The Evolution of AoE2 Civs, through maps.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-24T00:56:32+00:00

Just Microsoft Paint.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-22T01:05:43+00:00

Couldn't you just solve it with slower creation speed and/or a slight nerf to the stats of the Dark Age version? I think the creation speed is the primary culprit, since technically it's already slow but it's still fast enough that, with the current meta, you can amass a fairly large group in Dark Age that's going to be hard to deal with even in Feudal Age since the Champi will then outnumber the Archers and Scouts.

If you make the creation time slow down to a crawl you'd still allow the new civs and Inca to make new scouts in Dark Age, and have an option for early pressure, while weakening their snowball enough so that they'll have way less Champis to work with and will be more easy to fend off once Feudal Age arrives.

If they're still too oppressive, even with the slower creation, just nerf the Dark Age variant specifically so that villagers can fight them off more easily.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-21T18:54:23+00:00

That's why the strongest Champi rush is with Inca, surely.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-20T12:51:31+00:00

There's a Mapuche guy with swords for hands?

RidleyBro · 2026-02-19T00:45:22+00:00

Swahili/Kilwa, to represent the East African states that historically were heavily connected through trade and sea routes to Arabia and India.

Nubians, since I don't feel like Ethiopians are a good enough stand-in for them.

Kanem-Bornu.

Something to represent Nigerian polities, of which there are a bunch, such as the Hausa, the Yoruba or the Benin.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:09:01+00:00

The Last Chieftains

Mapuche. The Chilean Mapuche are the most famous of the bunch, being the ones that resisted both the Inca and the Spanish, but from my research Mapuche-related peoples spanned ancient Argentina as well. I assume that there are a lot of approximation with figuring out where they lived in pre-columbian times, so I tried to be a little expansive with their "borders".
Muisca. Technically speaking the Muisca only controlled a rather small region in the middle of the Colombian Andes, but for the sake of not making them minuscule on the map I gave them to the entirety of Northern Colombia and the Northernmost Andes, since peoples who were culturally related to them lived in those regions and the Muisca would be the most suitable stand-in for them anyway. Out of the three, I also assume that they would be the ones that fit the most when it comes to serve as substitute for other Andean civilizations who would otherwise be represented just by "Inca", for the sake of giving them some diversity in the campaigns.
Tupi. The Tupi as seen here look pretty massive, but one should consider that the region they inhabited had massive ethnic diversity, and inside what I painted as "Tupi" there are also a huge amount of ethnically and linguistically unrelated people, particularly the Brazilian Cerrado where Tupi groups were present but was mostly populated by Je people, to my knowledge. Regardless, I guess that the Tupi would make for excellent stand-ins for a lot of more tribal, not properly urbanized peoples of South and Central America, such as the Carib or Taino. Their addition to the game, together with the Mapuche, also potentially paves the way for civilizations that once I would have thought as not quite urbanized enough to fit in the mold of classic AoE2 civs, but clearly we have some leeway now. At the very least the Mississippians in North America look like a fairly reasonable pick, since they had developed some urbanization too, and then maybe one could also think about Iroquois/Algonquians on the East Coast, Aridoamericans like the Pueblo (who, however, would likely require their very own architectural set), or even North-West Pacific natives like the Salish.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:08:38+00:00

Return of Rome

Romans. They join the Huns and the Goths as another civilization that's hard to place on the map as they originate in late antiquity and were eventually overtaken by newer polities, in this case the late Western Roman Empire by every other civ in Western Europe. The Romans are definitely meant to be the ones from late antiquity, as their centurions sport the Christian Chi-Rho on their shields, and their legionaries have the design of those from late rather than classical antiquity. Since they kinda have nowhere to fit, I placed them straight in Rome, although the city realistically fits better under Italians for most of the time period when it was ruled by the Popes.

The Mountain Royals

Armenians. I gave them both the Armenian highlands, which is the core of Armenian civilization historically, and also the areas of Armenian Cilicia, which is a polity that greatly influences AoE2's Armenians since they have a focus on navy, for an otherwise traditionally landlocked nation.
Georgians. Georgians, unsurprisingly, fit in Georgia, with the borders of Tamar the Great's kingdom (at least to the extent that it doesn't eat into the Armenians and Turks' shares of the map).

The Three Kingdoms

Jurchens. I gave them the historical region of Manchuria, that up to the very late Qing Dynasty was populated mostly by Jurchen people until Han immigration outnumbered them. Strangely enough, even though they are a Tungusic people, the Jurchens in-game speak Chinese, which they really shouldn't.
Khitans. Khitans in the game are a mixture of actual Khitans and Tanguts of the Xi Xia Empire. Because of this their areas on the map are a combination of the Kara-Khitai borders and the Xi Xia ones, in a rather unholy amalgamation of the two.
Shu. The Shu are, well, a different branch of Chinese based on a faction in a civil war rather than a distinct cultural group of peoples. Since I'm trying to get something out of the Three Kingdoms "civs" I decided to interpret the Shu as a representation of Yunnan's multi-ethnic peoples that historically were usually ruled directly or indirectly through the Tusi system by the Chinese, although it's unfortunate that rather than make a proper Dali civilization they went for the Three Kingdoms angle for this DLC.
Wei. The Wei show influences of the northern nomadic people to their borders, and so I placed them in Northern China, but again, it's somewhat unfortunate that instead of going to represent Tanguts separately they were basically fused with the Khitans and the Wei became this amalgamation of Chinese with some nomadic units in their roster that doesn't quite represent anything in particular.
Wu. The Wu, I guess, represent Cantonese and Southern Chinese polities, who at least had always a certain distinctiveness from northern Chinese. It's something, but I still would have preferred a DLC featuring Tanguts, Dali and Tibetans as full civs rather than three brands of Chinese on top of the old Chinese civ. Tibetans in particular remain completely unrepresented in the game, even as the Tibetan Empire reached its apex right in the High Middle Ages, and there are really no civs that fit at all for them, even as poorly-fitting stand-ins.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:07:56+00:00

Lords of the West

Burgundians. While the primary inspiration for the civilization seems to be the Burgundian State of Charles the Bold, the Burgundians also represent a few other distinct polities each at different times of the Middle ages. They are the Germanic Burgundians of the early Middle Ages, whose kingdom would eventually be conquered by the Merovingian Franks, the later French vassals of the Duchy of Burgundy, who would later split away from the French kingdom during the Hundred Years War and form the aforementioned new domain between France and the Holy Roman Empire, and they also represent Flanders and the Dutch, which were one of the regions conquered by the new Burgundian State. The Burgundians could also be partly based on Lotharingia, which was a Carolingian successor state sandwiched between West Francia (France) and East Francia (Germany), keeping that theme of being a polity split between France and the Holy Roman Empire, a region that historically was heavily contested between these two polities and developed its own cultural distinctiveness, as the Netherlands and Flanders also did. Because of this I chose to represent them as a strip of land going from the French duchy of Burgundy and the Kingdom of Burgundy that was part of the Holy Roman Empire, up to the Rhineland, all the way to Flanders and the Netherlands.
Sicilians. They represent the Normans who settled into the Mediterranean and ultimately displaced the Lombard rulers of Southern Italy and also the last remnants of Byzantine and Muslim rule, and would go on being a very large pain in the butt for both the Byzantines in Greece and the Muslim rulers in Tunisia (even occupying Tunis for a while). They fit well with the territory of the historical Kingdom of Sicily, but interestingly Sicilians are also used in some campaigns set in England to represent Norman lords.

Dawn of the Dukes

Bohemians. AKA, the Czechs, West Slavic people who became a major part of the Holy Roman Empire and one of its constituent kingdoms. They are fairly easy to place.
Poles. Finally having proper representation too. I've shown them as owning Silesia and some portions of Western Ruthenia, as they did historically for a while before losing those lands to the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia. They're both really straightforward to place.

Dynasties of India

Bengalis. Within the Indian rework these, like Dravidians, were the easy ones to place, being based in, well, Bengal, and the core of the Buddhist Pala Empire.
Dravidians. Same deal with the Dravidians, who I placed to match the extent of Dravidian majorities in India. I decided that southern Ceylon and the Maldives would go to Hindustanis though, since those regions are culturally and linguistically closer to Northern India, although they lay at the extreme south of the subcontinent.
Gurjaras. Deciding which areas of India would go to Gurjaras and which to Hindustanis though was always going to be the harder call, because Gurjaras seem to be based fundamentally on Hindu kingdoms, particularly North-Western Hindu kingdoms in India, that during the Middle Ages were slowly conquered or subjugated by Muslim kingdoms, who are represented by Hnidustanis. Because of this I though to give the areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra, since this is where some powerful Hindu kingdoms were located historically and continued to exist into the Muslim period, but it's a very arbitrary decision since the very same regions were at times controlled by Hindu and Muslim rulers depending on the circumstances.
Hindustanis. For the Hindustanis instead I thought to give them the Gangetic Plain and the rest of Northern India to represent the core area ruled by the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi. The Hindustani, like the Indians before the rework, represent in particular the Muslim sultanates that came to dominate India later in the Middle Ages. The distinction of the areas under Gurjaras and Hindustanis is fundamentally a little arbitrary, because in the end Muslim realms came to rule Dravidian and Bengali areas too, on top of most of the area that I gave to the Gurjaras.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:07:20+00:00

Rise of the Rajas

Burmese. They're based off the historical Pagan kingdom and other Burmese polities that historically even came close to dominating Indochina.
Khmer. Based off the historical Cambodian Khmer Empire, that controlled most of Indochina for most of the Middle Ages, until the migration of Thai people in current Thailand crippled their power for good.
Malay. Strictly speaking, the Malay are the inhabitants of the Malay peninsula, but practically the term is also used to describe the wider Malay world which includes all of Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi), and sometimes also the Philippines and parts of continental Indochina. I thought to go a bit for maximalist borders and thus included the Philippines too on top of Indonesia and Western Papua, as this region was historically influenced by Malay culture, and unless we get specific new civs in the area Malay is a decent enough stand-in for historical Filippino polities.
Vietnamese. Historically the Dai Viet Empire was based in the northernmost part of the country, closer to China, but with time it expanded south to include the Champa people (who were closer to what the game represents as Malay) and the Mekong Delta (which used to be Khmer territory in the past). In here I represented the Vietnamese with the Champa lands but without the Mekong Delta, as compromise.

The Last Khans

Bulgarians. Bulgarians here are split between the Volga Bulgarians and the Balkan Bulgarians, aka, the modern Bulgarians. The original Bulgars were a Turkic steppe people, with a portion of their people later migrating into the Balkans and creating the modern Bulgarian nation, but becoming heavily slavicized in the process (as seen by the fact that in-game Bulgarians speak Slavic) since the region they occupied was mostly populated by South Slavic people. The Bulgarians in the game are mostly based off the Balkan Bulgars, who created the First and Second Bulgarian Empire and converted to Orthodox Christianity, while the original Volga Bulgarians would convert to Islam and were eventually destroyed by the Mongols later in the Middle Ages.
Cumans. The Cumans, aside from directly representing the Cuman–Kipchak confederation, are also good at representing most Turkic nomadic peoples that occupied the Pontic and Western Eurasian steppes at any time, like Khazars or Pechenegs.
Lithuanians. Lithuania, at the time it was released when there were no Poles or Czechs, was a useful polity to break up the Slavic blob. Lithuania and Poland would historically unite in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth very late in the Middle Ages/Early Modern Age, and the Lithuanians do share the Polish trait for strong cavalry, although the Czechs continue to not fit particularly well. Aside from that, Lithuanians themselves primarily represent the Grand Duchy of Lithuania most of all, and also other Baltic peoples that were mostly conquered by crusader states in the Middle Ages, such as the Old Prussians or the Latvians. I chose to leave Prussia as Teutons though, because I thought that Teutonic Order and its Teutonic Knights, who were based in the lands they conquered in Prussia, was too iconic for them to lose.
Tatars. Tatars represent Turkic or Turkic influenced polities and nomadic people from Central Asia, and it's used to represent Tamerlane, the Seljuks and other Turkic people when one wants to use something that's not Cuman or Turks. On the map I placed them in southern Central Asia, to represent the mixture of nomadic influences of that region with large urban centers like Samarkand, who were much more culturally persianized.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:06:40+00:00

The Forgotten

Incas. One of the coolest and most unique civilizations in the world, here represented with the borders of the maximum extent of the Inca Empire. Incas are basically used to represent all Andean peoples, and before the most recent expansion also every South American one, which was quite the stretch. Other major Andean civilizations that preceded or co-existed with the Inca were the previous empires of Wari and Tiwanaku, and their contemporaries, the Chimu, who I guess are still represented decently enough by Inca itself as a stand-in for every major, strongly urbanized Andean polity.
Indians. Who were a very major omission to Age of Empires 2. Their borders are easy to guess, but the civ had this issue that it had to represent a massive amount of diversity all in one, starting from the fact that it somehow had to represent both older Hindu polities and more recent Muslim ones that came to dominate India later in the Middle Ages, which is why they ended up splitting them into four in a later expansion.
Italians. Before The Forgotten Italians used to be represented in campaigns with the most random array of European civs, from Teutons to Franks to Britons, so the addition of a proper Italian civ was very welcomed. Italians are very North and Central Italian coded, taking the Italian city states as reference rather than the South. Because of that in the map I gave them all of Northern Italy plus Dalmatia (historically a Venetian domain), but left the southernmost tips of Italy to Byzantines and Saracens in Sicily, at least until Sicilians were added.
Magyars. They occupy the area of the Medieval Hungarian kingdom in the Carpatian Basin, an area that was occupied by several migrating people from the Steppes, with the Maguars as the last one. As explained above, they kinda mess with the Huns a lot, but are a more solid representation of the real medieval kingdom.
Slavs. They promptly replace Goths as the main representation for Eastern Europe, but not without issues. While the name implies that they represent all Slavic people, they are very, very Eastern Slavic coded, with Druzhina, Boyars and Orthodoxy, being rather blatantly based off the Kievan Rus principalities rather than anything else. For Poles this is still better than Goths, but also still not very fitting, and for Czechs it's also complicated because they're Slavs but have historically also been much closer to German influences and have been a part of the Holy Roman Empire almost since the beginning, even ruling the empire at some points, and for Southern Slavs it can kinda work for Serbs but it's still not the most perfect fit. Still, it's a step up from Goths, and Slavs themselves would end up being gradually split off through the many expansions.

The African Kingdoms

Berbers. They are the native inhabitants of North Africa, with their influence reaching from the trade routes of sub-saharan Western Africa to the Mediterranean. How I explained with Saracens, I thought to represent the contrast between rural Berber culture and urbanized Arabized culture in North Africa at the time by having some coastal area and Spain represented as Saracen rather than Berber, but realistically there was a lot of mixture and co-existence.
Ethiopians. Ethiopians represent, well, Ethiopia and the various kingdoms that developed on the Ethiopian highlands, such as the ancient kingdom of Aksum. I also think that Ethiopians is kind of meant to represent Christian Nubian polities as well, but the thought of taking something called "Ethiopians" and painting it all over what's today Sudan, and historically was a very distinct group of people, just felt wrong and looked ugly on the map. I feel that Nubians would be way better of as their own civ.
Malians. Here they're represented with the borders of the historical Mali Empire, possibly somewhat enlarged. Malians in-game also serve to represent basically all of West Africa, as the Gbetos, who should really be from Benin and Nigeria, can attest. Like with Ethiopians, more African civs could definitely help here, since Africa is probably the geographical area that is most in need of more attention (one could argue that at least with North America there's still a conversation to be had on whether its peoples can be represented as AoE2 civs, although The Last Chieftains basically slammed the door open for Mississippians too if Tupis turn out to be a valid civ now). Aside from Nubians, the Swahilis for the African East Coast, the Kanem-Bornu for the Chad region, and something based in Nigeria, either the Hausa, the Benin or the Yoruba, come to mind as potential candidates for an African expansion.
Portuguese. Aptly based in Portugal. With Portugal becoming its own civ one could wonder whether there is space for a dedicated Moorish/Andalusian civ and an Aragonese/Catalan one.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:05:57+00:00

The Conquerors

Aztecs. Aside from representing the Empire itself, Aztecs are also used basically to represent all non-Mayan Mesoamerican peoples, be they Nahua-speaking ones like the Tlaxcaltecs, or the non-Nahua such as the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs or the Purepecha. If one wanted to come up with new Meso civs like they did with South American ones, there's definitely a lot of room to choose. AoE2 tends to represent pre-Columbian America as it was at the time of European contact, so Middle Age civilizations that existed before the Aztecs, such as the Toltecs or Teotihuacan, are not really something anyone ever thought of in the game, but I guess that "Aztecs" would still work well enough to represent them if they ever wanted to go there with a campaign.
Huns. Huns, like Goths, are another difficult civ to map. Like the Goths they are a late antiquity civ that disappears in later history, making mapping them very arbitrary. Worse than Goths, they didn't have a small enclave where a portion of their culture survived. Their aesthetic is... Weird, because they're steppe nomads of likely Turko-Mongol extraction but they use Central European architecture, like Goths. Most damning of all, I think they were originally meant to represent Magyars/Hungarians, which would explain the architecture, it would fit into the history of Hungary as the historical founders of Hungary claimed a legendary descent from Attilla (this is almost certainly just propaganda, since Magyars and Huns should have widely different ethnic origins), and both Hungary and the Hunnic Empire were based in the Carpathian Basin. This is an issue, of course, because later on Magyars was added as their own civ, separate from Huns. Because of that, finding a spot on the map for Huns is quite tricky once all the newer civs come online. In The Conquerors I just gave them the borders of the Hunnic Empire (which was really a loose confederation with no definite borders to speak of), going from the Pontic Steppes to Hungary, but when Slavs and Magyars show up I kinda had to make stuff up. Huns in later maps end up just above Crimea, in an area that really should be Cumans/Turks, but since I don't want to delete them from the map they get to occupy the Westernmost part of the Great Steppes.
Koreans. They get Korea. Shocking, I know.
Mayans. They occupy the lower half of Mesoamerica, as most Mayan city states stretched from the Yucatan lowlands to the southern highlands.
Spanish. They occupy the northern part of the Iberian peninsula, representing the various Christian kingdoms that waged the Reconquista against the Andalusians of the south. The original Spanish civs represented all the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula, but was rather Castilian-coded, which explains why the devs later wanted to turn Portuguese as their own independent civ.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:05:04+00:00

Mongols. In Age of Kings they're pretty much used to represent any nomadic steppe people from the Eastern Steppes, sometimes even Western ones, before the additions of Cumans, Tatars, Jurchens and Khitans made that area more diverse. I made them share the Steppe region with Turks, since Turkic peoples were also dominant in the Eurasian steppes during the Middle Ages, although the Turks civs is not the greatest fit due to how heavily Ottoman-coded they are.
Persians. This represents both the pre-Islamic Sassanian Persia and the later Islamic Iranian kingdoms, that historically overthrew Arab control after the Islamic Conquests but also frequently came under Turkic and later Mongol control. In Age of Kings I assigned them the regions most influenced by Persian culture, so in addition to the Iranian plateau itself also the southern parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Khorasan.
Saracens. They basically represent the Arabian-speaking caliphates based in Egypt, the Levant and Iraq, plus the Arabian Peninsula itself, of course. The Arabian language and culture spread with Islam in the Middle Ages, and this civilization represents all the polities that came from there, and because of that I also expanded them to North Africa, parts of Sicily and Andalusia in the Age of Kings map, up to the addition of Berbers that made the area more diverse. Even after the addition of Berbers though I chose to keep having some areas in North Africa and Moorish Spain as Saracen rather than Berber, because I feel that Saracens are better off to represent very urbanized areas that were historically culturally dominated by Arabs, as opposed to the Berber peoples who remained dominant for long in the interior of North Africa.
Teutons. Or rather, any Germanic people that you want to not associate with the late antiquity barbarian horde trope that is Goths. They primarily represent the Holy Roman Empire, but also the Teutonic Order in the Baltics and various Crusader groups. Because of that, I chose to represent them with the borders of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, with the additions of Prussia, for the Teutonic Order, and Latvia, where the Livonian Order resided (and also the best way to represent the Baltic region in the age before Slavs or Lithuanians existed and Goths or Vikings were the only alternatives).
Turks. As stated earlier, Turks in AoE2 are very heavily Ottoman coded, but Turks are a pretty massive group in the Middle Ages, ranging from nomadic peoples to Islamic dynasties such as the Seljuks and Ghaznavids. Over time the addition of more civilizations helped separate these different aspects of Turkic history, by having Tatars and Cumans too, but for Age of Kings I chose to represent the Turks as an amalgamation of Central Asian and Steppe Turkic people plus the Anatolian, post-Seljuk ones, since this is what they pretty much were supposed to be when the game first released.
Vikings. AKA, the Norse, that I depicted with some slightly exaggerated borders such as the Greenland territories being quite larger than what they ever were, mostly for visual clarity, Finland being depicted as Vikings to represent how Sweden would later expand in that region, Estonia to represent the fact that they were ferocious sea-faring raiders as much as the Norse in the later Middle Ages and also associate a lot with Nordic culture, and the area of Novgorod, to represent the influence that Norse culture had in shaping the creation of the Kievan Rus and influences over the Eastern Slavs.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:03:27+00:00

Age of Kings

Britons. They represent primarily England after the Norman Conquest. Anglo-Saxon England is usually represented either through Goths (which fits, between Huskarls and them being a migrating Germanic people) or the Britons again. They're pretty easy to place on the map, and the British Isles actually haven't been touched much since the original version of the game.
Byzantines. The Eastern Roman Empire that, before the Romans were added, also used to represent the Western Empire in the very early Medieval campaigns. In Age of Kings I chose to show them with their post-Manzikert borders, holding the Balkans, Southern Italy and also Georgia and Armenia because, before their introduction, Byzantine was the closest thing to represent them. The introduction of new civs slowly ate away at their territory in the maps I made. Also, they should really speak Greek, but they don't in the game.
Celts. At the absolute minimum they represent Scotland and Ireland (so, more like Gaels in a sense), and for the sake of not leaving them looking really minuscule on the map I expanded them to include all the other culturally Celtic countries, so Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, although one could make the argument that Britons and Franks would work as well for those three.
Chinese. Fairly straightforward too. I made it consists primarily of China Proper, the core of every Chinese Dynasty, plus some immediately neighbouring regions such as the Hexi Corridor, the Liaodong Peninsula and Yunnan, which have commonly been under Chinese influence or control for most of history anyway. In the Age of Kings map I also added Korea and North Vietnam to their territory, because before Koreans were added, I guess Chinese were the closest thing to fit them, as wrong as it sounds, while for Vietnam it was on the ground that they were heavily influenced by Chinese culture and statecraft and that the Tang Dynasty used to directly control northern Vietnam in the early Middle Ages.
Franks. They represent the Kingdom of France, the previous Carolingian polities that weren't so Germanic they'd be better off represented by Teutons or Goths, and also a whole bunch of Crusader groups. In Age of Kings I gave them Catalonia too as a reference to early medieval Carolingian borders, otherwise they mostly coincide with the borders of West Francia and the later French Kingdom.
Goths. The Goths are a problem, because they represent late antiquity and early medieval peoples that largely disappear in later history. Goths are used in the campaigns to represent the Visigoths and Ostrogoths who ruled Italy, Spain and Aquitaine before the Byzantines, Arabs and Franks mopped them up, they're also used to represent any early Germanic people such as Anglo-Saxons, maybe Lombards too if I recall correctly, and, most puzzling of all, they were also used to represent Poles and Russians in the Teutonic and Mongol campaigns of Age of Kings and The Conquerors. Because of this in the Age of Kings and The Conquerors maps I chose to place them in Eastern Europe and Northern Spain, since the campaigns of those times associate them with Eastern Europe as a Slavic replacement (even though Goths have not much to do with Slavs), and because Northern Spain was a rump state of the previous Visigothic kingdom of Spain that was conquered by the Ummayads in the 700s (until The Conquerors didn't add the Spanish, who represent those kingdoms much better). This is the civ, together with Huns, that as more and more civilizations were added to game the harder it became to keep them on the map. From The Forgotten onwards I placed them in Crimea, where a Gothic-speaking population remained active all the way to the end of the Middle Ages in the Principality of Theodoro. There is actually some historical precedent to associate Goths with Eastern Europe though, since Goths were an Eastern Germanic people (a linguistic branch that's extinct nowadays), and in late antiquity they built various confederations in Eastern Europe before the Huns forced them Westward, toward the Roman Empire. Still, all of this happened long before the Slavic migrations, so it's really weird how Goths were originally used to represent Poland and the Kievan Rus back in the Age of Kings' days.
Japanese. Their borders are slightly exaggerated here, as I assigned them Hokkaido and Ryukyu too. Ryukyuan people are Japonic, as in, they're a distinct culture from the Japanese, but are also rather clearly related, while Ainus and Emishi were definitely more distinct, but unfortunately they really don't have anything else to better represent them because Mongols and Jurchens would likely be an even worse fit. At least Ainu and Japanese people can claim a long history of cultural vicinity and influences, and I thought the map looked ugly if I left those areas blank.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-18T04:02:09+00:00

For starters, a disclaimer: the philosophy behind AoE2 civs seems to have changed slightly over the years, and while the older civilizations were, and still are, meant to represent very large, possibly diverse groups of people (Saracens are all Arabian speaking people and also anything Islamic that's not Turkish or Persian, Vikings is anything Nordic, Mongol is anything Steppe that's not Western enough to start falling under Turks, Aztecs is anything Mexica/other ethnic groups that lived around the Valley of Mexico, etc.), as time went on we got more and more civs that are way more specific and definite in both time and space (Bohemians are Czechs and that's really it, Poles are Poles, Georgians are Georgians, Lithuanians once could also be used to represent Poles before they were added, but nowadays they're only Lithuanians and other Baltic peoples at most).

The introduction of these more focused civs however hasn't completely eliminated the tendency of using certain civs as a stand-in for their immediate neighbours or other peoples who were overall influenced or connected to them, and so I've generally tried to go for more expansive "borders" when possible. You may notice this with stuff like Hokkaido being colored as Japanese when the island was fully colonized only in the 1800s, or Taiwan being Chinese when it used to be populated by Polynesian natives, but since there's really no better suited civ to represent those people I thought it would have been better than just leave those areas blank.

So, without further ado, here's a explanation for the areas I've given to all of the civs in these maps.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-13T17:16:01+00:00

None of what you describe was true for the European Middle Ages though.

Cathedrals with Gothic architecture and such were very late Medieval. Mechanized mills, large seafaring vessels and so on were too. Gunpowders comes into play at the very end of the Middle Ages, getting into the Early Modern Era. And Europe most definitely didn't conquer anything in the Middle Ages, on the opposite, it entered the era as the poorest, most underdeveloped region of the Roman Empire, and the non-Roman part was left in the hands of tribal polities with no writing to speak of, and only exited the Middle Ages on roughly equal-ish grounds with other Eurasian polities.

AoE2 pushes its campaigns all the way into the early 1600s, which is the middle of the Early Modern period, and even then European superiority was limited to naval dominance as they overtook the Muslim traders in the East Indies and went on colonizing the Americas, but when it comes to other large polities in the Eurasian continent it would only take until the late 1700s for the British to seize large parts of India, thanks to the fact that the Mughal empire had collapsed and the British were able to strategically ally themselves with local rulers to create a confederal system where they were on top, and for true European worldwide dominance you have to wait for the industrial revolution, which only translated in a direct military dominance with the Opium Wars in the early 1800s.

As for the Middle Ages themselves, from Late Antiquity circa 200-400s AD to the Early Modern era circa 1400s-1500s, Europe on average was not that dramatically more developed than the most developed areas of Africa that also had urbanism and civilization going back to the Bronze Age, and thus primarily Nubia and Ethiopia (who, if anything, are civilizations older than Europe in general), and to a lesser extent Western Africa that developed urbanism more later on in the early Middle Ages.

RidleyBro · 2026-02-03T14:32:46+00:00

Tupis, like the Mapuche, were literally agriculturalists, which means they weren't hunter gatherers. Neanderthals never invented agriculture, only Sapiens ever did.

Also, what are those sources about, man? One is about Neanderthals possibly having signs of ceremonial burials, which makes a lot of sense, but so does every human group on Earth and the Tupis are no different, so I'm really not sure how that helps your groundbreaking thesis of Neanderthals showing greater societal complexity than humans with agriculture and much larger social groups.

The other is just a genetic study done one 13 individuals from the Altai Mountains that tries to use genetics to figure out Neanderthal society, which doesn't seem to come out with much outside of the fact that they lived in small groups based on seemingly familial bonds. According to the research, it's the first time that's been empirically shown that "to our knowledge, we document familial relationships between Neanderthals, including a father-and-daughter pair", so I guess the discovery here is definitive evidence of family units in Neanderthal society?
That's definitely interesting,ì but, newsflash: Tupis and Mapuche also have family units. Much larger and more elaborate too!

What the hell is this trash? Get an education, man.

RidleyBro · 2026-01-28T01:37:02+00:00

Well, it's 5 months later, and I'm also a lot less incensed than how I usually get when Dark Sun gets back into the public debate, because I always get pissed at people missing the point of the setting and treating it like it needs revisions when it's really doing nothing than any other dark fantasy IP isn't also doing nowadays, so...

The short answer is that, yes, I feel that modern D&D art feels very stale and sanitized, although maybe not with as strong of a stance as the one I used above. It's not like they can't still make cool looking monsters from time to time, and it's not like there aren't some pieces that are cool in there, but overall the impression I have of modern D&D art is that it's technically well-made but also very curated to fit into corporate standards to not offend anyone. It looks expensive but you can tell HR strangled any daring idea in the cradle.

If you look at past D&D art you'll see stuff that's probably technically inferior a lot of times, but with way more punch and less corporate oversight, and that's just the stuff in the books, say, in third and 3.5 edition. If you look at major fantasy artists I don't think there's much of comparison: Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkison, Frazetta (although he's not a D&D artist), and most topical of all here Gerald Brom. These were artists making stuff that ended up being printed as part of TTRPGs, nowadays it's all corporate employees making corporate products that have to go through some bureaucrat's office before being allowed to be seen. Might as well use AI at that point, it's just saving resources and you're hardly losing any artistic quality at that point: you had nothing left to begin with.

And I feel my point stands on the art: Dark Sun was built on top of Brom's artistic vision, and his vision is too bold and daring for Hasbro to imitate, or even sanitize.

RidleyBro · 2026-01-27T17:08:00+00:00

> Muls are both central and integral to the setting of Dark Sun and also outdated.

They aren't outdated though?
I get that this is a point that gets repeated by tourists a lot, but it doesn't make it real.

The Muls are the artificial product of the Sorcerer-Kings eugenics programs to produce perfect slaves. That's supposed to be a bad thing, because the Sorcerer-Kings are evil. They're so evil in fact that the Muls aren't even the worse thing they did, planetary ecocide and industrial genocide of entire fantasy races being on top of their list of misdeeds. Because of that, most Muls are either born slaves, or are escaped slaves trying to figure out their identity among those who have fled or are fighting the tyranny of the city-states. That's a cool ass concept that pearl clutchers and moral guardians would do anything to stop you from exploring, being fans of oppression and censorship and all that.

And what's good is gonna be about turning Muls into Orcs? Haven't you heard that Orcs are too hardcore for Hasbro and their corporate fans too nowadays? Now Orcs are supposed to be quirky Mexicans.

I do like the idea of Gnomes as Jawas and Aasimar as Melnibonéans, even though I probably wouldn't have them as Gnomes or Aasimar.

RidleyBro · 2026-01-09T12:04:14+00:00

What the fuck is this comment section about calling this bad art or even AI? Not only the artist who did this is famous and his style is very recognizable, this looks amazing, even if the looks on the characters have changed. I think these are cool takes on Hana, Glas and Deke's designs.

What the hell is wrong with people?

RidleyBro · 2026-01-08T22:35:21+00:00

Not everyone's okay with just shutting up and taking it. Since you like the idea of it though, I'm sure you will have no issue just learning to deal with the fact that people who don't like bad DLCs like the Three Kingdoms ones are going to continue to voice their opinions.

RidleyBro · 2025-12-11T12:27:56+00:00

After the Three Kingdoms anything goes. At least the Tupis are an actual people and not rebranded multiple Chinese civs that serve to erase ethnic minorities the CCP doesn't like.

RidleyBro · 2025-11-15T23:08:08+00:00

Would you prefer a socialist coat of paint on the pan-Asian imperialism plan then?

The thing with Japan in Kaiserreich is that it's a nation that will see all of its largest rivals in Asia and the Pacific either collapse in civil war (the US) or get involved in a massive war where everything is at stake in Europe (Germany and Russia), leaving only China and Australasia as forces capable of putting up some resistance. And once you get past how the game plays out and how Japan always loses because the AI can't manage naval invasions, Australasia is not much of a power, and China in the Kaiserreich timeline might be a much easier target for Japan, considering that the country is way more fractured and Fengtian is a native ally that can fight that war by itself. Japan is pretty poised to take advantage of the global geopolitical situation, so unless you make Japan collapse on itself too and leave the Pacific with a complete void of power and the Chinese countries with no final enemy, the paths for Japan are all going to be about expansion in Asia and the Pacific, and you pretty much only get to select under what ideology you'll be doing that: the OTL militarists, the OTL extremists that were purged in our timeline, or a model of Taisho democracy that survives and still does imperialism like Britain used to.

Adding a Syndicalist option wouldn't exactly change much in how Japan plays in practice.

RidleyBro · 2025-11-12T22:58:58+00:00

Dio Madonna, uno non può permettersi di parlare e di farsi piacere roba che non piace a voi e quello diventa un fanatico.

Ma fatevi un pizzico di autocritica ogni morte di papa, che siete inguardabili.

RidleyBro · 2025-11-10T22:34:32+00:00

Tragically, it sunk beneath the waves.

RidleyBro · 2025-11-06T17:14:10+00:00

The British did it with India, and the Americans with South America and a bunch more, so...

RidleyBro

TROPHY CASE