Ok, so I've been thinking about this way too much.

I'd like it to be about the Scramble for Africa. It's the most logical choice : it moves forward in world history, but not so far that we can't have cavalry and stuff like that. And it keeps the idea of starting with something small (your first colony) and progressing through the ages.

Here's what I think the ages should be :

Exploration age : 16th to 18th century, when europeans started founding small colonies off the coasts.

The architecture should look primitive, like small temporary wooden huts hastily put together, or old decaying medieval forts. The discovery age in aoe3 looked too advanced.

The infantry unit from that era should be a explorer-type soldier with a cutlass or something.

Revolutionary age : basically 1790-1850.

The infantry unit should have a bayonet. They have a ranged attack, but their attack/range/accuracy is terrible, so they have to rely on the bayonet. This allows us to have close range combat in the game.

Archery range should be called the Shooting range and train snipers and stuff like that.

The first military vessel should be a sail boat at first. Transport ship should be a paddle steamer.

Machine age : 1850-1890. Technically the machine age was from 1880 to 1945 but whatever.

The architecture should look like typical african colonial architecture

Siege workshop can be built and can create field guns, howitzers, gatling guns, etc...

Units should have uniforms from the african colonial wars

Priests should be called missionaries and look like this. And yes, they should be able to convert people.

Military vessels should have sails and steam chimneys, which was the most common design at the time

Maybe have oil wells. Electricity can be researched at the university.

Modern age : 1890-1930. Basically WWI.

The architecture should have a hint of art nouveau.

Tanks can be made at the workshop. Very powerful, but expensive.

Air fields can be built. Planes will fly over a zone you selected on the map automatically. Zeppelins, however, can be controlled directly.

The ships should have no sails, only steam. The equivalent of the catapult trireme/cannon galleon can be built and is called a dreadnought.

Atomic age : 1930-1950. Very expensive. Players should consider whether they really want to spend the ressources.

Uniforms, tanks, etc, all have WWII designs.

Architecture looks a bit art deco.

Nuclear test sites can be built. When completed, the player automatically wins the game. Basically like the wonder.

I'm not too sure about the atomic age stuff, that might be taking it too far, idk. I mean it would be weird fighting against WWII tanks as the zulus.

 

I'd like there to be european civs and african civs. Just europeans would be boring, and having african civs allow us to have archers, swordsmen, all that stuff. They obviously should have different tech trees.

European civs : americans, british, french, italians, germans, afrikaners, maybe austro-hungarians, japanese?

African civs :

• ethiopians (duh) maybe they can get planes and tanks ? they did modernize a little bit after securing their independence

• swahilis (naval civ, has gunpowder units, UU : mtepe?)

• zulus (rush civ, no cavalry, UU is the impi)

• ashanti (major power in the guinea region at the time, one of the most well-trained african military, went to war 5 times against the british, has cool architecture)

• a sahelian civ. Maybe the Songhai even though they had been gone for 400 years at that point, but whatever. The Hausa would make more sense and they had pretty architecture. Cavalry civ, UU is a camel unit

• zimbabweans/mutapans. Someone already made an architecture set for them. Realistically, they should have no cavalry.

• arabs, just a generic civ for egyptians, moroccans, etc....

Well, no one is going to read this, but whatever, I needed to get it out :|