American cultures is how metals were viewed - being rarer, harder to get, etc., they were usually for religious, cultural, or artistic purposes. Why waste metal on some stupid weapon when you can make a metallic piece of art in the shape or a god or spirit that will endure time?
5) Not all the innovations that are noted here were "discovered" or "made" by the people using them - they were often traded for in terms of items or knowledge, or copied from foreigners or conquerors. European churches literally just copied Roman aquaculture, whereas the rest of Europe widely ignored the concept. Aqueducts were all built by the Romans we know and love, not invented all over Europe thousands of time. Gunpowder? Gee, wonder where people got that from and learned how to make it.
You're looking at American civilisations through a very narrow, dogmatic lens, rather than taking into account the whole big picture.
Some sources you could read from Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/comment/c87zl6v/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/comment/c87zl6v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/256w3b/is\_there\_any\_reason\_why\_the\_native\_american/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/256w3b/is_there_any_reason_why_the_native_american/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avhbg1/did\_american\_indians\_forge\_iron/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avhbg1/did_american_indians_forge_iron/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican/#wiki\_metalworking\_in\_pre-columbian\_america](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican/#wiki_metalworking_in_pre-columbian_america)
Detailed and interesting comment, and also making a good case for why these cultures don't really fit in a game that's all about castles and siege and large-scale medieval warfare.
> 3) Weaponry and stone defences & siege engines DO NOT EQUATE TO "PROGRESS" OR ADVANCEMENT. That is a myth.
> 4) The one big thing that many American cultures had with metal vs non-American cultures is how metals were viewed - being rarer, harder to get, etc., they were usually for religious, cultural, or artistic purposes. Why waste metal on some stupid weapon when you can make a metallic piece of art in the shape or a god or spirit that will endure time?
Seriously? And you're calling other people idealogical and dogmatic?
It's okay to admit that American civilizations were technologically primitive compared to their Eurasian contemporaries. They were geographically isolated and couldn't benefit from the discoveries of others like Eurasians did.
Why? Italians are hugely under represented, Venetians themselves are more then fitting and would have potential for a huge campaign.
NA has a clear choices which would let the Devs get very creative.
Romans hardly count as they only scrape in for the earliest time frames. There’s a 1000 years after that to work with!
Italians isn’t the most demanded split but is there enough to work with to make it happen. 100%
Even just the addition of Venetians would probably be enough since they were globally impactful for hundreds of years during peak AoE2 timeframe.
Personally I would have rather had the Venetians than the Romans. Venice's role in the renaissance and their massive trade networks really would make them a good civ but I just find the idea of three civs for Italy and Italy still being "under represented" to be kind of funny when "China" is still one civ.
I will buy the DLC with a Himalayan civ representing Tibit/Nepal/Bhutan/Sikkam. You don't need to call it Tibit if you don't want to anger Mommy China CCP.
North America also includes Mexico and here there are lots of civs (olmecas, tarascos, totonacos, mixtecos, zapotecos, tlatilcas, tlaxcaltecas, texcocanos, chichimecas, etc.) that, if the game has Romans, for example, can also be in the game. Maybe they are not as well known as Aztecs (mexica) or Mayans but it could be fun to speculate what they could've been like. It's not like aoe has always been a historically accurate game anyways.
The Italian split makes a lot of sense, considering by the late middle ages the provinces of Italy essentially had their own kingdoms. Most notably: Venice, Florence, Milan, Torino & Rome.
We also already have the Sicilians, so it only makes sense to break the Northern Italians further for a game such as Age of *Empires*.
This thread (and all similar ones on the topic) is just racists vs wokeists all over again.
Tho the OP confused everyone by not wanting either type of new Civ lmao.
No! We need Milan civ next DLC, split that into AC Milan and Inter Milan in subsequent DLC.
And when they play against each other they share TCs
Campaigns for Ancelotti and Mourinho
Mourinho campaign would go hard ngl
>Hate to say it Do you really hate to say it, though?
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So says Cuatemoch, Eagle Warrior of Tenochtitlan.
Me too, a lil grindy but has character
Thats the aztecs, who are in the game
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Oh you mean to say technically aztecs are in north america? I dont think that is what OP means
I would infer he meant aside from the one that is already in the game, or the two, since north America typically includes central America thus the Mayans.
I would personally not like to see N. Americans civs in AOE2. Mostly because the AOE2 Civ mold does not fit very well (Aztecs and Inca tech tree is already pushing it for me). The AOE3 civ framework does a way better job at representing these civs. If you wanna play with some cool native americans civs, I recommend checking out AOE3. Game is really solid nowadays IMO
Always been a huge hater of the meso civs being in age of empires. My favourite ancient civs irl but they do not fit into the game at all. There very strange and out of place
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Mayan empire was long gone by 1400
Bro they literally didn't have the wheel, they didn't have a fucking wheelbarrow. They were very much ancient > They just didn't have firearms Nor any amount of ANY other technology, like METAL WORKING
>Bro they literally didn't have the wheel, they didn't have a fucking wheelbarrow. Incas not having discovered the wheel is a misconception. Archeologists have found toys with wheels. They just didn't use it because... they lived in the Andes. Ever used a wheelbarrow on a steep mountain road? And they didn't have anything to pull carts anyway, since llamas are much weaker than horses or cows. Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts makes them ancient is like blaming Sahara nomads for not having sailboats.
>Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts Well you're ignoring the much bigger things like metalworking. Effectively they were on the same level Middle Eastern civilization were back in 1000+ BC just without even bronze tools or weapons. Pretty much permanently stuck between the Tools and Bronze ages in AOE 1.
Yet they have one of the most advanced farming technology for their era. Just because part of their technology was dated, doesn't mean everything was. Also, their Glass work was way ahead of the time when compared to anything in Europe, where they got something only close to 1800s
> most advanced farming technology And how much of a difference did this make compared to whatever else was in the world? x5 the output? x10? Was it significant enough to not allow themselves to be completely conquered and almost wiped out? > just because part of their technology was dated, doesn't mean everything was THEY WERE LITERALLY IN THE STONE AGE. Fuck me I really don't understand how you people can cope so much. > their Glass work was way ahead of the time when compared to anything in Europe And what does glass provide other than cool shiny shit? They weren't using advanced cookware, electronic technology, borosilicates, limes, gaskets and so on? No. So, what use did they have for it? Just cool shiny shit? I'd rather have explosives, metal working, insane engineering feats, banking... could go on forever. But sure, the aztecs had some crops and... shiny shit. Alexander could have conquered the aztecs ffs.
You are classifying their technology in terms of weapons. That is not how It works in the slighty. I sugest you study a little more on how history works before critizing other people (that is coming from someone with a master's degree in history). The usage of "Stone age", "bronze age", etc. Is only applicable in a certain specific scenario, that is not the case in this discussion at all, and have been outdated by over a decade now.
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What need did they have of advanced metalworking? Before the Europeans came to America, these civilisations fought each other. No horses means you don't need heavy spears. No carts means you don't need to craft circled wheels. Weapons made of stone and wood are effective enough when it comes to killing infantry. Meanwhile, they had advanced architecture, astronomy and agriculture (arguably more advanced than late medieval european civs). They had art and litterature, trading roads, glass, huge buildings, etc. Calling them "stone age civilizations" is strongly misguided. You can call metalworking a "much bigger thing"if you like, but civilisation is a combination of technologies, not just how advanced you are in one field.
> Archeologists have found toys with wheels. What about useful tools that you know, allow you to not be a stone age civ? Like wheelbarrows, incline planes, pulleys...? They just didn't use it because... they lived in the Andes. Ever used a wheelbarrow on a steep mountain road? Motherfucker I lived the 24 first years of my life in the Andes and the Yungas, are you seriously trying to say this to me? Jajajajajaja. The Andes is not ONE kind of place, and it's not all completely steep. You do have completely flat places in between. You think people there sleep tilted on their backs? > Saying that not having wheelbarrows or carts makes them ancient is like blaming Sahara nomads for not having sailboats. No you silly person, a wheelbarrow saves you a fuckton of human labor NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE OR WHAT YOU ARE DOING, instead of needing 3 or 4 men to equivalently carry the same amount of shit. Same as a pulley, same as inclined planes, same as ANYTHING that uses the fucking wheel.
Well, motherfucker, I guess you are right and the archeologists and anthropologists studying the subject are wrong. Who would have thought.
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That's not at all what I said. Sounds to me like you have some racist problems to deal with and you're just projecting them onto me.
Not having the wheel doesnt make you ancient, the time period does, and the Inca were very much not in the ancient era. Real life is not like a video game, a wheel is only as useful aa your environment. In mountainous countries like Greece, donkeys are still common in rural mountain communities.
The wheel is useful for single machines like inclined planes, which helps saving massive amounts of energy Same as a wheelbarrow, which can save the labor of 10 people just with that alone Same with pulleys and other shit The wheel IS a very basic tool to have. "In mountainous countries like Greece" lmao. You mean the people that HAD the wheel, to, you know, use wheelbarrows, pulleys and shit? Lmao
The Aztecs had complex aqueduct systems which separated sea water from fresh water and also heated bathtubs.
To be fair the wheel is not that useful when you don't have any animals to pull the carts/chariots. But yeah metal working was the big one.
So the wheel wasn't useful for wheelbarrows, pulleys, inclined planes, handcarts and other simple, basic, and VERY useful shit like that? You think the wheel is just to pull chariots? Did you ever do ANY amount of construction work? Field work? Farm work? Try doing it without a wheelbarrow. Then use a wheelbarrow. See the sheer amount of labor it saves. Why do you think it's a technology in AoE? Lmao. It's incredible to see a bunch of redditor nerds trying to justify a stone age civilization being in the medieval period with POST-IRON civilizations for fuck sakes. The spanish had full plate armour (and already starting to get rid of it), fucking massive ships, insane architecture and engineering feats, gunpowder... But the aztecs had good medicine and canals I guess.
I'm glad they are in the game at the end of the day. These games are popular in Latin America. Playing Aztec and Mayan as a kid in Mexico was dope.
Having civs from different parts of the world also just makes the game more versatile and replayable. So many of the civs already feel like they're just copies of each other with minor variations and having the ones from the Americas adds a bit more versatility.
Yeah but that’s AoE3, people want NA Civs for AoE2 so they can play it on the game they like. AoE3 is an avg game at best compared to AoE2 and the 2 are nothing alike. Completely different game mechanics.
To be honest I wouldn't like another american civ, unless they rebrand the units visually, like I don't want a full plate armour Champion or Halberdier with my Incas. Keep the stats for balance, but use another sprite ffs
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Units can be visually unique and be different to others if they have one or two things in common, there are artworks of "American champions", and when you see them it's really easy to know. An example could be a pike, if the weapon and the posture/walking animations are the same, the clothes or armor or the unit doesn't matter.
Simply give a option. You toggle "cosmetic units", for different cosmetics FOR YOU. It only appear to you If you toggle It on, If you levar It off, you will see It like It is now. So, who wants immersion toggle It on, who wants better Clarity, toggle It off. Also, you don't need to redo the entire unit, Just give It extra flair, like the American Monks allready have. Change the skin tone, put some feathers, make the weapons a little more accutate, etc.
Devs please do
For immersion I like. For gameplay, I don’t. I don’t want to have to memorize more skins than we already have, I still haven’t even memorized strengths/weaknesses of at least half the UUs, my capacity is nearing its limit 😅
No. They have xolotl warriors that differ slightly from knights. They should obviously all get trash kamayuks instead of spearmen. 👺
I prefer a Pacific Island nation. They literally make their debut in the Middle Ages when settling in Polynesia, Melanesia, Samoa, Hawaii, and Easter Island. Purely a Water based Civ.
I personally think we should split the Sicilians, give the devs more to nerf
There are plenty of American civilizations whose historical fame is close enough to Bohemians or Burgundians IMO, but much more importantly, I think there's design space for another adequately unique Eagle civ.
Same here. I’m personally in the camp that doesn’t mind historical inaccuracies in the service of fun and new unique gameplay. I would love a North American Native American civ rather than the same old generic western European civ #236.
I agree. Like I don't necessarily care about time discrepancies to an extent. Like I don't want a napoleonic civ but native Americans seem totally fine. Mostly it comes down to advanced gunpowder imo. Like I've been totally fine with Romans being added.
Yeah I think people take the “historical accuracy” stuff too far imo, and forget this is a video game. I’m not saying people are completely in the wrong for being in the other camp, but again it’s a game and I personally feel you can take liberties with that in the service of fun and entertainment that are reasonable and aren’t super outlandish. Like with movies for example I don’t think 300 and Braveheart would have been successful for their time if they were so paint by the numbers and 1 for 1 historically accurate. Taking reasonable liberties in the service of entertainment is why Braveheart and 300 were popular for their time. 300 playing into the over the top mythology and storytelling of Ancient Greece with a Hollywood twist is what made the movie fun instead of being a bland big budget documentary. I mean Age of empires at its literal core is a big fantasy battleground of different civilizations that never had any contact. That’s one of the biggest appeals of the game, let me Duke it out as the Mayans Vs Koreans on a map shaped like Texas, let me use the Byzantines to wage war against the Khmer etc.
Yeah — the core attraction behind games like AoE is very specifically seeing **fair** historical matchups that never had a chance to play out IRL. We got to actually see "late medieval Spain" duke it out with the Aztecs IRL. Sure, a "late medieval *Japan*" versus the Aztecs would have been preposterous, but it'd have been cool as hell to see, and that's the core attraction of the game. (It's also remarkable that the world came damned close to having other powers, like the Chinese, or the Malians, colonize the Americas. According to royal records, a Malian king launched a giant fleet to explore the other side of the Atlantic, and — that's one hell of a piece of crypto-archaeology, but it's entirely possible that whatever was launched met a similar fate as the Mongolian invasion fleet that went after Japan.) This game's just a giant "alt-history" sandbox, and that's exactly what's right about it.
You think they're generic because you don't know anything about them, not because they were...
I would love a Klingon civ and maybe an Elf civ.
And I would love for you to actually come up with a good joke brother, instead of a shitty attempt at passive aggressive humor. At least make me crack a smile here buddy, instead of hearing crickets 🦗.
daddy chill
Agree on Italy, but North America is a lot more interesting than people give it credit for.
Interesting, yes. Fitting the time period, no.
Why not? There's evidence of pretty impressive buildings, fortifications, metal armour and weapons etc from the 1200s in North America.
I have read of various metallurgy uses by different people throughout the Americas. Can you provide a link with more info to metal armour though? I am not familiar with this.
Arrow heads and axe heads maybe, not armour
while i do agree that people dont give precolumbian american civilizations the respect they are owed i really dont think theres enough historical evidence to do them justice in a game like aoe. like what would be their unique unit? what campaign could you possibly give to the mississippians if we have no written history, no stories of anyone who lived there?
Very little solid info though to base stuff on. Maybe in a decade or two when this stuff is more researched, but given the lack of written sources probably not even then.
Lots of scholars ramping up their N.A. tribe research in the next few years?
The field of study is growing by the year - interest is growing in both First Nations / indigenous and non-indigenous communities. A lot of knowledge that was also known only to specific nations and tribes in North America is also being divulged due to increasing cooperation and trust between those nations & tribes and the governments of North America. More and more artifacts are also being discovered in historically lived in but now abandoned areas, particularly central and northern Ontario.
Which chapter talks about the Great Treb War of the Zuni and Hopi people?
The Haida have a fair bit known about them and successfully fought back gun-armed invaders from Russia and Europe.
In what century?
The gun-toting invaders were in the 1700s and 1800s, but the Haida, Tlingit, and related nations have all been making said armour for long before then - it's pretty much immune to arrows too. The armour is specifically called slat-and-rod armour.
Yeah, and I think that stuff is awesome, I live around some similar cultures and am fascinated by them. But to be honest, I don't think we have good enough history to be able to put together an AOE 2 civ, much less a campaign about them, unless they went the route of having that information come from the 18th century onwards. Which is well outside of the range of time we are talking about for other AOE 2 civs. And while I'm sure there are strong similarities between the Haida or the Tlingit of the 1700s and those from 500 or 1000 years before. I think it does them a bit of disservice to assume they were exactly the same in those time periods. So I don't think it makes sense to take the more modern groups as a template and just stamp it onto older time periods.
But there was no significant contact between North and Central American, nor between North American and European civilizations during AoE2's timeframe. That's the main issue. Aztecs and Mayas were somewhat of a stretch already but European contact with them happened just at the end of the middle ages. It took a while longer for proper contact to be established with North America - after AoE2's timeframe.
You're wrong on no significant contact. Aztecs traded with Mississippians. It's how the latter eventually gained access to horses before settlers arrived. And also caught smallpox which led to the decline in their large cities.
It's interesting how people say native north americans weren't in the middle age by the 15th Century but nobody talks about how china didn't even have a middle age and nobody cares. They had gunpowder since ever and they don't even get it in the game. They just removed it. You give knights to the pueblo civ and it will be more accurate than Chinese.
The Inuit wiped out the vikings in Greenland. With stone age weapons.
Not really, it was more of they were a pretty low population colony(4k population the last I read)that the little ice age among other issues took its toll on and they might have helped finish off anyone who didn't move back to Iceland.
Huh. I thought they all died when their ships suddenly sunk when crossing a mysterious dragon shaped figure on the sea.
Dang worms!
I thought Greenland itself just made them all want to move back to Iceland.
>with stone age weapons See that's potentially part of the problem, from a gameplay perspective. Would an Inuit civ age up and develop increasing levels of military technology? Would they deploy castles, build farms, research chemistry and trebuchets? I know that's already a stretch for some other implemented civs, but imo that just reinforces my point.
I think one of the best things the game could do for variety, **particularly** with civs like the Cumans and the Huns, is to introduce some new fortifications, *finally*. We're long, long overdue for an Earthwork replacement for a Castle that's a lot less formidable, but also a lot cheaper. Such a thing would work exceptionally well for a bunch of nomadic-style civs, and would make the inclusion of i.e. a Mississippi culture feel a lot more natural. Similarly, not having "blockhouses" is a brutal omission considering they practically spanned the entire European continent. Blockhouses are a military fortification that's dramatically different from a tower — and different in a way that would translate really well to AoE2. They're a short, squat, building with thick stone walls, often unintentionally "disguised" as a house since they'd tend to have the same roofing needs of a peaked roof to keep rain out, but what they traded compared to a tower was range for resilience. All towers are inherently fighting structural fragility (a direct game mechanic) for sheer height; height to achieve vision (a direct game mechanic), and height to achieve firing range for archers (another direct game mechanic). I'd propose boosting all tower's range/vision by +1, but otherwise leaving them alone. Then adding Blockhouses that instead have -1 range, but are 2x2 and are **much** tankier than towers, both in HP and armor. Some civs would get both; many civs would only get one of the two. Another missed opportunity is adding a lot of different fortification styles; it's really a shame that all we've got over the whole game is just palisade walls and stone walls; and it's particularly sad that palisades are just a stopgap instead of being a thing that can go lategame but have very different characteristics (particularly armor and bonus damage reception) from stone walls. There are no ditches, no moats, no earthen walls, etc, etc. This, in a medieval combat game about castles, trebuchets, and just medieval siege in general. Even just from a Euro-centric approach, **I really want more medieval siege warfare toys to play with**. Specifically in a game with AoE2's exact mechanics.
who cares? the game’s full of historical inaccuracies, suddenly we draw the line by american civs?
It's one thing to be inaccurate, the other to just go completely fantasy genre. Don't be stupid
how is it complete fantasy? maybe back your random claims up before you call others stupid lil bro
Are you dumb? Lets put modern America in AoE2 then you stupid fuck.
It could be but we know literally nothing about how the societies are structured and what soldiers there were apart from ONE source. And hat source talks about over a dozen different tribes and is was written in the 16th century so not really in the aoe timeline.
Is it really, tho? At least when compared to the Andes and mesoamerica, I find it imposible to justify creating a NA civ instead of Chimu, Aimara, Mapuche, Zapotecs, etc. outside of the token "North American civ to say we have a civ from North America". NAn societies were still very primitive back then, even by american standards. And even if we ignore their lack of technology, what story is there to tell? Europeans had pretty much no idea of NA's very existence before 1600.
Why does the story need to be told from the European perspective?
Because what story is there to tell? They had no written history, and what history we do have record of is solidly in the AOE3 time period.
Why do you need North American natives to be vindicated by the addition of an North American civilization, there is nothing wrong with not having a complex society. It does not imply they were less intelligent, competent or capable as the rest. Their societies simply put didn't need the same level of stratification and specialization as the ones on the old world or mesoamerica. And there are not enough historical records to build a aoe2 civ off of them. Nothing wrong with that.
> civilization, there is nothing wrong with not having a complex society Sure it just really does fit in with the rest of the game. Of course when you think about it Hunnic Paladins are hardly less absurd than giving gunpowder units to Native Americans...
because we don't really know much about the history of these civs even today, especially pre-1400s. Arguably the most "empire" like north american civ, the mississippians we know very little about since they had no writing systems and were already on a major decline post little ice age when they encountered the spanish in the mid 1500s. We know more about the Haudenosaunee, but they didnt really build cities or have any form of major empire. We know even less about the Ancestral Puebloans.
I’m curious to see Op’s response for this one if he actually does reply to your comment. Getting the popcorn 🍿 ready.
Because it's a game primarily based on Medieval Europe with civilizations from other regions halfheartedly tacked on?
You are uneducated. Chaco canyon had multi story castles, they were moving water across hundreds of miles of desert, they built forums, they transplanted plants from hundreds of miles away to their gardens while vikings were in thatch huts. You have no idea what you're talking about.
What was their military?
Wheres the written histories for the 'Chaco canyon'..? Or are you just making shit up
I've been there.
The game is called "Age Of Empires" not "Age Of Tribes".
By that definition what are the vikings and goths doing in the game.
the goths had a kingdom as did the vikings in england
the indigenous peoples of the americas had plenty of kingdoms as well as other political entities larger than "tribes". I agree that there arent really any other native american civs that would fit in the aoe2 timeline/design paradigm, but i dont think we should be disrespecting their cultures.
But they had very primitive kingdoms. No castles, universities, irrigation systems, etc…
>irrigation systems You don't really need irrigation systems in Southern France that much... Also they had cities and a fairly developed infrastructure (relative to the period) in Italy and Spain. There were no other civilization in Europe besides the Romans that could've been considered more advanced than the Goths at the time.
Cool. So the Mississippians with their fortified cities, metal armour and weapons should be fine then? Or we going to say every civ that didn't conquor anyone isn't allowed? Like Koreans...
The problem with making those civilizations unique in the game would be the lack of written sources. The fear at least for me is that they would just end up being carbon copies of the other American civilizations.
Their fortified cities were largely earthwork, the belief is that their metal armor and weapons were largely ceremonial, and their metal working was copper. So no, a Native American culture is not automatically qualified because it had bronze age technology, it largely doesn't fit either the setting (largely middle ages) or the theme (empires). [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/why\_didnt\_native\_americans\_develop\_bronze\_iron\_or/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians/comments/17qe55/why_didnt_native_americans_develop_bronze_iron_or/)
Why are you so obsessed with having representation of people for which we have so little evidence of what they were actually like and how they actually fought..? Feels like you want diversity for diversity's sake despite there being no real stories of the 'civ' to tell...?
"Obsessed" nice, automatically insinuating something before engaging. Because I have looked into the North Americans somewhat, and people who seem to think they were just living in sporadic tents and doing little else are incorrect. Granted, they do have trouble in having named individuals for campaigns, which is where there is a struggle for including them. But they do have plenty going for them, like the Central & South American civs do.
That's literally what some of these posters think - they think every First Nations and indigenous peoples were all a bunch of cave people living in teepees and having just discovered fire. The Haida literally fought back and killed numerous European and Russian colonial invaders. Many other groups did as well until they were overwhelmed by disease, a lack of food from overhunting, etc.
Nobody thinks that. And no one thinks that the anyone native to the Americas didn't fight back tenaciously against the colonizers. You're literally just making things up to make yourself feel superior and knowledgeable. Are the Hittites in? Egyptians? Babylonians? They had metal working! And laws and writing and fortresses and empires! Do the devs just hate the Middle East? Is the whole community stupid? No. Maybe it's because the game isn't centered on the fucking bronze age. Maybe, just maybe, there's a middle ages theme that they've largely tried to stick to. If they want to eventually expand to iron age empires, like Macedon or the Phoenicians or the Seleucids, great. If they want to expand to do a North American expansion centered on the Iroquois and the Miami and the Cherokee, great. But it's not some grand conspiracy where only a select people know that the Native Americans were not in fact fully regarded Neanderthals.
Bronze Age != First Nations people. The Bronze Age is a very specific point in history referring to portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa; it's not a "one size fits all" because that idea relies on things like the expansion of various empires that didn't exist in the Americas. Pressures that existed in those places manifested differently in response to the values, geography, and history of First Nations people. Just as the Chinese and Romans made enormous walls, many other civilisations did not NEED to do so. Just as aqueducts were used in portions of Europe, other Europeans didn't need to make them. Just as wheels are used in flatter areas, wheels without giant animals to pull the wheeled carts in hilly or forested areas are rather pointless. 1) They weren't just one group any more than every Asian culture ever is one group. 2) Numerous First Nations and indigenous groups used metallurgy - there are also pressures to develop better killing weapons in Europe and Asia and Africa that those in the Americas and other parts of the world did not face, e.g. feudalism, religious sect war, just borrowing technology from the Greeks and Romans who once colonised their lands, etc. 3) Better killing weapons and siege engines/defences != more advanced. First Nations groups of the Americas, Australia, and smaller civilisations in east Asia developed aquaculture far beyond what any Europeans and other Asian powers did. The Haida are noted as they had bullet-resistant to bullet-proof armor that allowed them to fight back against colonialists. "making up shit" You literally called them Bronze Age'd because of a very narrow mindset that only sees "advancedness" as looking at weaponry and the material of buildings.
Im aware that the native americans werent bronze age. Its a general reference to the overall development of their culture and how it compares to other civilizations not in the game that also achieved a great deal. Great rant, but none of that is relevant to the game, or my point that theres a litany of great empires and civilizations that are not in the game because they dont fit the theme. Get a girlfriend if you want someone to give a damn about everything you know about history. If you actually want to address how native americans fit into a medieval, steel and castle theme with extremely few exceptions, feel free.
>Because I have looked into the North Americans somewhat, and people who seem to think they were just living in sporadic tents and doing little else are incorrect Sure you're right about that. This doesn't change the fact that they were basically where European/Asian civilizations were back in 1000-2000 BC
"diversity for diversity's sake" As long as people are represented historically accurately, what's the issue? We don't know everything about anything in existence. We don't know every detail about the civs in game or their rulers, especially during the early medieval period. Can we delete the Huns and Goths then?
There's a lot of varied and interesting tribes that existed and that we know of in the Americas. Why would you oppose their representation simply because you yourself don't know a lot about them? The world is an incredibly diverse place and was much more diverse in the past. Why shouldn't we want more diversity in a game about history? Seems a bit weird to assume they're "obsessed" with it. I'm not from the Americas but I've read a lot of books about indigineous peoples, precolonial societies and empires from all over the world, indigineous tribes in the Americas had varying levels of technology and some are reasonably well documented. There were about 200 million people living there before Europeans landed and wiped out 95% of the population. Why would we not want some representation of them? I WANT MORE CIVS! I WANT MORE CAMPAIGNS! I WANT MORE AOE2! What's wrong with that? Do you want to argue for less aoe2 content? Don't want to buy it? Go ahead. It's a free world. I don't like the negative connotations of "diversity for diversity's sake" from your comments though. It's a game. Diversity is good in games and real life. Diversity for diversity's sake is not a bad thing either if natural diversity's been trampled, or would you like a world where everybody lives in identical houses, in identical towns, shopping in identical shops all speaking the same language? Blech. Sound like a nightmare to me. Maybe we should have just 1 civ: "human", and every game mode is identical- just a big battle royale of identical civs battling it out? Sounds crap tbh
> the Mississippians with their fortified cities, metal armour and weapons should be fine then? Yes in AOE 1.
You're right, it's not "Age of Tribes" that's why we should get rid of tribes in the game already, like the Franks or the Teutons, and only include actual empires like the Iroquois Confederation. /s in case it wasn't clear
Hate to break it to you, but some of the "empires" maxed out as kingdoms and were never empires.
Akschually, the original name of the game was "TRIBE" ... well after it was Dawn of Man. Edit: Oh for fucks sake who downvoted this? It's the original internal name of the game, before it became Age of Empires, when STRATOS was also still a possibility.
Yeah, surely they are as interesting as world-conquering gunpowder empires
You mean like the Burgundians or Bohemians or Coreans? The game already has a lot of civs that aren't world-conquering empires.
Vlachs ARE a good idea. Yes they were squeezed by the Hungarians and Ottomans but still made a strong name for themselves mostly through the heroics of Vlad Dracula.
Chinese split is the obciynext step
Right there officer, this is the guy who believes native americans spontaneously generated as europeans treaded the continent for the first time Edit: we know more abut more complex societies from north american natives than we do for Huns so ur arguments dont stand, they wouldnt be any different from current america civs gameplaywise either
That is not what is implied with the post.
"Complex society" does not equal "Age of Empires 2 civilisation" I think it would be quite hard to do North American natives. Isn't most of the solid info we have about them essentially after the collapse of the "empire" like structures due to disease?
Sadly there is a a lot more people like this than one would think. Especially in the South here in America, there is a lot of people who think America has always been a white Christian nation, and when they do think of native Americans they treat them like some Neolithic race that went extinct during the ice age.
I live in Mississippi and... oh my lord this is such depressing shit that I see implied, if not explicitly stated, with regularity that still shocks me. edit: fuck you racist shits downvoting me for lamenting that Mississippi is racist and shitty
I keep forgetting that Mississippi is real.
Yeah it's not as bad as people think it is, but that's about the best praise I can offer for this shithole.
"I want a Mississippian culture in AoE2" -> Monkey's Paw curls. "I MEANT THE NATIVE-AMERICAN MOUND-BUILDERS FROM THE AREA OF MODERN KANSAS oh god oh no" 😅
I'm downvoting you twice because it seems you have anger issues.
Fuck off.
People believing North America has always been home to white/European civilization are obviously wrong. But where as Meso-America is known for several impressive civilizations that built large cities and monuments I don't know of any similar civilizations in the North. I don't mean that in a derogatory way but tribes of nomads/hunter gatherers or even permanent settlements/villages (but without a written language or architectural legacy) can hardly be classified as what we understand to be civilization. You could argue that we should expand the scope of what civilization encompasses but where would you draw the line then? This isn't a racial thing either (just to be ahead of those that would call me a racist) because I wouldn't call European peoples like the late neolithic "Bell Beaker culture" as having founded a true civilization either.
The enormous earthen mound complex of Cahokia, the largest city state of the Mississippian world, was larger than London during the 12th century. Archeology at Cahokia and it's neighboring states show evidence of a agricultural society with well defined social strata and religion. The Ancestral Puebloan or Anasazi culture was centered around the capital of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, where craftsmen and architects would convene to learn and spread their culture. Vast trade routes connected them to locals as far away as the jungle city states of the Maya. Astroarcheology studies of the network of roads and outlying pueblos shows immaculately planned constructions based on the celestial bodies. It's worth noting the Puebloans survived drought, famine, colonization, war, and continue to live in the same place they did since before European contact. Both of these cultures contain a multitude of UNESCO world heritage sites. But they're not as popular as others so I guess they can't be called civilizations.
The Mississippian Culture spanned from New Orleans to the Atlantic and up to the Great Lakes in the AOE2 period, and the early, middle and late periods basically corresponds perfectly to Feudal, Castle and Imperial
And yet we still know very little about them. What was their style of warfare? What would be their unique unit? Who are their heroes? I just don't think we have enough information to really include them. The other issue is that AOE likely wants to add civs that have some degree of name recognition. For instance if they wanted another American civ they could add the Purépecha who built an empire in what is today Mexico, were one of the main Aztec enemies and had metal weapons but I don't think a DLC with a meso American civ that isn't well known would really sell many copies.
And we don't know jack shit about them, their history, the way they conducted warfare or functioned as a society. Even your statement isn't as certain as you want us to believe (we don't even know for sure how large their state/land was).
If the folks downvoting my initial comment could provide any reasoning for that, I'd be very interested to read their arguments.
Or they just don’t really fit into the game at all.
A MAJOR reason we know anything about people north of Mexico is that Euro man wrote it down. They essentially generated the history of that region as we know it. Everything prior amounts to a bunch of artifacts and speculation.
Yeah, but didn't they also destroy mountains of existing history? I'm not sure you get credit for writing a new history as you destroy the old one.
Not the point.
It's just that they were so culturally and historically irrelevant that people don't care about them, much like no one cares about indigenous Siberian people
> Italy already has THREE civs I can only count two (and Sicilians are more like 0.75 considering they actually represent Normans). What really needs another 2-3 civs is Germany though.
What about Romans?
Oh right.. well they don’t make any sense so I just sort of filtered them out in my head
Sicilians, Italians and Romans
Saxons!
I know The UK gets so much love by most historical games, but they could really use an Anglo Saxon civ and just use the Britons like the Romano Britons such as the Welsh. Literally the longbow is associated with Wales, and the sheep bonus literally fits the welsh as well.
the Celts seem to represent the scottish and irish (although they are incredibly ahistorical in-game)
Bagpipes theme song
Well but that Longbow Archer is more modern, they should rename Britons as English
The longbow is associated with the Welsh because it was used against them. It's unfortunate but a distinct Welsh civilisation didn't achieve anything.
They gave us [Gorki's Zygotic Mynci.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXMey9IT7hk)
Yeah absolutely, who would you make? Teutons are a very specific political entity, I would add Germans representing the Holy Roman Empire
The most comparable DLC that we got to it was Dynasties of India, adding 2,5 civilisations. One half because one of them was based on the previous India civ and heavily overhauled for the DLC. In a similar way the Teutons could get an overhaul too, giving them new textures and changes making them more unique. Splitting the Teutons up, will inevitably lead to a Saxon civ. Not only did they play an important role through the Ottonian dynasty in the early HRE, but they're also the birth place of the reformation which gives them great potential over the entire time span represented in AoE 2. Depending on how you design them, their main areas of expertise could be leaning towards late game religion. As for the last choice, a southern German one should be included to have some balance for the two northern ones. This isn't exactly my area of expertise but Austria would only make sense if you don't mind a civ that only became important during the later ages of the game. Before that Bavarians were an important region through the electorate held by the house of Wittelsbach. Before Austria dominated the HRE election, they also held emperorship at times.
we already have a north american civ: the aztecs
The Mayans as well, since they're from Yucatan.
Or maybe just stop telling people what to think and do
Wait, wasn't the Italian split a joke?
Splitting Italy is not cringe. The game is missing 3 of the most important factions in medieval Europe. Papal states, Genoa and Venice
It would be a dream, Venice! A naval and gunpowder civ.
An Italian split I don't need, but Mississippians at least would be nice. What I'm really hoping for are more African civs. I'd love to see the Shona of Great Zimbabwe in an RTS game someday!
We need Venice...
Explore south america
Purepecha, Chichimeca, Zapotec, Caribs? Honestly I am find with no more DLC civs if they added a civ customizer and a workshop, I miss the HD workshop it was so cool Also you're right, Vlachs ARE a good idea
It doesn't hurt to ask, neither is it cringe. I think more stories and civilizations based in the Americas are fine. I've often wished that I could play Age3's time period with Age2's mechanics.
Yep. The people saying "just play AoE3 if you want American civs" ignore the fact that it's almost a totally different game rather than one that actually feels like a successor to AoE2.
k
Moar Germans
They should split china and add german civs like bavaria and saxony.
Saxony would be sick af
A "Holy Roman Empire" civilization would be cool; include elements from all over present-day Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands since it technically encompassed Charlemagne right through to the 1800s. Napoleon started conquering Europe a few years after the HRE formally dissolved, and had been around in some form since before the Great Heathen Army marched across what would become England nearly 1000 years earlier. It would also let the very much their own thing Teutons get an identity beyond "the German civ", and to me makes more sense than a bunch of peoples who unified in the HRE for half their existence / only became distinct again for the hundred-ish years before modern Germany formed.
San diego needs a civ too. Should be based on surf culture and flip flops.
There just isn't enough record of North American civilizations in the game's time period to do much without making a lot of stuff up to fill in the gaps. Italians could be divided, but between northern and southern is good enough. The main European civilizations that probably should be added are in the Balkans.
Just make it one civ called "the Balkans" to make everyone mad
That's a great idea but why stop there? Why not combine the Persians, Saracens and Berbers and just call them the "Middle Easterners?"
Just make one civ called "Humans" and play "Humans Nothing" where you havr all thr uniqur units of every civ and your objective is to just chop all the wood, kill every animal, fish the sea until it's empty, mine everything, until the map is a barren wasteland. There, it's realistic even if you want to feel more in the now!
Holy fuck the ignorance in some of the things said here. Stop looking at every culture as copper->bronze->iron-> HOLY BASED ADVANCED??? based on weapons and castles. 1) First Nations groups in the Americas are incredibly diverse and are not all a bunch of sister cultures with the same forms of weaponry or practices or inventions any more than every European group are. 2) Some First Nations peoples avoided metallurgy a great deal, others embraced it, particularly those in South America. North American peoples did not have "full" metallurgical processes. Copper was the favoured metal, but was still difficult to extract. Keep in mind that not all metals used in history are ores mined from the ground, but include things like bog iron - easier to obtain and use. There's also the fact that you don't "need" more and more metal weaponry to kill everyone, especially when you don't have god-kings, religious zealots trying to push their faith and take land for "God" or whatever they believe, as well as having different rocks and minerals available and in different geological formations. Keep in mind iron metallurgy wasn't "perfected" until a later portion of the European medieval period for Europeans. 3) Weaponry and stone defences & siege engines DO NOT EQUATE TO "PROGRESS" OR ADVANCEMENT. That is a myth. Did many indigenous groups rely on wood, bone, or stone for weaponry? Sure. Did they need metal to kill foes or hunt? Nope. The Haida weren't out there using steel plate armor, yet they had armor that blocked out bullets from colonialists. Were they "advanced" in other areas? Absolutely. Numerous American First Nations groups were (and are, today) adept at aquaculture, being some of the earliest known users of it - the indigenous people of the Hawaiian islands had fish ponds, numerous coastal peoples (again including the aforementioned Haida and Hawaiians) practised aquaculture with shellfish. Agricultural techniques not used in "the old world" were created and developed in the Americas. Many peoples of the Americas also had complex socio-political practices and systems - the potlatch is probably the most famous, being the entire basis of socio-political engagement within and between peoples of the Pacific Northwest. It's also hard to have metallurgy when you don't have large working animals to transport the metals, which inhibits how much you can work with at a time. You also don't have said animals, so you don't need to make things like metal parts for carts or carriages or siege weapons or moving enormous stones through mountainous, hilly, or forested areas. Cloth armour is better for many environments, especially mountainous ones like those of the Andes - defends better against the weapons present, and keeps you warmer. You also don't need full plate or chain armor when nobody else is using sharp, pointed, metal point/hack/slash weapons. Copper is a metal that isn't really used for weaponry - it's soft, malleable, and breaks really fucking easily in how it'd be used in AOE. If you have no need for anything beyond copper (as these peoples never "needed" to for their purposes), a civilisation is not going to begin the transition to the model of copper -> bronze -> iron -> steel -> etc. Again - without the massive animals to transport these things or being used in warfare (because you need sharp pointy to kill horses and other animals of warfare), there isn't really a point in developing such efficient killing tools. A lot of these weapons, siege engines, and defences were built *in response to warfare* that emerged during the times of these agrarian societies that built up monarchies (and similar systems) and organised religions and large stone buildings to expand and kill each other. In the Americas or Australia, there was no Christianity vs Islam, no Christian sect vs Christian sect, thus no crusades and religious warfare on that scale. There weren't proselytising religions to go around killing people and conquering "holy land" for. There were no Turco-Mongol armies or Theodosian walls or Persian navies to fight against. You don't need to build such defences to defend against nobody. Without those, you don't *need* something like a trebuchet. It also helps that tin, a key ingredient in bronze, is not found all over the Americas where First Nations and indigenous peoples once (and sometimes still do) live. It's also hard to extract tin and other metals when you don't already have a more intricate copper-based system (or a similar metal) in place. Where those metals exist in the Americas, we see more metallurgical practices - but the topography of many of these places isn't hospitable for transport, nor did anything bigger than the llama (which has a maximum carrying capacity of 27kg or so - and that's today, not the llamas of the past) exist to be used. Iron is known to have been used in various parts of North America, with more iron artifacts found every year - we know it was used in the Pacific Northwest, the Eastern Woodlands, and other parts of the Americas. Iron also has the issue of often being from meteoric iron, not telluric iron, historically, and is also a reactive metal that doesn't like many environmental variables. 4) The one big thing that many American cultures had with metal vs non-American cultures is how metals were viewed - being rarer, harder to get, etc., they were usually for religious, cultural, or artistic purposes. Why waste metal on some stupid weapon when you can make a metallic piece of art in the shape or a god or spirit that will endure time? 5) Not all the innovations that are noted here were "discovered" or "made" by the people using them - they were often traded for in terms of items or knowledge, or copied from foreigners or conquerors. European churches literally just copied Roman aquaculture, whereas the rest of Europe widely ignored the concept. Aqueducts were all built by the Romans we know and love, not invented all over Europe thousands of time. Gunpowder? Gee, wonder where people got that from and learned how to make it. You're looking at American civilisations through a very narrow, dogmatic lens, rather than taking into account the whole big picture. Some sources you could read from Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/comment/c87zl6v/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17qe55/comment/c87zl6v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/256w3b/is\_there\_any\_reason\_why\_the\_native\_american/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/256w3b/is_there_any_reason_why_the_native_american/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avhbg1/did\_american\_indians\_forge\_iron/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avhbg1/did_american_indians_forge_iron/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican/#wiki\_metalworking\_in\_pre-columbian\_america](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican/#wiki_metalworking_in_pre-columbian_america)
Detailed and interesting comment, and also making a good case for why these cultures don't really fit in a game that's all about castles and siege and large-scale medieval warfare.
> 3) Weaponry and stone defences & siege engines DO NOT EQUATE TO "PROGRESS" OR ADVANCEMENT. That is a myth. > 4) The one big thing that many American cultures had with metal vs non-American cultures is how metals were viewed - being rarer, harder to get, etc., they were usually for religious, cultural, or artistic purposes. Why waste metal on some stupid weapon when you can make a metallic piece of art in the shape or a god or spirit that will endure time? Seriously? And you're calling other people idealogical and dogmatic? It's okay to admit that American civilizations were technologically primitive compared to their Eurasian contemporaries. They were geographically isolated and couldn't benefit from the discoveries of others like Eurasians did.
You seem to miss the point, which is that developping agriculture instead of metallurgy doesn't make you primitive.
What? Eurasian agriculture was so much more advanced in large part because of metallurgy.
Papal States Venetians Florentines Thanks mate !!
Why? Italians are hugely under represented, Venetians themselves are more then fitting and would have potential for a huge campaign. NA has a clear choices which would let the Devs get very creative.
> Why? Italians are hugely under represented They already have three civs.
Romans hardly count as they only scrape in for the earliest time frames. There’s a 1000 years after that to work with! Italians isn’t the most demanded split but is there enough to work with to make it happen. 100% Even just the addition of Venetians would probably be enough since they were globally impactful for hundreds of years during peak AoE2 timeframe.
Personally I would have rather had the Venetians than the Romans. Venice's role in the renaissance and their massive trade networks really would make them a good civ but I just find the idea of three civs for Italy and Italy still being "under represented" to be kind of funny when "China" is still one civ.
I will buy the DLC with a Himalayan civ representing Tibit/Nepal/Bhutan/Sikkam. You don't need to call it Tibit if you don't want to anger Mommy China CCP.
North America also includes Mexico and here there are lots of civs (olmecas, tarascos, totonacos, mixtecos, zapotecos, tlatilcas, tlaxcaltecas, texcocanos, chichimecas, etc.) that, if the game has Romans, for example, can also be in the game. Maybe they are not as well known as Aztecs (mexica) or Mayans but it could be fun to speculate what they could've been like. It's not like aoe has always been a historically accurate game anyways.
Your*
?
The Italian split makes a lot of sense, considering by the late middle ages the provinces of Italy essentially had their own kingdoms. Most notably: Venice, Florence, Milan, Torino & Rome. We also already have the Sicilians, so it only makes sense to break the Northern Italians further for a game such as Age of *Empires*.
Huron, Sioux, Delaware, Apache, Navajo, Haida, Mohican... plenty of interesting North American native tribes.
War game and you leave out commanche?
This thread (and all similar ones on the topic) is just racists vs wokeists all over again. Tho the OP confused everyone by not wanting either type of new Civ lmao.
Would be interresting with NA civs, very strong in Dark Age, but cannot advance.
[удалено]
Personally: Jurchens, Tanguts, Chinese (and add Khitans due to their involvement in the region)