Olive oil may be a stand-in for Wine, which might have been censored due to many countries' laws on the depiction of alcohol. Which would explain the Grand WINEry landmark's presence.
I would have made it like the abbasids a building where you can buy Upgrades with olive and 1 or 2 units and not so many usless units. That would also more historicall accurate becaus the byzantines(romans) were incredible advanced. Also the byzantines need sooooooooo much a Gold eco Bonus they have heavy cav for 150 Gold and there man cost the double amount of a normal and even there rams cost gold.
Massively agree with you regarding the Mongols. I still love playing as the Mongols but it feels like the game is actively working against the way I want to play them. I want to build up a huge mass of cavalry and mangudai but the game wants me to build generic archers and men at arms instead. I want to raid with horsemen but it's so clearly better to just tower rush. They so seriously need a rework, not for balance reasons but for fun / Civ fantasy reasons.
100%. They may be "balanced" as far as competitive players are concerned right now, but that doesn't mean the thematics aren't off with this civ. They definitely "tried" a nomadic-style civ, but it's time to admit that the implementation failed. Fix the packup mechanic, retune the cavalry numbers, perhaps provide new balance numbers for team games vs 1v1s. Boom.
The worst design IMO is the OOTD. The entire faction has no real unique mechanics (and no unique units at all if not counting HRE units)， How is duct-taping 2 units into one, and giving all ranged units +1 range a core mechanic that is comparable to something like Imperial officials or military schools or HRE prelates etc that have a set of a smaller mechanics and interactions designed around it? The bigger units look stupid and the gameplay is bland, its like an April fool's joke to me. This civ IMO is the only civ that needs a complete redesign, maybe something like Noble's armoury that gives your units lots of unique upgrades through the ages, or limited number noble units with great special abilities spearheading cheap normal units(like coop mengsk), duct-taping is just lazy design-wise and boring gameplay-wise, I really like the other 5 dlc civs, but OOTD is just unbearable.
It’s a simple gimmick that changes up how you think about playing the base faction completely. If we assume dev resources are finite, that’s pretty good value. It can be balanced a little better perhaps…but otherwise I still find them pretty fun and distinct. No thematic overlap to HRE
Instead of Mounted Samurai and Onna-Musha being 2 separate units, they should really just be one and be like the Ayyubid camel unit that switches between ranged and melee since the Samurai were more horse archers than heavy cav. To distinguish them, maybe instead of a lance charge their first shot in x seconds deal bonus damage to armor so they fulfill the role of anti-armor and shock cavalry but isn't really overstepping historical authenticity too much. Just have male and female variants so they don't lose that diversity but isn't way out of proportion. Onna-Bugeisha should imo be a militia unit for defending bases rather than a dedicated unit like what Byzantines and Rus have.
As an HRE main, Ive always thought they could use some sort of dragoon type unit- a cavalry unit with an ability to dismount. With more complex abilities like desert raiders switching from melee to ranged, its not out of the question (except maybe to animate since seige glitches during its set up/take down still).
Order of the Dragon is the worst design. OotD was on knightly order that was aiming to fight the turks, some sort of late crusader. I would have seen them as a blend of HRE with Eastern Europe civilization. They should have relied more on numbers, light units, horsemen, horse archers, archers, peasants levied into the armies with only a small core of gigachads knights and man at arms.
I have maintained for ages that the Rus' hunting mechanic ought to count animal corpses harvested rather than animals killed, and to compensate should scale more throughout the game. I think this would tie into that hunting element of the Rus much better, and also would mean the Rus are being more proactive about gathering from hunt rather than this stupid minigame of trying to kill all the deer patches as fast as possible Rus also gave me this idea for how to treat variant civs in the future. Instead of having the base game civ be the "main civ" and the variant needing to have this off-the-wall name to justify it being a variant, you could give it the same treatment as the Indians in AoE2 when they got split into the Dynasties of India. In the case of the Rus, maybe the devs could "split" them into the Kievan Rus and the Muscovite Rus? Maybe the Rus in the game now could be renamed to Muscovite Rus and the variant could be called the Kievan Rus?
Wow I love that idea. The hunting mini game is SO gimmicky. Counting animals harvested makes a lot more sense and encourages the Rus to hunt much more. Splitting the Rus the way you’re suggesting is also a great idea. I’d love to see it. But I kind of doubt the game will move in that direction.
Yesssss I've hated the hunting mechanic for so long. It's utterly stupid thematically. Kill all the animals then eat them hundreds of years later?!?! I alsooooo have been calling for the hunts to have to be finished for the bonus to be gotten. I think that would be much better. Or maybe the hunt has to be brought to a hunting cabin. That would also thematically think to the idea of collecting hides.
What criteria would you use if you were to make something like this? Sorry if that sounds blunt/rude, I'm genuinely curious and just don't know how to word it
They need to nerf jd by making it so that her xp resets and she cant just keep diving your units and dying over and over. Its so stupid how you can kill jd in feudal multiple times and she still ages up and shit on your entire feudal army.
Really nice idea, I can relate for Ayyubids, they need to be more anchored historically : Camel Lancers, Desert Raiders and Tower of the Sultan are a bit vague, and I would have appreciated to call Desert Raiders « Ghulam » as they were mostly mounted troops and the actual ghulams « Mubarizuns », the closest thing muslim countries had to a man at arm However I disagree on what you were saying about the concept of a whole « Gambling mechanic civ », I think it would be dangerous for the esport balance of the game. I personally dont like gambling or random mechanics in a competitive game, but if devs absolutely want to implement one, Id rather prefer it as an option than as a whole design.
I think a "controlled gambling" type of civ could work out. I have a concept in the works that relates to this idea. It wouldn't be as swingy as the Ayyubids, and it'd leave a lot of room for counterplay. That's my biggest issue with a gambling mechanic that is an appendage to the civ rather than the central mechanic, it's impossible to counterplay the gambling wing. You can't tell when it high rolls or when it low rolls. Mubarizun is cool! I didn't know about them.
Mine fav civ is Rus. I know how good use their bonuses even when there is not much animals and woods on the map. I learned when to focus on diffrent landmarks, or army type. I just love making army of knight with horse archers and warrior monks. For me hunting mechanic is nice because it gives you very good bonuses for taking food that can be little bit risk but hunting is faster food resourse to take. I still remember that mine dark age tactic is just to kill all deers I find and with that I can make age II landmark and I dont even got villigers in goldmine. Also because animal corpses unlike in AoE2 dont rot in team plays I kill mine teammate deers but I dont take them unless I see he focus on farms, then I take them. Later I even use knights to kill some boars but I until I got mine supply of food I dont take their corpses. But enemy deers? Oh sometimes I make 4-5 scouts just to kill whole herd and take them all to mine base. Becasue of that I win with nice food and gold income and I just make sure mine enemy dont use those deers. The problem with Mongols Age IV 2nd landmark (Khaganate Palace) is a it gives you units from Mongol, China or Rus empire. Those units are ok but they are random. If you could choose units like in Turks academies would be better. Because what you do with few horse archers when you need Huihui Pao? If you could choose what army will be next that would be nice. As for their migracions it can be usefull but I also learned a bit how to play. I usualy divide them in 2-3 bases. Military and economic. Military is camp that can with ease make sure mine army is big while economic base is walking around to take stone and make secondary upgrates. On late game some of those camps stops because of age IV landmark (White Stupa) or upgrated monastaries that work as Oovos. If I got enought supplies I even make some empty monastaries just for military camps to make some units faster. But I usualy take whole stone for upgrates (one miliary building stays in military camp to make those upgrates if i need them). Mongols just have very special play. Its hard but when you master it you can be suppried how good they are at raiding
Too much balance discussion in a video supposedly about civ design. But still a great discussion especially the older civs! Totally agree about Delhi, the most disappointing civ in the game.
I think a good way to rename Zhu Xi to distinguish it from the Chinese will be to call it “Cathay” It’s funny how the faction Grand Cathay in Warhammer has a more historical ties in its name than a random Zhu Xi Legacy 😅
I'd love that but I also in no way would I expect it to actually work. Pausing all your research to go move your base is also just a nightmare no one has time for in late game and I think they need to address that first.
I assumed the devs wanted to save the tutonic knights for an english variant? To explain going with the OotD idea for an HRE alt-civ. I really like the Order of the Dragon's focus on "It's like the HRE, but it's more geared towards the other landmarks you don't normally go for." We don't really have a "standard" for what an alt-civ should look like, but I like the similar-but-different feel between OotD and HRE mechanically. The christian crusaders included pretty much all of europe, and making them an alt-faction of the HRE or French does make more sense. But since the english didn't get an alt-civ this expansion and it's still "fitting enough", it could be the case. Like, switch up the network of castles style buff to instead apply around your monasteries and all the sacred sites on the map. And have a fuedal age light/medium cavalry unit with a massive focus on the initial charge. Since the classic mounted crusader really rocketed the concept of the lance in warfare, during a time when chainmail was the height of armor technology. Then replace men-at-arms with "paladins". So it's defensive, like the english, but more focused on hammer and anvil tactics instead of archery, and a sacred-site victory condition.
The Teutonic Order was mostly based in Prussia, it doesn't make sense for them to be an English variant at all. The only military order based around the British would be the Knights of St. Thomas, and there's better ideas for English Variants such as the Angevin Empire
Aside mounted samurais one of my big issues with the japanese is the complete absence of warrior monks there was big fortress monasteries in japan with armies partially made of these warrior monks, quite a few of these monasteries dwarfing a lot of daimyos. In fact i t inspired me to slowly making a japanese variant centered around warrior monks. I partially disagree with the ayyubids their design doesn't overlap with abba, the fact that one is very tempo oriented and getting advantages out of short term bonus (fast age up, 3 dervishes, instant vills on age up), while abba is all about patiently building a mid/late game juggernaut. About Jeanne d'Arc it feels too much like french on steroid AND dumbed down, like what you do is after doing a few shores by killing a boar and a few wolves you just brawl while microing Jeanne the compagnion units feels like cameos and lets not start with consecration a better french keep aura for free that you can put on everything. French just need 2 things to me. A quality of life update to their trade mechanics by centralizing the option to switch trader's ressources on markets with a toggle system to assign X traders to R ressource and a better college of artillery by giving a passive aoe attack on canons (it can be a tuned down version of the current active ability), like the great bombard and zhuxi bombard has it, why does the actual field artillery only has a 3 min cooldown shot locked behind a landmark.
mongols under OotD is crazy.....OotD is just a change to scale and textures of existing models, no new landmarks, no hero, no special powers, no new buildings.....mongol civ is the unique nomad civ....maybe it's not easy to move buildings but it's a supercool feature.....OotD is for new players who know nothing about this game and start playing....also ayyubids so low is crazy.....maybe devs could add saladin hero but it's one of coolest civ....for me it's better than abbassids
I mentioned that the Mongol design is great. The implementation doesn't fulfill the intended design goals though. If they fixed the clunk around the moving buildings, and maybe considered rebalancing for team vs solo games, they'd be a top tier design.
Lacking horse archers for ottomans is a bit dumb. Turkish horse archery is very famous and common. Actually sipahis are heavy cavalry units. They should make them as lancer cavalry. And sipahis should rename as "akıncı" which means like raider/frontline light cavalry. This unit should be capable for using bows or they should add a new horse archer unit.
HRE, Imperial Knights and some sort of Bonus to represent the Hanseatic League. Sipahi is Ottoman they were pretty much Heavy cav so im not sure why they replace light cav. Akinji would have been a better name for the light cav
I think there’s a point where we have to ignore historical accuracy when we are talking about a video game that’s needs some balance in order to be playable. If we went for historical accurate Chinese would run over everyone with all the gunpowder in age 4. It doesn’t make sense to take historical accuracy as a real factor to judge some civilization power over others in terms of gameplay
The game is rooted on a historical theme. Otherwise we should add flying units, lazer beams, and dinosaurs. They'd make for great gameplay additions. The reason no one wants those things to be added is because it messes up the historical theming. So, to a degree, historical authenticity matters. I agree, I don't want a purely historical game either. But the ways in which the devs take inspiration from history should try to make sense as much as possible. For the most part, AOE4 has done a better job at that than any of its predecessors.
My issue with the Ayyubid's is theirs very little influence actually from Saladin and the Ayyubid dynasty. They shouldn't have the house of wisdom as Saladin's powerbase was in Egypt and the Levant. If they wanted to keep the one landmark system, it should've been changed to the Cairo Citadel. The units are just really random too, I'm not an absolute expert on Saladin, but from what I know camels weren't incorporated into his armies in any significant manner, instead of Camel lancers they should of had Mamluks as a heavy cav. The camel raiders are also just really random, In general the Ayyubids should have a focus on cavalry, Turkic horse archers and maybe some unique upgrades for horseman would be good, but miss alot of the infantry and archer upgrades the Abbasids have. The play on siege craft is okay, but the sultans tower is just weird and i'm not sure what its based on.
Zhu xi legacy is such a dumb name that I actually thought that it should just call Chinese and have the og Chinese rename into sth. The OG Chinese civ design have many defensive concept / slightly stronger army composition, which can safely represent the capital/centralisation part of China. The civ can be called forbidden army for a more authentic name for their advance usage of gunpowder units, rather than some kind of mix between confucianism naming, taoism (the mediation garden) and Buddhist monk
I think the idea behind olive oil is that is's a kind of engine of economy, that allows Byz to buy mercenaries. I feel weird that Abbasid's wonder is The Prayer Hall of Uqba (Great Mosque of Kairouan). The mosque itself was founded long before the Abbasid time. It got the present view under Agglabids. Yes, technically Agglabids were the vassals of Abbasids, but imagine if devs would choose not the Azure mosque for the Ottomans but let's say Khan palace in Crimea. Yes, Crimean khanate was a vassal of the Ottoman, technically it was part of the Ottoman empire, but...
Couldn't disagree more with Order of the Dragon. I think it's worst designed Civ in aoe history. Unit models look like giants roaming the world and don't fit at all. Gameplay is completely blant, mechanics are too close to HRE, historical background doesn't make sense at all as a civ.
@@ChillyEmpire It does play differently, but that does not mean that the mechanics are not similar. Aachen is completely the same just tuned down, Meinwerk is the same with 2 different techs, Regnitz is 100% the same, Burger is 80% the same, imp is the same as well in terms of landmarks. Villagers do basically receive a constant inspiration bonus ... dont tell me that these civs are not very similar.
one of the issues i have with China is Ming dynasty, hp bonus is good, but it has no unique building(ever since dynasty buildings moved down) and grenadiers feel underwhelming for 2400f 1200g
Byzantines without their definitive unique and influential monastery is a big hole that it cant reach pass mid tier due to this. The mercenery theme is very good but the rest is also filled with multiple toggled abilities, all are a bit much. Byzantines also should have a gold trading bonus. Byzantines, ottomans, mongols, abbasids were the guys who made money from trade routes by far the most. Give trade bonuses uniquely to these civilizations. Byzantines music is also a bummer like ottoman. Video games mostly ignored the areas tones shared with persia. They make byzantines leave their happy or slight melancholic oriental sounding which comprises most of their secular music and make ottoman tavern music which is their continuation also dissappear, stretch byzantines to west and ottomans to south. You hear definitive kemenche in only the first age, then slavic albanian hymn sound appear or later you hear a byzantine chant with european tonality which otherwise should have sounded very different. In feudal they used a music which sounding like byzantine or ottoman, but it uses one of the tones like nihavend containing no different notes than western music. I think rus is fantastic. The polish and baltic influence of knights are there, the traces of holden horde and heavy kıpchak tatar heritage of rus wafare is there with horse archer and wooden siege buff(no bombard and a buff to other siege should be better). Eastern slavs controlling and retreating to forests is there during tough times against nomads, who only rule steppes once rivers freeze. Slavs are forest people in early history as well. The viking ruriks changings ships but falling behind later times as slavs forget water is also implemented there, they even put constantinople in siege in past. The wooden fort is really nice when you look at early times but also to the rapid cossack expansions towards east by literally only using wooden fortress. Passive gold from forests nicely nods the increasing fur trade income during ivan. The warrior monks and altered monastery is a nice nod to the heir of orthodox church.
I would love to see a civ that has in-game mission mechanics or contracts. The player gets one mission each period and after completing it, receives a reward or has a bunch of missions and chooses the most interesting. It would work something similar to the daily achievements but in the game. If anyone played League of Legends, Kindred had something like this.
I agree completely! Check out my concept for the Danes if you haven’t yet. I gave them a mechanic for “feats” you can accomplish that function basically like quests.
You know what would be great for the byzantines? Instead of the mercs costing olive oil, have olive oil never go under 50 gold on the market and demand grows back faster so you can build your eco around selling olive oil for gold, and then choosing to recruit mercs with gold or do anything else It would really go with the whole trade economy focus on byzantines. They should be a defensive faction with a variety of units.
Greek Fire should not feel like an afterthought with they Byzantines. I wish their mercs made a but more sense to but other wise they are fine. Also they have their own Grenadiers BEFORE the chinese so they should really not have to hire them. Horse Archer, Arbelesters (since they are a stand for for Genoese) Are the only two i can think of that they actually used. With Japan they once again did give samurai their bows, the Shinobi are so bad and then the mounted crossbows really ruins it for other cultures. Then of corse there eco is amazing having every thing simplified for them. I do love their upgrading TC a lot.
"Ghulam" would colloquially be used to refer to a male servant/slave, so at least in the bare meaning of the word "mamluk" ghulams are mamluks, maybe Another interesting thing, even though I liked their old shield more, the camel rider shield that was given to the newly branded Ghulam is apparently derived from the north african "Adarga". So perhaps the shield change was to emphasise the "slave soldier" over the "arabian swordsman"? maybe
Agree with you! Most Chinese couldnt relate to Zhu Xi, there are more prominent legends in Medieval China, but i thought the perfect variant would be Manchuria! But i know, its complicated, they arent considered "Chinese" ethicitly speaking, so may not be a legit variant haha
Totally unrelated to Age of Empires 4 itself, I'm curious how you know so much about history? As someone who is interested in world history but had a very America-centric history education growing up, I would love to see a video with some history book recommendations for each civ
My dad bought me some bargin bin World History Atlas when I was a kid. I ended up reading it every night and that gave me a really good foundation for absorbing history. I got a degree in history for my undergrad. I'll have to find you the title of the atlas...not sure where I placed it but I highly recommend it.
I fail to understand why cavalry archers has to be this controversial in our community. The main reason made me buy the game was, mangudai in the first place. Yes, I love entire Age of series but the fact that horse archers were firing while riding is something I always fantasied for all those years I played AoE II. And today look at it, Mangudai are weak and slow, Rus' horse archers are incompetent enough to not being able to shoot on gallop and Ottoman horse archers are absent (Onna-musha are great, all of these hard-boiled steppe men are being beaten by Japanese ladies :). I mean it's even logical for other civs to have them too. Byzantines enlisted or hired Turkic warriors from the steppes. They had a unit called Turcopoles which most were Turks but also Greeks. Emperor Doukas Vatatzes even settled Kipchaks to western Anatolia. Chinese Yuan Dynasty were of Genghis Khan's lineage. I'm sure they had a massive horse archer capability. Delhi Sultanate was founded by Turco-Mongol ex-slaves, they sure did know how to shoot a bow from horseback. Mamelukes were slaves from the steppes, sold to the Arabian realm to be raised as soldiers and commanders. Many were Turkic, Mongol, Circassian, Slav or Alan; surely they brought their expertise with them. Only our three Western European and one African civ didn't used them. They should be one of the mainstay unit types, not something exotic. When (if) we get Persians, Magyars, Poles, Bulgars, Khazars, Tibet or any other civilization that bordered a steppe polity ought to have horse archers because fire is how you fight with fire. I see the folk here value historical accuracy. I want to add a couple of notes about archery in general in this game. If it is accuracy we are after; there is a reversely working archery mechanic here at play. English archery was not about shooting at enemies from an extreme distance. It was about delivering a heavy arrow with much momentum as possible. It meant that arrows used were heavy and didn't fly far but packed a big punch. 15 to 50 meters were their effective range. Mind you, arrows can fly much farther but to be effective against armoured opponents, archers needed to be relatively close to their target. Later Qing dynasty of China had the same approach and they crafted the most efficient and elegant bows for shooting heavy arrows. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are Ottomans and Koreans. They engineered the shortest composite bows with a different goal, shooting as far as possible. Short limbs meant that when the bow is fully drawn, string angle is narrower so the arrow gets much more velocity thus flies more (I'm sure someone more versed in archery and English can explain better but it is basically this). Ottoman flight records couldn't be surpassed until this age of modern synthetic materials. There are many small monumental stones erected all over Konstantiniyye to remember these deeds. Ottomans may have took this route because they fielded some of the first large scale hand-held gunpowder weapons and this early guns weren't much effective at great distances. I'm not sure about the Korean reasoning though. Just some things I've thought about, I hope people find useful. If we dive into the specifics of regional bow designs and horse breeds of cultures, I'm sure we or the devs can settle the balance of horse archers. For example; Mongol bows were not specialized in either momentum or velocity and their horses weren't the fastest but they possessed unbeatable endurance and constitution. An average range, average damage, on the slow side, cheap and high HP horse archer. Byzantine bows were not specced either but their horses were faster; average range, average damage, average speed, expensive and high armor horse archer. Turks had the highest range, some of the best horses (see Akhal-Teke, a descendant of Turkoman horses which were descendants of Heavenly Ferghana Horses which the Chinese Emperors waged war half world away to get some); high range, low damage, high speed and average armor and so on. But most importantly, all should be able to fire on the move after an upgrade. And as someone whose ancestors both raided from horseback, and defended against it I greet you, I hope the devs are willing to experiment some more.
the only problem i also want to mention towards the hre is that their landmarks and especially their wonder dont make any sense at all from a historical point of view. The Aachen chapel should be the wonder, the meinwerk thing is a church not a forge, the current wonder is kinda made up the list goes on. I really like the design of the hre i just wish it had a better answer to archers and a bit more variety like you said.
To be fair, not many landmarks fit into their actual use. HRE has like 5 landmarks called "palace" and the English have 3, and each one of them is a different type of building. It seems like neither clarity nor consistency were the focus on the landmark design.
I noticed all the variants are "Good enough" or worse. What would your ideal variant look like? What would you like to see from the ayyubids instead, for example.
Oh this is a great question hrm... Here's my thoughts on variants - I don't think the devs behind AOE4 are too focused on "business" considerations. Sultans Ascend was released at 15 dollars and included 2 full civs and 4 variants. They did not need to do all of that. I think the variants were made by developers who personally were fans of the game and wanted to spice up the gameplay a bit. With that in mind, the way I'd imagine the variants would be - what's the most cost-effective way (knowing that there won't be too much financial backing to add new assets, etc) to create new, compelling gameplay scenarios easily? That'd be question number 1. All 4 variant civs do a great job at answering this question. Question number 2 gets trickier: What's the best way to introduce a variant civ while also avoiding diluting the thematics of the base civ? I think Jeanne D'Arc and Order of the Dragon both answered this acceptably - add a core "gimmick" that makes them play completely differently. "French but with a Hero" in Jeanne's case, and "HRE with big, expensive gigachads" in the Order's case. Zhu Xi and Ayyubids however, did not attempt a core gimmick. And as a result, they thematically overlap with the base civ. The last question I'd ask is can the civ design go even further, and create a strong, identity that allows players to fulfil some kind of historical fantasy. Ie. English being a well-defended island, Byzantines being able to recruit mercenaries to make them the jack of all trades, Mongols being mobile and trade focused, etc. I think all 4 variants "sort of" attempt that...but ultimately fail hard. I mean Jeanne wields a cannon, Gigachads...are completely made up, and what the heck even is the Zhu Xi fantasy? My thoughts on some potentially cool Abbasid variants: 1. A Bedouin-style variant with a more nomadic rather than city-building playstyle. Maybe emphasize camels. 2. An Assassin variant that puts more emphasis on individual unit micro and high-priority targets. 3. Umayyad/Almohad variant with a hit-and-run platsytle centered around Zenata javelin cavalry.
What kind of variant would you design for rus? Im no huge history guy and design wise i also got nothin so i would be curious if you as a rus main got any interesting ideas
Ooo that's a great question. Hard for me to answer though. Variants don't have a straightforward design boundary right now so kind of anything goes. I personally like the variants that center around the addition of a simple, core idea, that fundamentally changes how you play the civ. Ie. Order with elite but expensive units, or Jeanne with the Hero. The weakest civs design-wise are Zhu Xi and Ayyubids, which are thematically the same as their base design but with new units and techs. It basically means they're either going to be "the better version" of the base civ, or "the worser version" depending on the balancing. Rus right now is a very expansive civ that likes to get out onto the map with scouts, hunts, and knights. It might be interesting to see a variation that's more in-ward focused. Maybe like a "Moscow" or "Novgorod" variant. More about city-building and defending a centralized economy, with a more static, infantry-based army.
@@ChillyEmpire yeah i was also thinking like maybe the novgorod republic and then that civ be more trade focused with the hanse-system maybe?? Would that feel like playing the rus at all though or would it just feel like playing hre 2, idk im not a game designer. I was also thinking maybe something like hero-focused again but idk if they want to re-visit the idea considering how "popular" jeanne is.
8:40 samurai *were* cavalry archers that fought with mongol style tactics. So no, you're not right. They head armored horse archers sp yeah making them lancers is wrong but the foot samurai idea is also not correct
the problem with the ayyubids, at least to me, is its just feels like abassid 2.0. they took ideas they started with abassid, and just ran with them. way more unique units, way more camels, all the wing options, and the tower. It makes playing abassid feel... vanilla, for lack of a better word. Those ideas should have been somewhat split between the two, and any villagers coming out from the wings has to go. French and JD should have way more differences. The only one that is really noticeable is the villager production speed. Even if JD is beatable, its incredibly unfun to play against as well. ZXL just feels like overall better china.
Zhu Xi's Legacy - The only civ design I totally dont get is Zhu Xi's Legacy. I feel that there are some mechanics with a Yolo name that totally don't fit. Legacy, philosophy but where? If we just reskin this civ into any other it would be the same empty feeling, dissonance. OOTD - the civ where I really like its mechanic, my favorite civ currently but I dont feel this Order theme. To be honest I would prefer to see just Tutons or Jerusalem Kingdom which, IMO would fit way better. Joan Darc - I really, really like this hero theme. Hero theme is awesome to me but I would give her more levels to make this power spike less drastic. The only thing I would totally change is her model on the max level in the melee version. I totally don't feel this bazooka in the melee. I would change Bazooka into a long baner which would keep the same attack distance and would fit this hero way better as a buffing, commanding character. I still have a feeling that those variant civs are what devs were going to do at the start with the basic civs but lack of time forced them to make more generic civs and later finish them giving us their variants. To me, Rus has the best design. Wooden buildings, animal hunting, hunting cabins, and so on. Just love this. The only thing I dont get is that their scouts are so useless later. In the initial phase of the game, we are encouraged to use more scouts for hunting, but later they lose their importance. What I would maybe change is to upgrade the castle-age scouts to horse archers. Thanks to this solution, it would be a good idea to keep scouts in the initial phase of the game, use them to collect the game, and later in the game upgrade them to horse archers and extend their usefulness.
@@ChillyEmpire I didn't mean that you dont need any scout at all. I totally agree that vision and information are very important. I mean that after you produce several scouts early game to hunt, you don't need them as many later. Malians are a really good example where you can focus on scouts early and use them late game not only for scouting but also as a unit. If only we could do something similar with the Rus e.g. upgrade them to horse archer and keep scout vision, it would be more fluent and connected with the design, theme IMO. Currently, Malians have with scouts something that Rus is missing.
Really enjoyed this video, thank you! I do disagree on several bits. You seem to place a much heavier emphasis on historical accuracy than I do. I personally think it makes the game more exciting and imaginative to create your own version of how things were based on some elements of truth. Making the game more historically accurate would also mean making it more limited and boring, in my opinion.
It’s a spectrum. I’m not the biggest stickler on historical accuracy. But I have more respect for design decisions that can work well within its bounds.
Byzantines: Design: S Tier: Visuals and soundtrack frikin amazing. Balance: A Tier: The ideas need some fine tunning. Maybe the Varangian Guard one or two buffs. I think they are doing somewhat fine despite having so many hyper aggressive civs in the dlc. Japanese: Design: S Tier: Visuals look great Balanace: F Tier: Best infantry in the game, best ranged (with the Osutzu), best cavalry, free relics, you gain both gold and stone, undestroyable town center - it´s ... just too much. You can beat them but sometimes i´m just spawning next to them and wonder how i shall deal with them. Maybe it´s also a HRE counter which as a HRE player scares me. Order of the Dragon: Design: C Tier: Well it´s just HRE in black. That said: their knights still look frikin amazing. Rest is a bit meh. Balance: B Tier: Very odd but still kinda good. They are hard to estimate. The only major problems i have with them: - Sushi kinda a hardcounter with their crossbows - You have never enough forces to split them up and help somewhere else on the map - Fitting in some siege weapons is problematic - You lose against hyperlategame civs because you don´t have the efffictive amount on the battlefield like they do. Ayyubids: Design: D Tier: Camels lancers look cool, desert raiders are a mixed bag, i hate the flamming catapult, the tower is weird. Balance: E Tier: They are just Abbasids but aggressive. And they can do early Gulam strat with the fast age up. Which scares me a lot if there is minute 7-8 a Ghulam on the field. John Dark: Design: F Tier: Just re-used assets. Balance: E Tier: I guess if she wouldn´t pull out a (french) canon from her ass she would be more bearable. Sushi: Design: E Tier: I guess there is the new knight and the yuan rider, rest same, cannot tell Chus and Crossbows apart. Balance: F Tier: faster age up than anyone else, Shaolin monks are freakin scary, can pick all the relics quickly, their second dynasty bonus is also insane, they can field dozens of units, they can have constant chu-ko-nu production with their landmark, their cavalry is insane, their crossbows hard-coutner some civs, their bombards are insane, I hate nest of bees, It´s just too much. You can win against them yes but sometimes it feels like how and why. Chinese: Design: S Tier: It looks and kinda feels like how "China" would play out i guess. Balance: C Tier: It needs ages to go online, their units lack punch (except the nest of bees and grenadiers), you need a lot of ressources, game is in a hyper aggressive meta right now so that doesn´t help either Abbasid: Design: S Tier: Basically the middle eastern civ as anybody would see it Balance: A Tier: Honestly on paper i don´t mind playing against them. The TC boom got nerfed so it feels more fair to play against them. I hate the gulams. The camels are great against cav civs. Zey British: Design: S Tier: Pesky island people Balance S Tier: Versatile, i hate the longbows (and like to use them), backingham palace minigun. great on offense and defense, solid eco. Well designed. The French: Design: S Tier: Basically how you would picture the franks Balance: F Tier: I have soo many games where the french player don´t need to make another unit than french knights. Sometimes you encounter someone that adds a few archers to their comb, Backingham palace being bullshit but Red Palace is even worse (if you come into range). Honestly nerf their late game castle discount by 5% or something. Maybe something with their knights. It´s just nnwewnweuuweiwoe. HRE: Design: S Tier: Very german Balance: D Tier: i´m actually one of the minority players that goes Meinwerk over Aachen. I like the early utility you gain from it. Also Aachen is basically for french / english player: "Pls attack here" of the time. And the map generation can fk me over quite often. I like the HRE landmarks but they feel a bit very restrictive at times. Also you miss out on the special techs for the knights / horseman, they rely too much on getting relics sometimes (but once they get them uff), Landsknechts are great on paper and can dish out damage but sometimes never reach combat and feel like a waste of gold and quite frustrating to play. They are kinda THE infantry civ in the game being outshined by the Abbasids and their Gulams and the Japanese infantry. (also it´s a pain in the ass to see people only play them as MAA-printer) Yeah they need some love in a few ways. I like to play them more aggressivly in feudal but even than it often doesn´t feel good in comparison to what other civs can do. Mongols: Design: S Tier: Very mogolian Balance: B Tier: Aside some game mechanics that could be less cluncky, i think it works great as a raiding civ and it´s acutally great there. That said: i see a french knight: PANIC - i see a Keshik: Ah what ever. I have the feeling Mongols quite often are running out of steam. And than you only see them again with their wonder and 80 towers. They are in an odd spot but i do think they are somewhat fine and not cancerous (aside the mangudai of course)
Rus: Design: A Tier: LEGOLAS! Shoot the deers! Balance: E Tier: I hate Streliz. 60 damage on a melee attack (the Order of the Dragon knights have that on the charge attack >:( Their lategame scares me. Their siege is great, the knights are strong, the Streliz are cancer. Delhi: Design: S Tier: Very elephant Balance: D Ter: It looks and plays very weird. You basically never see Elphants and if you do, you let the delhi guy get to lategame. To be fair the elphant units always had a weird and hard time in the series. AoE1 was slow but bulky but alwys converted. AoE2 had the same problem AoE3 damn .. those elefants are actually pretty scary there o.o They have a lot of great ideas that don´t work out (for me at least) Mali: Design: A Tier: Much AoE3, Such free boom, so cattle Balance C Tier: You can defeat them but hell i hate to play against them. Eco that cannot be harassed properly, good counter units, invisble shits, cheap knights and a lot of ILALU. I have to admit they are a bit harder play but damn if i saw anybody with a conquerer emblem they would usually pick Mali. Ottoman: Design: S Tier: Very recruitment Balance : B Tier: Great bombards are the pain of the ass. If you let them get to this point nah it´s just uuugh. The rest seems actually fine and fun to play against (except that you shouldn´t do much cav) but those bombards pls not.
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Olive oil may be a stand-in for Wine, which might have been censored due to many countries' laws on the depiction of alcohol. Which would explain the Grand WINEry landmark's presence.
I have read this elsewhere also
yeah
I would have made it like the abbasids a building where you can buy Upgrades with olive and 1 or 2 units and not so many usless units. That would also more historicall accurate becaus the byzantines(romans) were incredible advanced. Also the byzantines need sooooooooo much a Gold eco Bonus they have heavy cav for 150 Gold and there man cost the double amount of a normal and even there rams cost gold.
Olive oil was used as a lube for those kinky Romans
Massively agree with you regarding the Mongols. I still love playing as the Mongols but it feels like the game is actively working against the way I want to play them. I want to build up a huge mass of cavalry and mangudai but the game wants me to build generic archers and men at arms instead. I want to raid with horsemen but it's so clearly better to just tower rush. They so seriously need a rework, not for balance reasons but for fun / Civ fantasy reasons.
100%. They may be "balanced" as far as competitive players are concerned right now, but that doesn't mean the thematics aren't off with this civ. They definitely "tried" a nomadic-style civ, but it's time to admit that the implementation failed. Fix the packup mechanic, retune the cavalry numbers, perhaps provide new balance numbers for team games vs 1v1s. Boom.
yes totally. they have to be hit-and-run and should be using infantry as much as HRE would use archers... @@ChillyEmpire
Everyone: Empire of Jade is a terrible name.
Relic: OK we changed it to Xu Xi's Legacy!
Everyone: Empire of Jade is a great name!
The worst design IMO is the OOTD. The entire faction has no real unique mechanics (and no unique units at all if not counting HRE units)， How is duct-taping 2 units into one, and giving all ranged units +1 range a core mechanic that is comparable to something like Imperial officials or military schools or HRE prelates etc that have a set of a smaller mechanics and interactions designed around it? The bigger units look stupid and the gameplay is bland, its like an April fool's joke to me. This civ IMO is the only civ that needs a complete redesign, maybe something like Noble's armoury that gives your units lots of unique upgrades through the ages, or limited number noble units with great special abilities spearheading cheap normal units(like coop mengsk), duct-taping is just lazy design-wise and boring gameplay-wise, I really like the other 5 dlc civs, but OOTD is just unbearable.
It’s a simple gimmick that changes up how you think about playing the base faction completely. If we assume dev resources are finite, that’s pretty good value. It can be balanced a little better perhaps…but otherwise I still find them pretty fun and distinct. No thematic overlap to HRE
Instead of Mounted Samurai and Onna-Musha being 2 separate units, they should really just be one and be like the Ayyubid camel unit that switches between ranged and melee since the Samurai were more horse archers than heavy cav.
To distinguish them, maybe instead of a lance charge their first shot in x seconds deal bonus damage to armor so they fulfill the role of anti-armor and shock cavalry but isn't really overstepping historical authenticity too much. Just have male and female variants so they don't lose that diversity but isn't way out of proportion.
Onna-Bugeisha should imo be a militia unit for defending bases rather than a dedicated unit like what Byzantines and Rus have.
I liked the approach. Not listing on who is better. First time I see a video about the game design and historical accuracy. Well done!
As an HRE main, Ive always thought they could use some sort of dragoon type unit- a cavalry unit with an ability to dismount. With more complex abilities like desert raiders switching from melee to ranged, its not out of the question (except maybe to animate since seige glitches during its set up/take down still).
Order of the Dragon is the worst design. OotD was on knightly order that was aiming to fight the turks, some sort of late crusader.
I would have seen them as a blend of HRE with Eastern Europe civilization. They should have relied more on numbers, light units, horsemen, horse archers, archers, peasants levied into the armies with only a small core of gigachads knights and man at arms.
They clearly didn’t care about the historical inspiration there. So I didn’t judge them by it. I’m down for a gigachad civ.
Good video. Nice touch with the background music matching the civ you are speaking about.
Time marks:
1:42 Byzantines
7:36 Japanese
12:42 Order of the Dragon
16:13 Ayyubids
20:03 Jeanne d'Arc
23:22 Zhu Xi's Legacy
26:43 Chinese
27:55 Abbasids
29:35 English
30:48 French
33:43 Holy Roman Empire
35:21 Mongols
39:15 Rus
40:55 Dehli's Sultanate
44:46 Malians
49:58 Ottomans
Omg thank you. I forgot to add this
I have maintained for ages that the Rus' hunting mechanic ought to count animal corpses harvested rather than animals killed, and to compensate should scale more throughout the game. I think this would tie into that hunting element of the Rus much better, and also would mean the Rus are being more proactive about gathering from hunt rather than this stupid minigame of trying to kill all the deer patches as fast as possible
Rus also gave me this idea for how to treat variant civs in the future. Instead of having the base game civ be the "main civ" and the variant needing to have this off-the-wall name to justify it being a variant, you could give it the same treatment as the Indians in AoE2 when they got split into the Dynasties of India. In the case of the Rus, maybe the devs could "split" them into the Kievan Rus and the Muscovite Rus? Maybe the Rus in the game now could be renamed to Muscovite Rus and the variant could be called the Kievan Rus?
Wow I love that idea. The hunting mini game is SO gimmicky. Counting animals harvested makes a lot more sense and encourages the Rus to hunt much more.
Splitting the Rus the way you’re suggesting is also a great idea. I’d love to see it. But I kind of doubt the game will move in that direction.
Yesssss I've hated the hunting mechanic for so long. It's utterly stupid thematically. Kill all the animals then eat them hundreds of years later?!?! I alsooooo have been calling for the hunts to have to be finished for the bonus to be gotten. I think that would be much better. Or maybe the hunt has to be brought to a hunting cabin. That would also thematically think to the idea of collecting hides.
Your criteria for your ranking system is not what im looking for. But very original. Props to you.
What criteria would you use if you were to make something like this? Sorry if that sounds blunt/rude, I'm genuinely curious and just don't know how to word it
They need to nerf jd by making it so that her xp resets and she cant just keep diving your units and dying over and over. Its so stupid how you can kill jd in feudal multiple times and she still ages up and shit on your entire feudal army.
Really nice idea, I can relate for Ayyubids, they need to be more anchored historically : Camel Lancers, Desert Raiders and Tower of the Sultan are a bit vague, and I would have appreciated to call Desert Raiders « Ghulam » as they were mostly mounted troops and the actual ghulams « Mubarizuns », the closest thing muslim countries had to a man at arm
However I disagree on what you were saying about the concept of a whole « Gambling mechanic civ », I think it would be dangerous for the esport balance of the game. I personally dont like gambling or random mechanics in a competitive game, but if devs absolutely want to implement one, Id rather prefer it as an option than as a whole design.
I think a "controlled gambling" type of civ could work out. I have a concept in the works that relates to this idea. It wouldn't be as swingy as the Ayyubids, and it'd leave a lot of room for counterplay. That's my biggest issue with a gambling mechanic that is an appendage to the civ rather than the central mechanic, it's impossible to counterplay the gambling wing. You can't tell when it high rolls or when it low rolls.
Mubarizun is cool! I didn't know about them.
Elephants need either AoE damage or an aura debuff akin to camels. Why not? Elephants were massive, powerfoul beasts in medieval wars
Mine fav civ is Rus. I know how good use their bonuses even when there is not much animals and woods on the map. I learned when to focus on diffrent landmarks, or army type. I just love making army of knight with horse archers and warrior monks. For me hunting mechanic is nice because it gives you very good bonuses for taking food that can be little bit risk but hunting is faster food resourse to take. I still remember that mine dark age tactic is just to kill all deers I find and with that I can make age II landmark and I dont even got villigers in goldmine. Also because animal corpses unlike in AoE2 dont rot in team plays I kill mine teammate deers but I dont take them unless I see he focus on farms, then I take them. Later I even use knights to kill some boars but I until I got mine supply of food I dont take their corpses. But enemy deers? Oh sometimes I make 4-5 scouts just to kill whole herd and take them all to mine base. Becasue of that I win with nice food and gold income and I just make sure mine enemy dont use those deers.
The problem with Mongols Age IV 2nd landmark (Khaganate Palace) is a it gives you units from Mongol, China or Rus empire. Those units are ok but they are random. If you could choose units like in Turks academies would be better. Because what you do with few horse archers when you need Huihui Pao? If you could choose what army will be next that would be nice. As for their migracions it can be usefull but I also learned a bit how to play. I usualy divide them in 2-3 bases. Military and economic. Military is camp that can with ease make sure mine army is big while economic base is walking around to take stone and make secondary upgrates. On late game some of those camps stops because of age IV landmark (White Stupa) or upgrated monastaries that work as Oovos. If I got enought supplies I even make some empty monastaries just for military camps to make some units faster. But I usualy take whole stone for upgrates (one miliary building stays in military camp to make those upgrates if i need them). Mongols just have very special play. Its hard but when you master it you can be suppried how good they are at raiding
Too much balance discussion in a video supposedly about civ design. But still a great discussion especially the older civs! Totally agree about Delhi, the most disappointing civ in the game.
I think a good way to rename Zhu Xi to distinguish it from the Chinese will be to call it “Cathay”
It’s funny how the faction Grand Cathay in Warhammer has a more historical ties in its name than a random Zhu Xi Legacy 😅
37:55 blood memories are real bro
This is interesting, Dehli is by far my favorite civ to play though. Sacred sites are 125 gold/min. really strong
It's a strong civ for sure. I just don't think it's as thematically coherent as the other designs in the game.
I hope they add one key pack/repacking everything for mongols
I'd love that but I also in no way would I expect it to actually work. Pausing all your research to go move your base is also just a nightmare no one has time for in late game and I think they need to address that first.
I assumed the devs wanted to save the tutonic knights for an english variant? To explain going with the OotD idea for an HRE alt-civ. I really like the Order of the Dragon's focus on "It's like the HRE, but it's more geared towards the other landmarks you don't normally go for." We don't really have a "standard" for what an alt-civ should look like, but I like the similar-but-different feel between OotD and HRE mechanically.
The christian crusaders included pretty much all of europe, and making them an alt-faction of the HRE or French does make more sense. But since the english didn't get an alt-civ this expansion and it's still "fitting enough", it could be the case.
Like, switch up the network of castles style buff to instead apply around your monasteries and all the sacred sites on the map. And have a fuedal age light/medium cavalry unit with a massive focus on the initial charge. Since the classic mounted crusader really rocketed the concept of the lance in warfare, during a time when chainmail was the height of armor technology. Then replace men-at-arms with "paladins". So it's defensive, like the english, but more focused on hammer and anvil tactics instead of archery, and a sacred-site victory condition.
The Teutonic Order was mostly based in Prussia, it doesn't make sense for them to be an English variant at all. The only military order based around the British would be the Knights of St. Thomas, and there's better ideas for English Variants such as the Angevin Empire
Tom Cruise isnt on the Japanese so its historically inaccurate..big thumbs down.
Yeah I need more white guys in my Japanese fantasy smh. Relic cant do anything right.
@@ChillyEmpirelmao
They need to make mangudai cheaper and buff keshiks in castle and imp
Aside mounted samurais one of my big issues with the japanese is the complete absence of warrior monks there was big fortress monasteries in japan with armies partially made of these warrior monks, quite a few of these monasteries dwarfing a lot of daimyos. In fact i t inspired me to slowly making a japanese variant centered around warrior monks.
I partially disagree with the ayyubids their design doesn't overlap with abba, the fact that one is very tempo oriented and getting advantages out of short term bonus (fast age up, 3 dervishes, instant vills on age up), while abba is all about patiently building a mid/late game juggernaut.
About Jeanne d'Arc it feels too much like french on steroid AND dumbed down, like what you do is after doing a few shores by killing a boar and a few wolves you just brawl while microing Jeanne the compagnion units feels like cameos and lets not start with consecration a better french keep aura for free that you can put on everything.
French just need 2 things to me. A quality of life update to their trade mechanics by centralizing the option to switch trader's ressources on markets with a toggle system to assign X traders to R ressource and a better college of artillery by giving a passive aoe attack on canons (it can be a tuned down version of the current active ability), like the great bombard and zhuxi bombard has it, why does the actual field artillery only has a 3 min cooldown shot locked behind a landmark.
mongols under OotD is crazy.....OotD is just a change to scale and textures of existing models, no new landmarks, no hero, no special powers, no new buildings.....mongol civ is the unique nomad civ....maybe it's not easy to move buildings but it's a supercool feature.....OotD is for new players who know nothing about this game and start playing....also ayyubids so low is crazy.....maybe devs could add saladin hero but it's one of coolest civ....for me it's better than abbassids
I mentioned that the Mongol design is great. The implementation doesn't fulfill the intended design goals though. If they fixed the clunk around the moving buildings, and maybe considered rebalancing for team vs solo games, they'd be a top tier design.
Lacking horse archers for ottomans is a bit dumb. Turkish horse archery is very famous and common. Actually sipahis are heavy cavalry units. They should make them as lancer cavalry. And sipahis should rename as "akıncı" which means like raider/frontline light cavalry. This unit should be capable for using bows or they should add a new horse archer unit.
HRE, Imperial Knights and some sort of Bonus to represent the Hanseatic League. Sipahi is Ottoman they were pretty much Heavy cav so im not sure why they replace light cav. Akinji would have been a better name for the light cav
I think there’s a point where we have to ignore historical accuracy when we are talking about a video game that’s needs some balance in order to be playable. If we went for historical accurate Chinese would run over everyone with all the gunpowder in age 4. It doesn’t make sense to take historical accuracy as a real factor to judge some civilization power over others in terms of gameplay
The game is rooted on a historical theme. Otherwise we should add flying units, lazer beams, and dinosaurs. They'd make for great gameplay additions. The reason no one wants those things to be added is because it messes up the historical theming.
So, to a degree, historical authenticity matters. I agree, I don't want a purely historical game either. But the ways in which the devs take inspiration from history should try to make sense as much as possible. For the most part, AOE4 has done a better job at that than any of its predecessors.
My issue with the Ayyubid's is theirs very little influence actually from Saladin and the Ayyubid dynasty. They shouldn't have the house of wisdom as Saladin's powerbase was in Egypt and the Levant. If they wanted to keep the one landmark system, it should've been changed to the Cairo Citadel. The units are just really random too, I'm not an absolute expert on Saladin, but from what I know camels weren't incorporated into his armies in any significant manner, instead of Camel lancers they should of had Mamluks as a heavy cav. The camel raiders are also just really random, In general the Ayyubids should have a focus on cavalry, Turkic horse archers and maybe some unique upgrades for horseman would be good, but miss alot of the infantry and archer upgrades the Abbasids have. The play on siege craft is okay, but the sultans tower is just weird and i'm not sure what its based on.
1000% agree
You shut do it like the best teir is chilly and the worse is warm
Lmao
Zhu xi legacy is such a dumb name that I actually thought that it should just call Chinese and have the og Chinese rename into sth.
The OG Chinese civ design have many defensive concept / slightly stronger army composition, which can safely represent the capital/centralisation part of China. The civ can be called forbidden army for a more authentic name for their advance usage of gunpowder units, rather than some kind of mix between confucianism naming, taoism (the mediation garden) and Buddhist monk
I think the idea behind olive oil is that is's a kind of engine of economy, that allows Byz to buy mercenaries.
I feel weird that Abbasid's wonder is The Prayer Hall of Uqba (Great Mosque of Kairouan). The mosque itself was founded long before the Abbasid time. It got the present view under Agglabids. Yes, technically Agglabids were the vassals of Abbasids, but imagine if devs would choose not the Azure mosque for the Ottomans but let's say Khan palace in Crimea. Yes, Crimean khanate was a vassal of the Ottoman, technically it was part of the Ottoman empire, but...
Agreed! What would be a better Abbasid wonder?
@@ChillyEmpire the Great mosque of Samarra is the first that came to my mind.
@@alkrimiy Great choice! It was the wonder for the Saracens in AOE2 as well...seems like an no brainer.
Couldn't disagree more with Order of the Dragon. I think it's worst designed Civ in aoe history. Unit models look like giants roaming the world and don't fit at all. Gameplay is completely blant, mechanics are too close to HRE, historical background doesn't make sense at all as a civ.
Mechanics aren’t close at all. It plays completely differently.
I agree that the historical themeing is off though.
@@ChillyEmpire It does play differently, but that does not mean that the mechanics are not similar. Aachen is completely the same just tuned down, Meinwerk is the same with 2 different techs, Regnitz is 100% the same, Burger is 80% the same, imp is the same as well in terms of landmarks. Villagers do basically receive a constant inspiration bonus ... dont tell me that these civs are not very similar.
one of the issues i have with China is Ming dynasty, hp bonus is good, but it has no unique building(ever since dynasty buildings moved down) and grenadiers feel underwhelming for 2400f 1200g
Zhu Xi is just better China
Byzantines without their definitive unique and influential monastery is a big hole that it cant reach pass mid tier due to this. The mercenery theme is very good but the rest is also filled with multiple toggled abilities, all are a bit much. Byzantines also should have a gold trading bonus. Byzantines, ottomans, mongols, abbasids were the guys who made money from trade routes by far the most. Give trade bonuses uniquely to these civilizations. Byzantines music is also a bummer like ottoman. Video games mostly ignored the areas tones shared with persia. They make byzantines leave their happy or slight melancholic oriental sounding which comprises most of their secular music and make ottoman tavern music which is their continuation also dissappear, stretch byzantines to west and ottomans to south. You hear definitive kemenche in only the first age, then slavic albanian hymn sound appear or later you hear a byzantine chant with european tonality which otherwise should have sounded very different. In feudal they used a music which sounding like byzantine or ottoman, but it uses one of the tones like nihavend containing no different notes than western music.
I think rus is fantastic. The polish and baltic influence of knights are there, the traces of holden horde and heavy kıpchak tatar heritage of rus wafare is there with horse archer and wooden siege buff(no bombard and a buff to other siege should be better). Eastern slavs controlling and retreating to forests is there during tough times against nomads, who only rule steppes once rivers freeze. Slavs are forest people in early history as well. The viking ruriks changings ships but falling behind later times as slavs forget water is also implemented there, they even put constantinople in siege in past. The wooden fort is really nice when you look at early times but also to the rapid cossack expansions towards east by literally only using wooden fortress. Passive gold from forests nicely nods the increasing fur trade income during ivan. The warrior monks and altered monastery is a nice nod to the heir of orthodox church.
I would love to see a civ that has in-game mission mechanics or contracts.
The player gets one mission each period and after completing it, receives a reward or has a bunch of missions and chooses the most interesting. It would work something similar to the daily achievements but in the game.
If anyone played League of Legends, Kindred had something like this.
I agree completely! Check out my concept for the Danes if you haven’t yet. I gave them a mechanic for “feats” you can accomplish that function basically like quests.
@@ChillyEmpire Didnt see it yet but sounds great! I ll check it for sure.
You know what would be great for the byzantines? Instead of the mercs costing olive oil, have olive oil never go under 50 gold on the market and demand grows back faster so you can build your eco around selling olive oil for gold, and then choosing to recruit mercs with gold or do anything else
It would really go with the whole trade economy focus on byzantines. They should be a defensive faction with a variety of units.
Greek Fire should not feel like an afterthought with they Byzantines. I wish their mercs made a but more sense to but other wise they are fine. Also they have their own Grenadiers BEFORE the chinese so they should really not have to hire them. Horse Archer, Arbelesters (since they are a stand for for Genoese) Are the only two i can think of that they actually used.
With Japan they once again did give samurai their bows, the Shinobi are so bad and then the mounted crossbows really ruins it for other cultures. Then of corse there eco is amazing having every thing simplified for them. I do love their upgrading TC a lot.
Oh shoot yeah I forgot to mention that I'm disappointed the Cheirosiphons are so underwhelming.
@@ChillyEmpire underwhelming is an understatement
Apparently Greek fire does not have any applications on land other that destroying building. Which mind you is not what it was used for
"Ghulam" would colloquially be used to refer to a male servant/slave, so at least in the bare meaning of the word "mamluk" ghulams are mamluks, maybe
Another interesting thing, even though I liked their old shield more, the camel rider shield that was given to the newly branded Ghulam is apparently derived from the north african "Adarga". So perhaps the shield change was to emphasise the "slave soldier" over the "arabian swordsman"? maybe
Agree with you! Most Chinese couldnt relate to Zhu Xi, there are more prominent legends in Medieval China, but i thought the perfect variant would be Manchuria! But i know, its complicated, they arent considered "Chinese" ethicitly speaking, so may not be a legit variant haha
Totally unrelated to Age of Empires 4 itself, I'm curious how you know so much about history? As someone who is interested in world history but had a very America-centric history education growing up, I would love to see a video with some history book recommendations for each civ
My dad bought me some bargin bin World History Atlas when I was a kid. I ended up reading it every night and that gave me a really good foundation for absorbing history. I got a degree in history for my undergrad. I'll have to find you the title of the atlas...not sure where I placed it but I highly recommend it.
Your knowledge of west African civs was like "oh wow". I thought I knew my history, but I genuinely learned something from that.
I fail to understand why cavalry archers has to be this controversial in our community. The main reason made me buy the game was, mangudai in the first place. Yes, I love entire Age of series but the fact that horse archers were firing while riding is something I always fantasied for all those years I played AoE II. And today look at it, Mangudai are weak and slow, Rus' horse archers are incompetent enough to not being able to shoot on gallop and Ottoman horse archers are absent (Onna-musha are great, all of these hard-boiled steppe men are being beaten by Japanese ladies :). I mean it's even logical for other civs to have them too. Byzantines enlisted or hired Turkic warriors from the steppes. They had a unit called Turcopoles which most were Turks but also Greeks. Emperor Doukas Vatatzes even settled Kipchaks to western Anatolia. Chinese Yuan Dynasty were of Genghis Khan's lineage. I'm sure they had a massive horse archer capability. Delhi Sultanate was founded by Turco-Mongol ex-slaves, they sure did know how to shoot a bow from horseback. Mamelukes were slaves from the steppes, sold to the Arabian realm to be raised as soldiers and commanders. Many were Turkic, Mongol, Circassian, Slav or Alan; surely they brought their expertise with them. Only our three Western European and one African civ didn't used them. They should be one of the mainstay unit types, not something exotic. When (if) we get Persians, Magyars, Poles, Bulgars, Khazars, Tibet or any other civilization that bordered a steppe polity ought to have horse archers because fire is how you fight with fire.
I see the folk here value historical accuracy. I want to add a couple of notes about archery in general in this game. If it is accuracy we are after; there is a reversely working archery mechanic here at play. English archery was not about shooting at enemies from an extreme distance. It was about delivering a heavy arrow with much momentum as possible. It meant that arrows used were heavy and didn't fly far but packed a big punch. 15 to 50 meters were their effective range. Mind you, arrows can fly much farther but to be effective against armoured opponents, archers needed to be relatively close to their target. Later Qing dynasty of China had the same approach and they crafted the most efficient and elegant bows for shooting heavy arrows. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are Ottomans and Koreans. They engineered the shortest composite bows with a different goal, shooting as far as possible. Short limbs meant that when the bow is fully drawn, string angle is narrower so the arrow gets much more velocity thus flies more (I'm sure someone more versed in archery and English can explain better but it is basically this). Ottoman flight records couldn't be surpassed until this age of modern synthetic materials. There are many small monumental stones erected all over Konstantiniyye to remember these deeds. Ottomans may have took this route because they fielded some of the first large scale hand-held gunpowder weapons and this early guns weren't much effective at great distances. I'm not sure about the Korean reasoning though. Just some things I've thought about, I hope people find useful.
If we dive into the specifics of regional bow designs and horse breeds of cultures, I'm sure we or the devs can settle the balance of horse archers. For example; Mongol bows were not specialized in either momentum or velocity and their horses weren't the fastest but they possessed unbeatable endurance and constitution. An average range, average damage, on the slow side, cheap and high HP horse archer. Byzantine bows were not specced either but their horses were faster; average range, average damage, average speed, expensive and high armor horse archer. Turks had the highest range, some of the best horses (see Akhal-Teke, a descendant of Turkoman horses which were descendants of Heavenly Ferghana Horses which the Chinese Emperors waged war half world away to get some); high range, low damage, high speed and average armor and so on. But most importantly, all should be able to fire on the move after an upgrade.
And as someone whose ancestors both raided from horseback, and defended against it I greet you, I hope the devs are willing to experiment some more.
Really well written
the only problem i also want to mention towards the hre is that their landmarks and especially their wonder dont make any sense at all from a historical point of view. The Aachen chapel should be the wonder, the meinwerk thing is a church not a forge, the current wonder is kinda made up the list goes on. I really like the design of the hre i just wish it had a better answer to archers and a bit more variety like you said.
Oh good point. Totally forgot to mention that. The wonder is Danish - really weird choice.
To be fair, not many landmarks fit into their actual use. HRE has like 5 landmarks called "palace" and the English have 3, and each one of them is a different type of building. It seems like neither clarity nor consistency were the focus on the landmark design.
But they have a really good answere for archers with the meinwerk palast you can Upgrade your knights your horseman and your spearman
@@ignaciovega8667 TRUE! Why so many palaces
I noticed all the variants are "Good enough" or worse. What would your ideal variant look like? What would you like to see from the ayyubids instead, for example.
Oh this is a great question hrm...
Here's my thoughts on variants - I don't think the devs behind AOE4 are too focused on "business" considerations. Sultans Ascend was released at 15 dollars and included 2 full civs and 4 variants. They did not need to do all of that. I think the variants were made by developers who personally were fans of the game and wanted to spice up the gameplay a bit.
With that in mind, the way I'd imagine the variants would be - what's the most cost-effective way (knowing that there won't be too much financial backing to add new assets, etc) to create new, compelling gameplay scenarios easily?
That'd be question number 1. All 4 variant civs do a great job at answering this question. Question number 2 gets trickier:
What's the best way to introduce a variant civ while also avoiding diluting the thematics of the base civ?
I think Jeanne D'Arc and Order of the Dragon both answered this acceptably - add a core "gimmick" that makes them play completely differently. "French but with a Hero" in Jeanne's case, and "HRE with big, expensive gigachads" in the Order's case.
Zhu Xi and Ayyubids however, did not attempt a core gimmick. And as a result, they thematically overlap with the base civ.
The last question I'd ask is can the civ design go even further, and create a strong, identity that allows players to fulfil some kind of historical fantasy. Ie. English being a well-defended island, Byzantines being able to recruit mercenaries to make them the jack of all trades, Mongols being mobile and trade focused, etc.
I think all 4 variants "sort of" attempt that...but ultimately fail hard. I mean Jeanne wields a cannon, Gigachads...are completely made up, and what the heck even is the Zhu Xi fantasy?
My thoughts on some potentially cool Abbasid variants:
1. A Bedouin-style variant with a more nomadic rather than city-building playstyle. Maybe emphasize camels.
2. An Assassin variant that puts more emphasis on individual unit micro and high-priority targets.
3. Umayyad/Almohad variant with a hit-and-run platsytle centered around Zenata javelin cavalry.
What kind of variant would you design for rus? Im no huge history guy and design wise i also got nothin so i would be curious if you as a rus main got any interesting ideas
Ooo that's a great question. Hard for me to answer though. Variants don't have a straightforward design boundary right now so kind of anything goes. I personally like the variants that center around the addition of a simple, core idea, that fundamentally changes how you play the civ. Ie. Order with elite but expensive units, or Jeanne with the Hero. The weakest civs design-wise are Zhu Xi and Ayyubids, which are thematically the same as their base design but with new units and techs. It basically means they're either going to be "the better version" of the base civ, or "the worser version" depending on the balancing.
Rus right now is a very expansive civ that likes to get out onto the map with scouts, hunts, and knights. It might be interesting to see a variation that's more in-ward focused. Maybe like a "Moscow" or "Novgorod" variant. More about city-building and defending a centralized economy, with a more static, infantry-based army.
@@ChillyEmpire yeah i was also thinking like maybe the novgorod republic and then that civ be more trade focused with the hanse-system maybe?? Would that feel like playing the rus at all though or would it just feel like playing hre 2, idk im not a game designer. I was also thinking maybe something like hero-focused again but idk if they want to re-visit the idea considering how "popular" jeanne is.
@@Ω3103ζ Ooo a Novogrod civ focused around Alexander Nevsky would be sickkkkk
8:40 samurai *were* cavalry archers that fought with mongol style tactics. So no, you're not right. They head armored horse archers sp yeah making them lancers is wrong but the foot samurai idea is also not correct
Yeah in my design for the Japanese I gave them armored horse archers. I don't think they should have armored lancers.
@@ChillyEmpireI just checked it! We seem to think very similar about the Japanese! :)
the problem with the ayyubids, at least to me, is its just feels like abassid 2.0. they took ideas they started with abassid, and just ran with them. way more unique units, way more camels, all the wing options, and the tower. It makes playing abassid feel... vanilla, for lack of a better word. Those ideas should have been somewhat split between the two, and any villagers coming out from the wings has to go. French and JD should have way more differences. The only one that is really noticeable is the villager production speed. Even if JD is beatable, its incredibly unfun to play against as well. ZXL just feels like overall better china.
Agreed! They're abbasid 2.0
Zhu Xi's Legacy - The only civ design I totally dont get is Zhu Xi's Legacy. I feel that there are some mechanics with a Yolo name that totally don't fit. Legacy, philosophy but where? If we just reskin this civ into any other it would be the same empty feeling, dissonance.
OOTD - the civ where I really like its mechanic, my favorite civ currently but I dont feel this Order theme. To be honest I would prefer to see just Tutons or Jerusalem Kingdom which, IMO would fit way better.
Joan Darc - I really, really like this hero theme. Hero theme is awesome to me but I would give her more levels to make this power spike less drastic. The only thing I would totally change is her model on the max level in the melee version. I totally don't feel this bazooka in the melee. I would change Bazooka into a long baner which would keep the same attack distance and would fit this hero way better as a buffing, commanding character.
I still have a feeling that those variant civs are what devs were going to do at the start with the basic civs but lack of time forced them to make more generic civs and later finish them giving us their variants.
To me, Rus has the best design. Wooden buildings, animal hunting, hunting cabins, and so on. Just love this. The only thing I dont get is that their scouts are so useless later.
In the initial phase of the game, we are encouraged to use more scouts for hunting, but later they lose their importance. What I would maybe change is to upgrade the castle-age scouts to horse archers. Thanks to this solution, it would be a good idea to keep scouts in the initial phase of the game, use them to collect the game, and later in the game upgrade them to horse archers and extend their usefulness.
Agreed with a lot of this...except scouts losing their importance. They never lose their importance in a real game.
@@ChillyEmpire I didn't mean that you dont need any scout at all. I totally agree that vision and information are very important. I mean that after you produce several scouts early game to hunt, you don't need them as many later.
Malians are a really good example where you can focus on scouts early and use them late game not only for scouting but also as a unit.
If only we could do something similar with the Rus e.g. upgrade them to horse archer and keep scout vision, it would be more fluent and connected with the design, theme IMO.
Currently, Malians have with scouts something that Rus is missing.
ottomans is my favorite
btw how do u make custom tierlist
acaba neden ottomans is your favorite kanka
Mongol and Malian have only 1 way to play with difference composition of units its kind of boring and predictable
Really enjoyed this video, thank you!
I do disagree on several bits. You seem to place a much heavier emphasis on historical accuracy than I do. I personally think it makes the game more exciting and imaginative to create your own version of how things were based on some elements of truth. Making the game more historically accurate would also mean making it more limited and boring, in my opinion.
It’s a spectrum. I’m not the biggest stickler on historical accuracy. But I have more respect for design decisions that can work well within its bounds.
Agreed!
31:53 Whats a Barracks?
china is different than zhu xi. it is better but more early game focused.
Except it's easily one of the best late game civs too.....
lol.... sorry, I thought u are Serious Trivia for a second.
What's serious trivia?
@@ChillyEmpire Total War 3 Kingdoms TH-camr I think
Dehli? wtf.
Byzantines:
Design: S Tier: Visuals and soundtrack frikin amazing.
Balance: A Tier: The ideas need some fine tunning. Maybe the Varangian Guard one or two buffs.
I think they are doing somewhat fine despite having so many hyper aggressive civs in the dlc.
Japanese:
Design: S Tier: Visuals look great
Balanace: F Tier: Best infantry in the game, best ranged (with the Osutzu), best cavalry, free relics, you gain both gold and stone, undestroyable town center - it´s ... just too much.
You can beat them but sometimes i´m just spawning next to them and wonder how i shall deal with them.
Maybe it´s also a HRE counter which as a HRE player scares me.
Order of the Dragon:
Design: C Tier: Well it´s just HRE in black. That said: their knights still look frikin amazing. Rest is a bit meh.
Balance: B Tier: Very odd but still kinda good. They are hard to estimate. The only major problems i have with them:
- Sushi kinda a hardcounter with their crossbows
- You have never enough forces to split them up and help somewhere else on the map
- Fitting in some siege weapons is problematic
- You lose against hyperlategame civs because you don´t have the efffictive amount on the battlefield like they do.
Ayyubids:
Design: D Tier: Camels lancers look cool, desert raiders are a mixed bag, i hate the flamming catapult, the tower is weird.
Balance: E Tier: They are just Abbasids but aggressive. And they can do early Gulam strat with the fast age up. Which scares me a lot if there is minute 7-8 a Ghulam on the field.
John Dark:
Design: F Tier: Just re-used assets.
Balance: E Tier: I guess if she wouldn´t pull out a (french) canon from her ass she would be more bearable.
Sushi:
Design: E Tier: I guess there is the new knight and the yuan rider, rest same, cannot tell Chus and Crossbows apart.
Balance: F Tier: faster age up than anyone else, Shaolin monks are freakin scary, can pick all the relics quickly, their second dynasty bonus is also insane, they can field dozens of units,
they can have constant chu-ko-nu production with their landmark, their cavalry is insane, their crossbows hard-coutner some civs, their bombards are insane,
I hate nest of bees, It´s just too much.
You can win against them yes but sometimes it feels like how and why.
Chinese:
Design: S Tier: It looks and kinda feels like how "China" would play out i guess.
Balance: C Tier: It needs ages to go online, their units lack punch (except the nest of bees and grenadiers), you need a lot of ressources,
game is in a hyper aggressive meta right now so that doesn´t help either
Abbasid:
Design: S Tier: Basically the middle eastern civ as anybody would see it
Balance: A Tier: Honestly on paper i don´t mind playing against them. The TC boom got nerfed so it feels more fair to play against them. I hate the gulams.
The camels are great against cav civs.
Zey British:
Design: S Tier: Pesky island people
Balance S Tier: Versatile, i hate the longbows (and like to use them), backingham palace minigun. great on offense and defense, solid eco. Well designed.
The French:
Design: S Tier: Basically how you would picture the franks
Balance: F Tier: I have soo many games where the french player don´t need to make another unit than french knights. Sometimes you encounter someone that adds a few archers
to their comb, Backingham palace being bullshit but Red Palace is even worse (if you come into range).
Honestly nerf their late game castle discount by 5% or something. Maybe something with their knights. It´s just nnwewnweuuweiwoe.
HRE:
Design: S Tier: Very german
Balance: D Tier: i´m actually one of the minority players that goes Meinwerk over Aachen. I like the early utility you gain from it.
Also Aachen is basically for french / english player: "Pls attack here" of the time.
And the map generation can fk me over quite often. I like the HRE landmarks but they feel a bit very restrictive at times. Also you miss out on the special techs
for the knights / horseman, they rely too much on getting relics sometimes (but once they get them uff), Landsknechts are great on paper
and can dish out damage but sometimes never reach combat and feel like a waste of gold and quite frustrating to play.
They are kinda THE infantry civ in the game being outshined by the Abbasids and their
Gulams and the Japanese infantry.
(also it´s a pain in the ass to see people only play them as MAA-printer)
Yeah they need some love in a few ways. I like to play them more aggressivly in feudal but even than it often doesn´t feel good in comparison to what other civs can do.
Mongols:
Design: S Tier: Very mogolian
Balance: B Tier: Aside some game mechanics that could be less cluncky, i think it works great as a raiding civ and it´s acutally great there.
That said: i see a french knight: PANIC - i see a Keshik: Ah what ever.
I have the feeling Mongols quite often are running out of steam. And than you only see them again with their wonder and 80 towers.
They are in an odd spot but i do think they are somewhat fine and not cancerous (aside the mangudai of course)
Rus:
Design: A Tier: LEGOLAS! Shoot the deers!
Balance: E Tier: I hate Streliz. 60 damage on a melee attack (the Order of the Dragon knights have that on the charge attack >:(
Their lategame scares me. Their siege is great, the knights are strong, the Streliz are cancer.
Delhi:
Design: S Tier: Very elephant
Balance: D Ter: It looks and plays very weird. You basically never see Elphants and if you do, you let the delhi guy get to lategame.
To be fair the elphant units always had a weird and hard time in the series.
AoE1 was slow but bulky but alwys converted.
AoE2 had the same problem
AoE3 damn .. those elefants are actually pretty scary there o.o
They have a lot of great ideas that don´t work out (for me at least)
Mali:
Design: A Tier: Much AoE3, Such free boom, so cattle
Balance C Tier: You can defeat them but hell i hate to play against them. Eco that cannot be harassed properly, good counter units, invisble shits, cheap knights and a lot of ILALU.
I have to admit they are a bit harder play but damn if i saw anybody with a conquerer emblem they would usually pick Mali.
Ottoman:
Design: S Tier: Very recruitment
Balance : B Tier: Great bombards are the pain of the ass. If you let them get to this point nah it´s just uuugh. The rest seems actually fine and fun to play against
(except that you shouldn´t do much cav) but those bombards pls not.