What should Age of Mythology Retold do about China? 

Thanks to World War Armies for sponsoring the video! Play the game for free: wwc.onelink.me/uDzy/rts As for Chinese in Retold, what is the #1 change you would make if you had the reins?

I really hope they will put some work in the Retold and make the game more popular once again. I remember playing AoM 15 years ago, everyone was playing GTA, Counter-strike, Need for speed, but my favorite game was Age of Mythology.

My biggest issue with the chinese, is that they feel too "samey". they start with scouts like the greek, they passively gain favor from buildings like atlanteans and egyptian and they spam the same hero like the nords. i enjoy the original 4 because of how different they play from each other.

I personally would be happy if China was included with a new coat of paint but I think that the developers should really have a conversation about how they deal with the black mark that comes with including China. Everyone hates it. Even after all the balancing they are still excluded from some lower level games. Seeing as they have to build all the assets again it really might not be all that bad of an idea to just shelf china and put the focus on a DLC civ.

It isn't just China that needs a rework, but Atlantis too. The multiple use God Powers was a big change, and it needs to be evenly balanced across all races.

Really interesting to hear the behind the scenes for this. I shouldn't be surprised that as usual, the developers tried their absolute best, and the failure was entirely down to the higher-ups. I think the best strategy for China would be to not include it in the original release, and add it as DLC later, after one or two other cultures have been added first. China is pretty toxic right now in AoM due to the disaster that was Tale of the Dragon, but if good will is built with the community by producing a good product and good new cultures first, then China could be added back in with little to no backlash.

Retold should add: Indians with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Japanese: Amaterasu, Susanoo, Tsukuyomi. Aztecs: Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca. Romans... could vary... they could either have the mirror of the greeks just with roman names... or maybe some other gods as major. Jupiter(Zeus) definitely has a spot. Maybe Minerva and Juno. But these 2 were minor to the greeks.

Nice video, good insight behind the scenes. Let's hope they put enough ressources into Retold!

You know how cats will sometimes sit on a shelf, and look right at you as they slowly push an object off of it? Either that or they should totally rework it so it feels like something that should actually be part of the game.

Some excellent ideas here, but even more than your suggestions I really appreciated the behind the scenes account of what was going on at the studio.

I sincerely hope the forces that be could grant you an advisory and/or dev capacity for Retold, since the ideas you've given in these video essays are solid!

I can see why the Chu Ko Nu idea wasn't implemented. As something that's supposed to be a basic archer unit that sounds so incredibly hard to implement in a way that doesn't break the game balance in half. As a game where it's highly common to mass Archers in early Classical anyway, I can see that either steam rolling games or making Chinese dead in the water. You'd most likely have to make it something you get later in the game and give them a different basic Archer unit lol

The biggest problem with the original design of Chinese was in order to make them work you kind of need at least some good knowledge of Chinese culture in general, and what we got was at best Shang-chi level ABC grade "oh I might have heard that from my grandma when I was 5" kind of understanding, which would be at best cardboard cutouts. At the very least maybe just give Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms a watch? That movie was pretty poorly received in China, but in my opinion as a gateway to Chinese myths, that works pretty well. Like, as a Chinese who knows about these myths that movie might seem like crap, but for people who have no idea, then it works perfectly well.

Thank you for this video and the insight you provided into the development of the Chinese! I appreciate your more optimistic take on the issue and definitely believe the Chinese can be fixed with some tweaks and a bit of love to make them stand on their own. Can't wait for Retold!

I wonder how much of (or if any) this content influenced China in Age of Empires IV. Fascinating video!

I like your idea to fix Call to Arms. You comment how strong it is in a sup game, but it's also OP in DM when someone like Yoshii is behind it. Also agree about the campaign, it wasn't fun for me to play through (and it was pretty buggy, had to restart one mission). I would fix great flood if I could fix anything. Poster child for china being OP

I couldn't fully grasp why China was getting so much hate from the community; I just pictured them as a wood hungry civ that loved cavalry units and that while the Greeks were the balanced civ, Egyptians focused on defense, Norse on offense, China focused on a strong eco, which explained their many eco myth techs. After watching your video I oo understand a little better. Your idea for Call to Arms being temporary would certainly help with balance and giving the Mounted Archers better tracking would make them more usable. I also agree that Gardens are actually a neat idea for favor, cheap to build early on and great a generating resources but the tradeoff is that they are frail and take up lots of room making it hard to defend them. One issue I did have was playing against Chinese AI since their units were so spammable it gave little breathing room and made it less fun, though of course learning how to maintain a better economy helped remedy this. I agree that their cavalry units should be tweaked and take up more population, leaving the Norse Raiding Cav as the only 2 pop cavalry unit and making them unique.

I actually think that balancing the powerful human units with pop consumption feels bad. Myth units I'm more okay with, but the issue I have is that it kind of prevents the advantage of pop-efficiency. See, in AoE2, the weaker units can often be more resource efficient; consider the paladin vs the halberdier. One on one, the paladin wins, but with equal resources spent, the paladin loses. Now, that's a particularly exaggerated example, because of the hard counter in play, but you'll see the same thing with Paladin vs Battle Elephant. However, when a unit takes up multiple population spaces, it is no longer as feasible to build up enough mass of this expensive but powerful unit to the point that you can take what should be inefficient battles, but win on efficiency because of Lanchester's Laws making your power advantage more efficient. Essentially, what I'd like to see for balance is: Human and Hero units are always 1 pop. More powerful human and hero units cost more than equivalent power myth units, but those myth units may take up more pop space, so they're back to being resource efficient rather than population efficient, but they pair well with human units because that resource efficient brute can create a numerical advantage for the population efficient human units. The myth units also have the balance factor of Favor being a slower gathering resource with limited ability to stockpile it, so they should maybe still have some resource efficiency compared to equivalent power-and-population space human units. I am aware that this is a disagreement with the design choices of the base AoM.

I'm a guy who played AoM years ago as a teen, before my computer died. I didn't know Tale of the Dragon existed, and seeing the bad reviews left me concerned. It sucks cuz I WANT a new, fun expansion to such a memorable game. Look at how many cultures and mythologies we can draw from! Instead of regurgitating more AoE2 DLCs, please do more for AoM. If Warhammer Total War could do it, so can AoM!

Very useful insight, hearing all the formally private information involving work on the DLC now that your not legally bound by it anymore. It makes perfect sense why things ended up the way they did and why this DLC has negative reviews even all these years later. (Also would it really pain Microsoft to let it go on sale? I swear the DLC has NEVER gone on sale on steam) At the end of the day, I'm still happy this 2 decade old game is even getting a remaster like Retold, and didn't end up in the abandonware bin like many of its kin of the time did. EDIT: Also $6000 for a year's worth of work is... just sad, even government welfare pays more than that a year, no wonder you were under contract. Glad it led to bigger and better things thou!

Holy shit, you worked on one of my favourite games ever, from childhood up to even now, I hate how bad the DLC was when I first discovered it and how horrendous the campaign was

Some good points but the real problem was the lack of actual content. Instead of getting quality textured objects and new themes, there was a lackluster set of re-textured old objects and units. The buildings looked like a mod and nothing looked official, it looked home-made. It all boils down to low visual quality. AoM has never been balanced so that wasn't the main issue.

Amazing video, such great insight when it comes to the dlc’s development, thank you. I definitely agree with the art needing to be updated. Not only the campaign had no connection to the original civilizations; the art direction itself (ESPECIALLY the art of Gods) is not in line with the original artstyle of the game. Despite the in game models having insane amount of reused assets. About the campaign being too isolated from the rest of the civs. I understand it was severely rushed. But I can’t help but wonder if a Mesopotamian/Anatolian/Caucasian civilization could’ve been better instead of Chinese. Slowly approaching to Middle and East Asia. Because there are many ancient and powerful civilizations one would encounter before China while traveling from Europe/Middle East to East Asia.

7:37 wtf why gunpowder? No wonder the game was bad, you guys were not respecting the title of the game. Gunpowder gets invented 1000 years after the greek dark ages. It's bad enough that chinese crossbows were invented 500 years after the events in the game were supposed to take place. The #1 change I would make is keep faithful to the ancient Age of Mythology theme. This is an age of empires game so we should expect historically accurate units and tech. We want to learn about ancient Zhou and Shang Dynasty legends, heroes and monsters! That would make the campaign interesting and memorable.

To be fair though it's hard to think of how they could include China within the existing AoM narrative, which Campaign-wise already set China up for failure. Every civilisation was brought in a way that sort of makes sense in the story, but China is so far away from all the civilisations we meet in the game, that it would be extremely hard to even explain why the hell would Chinese characters even interact with Egyptian, Greek and Norse characters in the first place. Sure, in theory they wouldn't need to fetch that explanation too far, with all the portal and underworld magic that exists in the Lore... but the fact is, they introduced the Atlanteans as a direct aftermath of the end of the first campaign, which made them feel more organically part of the universe, while the Chinese... you can tell they're just here to either compell the Chinese market, or because they thought it'd be cool to see those myths represented too, but there was no intention to make their appearance relevant in AoM to begin with. There are so many more European, North-African and Middle-Eastern civilisations with crazy mythologies, that could instead be introduced and get to interact with the original characters in a meaningful way. I'd rather root for a Celtic faction, for instance, or more gods per existing faction.

I know its a remaster/remake, so add-ons/dlc are probably not happening, BUT I would love if they include some kind of new faction(mythology) for ex. Japanese Mythology is quite appealing. Major gods such as Izanami/Izanagi; or maybe the triple siblings: Amaterasu, Susano-ô, and Tsuki-yomi (as a counterpart for the Greek Brothers). And they also have countless deities to choose from.

I wish they just did AoM 2

I hope some of it is included, we can hope

Anyone think that atlantes also need small rework for blessing mining & city placement?

I just want my norse redhead Ginats fight against some celtic and germanic Warriors, I also deeply hope for rome, so I can play my Varusschlacht just with myth

What about having gardens instead of farms? Like the civ gains favor from farms. Maybe you can build gardens for cheap (like 5 wood) and then upgrade them for 70 wood to be gathered for food (in the exact same way as a farm) and favor. Currently, having gardens act as a plenty vault is something you can't balance. Either the resources gained from farms is negligible or your economy is crazy explosive. This isn't me complaining the China is an overpowered faction (as it's been a while since I've played against them and they might suck in other areas), but rather pointing out a distinct fact so this flaw in design can be avoided.

The actual shame is that Age of Mythology never did Slavic mythology. Which is massive compare to China or Norse or Egyptian. But okey. Markets are always served first.

Hope will have more civs.

Also what mods are you using in the video??

Personally I loved the idea of spammy Chinese infantry but I do agree that game as is now is not fun to both play with and play against. So if Retold is willing to put in the extra mile, I would love to see some kind of morale system, where if infantry is left alone against enemy myth units, the infantry cowards over time and refuse to receive new orders. And this thus further justifies the role of generals in the Chinese faction and gives key weakness that can be exploited by the enemy. This will fuether prevent cheese gameplay, since it would literally require a myth unit to deny harassment depending on balance.

Hello my friend . would you be interested in making a video of the new RTS game Red Chaos - the strict order. there are already some videos about it and it can also be seen on steam.

The additional units in the OG civs should be removed, no priest/healers should exist like in AoE2 and AoE4. AoEO have good civ design, they can see how its done there for more unique playstyle. But yea, heavy rework to the Chinese and the removal of the new units of the OG civs should be nice upgrade to the TT.

I think they need to rebalance all of the factions around each other. The Greek, Egyptian and Norse were all designed with each other in mind. Atlantean was designed after the fact and it definitely shows with their god powers having multiple uses and overall needing less micro to manage, although this faction was pretty powerful it wasn't too far off that it couldn't be beat. The Chinese faction is just a mess and should be completely rebalanced For the campaign though yeah nuke it. I don't think it would be necessary to have them interact with the OG cast of characters but at least include the other factions as enemies or allies in the campaign. Take a page from the Atlantean campaign where you not only played the Atlanteans but also as other factions against the Atlanteans.

AoM is my favorite game ever, but China always felt a litle bland to me. I don't know if it's just the notalgia talking, but I am open and hopeful to meet them again in Retold

I agree with most of the video. The Chinese are nowhere near as bad as most people say they are, but they still have issues. I'd argue that all the civilizations have issues, but I digress. I don't agree with your dislike of the campaign though. I thought it was fun and memorable, but I agree it should have tied in with the other campaigns and featured the other civilizations.

00:58 "blows harder than an einherjar" Christ almighty XD

if they dont fix not only will be a major fuck up ( after AOE4 that would not surprise me) but retold will be just another another HD version you need buy again.

Do you have an idea when Retold releases, maybe this year?

when do you think the release date would be?

What if each Age had its own immortals, and you got weaker ones from early ages and more powerful ones from later ages?

1:04 is it true most of the DLC was made by 1 game?

I never understoot why they took china as the new faction there where so many other options like: the aztecs hinduisme

The Chinese dragon should make lightning or thunderstorm, Chinese dragons are not supposed to breath fire

I never really played around them much, but I remember, that minus all the unbalanced and low effort critique, my own personal beef was that the Chinese were simply completely disconnected from the rest of the game/civs. You can hardly join them campaign wise with any semblence of logic, and simply don't fit in that much because of this.

just fix the net code. playing online can be great but the lag and drops are very annoying

Always interesting to learn how a shitshow became a shitshow from an insider

A good overhaul should be enough

Just make a dedicated server. It will be soooo much helpful. Me and dozen of my friends just need a dedicated server to calling us all back.

I Hope Graphics Chinese be better ini Retold

I hope alone side a Re worked china, we will eventually get other mythologys. Aztec or one of the other messo Amercian empires. Celtic/ Irish. Japan would be could but might be a bit similar to Chinese. Native American, Pacific islanders. Perhaps even Babylonian and proto abramic

Didnt the mods already fix it ?

I have zero interest at all in TOTD chinese, I'd prefer a completely new chinese mythology set in a different historical period instead, with new and cool mechanics and of course better myth units. Anyway there are some elements and features that should be removed or changed regardless in Retold: the fire lance should be removed for obvious historical consistency, that weapon is far too modern. The pantheon should be completely reworked from the ground up: for example the jade emperor, sun wukong or the three pure ones were all of them considered far more powerful and important than shennong/fuxi/nuwa in chinese mythology.

Why does campaign have to incorporate previous civs / campaigns?? I know AoM isn't supposed to be realism but they historically didn't interact wiht those other Civs in that era.

cant wait AOM retold, buying or even pre purchase for sure ❤

We want more yay =D more deities, more powers and units

What I dont like about the Chinese: -The splash of Vermilion Bird is way to big. -That some Godpowers are to strong. -That Monks convert units: it doesnt fit the setting in my opinion (why should a devout follower of Zeus in a setting were gods are REAL convert to a different believe system in just 11 secounds of Wololo, it makes no sence) ... For Atlantians this is a Godpower ... and Chinese get this free of charge? This doesnt seem fair ... Monks feel incredibly bad to play against. I hate that this unit exists. -That Chinese start with a 4th Vilager is a very strong boost in the early game with no real downside. Compare this to for example Egypt. They have a reduced gather and building rate to make up for the empower ability. -That gardens can generate gold. Gardens are in general just better monuments. All in all I think the chinese need a complete re- desingn ... the faction feels completly out of place and broken. They are not fun to play and not fun to play against. Same is true for atlantians ... whenever I watch competetive play they together with chinese usually win whenever they are picked. Thats usually the problem with dlc factions ... we can observe similar sitautions in AoE2 or WH3TW were certain factions are completly irrelevent and a bad pick due to the new ones. I hope the retold team keeps this in mind and doesnt fall into the same trap.

I think they should buff the earth dragon and other dragons in general They get bodied by a mere white tiger when the expansion is named tale of dragon Also the titan pangu looks devastating...ot should have been dragon...more dragons, more they can represent chinese mythology. About other stuff, i wish they make the a.i more intelligent and advanced than the already modded a.i ...its pretty good, but it would have been awesome if we can chat with the a.i and even tell them to attack where we will attack...sounds too much to ask, but if they implement it, it will be so awesome. Imagine enemy a.i defeats you and says , down there you go sucker 😂

Wait, your team only got paid 6k total!!!!! What the hell. A Microsoft new grad dev makes short of $200,00 a year. I can’t believe how bad they shafted y’all!!! So fucked up

No Chinese civ. There I fixed it.

I will say the Chinese faction is interesting faction, but the campaign freaking sucks. However this video does explain a lot. For one, a lot of the faction is cavalry focus so with infantry you don't have anything past the basic anti cav and anti infantry, but overall, the chinese are strange where they can train up scout units when the cataphract is more viable, some myth units were strange but I can't remember but I do know one myth unit that heals your units upon death, that is very strange and I ask why it exists. Though there were other units from other factions like the Egyptian kopesh, I been told its great against villagers but then it got updated to be good against caravan as well, the problem is the unit can be outclassed by any other combat unit, I seen comments thinking, what if the Kopesh gets a defense boost when near the pharaoh and pharaoh gains an attack boost. Examples. One thing I do hope to see, more factions, I would like to see aztecans or meso americans in general, the africans and even Japanese. An RTS of cultures set in the midBronze to early iron age. Though if the Chinese do get a new campaign simply a reworked campaign and a whole new campaign, if its chinese versus other cultures, I would like it if you play as an invading force or atleast some sort of invading expedition force.

I want see voice chat on game

The single player campaign sucked, it should have started with 2 factions warring about something insignificant in mission 1, you vs some other chinese. Mission 2 you encounter a strange door to the underworld and your enemy escapes there so you chase him. You get sealed in but emerge in another door in Egypt 5 years after the events of the Atlantean campaign and meet the heroes there. Your old chinese enemy has sided with the forces of evil so you ally with the old Egypt/Grecian heroes chasing your old enemy up north to a final gate (the Norse campaign seemed a bit weak in OG AOM). I was expecting something like that when I started playing it - not some wierd 7 mission campaign about rescuing some birds where you didn't even leave China. Imagine if The Titans (which already had mixed opinions) had a campaign where the other civs didn't even feature at all how much worse it would have been recieved?

I want Slavic gods

So no chinese at launch guessing they will be DLC

Including China was a mistake, they should have gone with either persians or indians. China rarely if ever interacted with other nations.

What should Age of Mythology Retold do about China? Remove it. Along with Atlantians.

I'll be honest, if I was in charge of it I wouldn't include either china or Atlantis. I liked the balance of base AoM the most and practically never played with the titans expansion.

I am always whishing, to this day that there was an option to disable the Chinese add on completely. It has absolutely ruined the game. It’s already been said a million times that it’s a cash grab, but it actually managed to ruin the game. The cpu is my biggest gripe. For some reason I can beat Titian with no handicap, I was never able to do that. They are noticeably stupid, don’t go for relics, build their docs in stupid places, don’t go for settlements until far in the game. Those are just a few problems with the ‘updates Ai’. Also if you were to host a game with 10 slots, and make all the cpu random gods including yourself, I can pretty much guarantee you that over 70% of the gods will be Chinese every time. That is so gd annoying. Sorry for the book (Also if you play vinlansaga or team migration, and have a Chinese cpu, the computer literally doesn’t have enough resources to build all it’s necessary buildings to advance, so it just breaks. Like really)

China feels so tack on. It needs complete rebalance.

Shennong was good like fixi and nuwa but become too weak after 2,7 update and worse in 2,8, Dabo Gong is the most useless god in the game,china dont have ranged MU so they need very good archers to compensate especialy shenong who focus the fire lancer do HALF damage and his catapults do only +10% damage to buildings and his splash is useless,also monk has no use in high level games and is not that good to compare to fuxi nuwa bonuses maybe his convert time to MU should be 7 seconds or double range monk is a bad unit anyway and cannot be trained in classic age is the worse, shenong need a rework asap,maybe should include a silk road tecnology to improve the caravans is historicaly acurate

There is something I don't understand. Why Chinese? If I'm not wrong their concept of gods is vastly different than the other 3 mythologies, they are more like powerful humans (maybe due to the many emperors taking a godlike figure). So we start with the wrong foot. There are other far better options, like Hindu. Sounds like a comercial decision rather than game design.

I think Extended edition needs to be entirely ignored and they should port the original version of the game. Every added unit is extremely unbalanced and look and sound horrible.

No china or the aztecs please

They should exclude.

All the Chinese sprites looks like a bad mod.

They should add Armenian civ like in AoE. And about Chinese... just no... it's ugly and I never use this word lightly - racist.

Imo, China should be put away and focus on Greek, Egypt and Norse, then Atlentians and maybe Rome since they also had multiple gods 🤘 and some other tribes maybe but mostly from Europe..

Am I the only one, that thinks they should have included Aztecs/Mayans instead of a chinese civilization?

Chinese shouldn't even be there, this was a stupid mistake !

Scrap it, terrible addition. Doesn't belong with the other civilizations.

Played Chinese a bit when released, and a bit against them. DISABLED and never used again.

Are you still part in developing in AoM Retold?