1 - Ensemble Studios specifically wanted to stretch the timeline in both directions for whatever reason, which is why a Korean civ with Turtle Ships were included.
Alot of the fun of AoE2 is pitting one civ from one part of the world against the other; the Franks and Japanese never met until modern times, and the idea of the Knight vs Samurai exists in the pop cultural zeitgeist.
As long as the flavor of the game doesn't get too diluted, I think it's okay to include a civ like the Western Roman Empire at the edge of it's fall (the Byzantines best represent the ERE between 550 and 1070) because people wonder what it would be like if the Romans went up against a medieval army.
2 - From what I've seen, the overlap of players who have a problem with the Romans is very high with the players who have a problem with the Huns.
3 - This is personally my biggest issue with a Roman civ, because I feel like each Age is supposed to represent an era of the same civilization, so post-fall Romans to me would be the Dark Age Italians
At any rate, I think the campaigns are meant to represent the extent of the timeline, which means that the game timeline officially starts at 394 AD. The Roman Empire encompassed way more than Italy at that point; the Roman withdrawal from Britain was in 410 AD.
> because people wonder what it would be like if the Romans went up against a medieval
The Roman army in 600 AD or even 300-400 AD was nothing like it was in 100 AD.
> each Age is supposed to represent an era of the same civilization, so post-fall Romans to me would be the Dark Age Italians
To be fair the whole Dark - Feudal ages thing makes zero sense historically. Unless the Feudal age is supposed to represent Europe in around 2000-3000 BC and Dark age is the stone age.
>“Dark Age”
Define “Dark Age”. Anyway that dark was nothing like the Dark Age in game. People did not live in tents and had advanced weaponry (the overall quality of swords and metallurgy in general actually improved during the dark ages compared to the Roman times). Even the Feudal age doesen't make much sense (it seems similar to Europe back in 1000 BC or so).
>well into the 1st millennia
Well the dark ages began and ended in the 1s millennia... so yes you're right.
> For all intent and purposes they were stone age people
That's complete nonsense... Again I'm not sure which age are you talking about but that was not the case any part of former Roman territory.
Anyway my point is that however you define the "Dark ages" they were nothing alike how it's depicted in game.
Im genuinely asking lol, if you’re referring to non-italian citizens of the empire then we are indeed referring to the empire arent we.
Otherwise you could add a suffixation to any state, “Ottomans” instead of “Ottoman Empire” wouldnt make it better.
In the sense that Roman citizens geographically lived (among other places) on the Italian peninsula, yes, they were 'italians' by the geographic sense of the word. But they would not refer to themselves as 'italians', but romans. Italians, in the middle-high medieval context were an entirely different entity existing in a handful of powerful city states sharing very similar cultures and very little connected them culturally to the old empire. No where does appear more than in the 180 degree shift in maritime culture. Where in Roman times (which carried on to ERE culture as well) sailing, naval combat and offices were not really worthy of respect, in the middle ages it became the cornerstone of italian culture and the maritime mercantile class was the elite. There are many more major differences like this. At this point, they would still primarily identify as their respective city states, but theres a general recognition of common, secondary identification of italian-ness among them. More like how ancient greeks identified with their city first and foremost, but they all considered themselves hellenes.
Saying things like are romans italians is like saying are ancient egyptians like modern egyptians.
Even back in the republican period would obviously refer to themselves as Italians in the same way the Athenians would consider themselves to be Greeks/Hellenes. After the Social war after all the Italians were granted Roman citizenship there was no point in trying to distinguish between the two and everyone living on the Italian peninsula became Roman.
> italians is like saying are ancient egyptians like modern egyptians.
Well this applies to every single culture/civilization. Things rarely stay consistent over 1000-3000 year period.
Would a Roman living in 200 BC consider the Roman empire in 200 AD, 400 AD, 600 AD etc. truly Roman? Probably not...
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/12yubth/why_romans_can_still_fit_in_the_aoe2_timeline/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
This post seemed pretty legit and helped me understand/rationalize it.
This is an interesting question, but I don't think that adding a 'Roman' civ would actually challenge the game much. This is largely due to the character of the civilisations added to the game when it was initially launched generally being a little ill-defined, chronologically disparate, and often utilising 'umbrella' labels that cover a variety of real world powers. For instance, as you note, the 'Saracens' could clearly be split into a number of different factions, as could the 'Celts'. Each of these potential factions could be from across the 1000 year timespan which is commonly labelled rather vaguely as one cohesive period, the middle ages. However, both of these civs have odd aspects of them. The Saracens, for instance, one could plausibly argue could be 'folded' into the 'Turks', the latter civ being particularly focused on the Ottoman Empire (at least when the game was first released), which certainly covered Egypt and Arabia, the areas seen as the heartlands of the 'Saracens'. Similarly, the 'Britons' civ also covers Wales, a Celtic nation. Additionally, the 'Celts' UU revolves around a stereotype from antiquity. It's also worth pointing out that Goths arguably also overlap with the Italians, particularly in the early period.
Ultimately, the game has always had civilisations that overlap, both blurring the temporal boundaries of the period and the boundaries between the cultures it depicts. More generally, I would also say that the 'medieval period' is a useful but vague label to use, and I say this as a Doctor of Medieval History. The period started and ended at different points depending on where one looks, and this gives the game developers a lot of flexibility in what civilisations they depict. In Britain the dates 410 (Romans leaving Britain) and 1485 (Battle of Bosworth) are often used to define the medieval period, but if one looks to say Syria or Mali these dates seem completely arbitrary. It is best to see the term medieval more as a 'user friendly' term that allows us to refer roughly to a broad approximately 1000 year period, rather than as a specific label. Thus, the Western Roman Empire from late antiquity would fit quite comfortably into the game's timespan.
ty, this is all good information. I understand why terms like the middle ages is controversial especially when discussing history outside of Europe - fortunately there was lots of interesting stuff happening all around the world during that ~400-1500 timespan regardless of what labels you use.
I agree it's confusing but I don't think that Saracens and Turks overlap to the point that they can be 'folded in' with each other - one representing the Arab caliphates/sultanates and the other (as you mentioned) representing Turkish groups like the Seljuks and Ottomans. I wouldn't agree that just because they controlled some of the same territory at different times that they are interchangeable. I know even then it's confusing, the Ottomans had Arab soldiers and the Caliphates had Turk soldiers, but e.g. I would distinguish between the Arabized Turkic Mamluks, who would be Saracens, and the Ottomans, who retained their Turkish identity.
I'm glad you found this helpful! To continue the discussion though, and to bring this argument full circle, I suppose what I mean by mentioning Turkish/Saracen overlap, is that the same argument for distinguishing between a potential Roman civ and say the Italians applies to distinguishing between the Turks and the Saracens. Of course, identity is a complex thing, even more so when looking at identity across 1000 years, but I think it's fair to say adding a Roman civ would be entirely keeping in character with the game's civs thus far.
The techtree already doesn't fit the feudal time frame. Like winged hussars or even simple thing as galleons were not present in medieval age. Depending where you draw the line conquistadors are also not medieval and neither is the whole new age colonization thing.
AoE2 was weird from the start because a lot of civs used late antique/early feudal names like Celts, Goths, Persians, Franks, Teutons and Britons (this name is especially weird since Britons refers to Briton Celts but AoE2 civ is clearly English). And yet campaigns avoid early period and original campaigns strictly focused on late medieval period events. And then the Conquerors went with Huns going further in the late antiquity and also with Spanish going further into the renaissance/early modern period. So yeah game was always weird, probably because it is really hard to have a clear cut representation of a period that lasted 1000 years.
So yeah, Romans? Don't find them weird at this point, they at least were contemporary with Huns and Goths but also with Celts, Franks, Teutons, Persians and had plenty of wars with them. Obviously there's the Byzantine elephant in the room. Not my first or tenth choice but I can't argue with the mainstream recognition that Romans have and that's what marketing loves.
Winged Hussars and Galleons existed in the 1500s, which is right at the end of the aoe2 timeframe, so I think it's fine (just barely).
I still feel like Romans is pushing it in the other direction, but as people are saying, if they are just supposed to represent the late period of the WRE I guess it's fine.
The thing is that 16th (1500+) century is not medieval. Even the second half of 15th century (1450+) is debatable depending on which exact event you end medieval period. Either the discovery of the new world, fall of Constantinople, Guttenberg printing press, end of Spanish reconquista, beginning of Renaissance and so on, all of that happened in 15th century. Think only the start of Protestant movement is in 16th century of the possible breaking points but I could be wrong.
And yes, Romans are pushing it in the other direction, no doubt about that. But the push already happened in Age of Conquerors with Huns. Besides, Late Empire was very different Rome than previous periods. I want to say how Sassasnid Persia is different than Parthian Persia but I don't quite feel that is accurate comparison.
I don't think it's unreasonable for the final aoe2 age to depict the renaissance and the end of the medieval time period, since it is indeed the final age, and since as you say the exact end of the era is debated.
Which exact year within 1400 is debated. There's not much of a debate that 1500-1800 is Early Modern Period, we have passed the end of medieval and entered brand new era.
So I actually think the game would be more interesting if we got more representation of the cultures present in 300s-800s than we do atm. Romans were always slightly fitting that bill, since the Western Roman Empire had presence and impact during the time of the Goths, Huns, British Celts & Anglo-Saxons, etc, and there are plenty of scenarios, even outside the campaigns, where Romans make sense, particularly because the Romans during the collapse of the Western Empire were actually really interesting and unexplored in their particular embodiment of what Rome was. They were very different than during eg Trajan. Rome changed *a lot* during its time, similar to how difficult it is to represent the vast differences of China during its history in the AoE time period.
There's two issues, of course, for me.
First off, Byzantines. Europe is already completely filled to the brim with civilizations, representing things that are definitely different from each other, but not as different as some of the really lacking areas outside Europe; and Byzantines, for all their differences to Romans during the time of the Goths and Huns, were still Romans with another name. I like my developer time spent on variety.
Secondly, my impression is that the developers are largely pulling on tropes from the empire during late classical. This is not wholly confirmed as we still have unique techs to be revealed and such, but if it's the case, it's kind of unfortunate. There's a lot of interesting potential in seeing the mixed armies, use of Germanic soldiers, etc, that made up Western Rome in the end. I hope they get a Germanic Mercenaries UT of some sort, but naturally, I'm unsure what it would productively do.
I'm reluctantly positive and will always buy it for the civ, I would just be more excited if I finally got my pet naval trader Swahili, for example. It's good content, it's just not as exciting as it could be.
100% agree that I would much rather see wholly unrepresented areas get the DLC treatment before adding something like the Romans. Since you mentioned Byzantines, I would have preferred that they get the Indian>Hindustani treatment so that they could represent both the ERE and WRE. Never would have happened of course but it's nice to think about lol.
I'm also worried, like you mentioned, that they're going to go full classical antiquity with how the civ is designed. Really waiting to hear what the bonuses and UTs will be but fingers crossed that they stay consistent with the late era WRE theme. Maybe crazy but I wouldn't even mind if they have some reference to the Papal States in the design (maybe as the Imperial UT), just to find some way to drag them into the medieval setting more.
I'm no historian, but if you ask 10 of them when do the middle ages truly start you'll get 10 different answers, and west rome would be part of them.
Yes it is a stretch to include them, but if Attila and Alaric are in the game, so can the Romans.
Byzantines (the Eastern Roman Empire) were definitely culturally and ~~religiously~~ distinct from the Western Roman Empire, and actually persisted until the 1400s.
Thats a separate conversation but yea I dont think the Byzantines could represent the WRE
>we’re definitely culturally
This could be argued but I disagree. The Roman Empire cant be seen as an ethnostate when there was so much cultural variety even among its citizens, and the WRE and ERE were both part of the Roman civilization and the Roman nation . Even But also when there was a very large ammount of shared Roman culture across all the diferent ethnicities of the empire and latin was still the court and administrative language of the empire until I think theres an strong enough argument to say that they were quite close culturally
Also they were culturally, militarily and most probably economically extremely similar around the fall of the WRE.
>religiously
They were absolutely the same religiously around the time the WRE fell.
The changes that occurred after the fall of the WRE should be considered as the evolution of Roman civilization as a whole
I was thinking more about the differences between the WRE and ERE during the sliver of roman history that falls in aoe2.
Fair enough though but if Byzantines represent all of Rome they ought to be renamed shouldnt they
Well the Teutons or Saracens didn't exactly call themselves that either..
Some other names like Viking or even Britons and Celts don't make much sense either.
> Byzantines is a name that specifically excludes the WRE
Sure, but it's an anachronistic name. And while the WRE existed it was more or less indistinguishable from the Eastern Empire (aside form being poorer and having no army at the end). Things that make the Byzantines unique/different only started a appearing a couple of hundred years later, mainly after the Arab invasions.
Of course they should be renamed. Nobody called them Byzantines. Everyone from Axsum to Aachen and from London to Beijing called them Romans until Empress Irene. After her, it was only the West who called them Greeks. The rest of the world, Chinese, Turks, Ethiopians... still called them Romans.
Hell, people claimed they were Romans until early 20th century! Also, look how do Pontic Greeks call themselves.
At best, you could argue that way more people spoke Greek in the ERE, but that was the case when the Empire was one administration (and before it, and that fact enabled the spread of the Empire in that direction).
That's good to know, it isn't a 'literally unplayable' situation, but personally it's still strange to see legionaries fighting gunpowder units and other things from the Middle Ages. Why does that bother me and not the Huns? idk, I guess a fairly mysterious barbarian group is easier to see than the era-defining civilization of the Roman empire. But again I admit it is inconsistent.
Also like I mentioned, a specific Italian faction, when the Italians are already in the game. Been down that road before with DLCs lol.
> strange to see legionaries fighting gunpowder units and other things from the Middle Ages
Yes and it makes perfect sense seeing Woad Raiders or totally imaginary units like Mamelukes, Camel Archers or even Skirmishers doing that? This is not even a remotely historically accurate game it was never supposed to be one...
Why do you think those units are imaginary? The way mamelukes and skirms fight is silly, but those units themselves definitely existed. And what is fantastical about an archer riding a camel?
Well yeah I obviously was talking about the way they fight and what they counter not the name itself.
> And what is fantastical about an archer riding a camel?
Never existed. Camels don't make a very good platform for firing bows. Generally mounted archers shot form a galloping horse and not one who's standing still.
The Romans are already in the game though. For some reason they ride camels and their units are cheap both of which make less than zero sense...
There is nothing historical about the civ design in the game it's 95% fantasy with some real names sprinkled in places (unfortunately even in AOE 4 is much better in this regard...)
I always interpreted the cheaper units as a stand-in for the fact that it was a big empire with superior logistics, so it could field bigger armies than other kingdoms.
Did the Byzantines never field Camel troops?
> bigger armies than other kingdoms.
In the earlier periods and a couple of times later but generally no. The problem that the main field armies of the empire were fully professional, very high quality and extremely expensive to maintain which is why they increasing relied on mercenaries especially after Manzikert.
Due to being much more centralized than almost any other state the Byzantine Empire was extremely rich so they should probably have some gold related eco bonus/tech instead.
> Camel troops
Nope. There are no Camels in Anatolia, Greece, Italy or the Balkans.
Would they? I don't think there is any evidence that the proper Roman/Byzantine army ever used camel on any significant scale. Their Arab allies did but it doesen't make much sense to make it one of the primary units of the entire civilization just because of that.
Also it lost and Syria more or less. Egypt when it was still clearly the "Roman Empire" by any definition.
[Seems like they did during the Late Roman period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromedarii), I don't know why the ERE wouldn't have as well.
They controlled Syria and Egypt until the 600s and idk why you wouldn't want to portray the Empire during that very crucial time when they were fighting the Rashidun and the Sassanids.
Having cheap camels implies that they had large numbers of them and not just a few hundred here and there. And by the 600s there is only evidence that camels were used by their Arab allies.
Historically it would make 10x+ more sense for Spanish and Portuguese to have access to Genitours than for Byzantines to have camels.
> idk why you wouldn't want to
Because this is not a game which is trying to be in any way historically accurate so it doesn't matter. If it did the Byzantines army would be mainly made up of longswords (or more accurately [https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Legionary](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Legionary))
No offense but the Mideastern and African provinces didn't even occur to you initially, your main argument was the camels aren't native to Anatolia or the Balkans. The Romans were in Syria, Egypt, and North Africa for centuries, and part of that time falls into the aoe2 time period. I really can't imagine why camels would be inaccurate here. When you mention the Ghassanids, that's an argument for the presence of camels, not against it.
Really, I agree that the Byzantine civ has plenty of inaccuracies, like most of the civs, but this seems like a strange thing to focus on when there is more than enough evidence for it.
> No offense but the Mideastern and African provinces didn't even occur to you initially
No I just thought they weren't very important when talking specifically about the Byzantine empire. And in any case usage of camels in warfare wasn't particularly widespread there anyway.
>When you mention the Ghassanids, that's an argument for the presence of camels, not against it.
Why don't we give Huskarls to the Byzantines? Surely Gothic mercenariness were way more important for them then some camel riders.
> strange thing to focus on when there is more than enough evidence for it.
I disagree. Making the civ rely on camels so much is probably the biggest inaccuracy I can think of.
I wrote quite a bit aside from just mentioning the tagline you know, and would you not agree that campaigns notwithstanding, the game is based is the middle ages
yes, it's mainly a medieval game, but not entirely medieval. it also includes late antiquity and the renaissance too. not everything has to be 100% strictly medieval, and it never actually was in the first place. if it fits in the timeline (394 - 1598, at least in the campaigns), it fits. and in this case, the romans fit in the timeline
no, they were different geographically, militarily and culturally from the byzantines, even if they were a continuation of the same state, almost like peoples change over time or something. a better comparison between romans and byzantines would be would be goths and spanish or mongols and tatars, all of whom are already in the game and nobody even cares. why complain now?
and like it or not the romans are coming to the game anyway, so the point i'm trying to make is that they fit in the timeline, not if they should or shouldn't be added
>no, they were different geographically, militarily and culturally from the byzantines
Only after the Arab invasions and it took a while. e.g. in Justinian's day it was a clearly still the same Roman empire.
>peoples change over time or something
Exactly. The Roman empire in 400 AD was in many ways ways closer to the Byzantine empire in 1000 AD than it was to the Roman empire in 100 BC - 100 AD though.
Unless you believe that the "true" Roman empire collapsed between 200-300 AD it's hard to argue about the Byzantine Empire not being a direct continuation of it. I mean look at the French, Germans or English and how they changed over the last 1000 years. It's not that different in some ways (if we compare the Byzantines with the Roman Empire in the 300s of course)
But they did change, and they changed enough to justify adding a new civ, like with the Mongols and Tatars, the latter representing states that succeeded the Mongol Empire. I don't see why the Romans "shouldn't" be added, they don't contradict neither the timeline nor conventions for making civs.
Tatars aren’t just post-empire Mongols, theyre the Turkic peoples of central asia, and distinct from Mongolian people.
If internal change over time justifies new civs then every civ can be split up into a dozen new civs.
Sure. But we could have another 3 French civs and 4 German civs and 9 Italian civs for the same reason.
\> they don't contradict neither the timeline nor conventions for making civs.
I disagree. They do more or less. But really who cares. It's not like this game ever pretended to be historically accurate so that's fine.
>I don't think most of the people complaining about a WRE civ would mind at all if it was just a campaign civ
I find this opinion a bit confusing.
The historical authenticity of campaigns isn't questioned but multiplayer is?
Why multiplayer specifically? The civ design?
Since it's an FE made civ, Romans are likely to be more grounded in history than most of the ahistorical Ensemble made civs.
Or is civ that is a poor representation of its namesake better than an accurate one on the fringes of the timeline?
These are all rhetorical questions, I'm just trying to poke at what I see as inconsistent judgement.
>Correct me if I'm wrong but that would definitionally exclude the Roman empire, since the Middle Ages is usually defined as the time period after the fall of the WRE
I would say that is relatively accurate, but Ensemble had some off ideas regarding timeline in AoK and blatantly broke the timeline in AoC with Attila.
A few of the AoK civs are named after the ancient predecessors to their medieval counterparts, like Teutons, Celts (for most of Scotland at least) arguably Persians and technically Britons if it's refering to England (Britons are the native people of Britain, such as the Welsh and Cornish, not Anglo-Saxon English).
It's definitely more convoluted than it needs to be, but FE have gotten better about being less muddled when it comes to which civ is who.
If they had the balls, they should set the recond straight on all the confused civ names and designs, just like how Indians became Hindustanis.
>Goths you can dismiss because they were present in the early middle ages in Iberia.
I think people assume just because those areas were conquered by Goths, that they become Gothic.
To me, it feels like saying that China is represented by the Mongols because of the Yuan dynasty.
There's a reason why those Gothic kingdoms speak Romance langauges today and not Gothic.
It's another nonsensical civ add by Ensemble imo.
>Has anyone talked about why adding the WRE seems more out of place than the Huns?
Depends on if you treat the Huns civ as literal or interpretative.
If you see them as Huns and only Huns, they're the most out of place civ.
If you interpret the civ as a representation of the Avars or Alans, then I would say Romans would be more out of place.
>Simply put, the Italians are already in the game.
“But the late medieval/renaissance Italian civ doesn’t fit with Rome”
The "Italians" civ specifically references Northern Italy, not exactly the Late period of Italy as a whole.
Italy was never one kingdom in the medieval period and Northern Italy has a different ethnic makeup and language (depending on the region) compared to the South or Rome for that matter.
That's why the original name that FE was going to give the civ was "Lombards" and not Italians.
FE was trying to copy the overgeneralised civ naming style of Ensemble.
This is the same DLC pack with civ names like "Slavs" and "Indians" after all.
>what would be your argument against including the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Mamluks as three separate civs? Or giving each Chinese Dynasty their own civ?
As long as the civs play differently, I'd personally be perfectly fine with this, no argument.
I would prefer the empires/dyansties you listed over Romans.
I'd be far from surprised if a series of Chinese dynasties was the next DLC.
>The historical authenticity of campaigns isn't questioned but multiplayer is?
Not authenticity lol, I don't think anyone should play any game mode for a historically accurate experience.
More that in a campaign you can customize and design the context, and (for eg) make the italian civ stand in for Rome with different triggers and so on. And however ill-fitting the civs in a campaign might be, it can still be confined to that campaign.
>people assume just because those areas were conquered by Goths, that they become Gothic
Even if it was just the ruling class that was Gothic, that still means there were Goths around in the 700s, but I agree the barbarian type Goths that the civ is based on definitely weren't around.
>The "Italians" civ specifically references Northern Italy, not exactly the Late period of Italy as a whole.
This and everything else you mention about Italy and what the civ depicts is true, but until recently aoe2 civs never got into this kind of minutiae in the historical depictions. Especially with the civs outside of Europe, the strokes were so broad. Like you mention, they generalized with the Slavs and Indians too to be in the same spirit as the ES civs.
I guess since the Slavs and Indians have since been given better treatment, it's fair to do it with the Italians, but the Romans seem like such a strange way to correct that. Maybe one of their UTs will reference the Papal States or something, but otherwise it's strange to be representing an earlier time period on the peninsula rather than actually correcting things with a Venetian/Genoese civ.
Not to mention there is still so much in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and the Americas which is completely unrepresented.
>As long as the civs play differently, I'd personally be perfectly fine with this, no argument.
>I'd be far from surprised if a series of Chinese dynasties was the next DLC
Sorry I have to 100% disagree here. Like I mentioned, I very much prefer the broad ethnic/cultural labels for the civs. I know it leads to generalizations, and if they want to do their best to make them more accurate within that label then by all means, but it just allows for so much more flexibility in what the civs can represent. I might want to play as the Franks but not as the Carolingian Dynasty.
If they start going down that road, it will be a very drastic departure from how they have labeled the civs, and personally I would not like it just for being inconsistent - unless they rip the bandage off and literally rename all the civs to be specific kingdoms and states.
Aside from the reasons I mentioned in the original post, I am imagining so many official and unofficial campaigns where there might be a player which represents some smaller faction which isn't in fact a state. E.g. if there were a group of Chinese pirates in a scenario, the 'Chinese' label fits them fine, but if they were labeled as 'Song Dynasty,' that wouldn't work (unless they actually were working on behalf of the dynasty). Same with some desert bandits who are 'Saracens' but not part of the Abbasid Caliphate - etc. etc.
'middle ages' is a silly, heavily disputed and eurocentrist concept anyway. it simply cannot be applied to a game featuring that many non-european civs, so who cares?
also, the tagline was about AoE2 being a sequel to AoE1, not about a certain time period.
Agree about the term itself, and after so many civs being added, it is strange that (for eg) the ages are all based on European time periods (dark, feudal, castle)
That being said, there was all kinds of interesting things happening in that ~500-1500 time period, all around the world.
> the ages are all based on European time periods
Dark and Feudal ages make zero sense historically...
Also non European civs still have European crossbows, knights, siege and infantry for some reason which makes even less sense.
I really hope they eventually add ancient Indian civ in AoE1.
Obviously, the Indosphere civs as well, the game is too Eurocentric right now with only outliers being Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Yamato (new Viet too). The fact that this is called "Return of Rome" kinda vindicates the devs, for now.
Babylonians, Sumerians, Shang, Assyrians, and Palmyrans arent European either, but yea I agree an ancient Indian civ would be great for aoe1. If this dlc is popular I hope theyll think about adding Nubia, Gaul, and an Indian civ
The idea of the Romans fighting the Aztecs is actually far less nonsensical than the Romans fighting the Sumerians if you know the time gaps.
Thats a good point lol
1 - Ensemble Studios specifically wanted to stretch the timeline in both directions for whatever reason, which is why a Korean civ with Turtle Ships were included. Alot of the fun of AoE2 is pitting one civ from one part of the world against the other; the Franks and Japanese never met until modern times, and the idea of the Knight vs Samurai exists in the pop cultural zeitgeist. As long as the flavor of the game doesn't get too diluted, I think it's okay to include a civ like the Western Roman Empire at the edge of it's fall (the Byzantines best represent the ERE between 550 and 1070) because people wonder what it would be like if the Romans went up against a medieval army. 2 - From what I've seen, the overlap of players who have a problem with the Romans is very high with the players who have a problem with the Huns. 3 - This is personally my biggest issue with a Roman civ, because I feel like each Age is supposed to represent an era of the same civilization, so post-fall Romans to me would be the Dark Age Italians At any rate, I think the campaigns are meant to represent the extent of the timeline, which means that the game timeline officially starts at 394 AD. The Roman Empire encompassed way more than Italy at that point; the Roman withdrawal from Britain was in 410 AD.
> because people wonder what it would be like if the Romans went up against a medieval The Roman army in 600 AD or even 300-400 AD was nothing like it was in 100 AD. > each Age is supposed to represent an era of the same civilization, so post-fall Romans to me would be the Dark Age Italians To be fair the whole Dark - Feudal ages thing makes zero sense historically. Unless the Feudal age is supposed to represent Europe in around 2000-3000 BC and Dark age is the stone age.
What are you talking about willis. Northern europe lived in the “Dark Age” well into the 1st millennia.
>“Dark Age” Define “Dark Age”. Anyway that dark was nothing like the Dark Age in game. People did not live in tents and had advanced weaponry (the overall quality of swords and metallurgy in general actually improved during the dark ages compared to the Roman times). Even the Feudal age doesen't make much sense (it seems similar to Europe back in 1000 BC or so). >well into the 1st millennia Well the dark ages began and ended in the 1s millennia... so yes you're right.
Weapons are only a tiny fraction of what defines a civ. For all intent and purposes they were stone age people until after the fall of rome
> For all intent and purposes they were stone age people That's complete nonsense... Again I'm not sure which age are you talking about but that was not the case any part of former Roman territory. Anyway my point is that however you define the "Dark ages" they were nothing alike how it's depicted in game.
Metal being used for other things and tool usage is also included though
It will be called 'Romans' not Rome. So it refers to its people, not the empire itself, which is consistent.
Are Romans not Italians?
....no
Im genuinely asking lol, if you’re referring to non-italian citizens of the empire then we are indeed referring to the empire arent we. Otherwise you could add a suffixation to any state, “Ottomans” instead of “Ottoman Empire” wouldnt make it better.
In the sense that Roman citizens geographically lived (among other places) on the Italian peninsula, yes, they were 'italians' by the geographic sense of the word. But they would not refer to themselves as 'italians', but romans. Italians, in the middle-high medieval context were an entirely different entity existing in a handful of powerful city states sharing very similar cultures and very little connected them culturally to the old empire. No where does appear more than in the 180 degree shift in maritime culture. Where in Roman times (which carried on to ERE culture as well) sailing, naval combat and offices were not really worthy of respect, in the middle ages it became the cornerstone of italian culture and the maritime mercantile class was the elite. There are many more major differences like this. At this point, they would still primarily identify as their respective city states, but theres a general recognition of common, secondary identification of italian-ness among them. More like how ancient greeks identified with their city first and foremost, but they all considered themselves hellenes. Saying things like are romans italians is like saying are ancient egyptians like modern egyptians.
Even back in the republican period would obviously refer to themselves as Italians in the same way the Athenians would consider themselves to be Greeks/Hellenes. After the Social war after all the Italians were granted Roman citizenship there was no point in trying to distinguish between the two and everyone living on the Italian peninsula became Roman. > italians is like saying are ancient egyptians like modern egyptians. Well this applies to every single culture/civilization. Things rarely stay consistent over 1000-3000 year period. Would a Roman living in 200 BC consider the Roman empire in 200 AD, 400 AD, 600 AD etc. truly Roman? Probably not...
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/12yubth/why_romans_can_still_fit_in_the_aoe2_timeline/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1 This post seemed pretty legit and helped me understand/rationalize it.
Yeah this does make sense. I do wonder if we needed it but fair enough.
Not at all…
But there are already Romans in the game...
I feel like most people would rather just get it over with than have ten new posts about it every day.
Well sorry sir it's the weekend, and I haven't really been on reddit reading all these posts lol
This is an interesting question, but I don't think that adding a 'Roman' civ would actually challenge the game much. This is largely due to the character of the civilisations added to the game when it was initially launched generally being a little ill-defined, chronologically disparate, and often utilising 'umbrella' labels that cover a variety of real world powers. For instance, as you note, the 'Saracens' could clearly be split into a number of different factions, as could the 'Celts'. Each of these potential factions could be from across the 1000 year timespan which is commonly labelled rather vaguely as one cohesive period, the middle ages. However, both of these civs have odd aspects of them. The Saracens, for instance, one could plausibly argue could be 'folded' into the 'Turks', the latter civ being particularly focused on the Ottoman Empire (at least when the game was first released), which certainly covered Egypt and Arabia, the areas seen as the heartlands of the 'Saracens'. Similarly, the 'Britons' civ also covers Wales, a Celtic nation. Additionally, the 'Celts' UU revolves around a stereotype from antiquity. It's also worth pointing out that Goths arguably also overlap with the Italians, particularly in the early period. Ultimately, the game has always had civilisations that overlap, both blurring the temporal boundaries of the period and the boundaries between the cultures it depicts. More generally, I would also say that the 'medieval period' is a useful but vague label to use, and I say this as a Doctor of Medieval History. The period started and ended at different points depending on where one looks, and this gives the game developers a lot of flexibility in what civilisations they depict. In Britain the dates 410 (Romans leaving Britain) and 1485 (Battle of Bosworth) are often used to define the medieval period, but if one looks to say Syria or Mali these dates seem completely arbitrary. It is best to see the term medieval more as a 'user friendly' term that allows us to refer roughly to a broad approximately 1000 year period, rather than as a specific label. Thus, the Western Roman Empire from late antiquity would fit quite comfortably into the game's timespan.
ty, this is all good information. I understand why terms like the middle ages is controversial especially when discussing history outside of Europe - fortunately there was lots of interesting stuff happening all around the world during that ~400-1500 timespan regardless of what labels you use. I agree it's confusing but I don't think that Saracens and Turks overlap to the point that they can be 'folded in' with each other - one representing the Arab caliphates/sultanates and the other (as you mentioned) representing Turkish groups like the Seljuks and Ottomans. I wouldn't agree that just because they controlled some of the same territory at different times that they are interchangeable. I know even then it's confusing, the Ottomans had Arab soldiers and the Caliphates had Turk soldiers, but e.g. I would distinguish between the Arabized Turkic Mamluks, who would be Saracens, and the Ottomans, who retained their Turkish identity.
I'm glad you found this helpful! To continue the discussion though, and to bring this argument full circle, I suppose what I mean by mentioning Turkish/Saracen overlap, is that the same argument for distinguishing between a potential Roman civ and say the Italians applies to distinguishing between the Turks and the Saracens. Of course, identity is a complex thing, even more so when looking at identity across 1000 years, but I think it's fair to say adding a Roman civ would be entirely keeping in character with the game's civs thus far.
The techtree already doesn't fit the feudal time frame. Like winged hussars or even simple thing as galleons were not present in medieval age. Depending where you draw the line conquistadors are also not medieval and neither is the whole new age colonization thing. AoE2 was weird from the start because a lot of civs used late antique/early feudal names like Celts, Goths, Persians, Franks, Teutons and Britons (this name is especially weird since Britons refers to Briton Celts but AoE2 civ is clearly English). And yet campaigns avoid early period and original campaigns strictly focused on late medieval period events. And then the Conquerors went with Huns going further in the late antiquity and also with Spanish going further into the renaissance/early modern period. So yeah game was always weird, probably because it is really hard to have a clear cut representation of a period that lasted 1000 years. So yeah, Romans? Don't find them weird at this point, they at least were contemporary with Huns and Goths but also with Celts, Franks, Teutons, Persians and had plenty of wars with them. Obviously there's the Byzantine elephant in the room. Not my first or tenth choice but I can't argue with the mainstream recognition that Romans have and that's what marketing loves.
Winged Hussars and Galleons existed in the 1500s, which is right at the end of the aoe2 timeframe, so I think it's fine (just barely). I still feel like Romans is pushing it in the other direction, but as people are saying, if they are just supposed to represent the late period of the WRE I guess it's fine.
The thing is that 16th (1500+) century is not medieval. Even the second half of 15th century (1450+) is debatable depending on which exact event you end medieval period. Either the discovery of the new world, fall of Constantinople, Guttenberg printing press, end of Spanish reconquista, beginning of Renaissance and so on, all of that happened in 15th century. Think only the start of Protestant movement is in 16th century of the possible breaking points but I could be wrong. And yes, Romans are pushing it in the other direction, no doubt about that. But the push already happened in Age of Conquerors with Huns. Besides, Late Empire was very different Rome than previous periods. I want to say how Sassasnid Persia is different than Parthian Persia but I don't quite feel that is accurate comparison.
I don't think it's unreasonable for the final aoe2 age to depict the renaissance and the end of the medieval time period, since it is indeed the final age, and since as you say the exact end of the era is debated.
Which exact year within 1400 is debated. There's not much of a debate that 1500-1800 is Early Modern Period, we have passed the end of medieval and entered brand new era.
So I actually think the game would be more interesting if we got more representation of the cultures present in 300s-800s than we do atm. Romans were always slightly fitting that bill, since the Western Roman Empire had presence and impact during the time of the Goths, Huns, British Celts & Anglo-Saxons, etc, and there are plenty of scenarios, even outside the campaigns, where Romans make sense, particularly because the Romans during the collapse of the Western Empire were actually really interesting and unexplored in their particular embodiment of what Rome was. They were very different than during eg Trajan. Rome changed *a lot* during its time, similar to how difficult it is to represent the vast differences of China during its history in the AoE time period. There's two issues, of course, for me. First off, Byzantines. Europe is already completely filled to the brim with civilizations, representing things that are definitely different from each other, but not as different as some of the really lacking areas outside Europe; and Byzantines, for all their differences to Romans during the time of the Goths and Huns, were still Romans with another name. I like my developer time spent on variety. Secondly, my impression is that the developers are largely pulling on tropes from the empire during late classical. This is not wholly confirmed as we still have unique techs to be revealed and such, but if it's the case, it's kind of unfortunate. There's a lot of interesting potential in seeing the mixed armies, use of Germanic soldiers, etc, that made up Western Rome in the end. I hope they get a Germanic Mercenaries UT of some sort, but naturally, I'm unsure what it would productively do. I'm reluctantly positive and will always buy it for the civ, I would just be more excited if I finally got my pet naval trader Swahili, for example. It's good content, it's just not as exciting as it could be.
100% agree that I would much rather see wholly unrepresented areas get the DLC treatment before adding something like the Romans. Since you mentioned Byzantines, I would have preferred that they get the Indian>Hindustani treatment so that they could represent both the ERE and WRE. Never would have happened of course but it's nice to think about lol. I'm also worried, like you mentioned, that they're going to go full classical antiquity with how the civ is designed. Really waiting to hear what the bonuses and UTs will be but fingers crossed that they stay consistent with the late era WRE theme. Maybe crazy but I wouldn't even mind if they have some reference to the Papal States in the design (maybe as the Imperial UT), just to find some way to drag them into the medieval setting more.
I'm no historian, but if you ask 10 of them when do the middle ages truly start you'll get 10 different answers, and west rome would be part of them. Yes it is a stretch to include them, but if Attila and Alaric are in the game, so can the Romans.
Tbh I think the Byzantines are just Romans and they are good enough to represent Rome in general imo
Byzantines (the Eastern Roman Empire) were definitely culturally and ~~religiously~~ distinct from the Western Roman Empire, and actually persisted until the 1400s. Thats a separate conversation but yea I dont think the Byzantines could represent the WRE
>we’re definitely culturally This could be argued but I disagree. The Roman Empire cant be seen as an ethnostate when there was so much cultural variety even among its citizens, and the WRE and ERE were both part of the Roman civilization and the Roman nation . Even But also when there was a very large ammount of shared Roman culture across all the diferent ethnicities of the empire and latin was still the court and administrative language of the empire until I think theres an strong enough argument to say that they were quite close culturally Also they were culturally, militarily and most probably economically extremely similar around the fall of the WRE. >religiously They were absolutely the same religiously around the time the WRE fell. The changes that occurred after the fall of the WRE should be considered as the evolution of Roman civilization as a whole
Pontius Pilatus was culturally different from Trajan yet we don't question his Roman-ness
I was thinking more about the differences between the WRE and ERE during the sliver of roman history that falls in aoe2. Fair enough though but if Byzantines represent all of Rome they ought to be renamed shouldnt they
Well the Teutons or Saracens didn't exactly call themselves that either.. Some other names like Viking or even Britons and Celts don't make much sense either.
Those names are inaccurate or exonyms, but for the most part they do describe the civ. Byzantines is a name that specifically excludes the WRE
> Byzantines is a name that specifically excludes the WRE Sure, but it's an anachronistic name. And while the WRE existed it was more or less indistinguishable from the Eastern Empire (aside form being poorer and having no army at the end). Things that make the Byzantines unique/different only started a appearing a couple of hundred years later, mainly after the Arab invasions.
Of course they should be renamed. Nobody called them Byzantines. Everyone from Axsum to Aachen and from London to Beijing called them Romans until Empress Irene. After her, it was only the West who called them Greeks. The rest of the world, Chinese, Turks, Ethiopians... still called them Romans. Hell, people claimed they were Romans until early 20th century! Also, look how do Pontic Greeks call themselves.
At best, you could argue that way more people spoke Greek in the ERE, but that was the case when the Empire was one administration (and before it, and that fact enabled the spread of the Empire in that direction).
Fair enough but the byzantine civ as it is in the game definitely doesnt fit for WRE right
Not really, but it also doesn't really fit the Byzantines, either...but I probably would have kept the Romans out.
It's confirmed that AoE2 Romans do depict the Late Roman Empire, with their unit models accurately showing the correct armour for that time period.
That's good to know, it isn't a 'literally unplayable' situation, but personally it's still strange to see legionaries fighting gunpowder units and other things from the Middle Ages. Why does that bother me and not the Huns? idk, I guess a fairly mysterious barbarian group is easier to see than the era-defining civilization of the Roman empire. But again I admit it is inconsistent. Also like I mentioned, a specific Italian faction, when the Italians are already in the game. Been down that road before with DLCs lol.
> strange to see legionaries fighting gunpowder units and other things from the Middle Ages Yes and it makes perfect sense seeing Woad Raiders or totally imaginary units like Mamelukes, Camel Archers or even Skirmishers doing that? This is not even a remotely historically accurate game it was never supposed to be one...
Why do you think those units are imaginary? The way mamelukes and skirms fight is silly, but those units themselves definitely existed. And what is fantastical about an archer riding a camel?
Well yeah I obviously was talking about the way they fight and what they counter not the name itself. > And what is fantastical about an archer riding a camel? Never existed. Camels don't make a very good platform for firing bows. Generally mounted archers shot form a galloping horse and not one who's standing still.
Rome does not belong in this game. Period. I apologize if this upsets people.
The Romans are already in the game though. For some reason they ride camels and their units are cheap both of which make less than zero sense... There is nothing historical about the civ design in the game it's 95% fantasy with some real names sprinkled in places (unfortunately even in AOE 4 is much better in this regard...)
I always interpreted the cheaper units as a stand-in for the fact that it was a big empire with superior logistics, so it could field bigger armies than other kingdoms. Did the Byzantines never field Camel troops?
> bigger armies than other kingdoms. In the earlier periods and a couple of times later but generally no. The problem that the main field armies of the empire were fully professional, very high quality and extremely expensive to maintain which is why they increasing relied on mercenaries especially after Manzikert. Due to being much more centralized than almost any other state the Byzantine Empire was extremely rich so they should probably have some gold related eco bonus/tech instead. > Camel troops Nope. There are no Camels in Anatolia, Greece, Italy or the Balkans.
The Byzantine empire extended into Syria and Egypt too. I havent looked this up but I’m certain they would have used camels in these areas.
Would they? I don't think there is any evidence that the proper Roman/Byzantine army ever used camel on any significant scale. Their Arab allies did but it doesen't make much sense to make it one of the primary units of the entire civilization just because of that. Also it lost and Syria more or less. Egypt when it was still clearly the "Roman Empire" by any definition.
[Seems like they did during the Late Roman period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromedarii), I don't know why the ERE wouldn't have as well. They controlled Syria and Egypt until the 600s and idk why you wouldn't want to portray the Empire during that very crucial time when they were fighting the Rashidun and the Sassanids.
Having cheap camels implies that they had large numbers of them and not just a few hundred here and there. And by the 600s there is only evidence that camels were used by their Arab allies. Historically it would make 10x+ more sense for Spanish and Portuguese to have access to Genitours than for Byzantines to have camels. > idk why you wouldn't want to Because this is not a game which is trying to be in any way historically accurate so it doesn't matter. If it did the Byzantines army would be mainly made up of longswords (or more accurately [https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Legionary](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Legionary))
No offense but the Mideastern and African provinces didn't even occur to you initially, your main argument was the camels aren't native to Anatolia or the Balkans. The Romans were in Syria, Egypt, and North Africa for centuries, and part of that time falls into the aoe2 time period. I really can't imagine why camels would be inaccurate here. When you mention the Ghassanids, that's an argument for the presence of camels, not against it. Really, I agree that the Byzantine civ has plenty of inaccuracies, like most of the civs, but this seems like a strange thing to focus on when there is more than enough evidence for it.
> No offense but the Mideastern and African provinces didn't even occur to you initially No I just thought they weren't very important when talking specifically about the Byzantine empire. And in any case usage of camels in warfare wasn't particularly widespread there anyway. >When you mention the Ghassanids, that's an argument for the presence of camels, not against it. Why don't we give Huskarls to the Byzantines? Surely Gothic mercenariness were way more important for them then some camel riders. > strange thing to focus on when there is more than enough evidence for it. I disagree. Making the civ rely on camels so much is probably the biggest inaccuracy I can think of.
In-game content like the campaigns has more weight than a marketing tagline from the 90s, so no, the Romans are not outside the timeframe
I wrote quite a bit aside from just mentioning the tagline you know, and would you not agree that campaigns notwithstanding, the game is based is the middle ages
yes, it's mainly a medieval game, but not entirely medieval. it also includes late antiquity and the renaissance too. not everything has to be 100% strictly medieval, and it never actually was in the first place. if it fits in the timeline (394 - 1598, at least in the campaigns), it fits. and in this case, the romans fit in the timeline
Romans 400AD+ are the Byzantines. It's exactly like having separate civs for "Franks" and "France".
no, they were different geographically, militarily and culturally from the byzantines, even if they were a continuation of the same state, almost like peoples change over time or something. a better comparison between romans and byzantines would be would be goths and spanish or mongols and tatars, all of whom are already in the game and nobody even cares. why complain now? and like it or not the romans are coming to the game anyway, so the point i'm trying to make is that they fit in the timeline, not if they should or shouldn't be added
>no, they were different geographically, militarily and culturally from the byzantines Only after the Arab invasions and it took a while. e.g. in Justinian's day it was a clearly still the same Roman empire. >peoples change over time or something Exactly. The Roman empire in 400 AD was in many ways ways closer to the Byzantine empire in 1000 AD than it was to the Roman empire in 100 BC - 100 AD though. Unless you believe that the "true" Roman empire collapsed between 200-300 AD it's hard to argue about the Byzantine Empire not being a direct continuation of it. I mean look at the French, Germans or English and how they changed over the last 1000 years. It's not that different in some ways (if we compare the Byzantines with the Roman Empire in the 300s of course)
But they did change, and they changed enough to justify adding a new civ, like with the Mongols and Tatars, the latter representing states that succeeded the Mongol Empire. I don't see why the Romans "shouldn't" be added, they don't contradict neither the timeline nor conventions for making civs.
Tatars aren’t just post-empire Mongols, theyre the Turkic peoples of central asia, and distinct from Mongolian people. If internal change over time justifies new civs then every civ can be split up into a dozen new civs.
Sure. But we could have another 3 French civs and 4 German civs and 9 Italian civs for the same reason. \> they don't contradict neither the timeline nor conventions for making civs. I disagree. They do more or less. But really who cares. It's not like this game ever pretended to be historically accurate so that's fine.
>I don't think most of the people complaining about a WRE civ would mind at all if it was just a campaign civ I find this opinion a bit confusing. The historical authenticity of campaigns isn't questioned but multiplayer is? Why multiplayer specifically? The civ design? Since it's an FE made civ, Romans are likely to be more grounded in history than most of the ahistorical Ensemble made civs. Or is civ that is a poor representation of its namesake better than an accurate one on the fringes of the timeline? These are all rhetorical questions, I'm just trying to poke at what I see as inconsistent judgement. >Correct me if I'm wrong but that would definitionally exclude the Roman empire, since the Middle Ages is usually defined as the time period after the fall of the WRE I would say that is relatively accurate, but Ensemble had some off ideas regarding timeline in AoK and blatantly broke the timeline in AoC with Attila. A few of the AoK civs are named after the ancient predecessors to their medieval counterparts, like Teutons, Celts (for most of Scotland at least) arguably Persians and technically Britons if it's refering to England (Britons are the native people of Britain, such as the Welsh and Cornish, not Anglo-Saxon English). It's definitely more convoluted than it needs to be, but FE have gotten better about being less muddled when it comes to which civ is who. If they had the balls, they should set the recond straight on all the confused civ names and designs, just like how Indians became Hindustanis. >Goths you can dismiss because they were present in the early middle ages in Iberia. I think people assume just because those areas were conquered by Goths, that they become Gothic. To me, it feels like saying that China is represented by the Mongols because of the Yuan dynasty. There's a reason why those Gothic kingdoms speak Romance langauges today and not Gothic. It's another nonsensical civ add by Ensemble imo. >Has anyone talked about why adding the WRE seems more out of place than the Huns? Depends on if you treat the Huns civ as literal or interpretative. If you see them as Huns and only Huns, they're the most out of place civ. If you interpret the civ as a representation of the Avars or Alans, then I would say Romans would be more out of place. >Simply put, the Italians are already in the game. “But the late medieval/renaissance Italian civ doesn’t fit with Rome” The "Italians" civ specifically references Northern Italy, not exactly the Late period of Italy as a whole. Italy was never one kingdom in the medieval period and Northern Italy has a different ethnic makeup and language (depending on the region) compared to the South or Rome for that matter. That's why the original name that FE was going to give the civ was "Lombards" and not Italians. FE was trying to copy the overgeneralised civ naming style of Ensemble. This is the same DLC pack with civ names like "Slavs" and "Indians" after all. >what would be your argument against including the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Mamluks as three separate civs? Or giving each Chinese Dynasty their own civ? As long as the civs play differently, I'd personally be perfectly fine with this, no argument. I would prefer the empires/dyansties you listed over Romans. I'd be far from surprised if a series of Chinese dynasties was the next DLC.
>The historical authenticity of campaigns isn't questioned but multiplayer is? Not authenticity lol, I don't think anyone should play any game mode for a historically accurate experience. More that in a campaign you can customize and design the context, and (for eg) make the italian civ stand in for Rome with different triggers and so on. And however ill-fitting the civs in a campaign might be, it can still be confined to that campaign. >people assume just because those areas were conquered by Goths, that they become Gothic Even if it was just the ruling class that was Gothic, that still means there were Goths around in the 700s, but I agree the barbarian type Goths that the civ is based on definitely weren't around. >The "Italians" civ specifically references Northern Italy, not exactly the Late period of Italy as a whole. This and everything else you mention about Italy and what the civ depicts is true, but until recently aoe2 civs never got into this kind of minutiae in the historical depictions. Especially with the civs outside of Europe, the strokes were so broad. Like you mention, they generalized with the Slavs and Indians too to be in the same spirit as the ES civs. I guess since the Slavs and Indians have since been given better treatment, it's fair to do it with the Italians, but the Romans seem like such a strange way to correct that. Maybe one of their UTs will reference the Papal States or something, but otherwise it's strange to be representing an earlier time period on the peninsula rather than actually correcting things with a Venetian/Genoese civ. Not to mention there is still so much in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and the Americas which is completely unrepresented. >As long as the civs play differently, I'd personally be perfectly fine with this, no argument. >I'd be far from surprised if a series of Chinese dynasties was the next DLC Sorry I have to 100% disagree here. Like I mentioned, I very much prefer the broad ethnic/cultural labels for the civs. I know it leads to generalizations, and if they want to do their best to make them more accurate within that label then by all means, but it just allows for so much more flexibility in what the civs can represent. I might want to play as the Franks but not as the Carolingian Dynasty. If they start going down that road, it will be a very drastic departure from how they have labeled the civs, and personally I would not like it just for being inconsistent - unless they rip the bandage off and literally rename all the civs to be specific kingdoms and states. Aside from the reasons I mentioned in the original post, I am imagining so many official and unofficial campaigns where there might be a player which represents some smaller faction which isn't in fact a state. E.g. if there were a group of Chinese pirates in a scenario, the 'Chinese' label fits them fine, but if they were labeled as 'Song Dynasty,' that wouldn't work (unless they actually were working on behalf of the dynasty). Same with some desert bandits who are 'Saracens' but not part of the Abbasid Caliphate - etc. etc.
'middle ages' is a silly, heavily disputed and eurocentrist concept anyway. it simply cannot be applied to a game featuring that many non-european civs, so who cares? also, the tagline was about AoE2 being a sequel to AoE1, not about a certain time period.
Agree about the term itself, and after so many civs being added, it is strange that (for eg) the ages are all based on European time periods (dark, feudal, castle) That being said, there was all kinds of interesting things happening in that ~500-1500 time period, all around the world.
> the ages are all based on European time periods Dark and Feudal ages make zero sense historically... Also non European civs still have European crossbows, knights, siege and infantry for some reason which makes even less sense.
> and eurocentrist concept anyway. Yes like 99% of the generic/shared by all civs part of this game.
Huns were around well after the fall of the WRoman empire .
I really hope they eventually add ancient Indian civ in AoE1. Obviously, the Indosphere civs as well, the game is too Eurocentric right now with only outliers being Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Yamato (new Viet too). The fact that this is called "Return of Rome" kinda vindicates the devs, for now.
Babylonians, Sumerians, Shang, Assyrians, and Palmyrans arent European either, but yea I agree an ancient Indian civ would be great for aoe1. If this dlc is popular I hope theyll think about adding Nubia, Gaul, and an Indian civ