(OT) Designers on drugs? -- Age of Kings Expansion will have Mayans and Aztecs!

[F_Smith]

This is horribly off-topic, but:

I don't know if anyone else would find this funny, but since this is a forum for game developers, and it is interesting industry news --

The new "Age of Conquerers" expansion pack for the game "Age of Kings" (a rt wargame based in the middle ages) is going to include the Mayans and the Aztecs, on an equal military footing with the Eurasian civs!

There are Mayan and Aztec crossbowmen, pikemen, and even Petards! They will not get horses or gunpowder, but apparently they will have steel, a navy and fortification skills.

And now the best part -- many of the devout players at the Age of Kings Heaven boards are debating vehemently the possibility of the Aztecs and Mayans being able to beat a European or Asian army of the time! They are in a minority, tho, it looks like 80% of the players feel this is a major mistake.

But it's amazing what you can sell to some of the people . . .

How bad a game designer do you have to be to put stone-age tribes in direct warfare with the Vikings, Huns, Saracens?
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited May 02, 2000).]

[Harun ar Rashid]

Dear F_Smith,

I agree with you that the Aztec and Mayan empires would not have been able to stand a full scale war against a European or Asian country.

But one should not underestimate the American civilizations. It may sound strange but I have read that the Aztec military was superior to the Spanish forces which entered Mexico in 15??. They were not equally armed concerning firepower and iron weapons but the Spanish cannons were useless in the mountaneous terrain. Hernan Cortez landed with only a few hundred men and had to form alliances with the tribes oppressed by the aztecs. When besieging Tenochtitlan he commanded some ten thousand men and the Aztec forces were suffering from a desease.

Anyway, referring to the Aztecs and Mayans as "stone-age tribes" does not make sense in my opinion. E.g. the city of Tenochtitlan was inhabited by about 60000 people when the Spanish came. You won't find many European cities of this size in that period of history.

[F_Smith]

Hi, Harun:

I do agree with you.

The Aztecs were definitely a very advanced stone-age tribe. They were a fascinating civilization. Their culture was unique, their skills in many areas was superior to the Europeans. And the Mayans may have been the most advanced civ in the world, at that time -- if you don't count military technology. The bulk of Europe and Asia were in a 'Dark' age (a bit of a misnomer, I know).

But Age of Kings is a wargame!

No steel, no horses, no navy, no siege technology, no gunpowder, and no experience at real army-level combat. What odds would a Mayan army need to overcome, say, the Norman army of William, or the fully armored Housecarls of Harold, at Hastings? 10 to 1? 20 to 1? 100 to 1? In Age of Kings, they'll win one-on-one, often. For "game balance" reasons.

If Clash is like that, what will you think of it, as a game?

[Peter Dobrovka]

What I would have like to see in Civilization were special advantages for different tribes. But then I think this would be a kind of racism. These Civ-type games are intended to rewrite history, not to replay it. Why shouldn't it be possible to have a Maya Civilization with gunpowder? It's only a historical accident that Europe/Asia did discover it and America not.

So leave the Civs generic, please. Equal chance to every one.

The only thing to consider would be the influence of geography/climate. The big ancient civilizations came from subtropical climate, the cities founded at rivers.
The Aztec civ would not have been so big without corn. Two harvests in one year, plenty of time to work on other things than farming.

Egypt had the periodic Nile flood making the small land stripe fertile. The construction and maintaining of irrigation systems were possible only by governmental organization of the society.

Peter

[Richard Bruns]

Peter: Our technology model, unlike the one in AoE, assumes that all people are created equally. The only differences between different civs are cosmetic changes like the appearance of some buildings or the names of philosophy techs that do the same thing (Chivalry vs. Way of the Blade).

Look at the ecology model to see what has been done regarding the effects of climate and ecology on farming and collection of resources. I have fixed things so the best farmland would be in the tropics and subtropics, with the exception of irrigated temperate grassland. For the cosequences of this, look at the economic model; higher farming effectiveness will mean more people can do other things.

[F_Smith]

Absolutely, I agree --

all civs should be *created* equal. An Aztec or Mayan 'civ' could certainly develop firearms, provided they developed some chemistry tech and the necessary metalworking techs (iron and steel, at least) over time.

In clash, I suspect this will be so.

But in AoK, a stone-age tribe with an advanced civilization will be fighting Frankish armored knights without ever having to develop steel arrowheads. They'll be using obsidian arrowheads and obsidian/wood "swords" against Viking warriors. They'll be on foot against the Hun's cavalry archers.

And they'll be able to win.

[Peter Dobrovka]

Sorry, I have currently no time to read your design documents, I am just lurking sometimes, waiting for Demo 5 and the patch with renders installing of the JDK unnecessary.

If you have already considered my ideas then it's all right.

What I thought was to determine the different development of the cultures by then enviroment and by what you let them do.

For example a civilization in a mountainious region would not develop wheel and it would not be so necessary to expand the civ but it would hinder invention of wheel-based technologies.

If you are fighting always you can develop better military weapons but your agriculture may be behind.

If you need irrigation to make your land fertile your government and logistics will develop faster.

Peter

[Helios]

Mayans and Aztecs? I agree, that seems to be a mistake. The Incas, though, could definitely been included. In my opinion, they were much more advanced than the Aztecs and Mayans, both in terms of political organization and military advancement. They were definitely not a 'stone age tribe.'

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