PCGamesN wrote a very clear article about the new Expansion and they also interviewed Cysion confronted with their opinions of "stupendous civs" which is rather revealing. The article claims that devs are just interested in new wacky ideas rather than doing actually what the game needs, and Cysion basically confirms it. They think it is what needs to be done to sell the new civs, but they are not even sure if the civs will ever be important for the game. And this is probably just the start of their dlc campaigning.
[...] (Description of the new civs we all know)
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Edit: Addition of the other PCGamesN article with material of the cysion interview, now with more regard how they changed their mind towards adding more civs and how they approached the selection of civs. Imo there is very little resistance to be felt towards adding more civs, but devs see it as welcoming chance that forums (ofc) dont stop want to add more civs and if you look at one of those ideas its even more broken than devs could come up with. It shows maybe that devs are super selective in their listening towards the community and have the feeling that players would enjoy venetians with a longboat that has more hp, faster archers with free ballistics and cheaper chemistry, 50% faster working and built dock. And devs were eager to just copy paste balance ideas from the forums before...
I also had always the feeling, sicilians were intended to be originally Normans since The expansion name lords of the west seems not very fitting for South Italy, and the whole civ design has very little sicilian but purely Norman features even though Sicily was never really an empire, after 60 years of Norman reign it was ruled by Aragonese, HRE or alike but not really independent. Meanwhile Normans were a true empire of which the sicilian was just a part of it. And cysion just explains here that they started with Britons to give them a campaign and then looked for regionally related civs to be included on top. Normans here is ofc because of the Norman conquest of GB a really close choice. And its a western euro civ not a mediterrean civ. However somewhen they seemed to just have changed the architecture set and renamed them Sicilians for whatever reason.
[...] (Description of the new civs we all know)
Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition’s new civs are “disruptive”, but fans love it
The AoE2 developers have noticed their fans enjoy new civs with crazy abilities
www.pcgamesn.com
Edit: Addition of the other PCGamesN article with material of the cysion interview, now with more regard how they changed their mind towards adding more civs and how they approached the selection of civs. Imo there is very little resistance to be felt towards adding more civs, but devs see it as welcoming chance that forums (ofc) dont stop want to add more civs and if you look at one of those ideas its even more broken than devs could come up with. It shows maybe that devs are super selective in their listening towards the community and have the feeling that players would enjoy venetians with a longboat that has more hp, faster archers with free ballistics and cheaper chemistry, 50% faster working and built dock. And devs were eager to just copy paste balance ideas from the forums before...
I also had always the feeling, sicilians were intended to be originally Normans since The expansion name lords of the west seems not very fitting for South Italy, and the whole civ design has very little sicilian but purely Norman features even though Sicily was never really an empire, after 60 years of Norman reign it was ruled by Aragonese, HRE or alike but not really independent. Meanwhile Normans were a true empire of which the sicilian was just a part of it. And cysion just explains here that they started with Britons to give them a campaign and then looked for regionally related civs to be included on top. Normans here is ofc because of the Norman conquest of GB a really close choice. And its a western euro civ not a mediterrean civ. However somewhen they seemed to just have changed the architecture set and renamed them Sicilians for whatever reason.
Age of Empires 2 DE: “If there’s appetite for more civs, why not?”
"The Age of Empires II community has been as alive as it has ever been"
www.pcgamesn.com
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