We’ve got another expansion to make, so where to start! We’re all joyously filled with crazy, weird ideas, bouncing them off the wall and eachother. But we’ll have to squeeze those ideas into a proper game. So where to start? Just like last time, it starts with the core of the new content, the new civilizations.
A Theme
In Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, we were presented with a rather obvious civ choice. Ensemble Studios had left hints behind on which civs they would’ve loved to add to the game. Some were nations that appeared in campaigns but were never turned into a proper, playable civ. Those were the easy choices, but now that we’ve used the most obvious ones, where do we go next? Over the last year(s), we’ve received a lot of feedback from players on possible new civilizations. Ranging from Medieval powerhouses like the Normans and the Khmers to less obvious or specific suggestions such as the Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Principality of Pannonia. But unlike our broader approach to AoF, we’ve decided to build out more of a thematic flair and pay a visit to a continent south of Europe with a rich history: Africa. We’ll be covering civilizations both born within the content, as well empires that held great power in the region – including one that has been requested many, many, many times by the fans.
But to keep things a bit exciting, they will all be revealed over the coming weeks, so feel free to speculate 😉
Oh except for the first one!
The Berbers
The Berbers (~700 AD) are the first African civilization to be seen in the new expansion pack. We caught a glimpse of them in the original El Cid campaigns in “The Conquerors”, where they are portrayed in a more generic term as Saracens. Berbers, however, are more than worthy of becoming an Age of Empires civilization. With dynasties across Northern Africa, the ancient Berbers will primarily be a Cavalry & Naval civilization. They’ll have 2 unique units and will also feature a unique technology that affects the entire team.
Since we’re early in development, we don’t have a lot of screenshots yet, but the Camel Archer is already properly functional in the game and looking good. As if it has always been hopping around in the Age of Empires II universe. It was of course teased with the overall expansion announcement.
And last but not least, the Berbers will have their own campaign, but we’ll share more on that later as well.
So this will be it for the first dev blog, it’s more of a tease than a proper “dev” blog, but we’ll certainly dig a bit deeper in the next episodes. We’re hoping to do these monthly, make sure you don’t miss out 😉
I’m not against Africa, but I’d prefer Armenians/Georgians or Finns rather tan Africa. However, Berbers was the civilization that I expected more.
yo, when’s the next dev blog gonna be released?
Do you think the team will develop one civilization at a time? or like before provide a list of related civilizations for people to vote? in my opinion, one at a time will be better, because like some people said the game still imbalance.
Ryz0n did say on steam that the next announcement probly wont make mention of upcoming civs, but there’s so many ideas in the works that there’ll still be plenty to talk about.
Working on it, this month for sure.
thanks for the update! we can be patient – “heavens are not falling” as my grandfather would say.
pLz I can’t wait!
The month is almost over! Any updates you can give us hungry fans?
Yeah, we’re wrapping everything up, just gotta confirm with Microsoft on what information we exactly want to “leak” 😉
So might take a wee bit longer than expected.
Awesome, thanks for the reply!
How about Vietnamese Civilization…they also have unique class also.
Vietnamese, Khmer, and other asian civilizations would make excellent additions to the game, but the theme for this expansion is going to be based in African History.
i found a Royal Janissary in the map editor and so will there be adding some more royal unique units for other civis?
Is there an ETA for when this new expansion will be released? Just need a ballpark figure.
This very interesting video shows the progression of European and some Asian civilizations from 1140 to present day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhNdEhRFOLA I did not know that Portugal had come before the Spain.
And Italy was established as a nation only in 1860, according to this video.
The italians represents all the kingdoms and city states in italy, like Sicilia, Napoles, Milan, Genova, Venecia, Roma, Florencia.
The kingdom of Naples were before the kingdom of Sicilia in the middle ages which was founded by the normans
again, this video illustrates the different nations and political entities that rise and fall throughout history. That isn’t accurate in describing the civs in aoe2, because they’re all meant to be broad in their scope and not restricted to specific countries that existed. ie, the civs are based more on language and ethnicity (“teutons” instead of “holy roman empire” – “indians” instead of “mughal dynasty” – “saracens” instead of “umayyad caliphate” or “ayyubid sultanate”)
I would say who want Romans in AOE2 was right, because the empire existed until 1300 and was distinct from the Byzantines (I thought the Romans were the same as Byzantines until yesterday). But if Teutons are representing them, there’s no need for them. But I’m still not convinced that Portugal is historically inacurate for AOE2, sorry Leovigildo.
Western Roman empire collapsed in the 400s AD, while Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantines) endured much longer – the approximate timeframe for aoe2 is between 500 and 1500. Aside from that, the entire catalyst for the “middle ages” (the time period of aoe2) was the fall of the Western Roman Empire. the original packaging for AoE2 even said “Rome has fallen and the world is up for grabs.” the 1300 number youre probably getting from the Holy Roman Empire, which was distinctly medieval in it’s origin. It isn’t a continuation of the old Roman empire as much as a new empire… Read more »
I’d say the timeframe is more from Vth or late IVth century (barbarian invasions) to late XVIth century (Spanish colonization of America and Japanese Sengoku Jidai).
makes sense.
the timeframe has been blurred a whole bunch more because of the Conquerers, since it added the Huns (imo the most out-of-place civ in the game), and also colonial Spain. so that expanded the timeframe from both sides.
in any case, we can agree that it’d be absurd to see ancient Rome existing alongside factions that came into existence during the middle ages (particularly the italians, since they existed in the same region at different times).
Well, I think the Huns are an interesting faction, and they would be even more out of place in AoE1 since they encoutered and fought more factions from the second opus. So… Romans would probably make no sense, unless somebody release a dlc about either the barbarian invasions, or uchronic factions (not in a “What if Romans, Carthaginians or Egyptians from the Ancient history fought against factions from the Middle Age?” perspective, more in the “What if those nations never fell down or came back to power a few centuries/millenia later and adapted their culture and military traditions to the… Read more »
I didn’t say it was inaccurate, it certainly isn’t. But it’s one of those that could easily be represented by other (Spanish) in campaigns and so on.
The timeline on Iberia isn’t totally accurate, but it’s “good enough”. For instance, Portugal did not finish it’s reconquista in 1232, but in 1249. However, from 1189 until 1191 it held control of most (if not all) of it’s current southern territories. Spain, as a political entity, only arised after the personal union of Queen Isabel of Castile and King Fernando of Aragon – eventhough during their lifetimes both Castile and Aragon were “de facto” independent from each other. During the Middle Ages, however, anyone born in Iberia was a “Spaniard”, regardless of being a Galician, Castilian or anything else,… Read more »
When come more Information about this new Expansion?
Well, actually i would love to see Portuguese with the same style of English architecture, and Dutch with English architecture, and call it a expansion! booya!
hopefully algeria will be added too or maybe maroc
The Berbers (and the Saracens secondarily) cover both of those areas well.
Berbers is a great idea! I have learnt a lot on medieval history of the Islamic world, including Middle-East, Central Asia, Africa and India. I think its a great idea to include new civs from Africa and another good idea would be to modify some current civs to be more historically accurate and specific, and to accommodate the new civs which may overlap a bit. Such as: – Mali/Niger: They had a thriving empire in the 1200 – 1500 CE, (check out Emperor Mansa Musa for more info) – Andalusia: Islamic Spain that existed from 800 – 1500 CE. Combination… Read more »
interesting ideas, but keep in mind that this is a game, so having a puritanical approach to historical accuracy isnt the best way to go. the approach to civilizations in age of empires has always been to use broad terms and descriptions so that a wider time period and landmass can be covered by the civs in the game. that’s why they use terms like franks and saracens: if you were to have a faction that represented the Umayyads or the Ayyubids or Al-Andalus, that would limit it’s scope, but with the blanket description of ‘Saracen,’ all those different countries… Read more »
Hmm, thats very true!
With the Forgotten Empires though, civs were created that were very limited in scope like Magyars, Slavs (which could easily fall under Teutons). So there is some hope 🙂
Anyways, I guess at least developers can get these ideas for future expansions/games.