The SILLANS -- A History-First AoE2 Civ Proposal (LAVAnilla Episode 4) 

TRUE. This was absolutely on my mind when I was designing the bonus but I just completely forgot to mention it in the video. I could definitely see you being right about the numbers being completely off. Like I said, I had no idea how to make this thing work the way I wanted it to, but if we find it's over tuned then I think your proposal is a really great way to start trying to fix it up.

Well thank you very much! The algorithm is a fickle mistress, but it's done a good deed this day at the very least. Really hope you enjoyed!

With luck I'll have that one out this year!

​​@@robbylava Can you heart my comment again? I fixed a spelling mistake and that removed it.

sicilians and burgundy have i think probably the most controversial factions designs of all times, so i am waiting with anticipation on what you cook for the sicilians and if you ever move to, the burgundians(personally speaking i am an absolute fan of flemish revolution, althought that may be the AOE3 player in me talking since i love doing revolutions)

@thegeneralissimo6172 absolutely interested in doing both of the above! I actually quite like the designs for both of them (perhaps unsurprisingly lol), at least on the mechanical front, though the Sicilians piss me off for entirely history based reasons. Hoping to get to at least one of the two by the end of the year, and the other shouldn't be atrociously long after that!

HEY! No need to apologize at all, I actually thought of you when I was making this vid. Glad you enjoyed! And many thanks for the congratulations. Your Dynasty vs Civilization question is a great one. I grappled with a similar question myself in a video essay a year or so ago ("Dynasties vs Ethnicities"). I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, though maybe on a livestream or voice call or something I could go into more detail, but to stick with the pragmatics of the situation, I DO personally think that the current "Chinese" absolutely merit somewhere in the range of at least a 6-8 way split in order to properly represent (ideally much more). I had no idea you were proficient with East Asian history! If you'd like to talk further, please do shoot me an email! You've been a great viewer of the channel and I'd love to potentially work with you.

Thanks so much for saying so my friend!

Hey! Really glad to hear you like this one so much my friend! I'm really glad someone mentioned to the stars, I was quite pleased with that touch hehehe I can see what you mean about Seodang, but my concern was that without it their late game would be the worst in the game by far. Even the Turks have awesome hussars to fall back on, so this was my attempt to give them a similar lifeline. I've even had more than a few commenters say that they think this bonus is too WEAK, if anything! So it's such a split consensus I'm really not sure how it would actually play out. If it ended up being too strong and made the civilization feel too good in post imperial age I would be more than happy to nerf it of course. Thanks as always for sharing your thoughts man! Always good to see you in the comments.

Awesome to hear! I was quite pleased with it myself. Great to see you in the comments section again my friend!

Awesome! Thanks so much for saying so! Really helps me figure out what I should be doing when people share feedback like this.

I can see why you would think so, but I think that's more to do with Silla being underrated rather than it being undifferentiated. Having just done a good amount of research, I can assure you they were QUITE different! Some similarities, of course, but I'd argue they were substantially more different from later Goryeo/Joseon than, to follow with your example, the Burgundians ever were from the rest of France.

@@robbylava It's more about the historical context with Burgundians, really. I would've personally given a partial focus to the Germanic Burgundians which weren't French at all, which is the main reason I think Burgundians make any sense as their own civilization. Burgundian State alone is really just French, but that original element is what makes them different. Which is why I find it unfortunate that the Burgundians are just the latter Burgundian State, when that should only be the Imperial Age focus of the civilization. Another example I can list which is closer to home is Hungarians being separate from Magyars, in your Slavs video. There's no word for a distinction in the local languages or by Magyars themselves. Hungarian self-denomination is Magyars and even in local languages close to Hungary it's the same thing (in Croatian, the only instance where we use a version of Hungary is in case of the Austria-Hungary but otherwise it's just Mađarska). There's no real cultural distinction or breakpoint between the Magyar tribes and the latter Hungarian state, it's a cultural continuum. It's that continuum that would be the foundation of any civ, like giving the Magyars the basic Steppe Lancer but without the elite upgrade, to denote their latter settled status compared to fully nomadic civs that have it. Not to there be a random break in a civilization's history because they went from nomadic to settled. Historically.... oh yeah, that's your focus..... historically there's a break, but for gameplay purposes I think that civilizations being represented as a sum of their histories feels more flavorful. Especially with the likes of Burgundy which might not have as much if it was just their weakly documented early germanic period, with the Burgundian State offering something to work with as well. I won't complain about you making civs I disagree with. We do have a difference in opinion and that's pretty natural, imo. Maybe would be best I just mention my opinion on a civ existing and that's it, but I'm mostly here to rant about campaign appearances.

@Crossil completely reasonable! I have zero issue with people disagreeing with me on what civilizations should be added, and I do really enjoy reading your analyses! The only thing you said that I really disagreed with was that the various Korean kingdoms are more uniform than some of the other existing civilizations we see out there. But at the end of the day, this is a judgment call as with so much else. Either way, I do really appreciate you taking the time to watch and share your thoughts! Always love seeing you in the comments.

Aight, I looked into this because I was curious to what degree it could make sense and I think I get it now. Honestly, it's always peculiar to see these blind spots in history you could miss. But how much would you divide the southern Korean peoples of this era? At least from my perception, Goguryeo would be continuation of the later united Korea, but how far could the south be divided? In theory they can be united under a Samhan tag, but I guess you're gonna be more ambitious?

Considering the wood bonus as you proposed, I think they would be too strong, specially in hybrid maps. Let me explain, usually you need 5-7 villagers in wood (on dark age) to make a dock and 3 fishing ships, if we can guarrison a villager for 3 villagers equivalent wood production, and second villager for 2, you should have enough to make fishing ships (it’s like if you were 3 villagers ahead in dark age, that is more than even the Chinese and you don’t start with less food). With that you should be able to reach feudal faster than the enemy, and start making fire ships which in theory should cement your economy advantage for the rest of the game. About the unique unit, I think it will not receive a lot of gameplay in higher elos, it is too expensive and cav archers need to be massed up to be effective. Also unlike the koniks an infantry unit doesn’t synergies very well with cav archers, first they don’t share any blacksmith upgrades, second infantry is good against pikes (the counter to cavalry) and ok versus camels (the other counter) but it is just ok vs smirks (skirms are usually faster than infantry, so they can hit and run) and also not great against scorpions (the most common counter to cav archers). I think the civ will probably be played as a food archer civ with siege (but maybe no many monks). From the bonus and tech tree I think it would be best played as a 1TC full in civ, since you have a huge eco advantage at the beginning (enough to probably kill the enemy in feudal) but it falls quite strongly after castle age. That means you “need” to finish the game before late castle age or you are dead.

Thanks so much for taking the time to watch and share your thoughts! I'm really glad you like it. I know that the Hwarang mounted/dismounted stats are kind of weird, but I felt like if I made the mounted version have Even the same HP and armor as the dismounted version I would need to increase the cost dramatically, making it probably the most expensive UU in the game. I was tempted to do so though! Seriously though, I'm thrilled you found so much to like in this one. I would say it's probably my best balanced build thus far on the channel!

That is absolutely something I want to do down the line! For now I want to give people a break from Korea, since (much as I love talking about it) I think a bunch of viewers are starting to get a little sick of it, but I will for sure be returning to the peninsula at some point in the future!

I meant to say pressing on my mind sorry.

Really glad you like it! I'm sorry though, I don't understand the question. Could you elaborate?

@@robbylava it is more for all your civs. I was wondering why you do not give bonuses for your custom Archer line of swordsman line or things like that.

@@user-dw7ej2rt8l OHHH I see what you mean! So there're two main reasons for that: 1. I don't want to force people to watch my older vids to make sense of newer ones 2. I recently changed up the philosophy of this channel to keep builds more "vanilla", so I'm trying to work with the existing tech tree as much as possible I will be getting back to some of those older, more out-there ideas in future though! And when I do, I will most certainly be creating civs that have bonuses for them.

True! But I actually find it to be rather a silly distinction, since it wouldn't cause issues with the UI to have the latter but not the former. So while not technically possible, I strongly feel like it should be!

Perfect timing! Hope you enjoyed both that and this.

I'm sure this is a super clever reference, but I am a cultural illiterate and don't get it at all hehehe

@@robbylava Hey I was just referring to "The Kingdom" show (Netflix), medieval Koreans vs Zombies and of course some political drama thrown in. It's a show I enjoyed a lot.

​@@afz902k great show

@afz902k OHHHH. I had zero idea that existed. Really interesting!

That's definitely part of the plan. Hopefully I will be getting to that civilization sometime this year!

At some point yes! I want to hit a bunch of other places first though, since I reckon you guys are probably pretty tired of Korea at this point

@@robbylava Thank you and I love your contect

@@zacksalmon8010 Of course my friend! Thank you so much for saying so, it means a lot to hear

I did a video on this very topic many months ago on the channel! Breaking up the Saracens is very high on my personal list of wishes for the game.

@@robbylava A Sultanate of Rum variation of the Turks wouldn't be a bad idea either.

@nomemories130 totally. I'm not yet sure how I'm going to approach that, but I definitely plan on doing so eventually

I see what you mean heheheh A lot of civilizations across history have been masters of trade. But our wonderful game is unfortunately very simplistic on the eco front, and trade is 100% worthless in the most common formats, so I have to be selective about where I put such bonuses.

First off, Silla was ethnically different from its neighbors on the peninsula, at least as much so as other civilization pairs we have in the game right now like the Goths and Teutons or the Franks and Burgundians. Secondly, I would like nothing more than to see China subdivided. 10+ seems completely reasonable to me! The far east has been neglected for far too long