Variant Civs - were they actually good for AOEIV? 

The specter of AoE2's game design continues to haunt AoE4.

If they made the variants more historically based both thematically and gameplay wise then it would've been one of the biggest brain gamer moves.

One of the biggest misses of the variants (imo) was to make unique units for them, and then make them situational units. Jeanne companions are locked behind keeps, Zhu xi has two moderately interesting cavalry units locked behind a landmark AND a technology, Ayyubids have a couple of units locked in the house of wisdom... like, whatever amount of resources they had to make something new, half of that content was made situational and only appears occasionally. As a comparison, the OotD, has a lot of interesting units. With the unique techs, every unit felt different than the parent civ, even if they are the same type.

I have 1450 hours played in this game, all of it in multiplayer. I love the game, but I agree with your assessment of the variant civs. The variants need to feel more different if they're going to keep adding them in the future. I do worry this game won't get much content going forward though. Another point, Devs need to more quick with balance patches and content drops in general. Community feels barren in the later months of seasons, and it doesn't help that the devs don't say something new is coming. Furthermore, Civs like Byz and Ayyubids need to be fixed and new civs need not follow the same trends that they do. Byz needs nerfs to mercenary production massively. Ayyubids needs nerfs to the castle age eco growth wing. No civ should ever be able to both tech up and create units or boom. RTS are based and balanced on the principle of you either tech, boom, or aggro. No civ should be able to do 2 or more well at once.

I think Ayyubid is quite good as variant civ. It keeps the central game mechanism of the house of learning and modifying it enough to change the way you play in comparison with Abbasid. It's main issue is the same issue Abbasid had in the first few seasons. The age ups inside house of wisdom should meaningfully impact your gameplay and offer you flexibility. Abbasid used to be played economic wing into military into trade. That was the build for every matchup. This season you actually select the age up depending on who you play against. If you're vs a aggressive civilization you would go military wing, then depending on how the game is going you can pick. Need to transition to farms ? Go eco. Want to get upgrades for your units/eco ? Go culture. If you're vs a boom civ you can boom too. Go eco wing then see how the game is going and pick your next wing. Or start military wing and apply some pressure. The house of learning and its flexibility should be front and center to these civs but for Ayyubid it's just a way to age up. You have choices but no actual choice. When it comes to the military Ayyubid has its camels which make it distinct enough but the siege feels like they gave it something for flavor it's not something that has much to any impact which is a shame. Feels like the issue is with the civ and not really with the fact that it is a variant.

The Ayyubids should have more emphasis on the Mamluks. Like they should be available in barracks from feudal. Same with Jeannes Champions and Compagnions, both should replace the normal maa and horsemen with some adjustments to cost and stats. The unique stuff that these civs have is currently just absent from their playstyle

The Ayyubid should emphasize the importance of the Sultan Siege Tower, maybe even make it act like a mobile keep that provides a buff for allied units around it

Hi, Chilly, I have been following your videos for a while, and usually, I agree with most of the takes that you bring to the table. Couple of things that I disagreed with about your takes: 1- The variants were not a miss. The variants were an excellent idea to bring freshness and different takes to the game. The devs wanted to explore aspects that could not be included in the base civ (desert raiders being a reference to Mamluks from Aoe 2, Shaolin monks being part of China, Joan of Arc as a hero like Aoe 2). On the other hand, these ideas were implemented poorly. I agree that Joan should have a different focus and that the China variant feels too much like China. 2-Ayyubids have a distinct Identity: Camels. I believe the dev's idea was to make this civ feel more like the Saracens from Aoe 2, and they gave the tools for people that play this civ to be the "Saladin's army against the Crusaders." I believe that the developers had a crusader civ in mind that the Ayyubids were supposed to be the rival of, but because of the tension rising in the Middle East, they decided to scratch that. 3-I believe that the layoffs and changes in the industry will affect AOE 4. The game suffered a great blow at launch, where it was at its zenith of popularity, and slowly declined and failed to recapture that initial boom it caused. I believe this was caused by the absolutely atrocious map and mission design the campaign had on launch. I cannot remember any of the names of the heroes in the campaigns, except for the fact that some of them were heroes in the Aoe 2 campaign. None of the missions were memorable, nor did they have any replayability. They missed a lot of ground with casuals by not making the campaign better, updating, or reworking them. 4- Going off my previous point, the devs did not lean into the multiplayer aspect either. They made a half compromise by making the multiplayer not fully esport-focused nor making it welcoming for casuals like they intend to do with AOM. Not committing to either side made the game stale over time.

As an Abbasid main, nothing really interested me about Ayyubid. It somehow seems like a less flexible Abbasid despite being more complex. Jeanne d'Arc kinda makes sense for people who like to micro a single hero, but it's so hard to balance a single hero unit. Making JD play with a very different unit composition from French makes a lot of sense. OOTD is actually the variant civ I've played the most despite never playing HRE, but only casually with friends rather than in competitive 1v1. Conceptually, Ayyubid and JD seem fine, but Zhu Xi and OOTD still seem so odd for how obscure their inspirations are.

I absolutely love the variant civs and I disagree completely that they aren’t different enough. They are wholly different on how they play. JD has a bloody hero mechanic and ayubids and abbasids have completely different gameplay. I don’t even know how people can agree with you on this. All of the variants civs are fine to me.

i think because it is a variant civ it played similarly to the base civ just with different flavor, i mean most of them have the same/similar landmarks (which what makes the most difference in playstyle between civs). i do agree though that i want them to be more unique

I 50% agree with your statements here. You're spot on when it comes to JD, she is such a dissapointing civ and is more of an annoyance rather than a new feature. Not only did it stirr up a lot of drama, but also gameplaywise has been very annoying to deal with due to balance at the beginning. And as you said, in the end, they end up playing like every other French and they never really stand out, You see France or JD, you expect Royal Knights to be spammed, and Royal Knights are spammed. And thats about it, they dont bring any new exciting ways to play the French which is really tragic, consider that France has a lot of other cool units you can build around, such as the Royal cannons and culverins, arbaletiers and the dankest looking Men at Arms. If the JD, as Beasty and you mentioned said was Infantry focused instead. This would then require a whole new way of thinking how 2 play the french and make it far more exciting. You want more cavalry focused French? You play the Vanilla French, you want more Infantry focused french? You play their Variant JD. When it comes to ZhuXi Legacy, I don't have much opinion, from my own experience going against them, they don't feel much different than any other Chinese, other than not having to concern one self with annoying Barbican, but my friend who mains China does prefer them far more than China. But for the simple reason: It allows him to play China, better than China. It's technically China+ with extra features, not nescessarily a different way of playing China. Other than the initial nature of China vs ZXL is that China leans more to defensive play while ZXL leans more to aggresive, but they dont lean so far that they actually play much differently. Ayyubid however I do have it disagree. I feel that Ayyubid is Abbasid on Crack-cocaine. It's a hyper aggresive variant of Abbasid, while the Abbasid is far more chill and relax and is a economic powerhouse. Ayuubid is a powerhouse in turboing through and being able to set the tempo of the game. However, just like a crack-cocaine addict, once the withdrawal kicks in, you burn out extremely quick and become super weak and vournarable if you fail at leveraging your tempo and winning the game. But it's fun none the less, and it does play quite differently at least from my own experience, Abbasid being my second go to civ to play. Another thing I feel with Ayyubid vs Abbasid, is that while both are generally all-rounder Civ, I feel Abbasid does much better being Infantry focused, while Ayyubid is far superior as a Cavalry focused civ, which the special armor aura upgrade kinda reflects. Camel support (+2 armor to infantry) vs Infantry Support (+2 armor to Camels). So Ayyubid is a much more Mobile civ than the Abbasid, with unpresedented Cavalry superiority vs any other Cavalry focused Civ, due to Camel Knights, Camel Raiders and the Dervish that can keep up with the Cavalry that also provides a powerfull aoe heals. When it comes to OTD, I completely agree with your statements there and have nothing to add to it but wishin the Landmarks were much more different.

The recent survey made me reflect why I prefer this game. It’s the uniqueness of each civ. That’s where 4s strength is and they need to lean into that. Make the variants more unique There’s a reason that aoe4’s pro scene is just the SC2 foreigner scene. Aoe4 civs differ similar to how Terran and Zerg differ.

I was mostly interested in Order of the Dragon (knightly order that had Dracula as member, yey!) and Ayyubids (Saladin!). I wasn’t that much interested in Jeanne d’Arc (she was almost synonymous with AoE 2 campaigns, so I felt she got enough attention already), and as for Zhu Xi’s Legacy, I tried to find out a little bit about his teachings, and found one grave disagreement with him, so I lost interest in this civ as well. As you can probably realize, I mostly choose civs for overall feeling, atmosphere, potential for role-play and overall fantasy (even in game, I’m type of player that many would call “doll-house-builder”, empire/city state-builder over militant strategist warlord). OdtD didn’t disappointed, it was kinda cool playstyle (also, I love their armour - combination of black and gold is my favourite since I noticed it on ancient Egyptian statues). Ayyubids however… not so much. Of course, main treasure of this DLC were new civs, I keep playing and enjoying Byzantines to this day (just for hearing those quotes in Greek is worth playing them, it sounds so badass). As for your suggestions for new variant civs, I love your idea of Novgorod as more defensive civ and less “kill all wildlife first” style (do you remember that there was once challenge and achievement in AoE 4 for completing game without killing single animal aside from wolves? Yeah, I do have that reward for this in my inventory, because that’s literally every single playthrough I do in AoE in general - first go for berries, than transition into farms, occasionally some fishing on replentishable deep fish, only time when I sue animal as food source is either a-hole enemy killing some of my sheep or aoe damage killing deer - waste not want not, lol). I’d also like to see variant civ on Mongols, which would represent Mongolians on conquered territories where they settled as new rulers - also making them more stationary civ (available at least palisade wall, normal farms instead of infinitely spawning sheep etc.). As for Richard Lionheart, I do not have an idea that I would prefer yet, but since I’m defensive turtle, I wouldn’t benefited much from aggressive variant of English. As for variant civ for Delhi Sultanate, I do remember you mentioning that this was strange choice to represent India this way in game, as DS is mostly seen as foreign occupant in nowadays India, one that also wasn’t particularly gentle with different philosophies (lot of cultural vandalism), so making variant civ as Hindu-focused Indian civ (Hindu temple as their religious building, some landmarks being different etc.) might not be worst idea, at least it would do some justice.

I do find it weird that zhu xi and ayyubid got different age up mechanics but ootd and jean just got their landmarks copy pasted. I think that should be their first move with both those civs to give them a different flavor. I agree that zhu xi feels odd and some of their most fun units are locked behind an imperial tech, why not give them their raiders in castle like china does? Also having no hand cannons for end game feels bad. I've enjoyed playing the variants, but I find Japan and Byz just way more fun out of the new civs.

Uh, the idea of ​​civilization variants is very interesting, in my opinion, but simultaneously extremely difficult to balance it well. In the case of a completely new civilization, where we do everything from scratch, we basically only care about what this civilization can offer unlike others, and why someone would choose it. In the case of the civilization variant, the problems begin to pile up. Firstly, the variant should be similar to the original civilization, but at the same time different from it enough to make you feel the need to choose it over the base civilization. Secondly, the variant must also be different from other civilizations to avoid the situation that we choose it instead of the original civilization, but in general another civilization does the same thing better, so choosing it will be better. Here we come to a situation where the variant stands between a rock and a hard place, distinguishing itself from the base civilization and others at the same time, and it is a huge art to balance it. Each civilization has more than 1 characteristic feature. For example, France is trade, calvary, keeps. I think the most important aspect here would be to change 1 element and leave the rest. For example, as mentioned in the video and what Beasty also proposed, we change France's specialization from cavalry to infantry and add a hero, keeping the other 2 elements that could be slightly changed, but not completely. Thanks to this, we have a variant that works completely differently from the original, and by maintaining the remaining features characteristic of the base version, it also distinguishes itself from other civilizations. In my opinion, that's why OOTD did so well because they left the HRE core and changed the weight of the units. Instead of spamming them, fewer, stronger.

In the future I'd rather the Variant Civs be distinct and much more fleshed out, even if we only get 1-2 new ones. Whats the point of getting 4 Variant Civs when they have so few differences from the base Civ? Quality over quantity any time.

I must admit that I am also a little bit disappointed about the variant civs. I think the orginal intend was to make them a little bit more "fantasy themed" -> see "Army of the Sultan", "Empire of Jade", "Order of the Dragon". My idea would be to redesing them from the ground up .... unfortunately that would never happen ....

Exactly! The Variant Civs were created to save resources and money, which I understand. However, this should not affect the gameplay. The soundtracks, dialogs, and building designs can be the same, but the Landmarks should have been entirely different, with distinct age-up bonuses and more unique units. As you mentioned, Jeanne d'Arc is just a more complex version of the French; you simply get a hero, and that's it! In my opinion, it should have had completely different Landmarks to offer a unique playstyle. However, I do like the OOTD and the Ayyubids because they provide different playstyles from their parent civilizations. Still, I would like to see changes to the Landmarks of the OOTD and the visual design of the House of Wisdom for the Ayyubids.

12:01 That boar attempt tho, completely haram

I stopped playing when the variants came out out of protest of the lack of historically based variants, you may remember some of the big posts I made on reddit at the time. I haven't really felt an urge to come back to the game since.

Man, I love the variant civs. And honestly I thought I would hate them. I feel like it made the original civs irrelevant

I love playing mongols. Just bought the game. But moving the bases is so friggin slow and tedious. It’s not easy to move away from an army with your base which defeats the purpose of having no walls or way to fortify easily.

I'm positive about general idea of variant civs....but they could be made better.....they seem a cheap way to add more civs but smart cause devs are smart....btw i'm very interested in next variant civs so i think variant civs work but can be better

Im still bitter about names of some of these variant civ

I like the variants and I feel they are different enough. By AOE II standarts they are not even variants)

I have a friend who doesn't play French, only JD because they have a hero unit. I likewise don't have any interest in playing JD, but I like french. I think the alts civs aren't that different, but that's kinda okay by themselves, so long as it's different enough that some players wll want to play one civ over the other for one reason or another. What's a far bigger issue in my mind is what you mentioned about units in the game that you just don't see. The seige tower, the bald monks. There's a ton of units and upgrades and mechanics in the game that you almost never see for whatever reason. Professional scouts? Mangudai? Varient civs aren't the issue - it's a lot less development work to make a varient civ, which is a huge plus. I like the concept of Varient civs. The issue comes from the mechanics. Are these choices mechanically different/interesting/viable? A lot of the time, the answer is no.

Jeane D'arc should be done the same way as Abbey of kings

My biggest issue is Joan D Arc too. Imo the "only" hero civ there should be in AoE4 (if they wanted a hero) is Genghis Khan. The dude literally conquered the whole "world" alone.

I agree that Ayyubid is unbalanced, not just in a op way, so much sucks about them, but the civ seperates itself a lot from Abba by a lot, I like the civ and it´s not as bad as many people say OOTD is great game design, seperates from all other civs even if it´s not great at top level, but I hate the regnitz, make it not that relic focused I´m indifferent to Zu Xi because I´ve never really played China, but their Unique units are more interesting to me JD is just French with a fancy unit, don´t get me wrong I like the hero but the rest is just French, I never play French anymore cause their eco bonuses are more boring than the hero to me

Pretty good vid, the variants civ more or less fail at bringing truly refreshing stuff, either by design (Jeanne is just french with a hero) or due to very bad internal balance (Ayuubid). I'd like to point a few things about ayuubid. In order to feel more distinct from abbassid they should really dive into the "wildcard" with high adaptability civ theme, it's what is was supposed to be on top of a tempo civ thanks to its 8 age ups options. But the balance between those options is so bad you end up with a civ that only truly picks 2 of its 8 cards and in the same order. Another thing that makes no sense is the golden age. You are making a tempo civ don't ask it to build up to 75 buildings, like it's even more than abbassid the anti-thesis of tempo. The golden age bonuses instead of being locked between a linear progression of spamming buildings should be a list of mini missions that can be accomplished with nor particular order. They should also partially synergize with age ups wings allowing the player to tailor strats and armies according to his needs. For exemple the 50% tech research speed requires to research 10 techs, all of a sudden the wing free with 4 blacksmith techs make a bit more sense and you can imagine a strat where after some fighting you get to castle age and quickly upgrade you army. You want the camel unit attack speed ? Recruit 50 camel units (you don't need 50 living camels just to recruit 50), yes free camels from the wing counts. The siege discount ? Build 2 siege workshops and maybe a few siege units. A few wing reworks, industry wing lowers the cost of millitary buildings by 10/20/30% and yes we are including the siege workshops. The growth wings still spawns its vills but it builds them one after the other at a TC rate instead of spawning them. Gamble wing gets a reshufle option that you can activate for a cost if you haven't spent any of the current tickets. Atabegs can be "fired" read that you don't need to destroy the building in order to get an atabeg back. Thinking about it is kinda fun I think I'll try to make a a more complete and coherent proposition and post it on the discord, but hopefully I showed what ayuubid could potentially become.

I honestly think the variant civs *as they are now* would've been easier to swallow if they weren't part of The Sultans Ascend. Byzantines, Japanese, and the new campaign would justify $15USD by themselves. imo They should've announced the variants and then started releasing them for free a month or two after the DLC came out to give themselves more time to work on them and to help with the content drought. They should've also made it clear the variants were highly experimental so we could judge them as experiments and not as fully-fleshed out civs that you have to pay to access. My main criticism of them is that they're too experimental to feel like genuine fleshed-out civs in their own right. Like the main reason I don't feel like playing OotD or JD is because when I play them I feel like I'm beta-testing a concept-stage civ or an early iteration of a modded civ. Judging them AS experiments: - I do like some of the concepts that they tried out. As much as I hate how JD is completely warped around the hero unit, it actually has sold me on the idea of having more complicated core units in civs that you have to keep alive and build up their power over time. I still don't like how the hero unit is a specific person from history and would prefer something more abstract, similar to the English King or the Mongol Khan. - OotD has sold me on the idea of 2-pop units that are chunkier, but I don't like that the entire roster is 2-pop units. I'd prefer a civ that still had a roster of mostly 1-pop units, but with an occasional 2-pop unique unit that has a specific role. - Zhu Xi has sold me on different landmarks being a really really excellent way to approach variant civs. A big feels bad about all the variants is the aesthetic similarities to their base civ. OotD might play very different from HRE, but the fact that I'm seeing the same architecture and hearing the same voicelines still makes it feel disappointingly similar to HRE aesthetically. Having entirely different landmarks adorn my base, for me at least, goes a long way. - Ayyubids hasn't sold me on anything. There's so much about Ayyubids that makes me sad. I am an Abbasid enjoyer and Ayyubids feel like they're similar, but also stronger *and* less fun to play, which is the worst outcome for a variant imo. I don't think there's a single thing I enjoy about Ayyubids more than I enjoy about Abbasids already.

And so wasted potential with their choices for example HRE > Teutonic Order, French > Crusader States (in crusades themed campaign!) instead we get ???Joanne D'arc??? Also don't forget initially there supposed to be Army of Sultan - not Ayyubids

personally I would like these variant to be like an option during age up. Like they there could be a landmark or technology upgrade that prompt these variant civs

I would never attribute low player count to be the fault of the variant civilizations. I'm going to point my finger at Relic focusing singlehandely on player vs player. They have added FFA nomad, which is a gamemode people wanted, because it's not as competitively structured as the ranking ladder is. I strongly believe there is a big market for players that just want PvE and Co-op content for RTS games. They are hard to pick up and get into, there is a lot of things to learn, but playing against AI in RTS games can be a challenge for a great portion of your time with the game, unlike first person shooters, that tend to have underperforming AI compared to the average skill of the user. Relic needs to release more PvE content, especially Co-op content. They must innovate on what singleplayer content can be created in an RTS game. That could draw in new players or incite old players to return. That is what I believe and I stand by that.

Personally the greatest offender from the Sultans Ascend was the japanese >:( Gad i hate them >:( (which is ironic considering im a weeb and they haunt me ever since Age of Empires 3) That said: Partially i´m happy we have the variant civs. Though a lot of things were quite off (mostly on balance and design wise). Ayyubids fast Age 3 was cancer. And it still somewhat doesn´t feel for me like the proper "Mameluk" civ. Though i appreciate the camel lancer somewhat. John Dark: aside from that she is a pain in the ass to play against. And fok her magic and her ultimates and don´t get me on when she gets bloodthrister and runan hurricans .... ... wait wrong game... It´s disappoiting that she could have had a men-at-arm and horseman focused civ but the only thing we see again are only french knights :( (which reminds me the devs need to do something about the french aswell in that regard). Sushi i´m somewhat fine with what we got because it feels a bit different to the normal chinese and the gunpowder. Their imperial guard though pisses me off once it´s on the field

did you forget Mali can't eat boar

i dont agree

不錯

I think AOE4 devs are OBSESSED with gimmicks, they think that if a civ has a different gimick then that Civ is different, when in reality the CIV works exactly the same but with extra steps. Ayyubids in particular are disaster, Bazaar gives them an entire new gimmick mechanic that does not exist in the rest of the game. like how can you even remotely think thats is okay for a civ to have so wildly different options for age up. You can choose between A- 300 wood B- A NEW MECHANIC TO SPAWN UNITS, VILLAGERS, AND EVEN RESOURCES FOR GOLD Its just... its impossible to balance. They went waaay to hard on the assymetric design and its gonna haunt them forever, they literally thought they were smarter than the people that developed the most beloved and prolific RTS in history (AOE2), and i say this as someone who never played Multiplayer in AOE2.

Other than Jeanne D' Arc - which is as stupid a Civ as its name suggests; the variants are fine. They could have had other names for them. Order of the Dragon - specialised Tuetonic Order more focused towards crusades Ayyubids - is fine Zhu Xi Legacy - could be Koreans - considering they have had a similar history as the chinese.

so i think variants civ are the cheap answer for a new civ , you need to have name , new talks new everything, variants are cheaper and if made it right change the gameplay of the civ. we have 1 good variants that is ootd , it change drastically how you play but alas is hard to balance , 1 okaish variant that is JD , the problem of it is that jd as a hero is cool but don't change enough the gameplay , just focus on arcery or infantry i dunno . 1 meh variant that is ayubids , is just a faster abbasid with a different cavalry with more focus on the house of hope , and in the end 1 copy civ, 1 dinasty and the focus on taxman is not enough to make a variant.

Just generic game theory, would a landmark that has attached shallow water and produces shore fish work? Balance, theme, etc.

I think a couple things are going on here.1 I agree the variant civs were a bad/lazy direction to take the game compared to if they had released completely new civs like Spain/Denmark/Italy, but I still enjoy playing the variant civs we got and the unique army comps they bring. I’ve played about 500 hours, almost exclusively team games, over half vs AI while I was learning the game w/ friends. Now that I play quick match/ranked only, I enjoy being able to go from booming with China’s endgame clocktower siege/Palace Guard army, to rushing a 6:30 castle with Zhu Xi, stealing all the relics and beating up early tier units w/ Shao Monks, then converting into Imperial Guards/10,000 bolts Crossbowmen with the TotS toggle-able buffs, and timing my Landmark builds to end up Yuan so I can do all that plus NoBs for 10% cheaper. That’s one example, but I guess my point is there’s plenty of diversity in play style for the variant civs, I think the bigger problem is just people that’ve played so much AoE they’ve done everything and are just burnt out on the game in general.

What?

for me, it's the reason why I stopped playing AoE4. I loved the Japanese and Byz, but the devs broke their promise: Each civ is "unique" and that's why they release with only 8. Now we have 16, and 4 of those are trash copy/paste. French doesn't have a single unique unit, everything is shared with J'dark. Having a civ after a person is a huge turn off for me. Then "The Order of the Dragon": Just copy HRE, multiple some stats and call of the day, boom, a new civ. Sushi's legacy is also another turn off for me, a "what if" civ with recycling assets. Then Ayyubids, an actually civ, but not well implemented. Look at each original civ, they are amazing, unique. But each variant civ is... trash, shouldn't exist. Again, this is my opinion, if you love it, good for you. I stopped playing AoE4. I played since the Beta. Not just stop playing, but also I lost interest in Drongo's casts (I used to love those) and tournaments I really loved this game, of course I don't like some things here and there, but the variant civs were the last straw I'm really really really excited for AoMR =)

Variant was and is bad idea the way they handled them

One of the most poorly implemented cool concepts that I've seen in gaming.

Byz is cool. The rest kinda suck and severely damaged the game's balance and feel

I still haven't messed with these variant civs. I hope they don't make anymore.

20 seconds no likes, bro fell off