Take a look at this list:Squamiger wrote:source pls, for this super broad generalization about an entire continent that you know almost nothing about.Well, in general, they didn't make big fancy buildings, I don't even have to try to make this point because all you have to do is just look at what's there. The few ones that did get built were the product of a few rich kingdoms. And what do rulers do when they have a lot of resources, such as gold which they trade in exchange for other materials? They get the taste of power and want this reflected in their status, in how they live, they want to emulate rulers from other kingdoms, inasmuch as they know about them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_Africa
And tell me how many are native architecture and how many are just castles and forts built by various colonists (Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, etc).
You're replying to a strawman here, I wasn't arguing about Ethiopian architecture in general, but about the fact that they're featured in the game using a castle building, and that's all based just on one single little fort built in Ethiopia under the influence of Middle Eastern or Asian cultures. I was arguing that they are forcing this meme "AOE game with castles" onto regions of the world whose civilisations weren't really defined by this.source pls. Why do you assume that Ethiopian rulers were influenced by outsiders, and not the other way around? Ethiopia has a unique tradition of monumental architecture going back possibly as far as 1000 BC, with the proto-Aksumite Dmt kingdom. There's two things here: Ethiopian architecture is very distinct and unique, as the country with one of the oldest traditions of Christianity in the world. It's quite different from much of the architecture on Somalia and the East African coast, which was more influenced by Islamic art styles but also was equally an indigenous tradition and not just a copy. There are many features of East African monumental architecture that are found nowhere else in the Islamic world, like porites coral carved niches, pillar tombs, and mosques without minarets. The earliest stone structures in East Africa were built directly on top of, and in the same form as, pre-Islamic wooden buildings. The idea that African elites just copied buildings from elsewhere is fundamentally incorrect. I mostly know about the East African examples but I would bet it's the same situation in West Africa as well.They often visit those other places or have travellers sent there, which describe what they saw there. And that's how they get such ideas that they need to build some of those big structures that were seen elsewhere. But again, these were not characteristic of most of Africa's architecture. Sure, you can find maybe one or two in Ethiopia, due to their proximity to the Middle East, from which they got influenced. That's the case for those nations in the "horn of Africa", like Ethiopia and Somalia.
I was arguing again that they're forcing this idea of game with castles onto a region whose civilisations weren't really characterised by it.What does that have to do with anything? They are making Hausa and Ethiopia civs so this is irelevant.But if you go to Angola or Zambia, you won't find any castles or forts built by natives.
AOE3 might be officially themed around colonialism but it kinda starts where AOE2 left off. What are the most rudimentary types of units you see in the "colonial age" or whatever it's called now (commerce age?)? Pikes and bows were typically medieval units, that's why they're featured so prominently in AOE2. However, these types of units didn't simply disappear at the end of the medieval age. For a while still, they continued to be used even in early modern armies (such as Landsknecht in the HRE armies). Gunpowder and artillery were gradually introduced and developed in Europe at least from the 13th century, if not earlier. By the time the first colonial expeditions were launched by the Portuguese (early 15th century), cannons had already been included in the arsenal of some European armies.Who said anything about the medieval era? AoE3 is a colonial era game, and Ethiopians and Hausa people in the colonial period were building large stone and mudbrick fortifications across their kingdoms, and that's whats reflected in the sneak peak.I'm not saying this to imply anything about the devs and SJW stuff, just pointing out that they're forcing this idea of medieval age and castle architecture on the rest of the world, when the medieval era didn't exist outside Europe, it's a European historical concept. It would be like the Chinese making a game about the Han dynasty with buildings from that era then adding civs from all around the world and trying to shoehorn their architecture to look like Han buildings. Something like that.
So there wasn't a clean and clear break from the medieval era even up to the 16th century, they were still using pikes and bows even during the colonial age. New types of weapons appeared, which harnessed the power of explosives (black powder) and powered much of the effort launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish to establish new sea trading routes, as a result of which they established new colonial empires. But those legacy weapons, swords, bows, pikes, were still used, despite the fact that they defined much of the medieval era type of warfare. Just as castles and fortifications were another defining feature of medieval warfare logistics, which was also born out of that specific structure of power in each territory, with kings that were actually quite weak and feudal lords, which controlled a fiefdom. These local lords built castles in order to fortify their local power and resist any invasions. That's why I said that this particular warfare style, which involved castles, pikes, bows, forts, is typical of the medieval age in Europe and some parts of Asia (like the Sassanid empire). Trying to make a civ look like they were a civilisation of castles, fortresses is just weird, when at best, they just had one little fort inspired by Middle East and Asian structures (including Indian ones).