Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

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Post by Peachrocks »

I think having Mexico when the Aztecs are in the game is a bit off. It is different to USA vs. Lakota and Haudenosaunee because even today, the native population percentage in Mexico is a lot higher then it is in the US. 15% compared to 2% and more self identify as indigenous. It’s complicated, like much of Mexico’s unfortunate history.

Having said that though the Aztecs shouldn’t have been in the game in the first place and if they were should have evolved their fighting style with Mexican flavour rather then using the same weapons in the Industrial Age with silly stats justifying them. Looking at you arrow knights.

I also disliked the choice for the same reason as the US civ. The reason of them not existing at the start of the period. Obviously polls named at least 30 other options, just like the US though this time they don’t have the same ‘bias’ the United States did. I think on this forum I listed those 30 choices and why they’d be more justified picks.

Above all else though the balance is again going to go down the toilet because honestly, I don’t think they have any clue what they are doing regarding this game. I honestly thought the African civs were deliberately overpowered as to push people into aoe4.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

another civ you can play as from the first age or revolt into from the 4th age .... #confused

I bet that the next civ will be where you can play from in age 1, revolt to from mexico in age2 or 3 , or revolt to from a Euro civ in age 4
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by MCJim »

Could their timing with this new civ have something to do with counterbalancing the hype of AoE4?
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

absolutely not, they were working on this since africa. Microsofts objective is still to push people to onto aoe4 as they know aoe2 is somewhat secure. They still remain a separate developer to aoe4 and microsofts lack of funding for any event for aoe3DE suggest a further push to aoe4. The recent aoe3DE civs suggest the devs want to exercise their creative freedom with the game instead of trying to create a game which can maintain a competitive environment for another 3/4 years down the line
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Pedrownage »

This seems like quite a gimmicky, unbalanced and hard-to-learn civ, but at the same time it is absolutely tremendous that new content is being added to this old ass game!!! If they keep patching the balance AoE 3 is gonna live for many more years to come!
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by MCJim »

Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Mr_Bramboy »

MCJim wrote:Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
There will be a new civilization every 3-4 months. That is the revenue model of AoE3:DE. As viewer numbers, compared to other age titles, are staggeringly low, it is clear that AoE3:DE does not have a competitive future. It makes complete sense that the competitive scene is not something that FE pays attention to. The priority is to churn out new civilizations and missions, and perhaps campaigns in the future.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by helln00 »

I_HaRRiiSoN_I wrote:absolutely not, they were working on this since africa. Microsofts objective is still to push people to onto aoe4 as they know aoe2 is somewhat secure. They still remain a separate developer to aoe4 and microsofts lack of funding for any event for aoe3DE suggest a further push to aoe4. The recent aoe3DE civs suggest the devs want to exercise their creative freedom with the game instead of trying to create a game which can maintain a competitive environment for another 3/4 years down the line
from the way the new civ is designed, there are 2 concepts that will probably be worked on, the federalism civ concept(US and mexico) and the alliance concept(hausa and ethiopia). Later civs will probably be in either of these 2 moulds, maybe an african on is next since we have gone federal, alliance and then federal again
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

MCJim wrote:Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
They could have waited another week or 2 but for the monetary success of the DLC they have to release it before the holiday season
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by MCJim »

Mr_Bramboy wrote:
MCJim wrote:Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
There will be a new civilization every 3-4 months. That is the revenue model of AoE3:DE. As viewer numbers, compared to other age titles, are staggeringly low, it is clear that AoE3:DE does not have a competitive future. It makes complete sense that the competitive scene is not something that FE pays attention to. The priority is to churn out new civilizations and missions, and perhaps campaigns in the future.
I partly agree because the numbers have always been lower, and we've always had a competitive scene, no matter its size.

I do agree with the fact FE is not foccused on the competitive part. You can tell by the way how multiplayer looks like and their efforts to add new game modes, campaigns and single player stuff. The amount of people that play single player is high and remains pretty stable. You don't even see a dip in player stats when AoE4 came out. So I understand this decision.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Mr_Bramboy »

MCJim wrote:
Mr_Bramboy wrote:
MCJim wrote:Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
There will be a new civilization every 3-4 months. That is the revenue model of AoE3:DE. As viewer numbers, compared to other age titles, are staggeringly low, it is clear that AoE3:DE does not have a competitive future. It makes complete sense that the competitive scene is not something that FE pays attention to. The priority is to churn out new civilizations and missions, and perhaps campaigns in the future.
I partly agree because the numbers have always been lower, and we've always had a competitive scene, no matter its size.

I do agree with the fact FE is not foccused on the competitive part. You can tell by the way how multiplayer looks like and their efforts to add new game modes, campaigns and single player stuff. The amount of people player single player is high and remains pretty stable. You don't even see a dip in player stats when AoE4 came out.
FE does not care about the fact that numbers have always been lower compared to other age titles. They just care about the numbers, and rightly so. The 'staggeringly low' phrase is a direct quote.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Dolan »

When they add Romania (or Wallachia) I'll return to AOE3, lmao.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by duckzilla »

Dolan wrote:When they add Romania (or Wallachia) I'll return to AOE3, lmao.
That would definitely be a better choice than Mexico/US. And there could be badass homecity shipments like a stack of poles to properly send a message to the Ottomans. Also a lot of options for allying mechanics, e.g. with the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Polish, and the Ottomans, or for mechanics surrounding the three principalities Transsylvania/Wallachia/Moldova or the united country of Romania.
Whatever is written above: this is no financial advice.

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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Peachrocks »

duckzilla wrote:
Dolan wrote:When they add Romania (or Wallachia) I'll return to AOE3, lmao.
That would definitely be a better choice than Mexico/US. And there could be badass homecity shipments like a stack of poles to properly send a message to the Ottomans. Also a lot of options for allying mechanics, e.g. with the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Polish, and the Ottomans, or for mechanics surrounding the three principalities Transsylvania/Wallachia/Moldova or the united country of Romania.
Funny thing is all those options as 'ally' civs would be better then either Mexico or the US. Probably the principality thing is better, people would love doing Dracula things. However I think in terms of better, well there's a LOAD of things you could do isn't there.
Mr_Bramboy wrote:
MCJim wrote:Well, they could easily release this DLC in January, February or even later. They chose to do it now. I don't think you can say it defititely has nothing to do with AoE4 being released around the same time.

It could be that they expected less attention to AoE3:DE (which is right) and that they wanted to prevent this by releasing a DLC now!
There will be a new civilization every 3-4 months. That is the revenue model of AoE3:DE. As viewer numbers, compared to other age titles, are staggeringly low, it is clear that AoE3:DE does not have a competitive future. It makes complete sense that the competitive scene is not something that FE pays attention to. The priority is to churn out new civilizations and missions, and perhaps campaigns in the future.
The thing is why waste resources on it then? Creating these civs, even with all their issues takes manpower and people that need to be paid (admittedly they probably get paid peanuts but it's still peanuts they could put elsewhere). I honestly think the community that kept aoe3 alive all this time would breathe a sigh of relief if they stopped messing with the game. I may have my problems with the way the ESO patch was balanced in terms of diversity and appealing to a certain skill set at the expense of others, but at least the logic around it was sound. The way they balance? As I said, I honestly wonder whether they do it badly on purpose to push people into aoe4.

Even more puzzling is the civ choice, both the US and Mexico have a mechanic that represents that side of things, granted its a bad mechanic, but they could try and fix it. US as a base choice I can kinda understand because of today's circumstances but Mexico is a head scratcher, nothing against them of course, I like Mexico just thing the time period is wrong for them. Like all these polls and such telling them what people want and they do this? There are people who won't buy this in consequence whereas they'd have made far more sales on Italy or even Morocco simply because Morocco was expected. It'd have been nice to get another Asian civ like Ayutthaya/Siam/Thailand or someone else who hasn't been in the game before.

Seriously just wish they'd make an aoe game set in Victorian era so they can use these civs without it being silly.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by helln00 »

Peachrocks wrote:
Seriously just wish they'd make an aoe game set in Victorian era so they can use these civs without it being silly.
I mean aoe 3 has the victorian era in the time scope so I think it still works in the end. the steel campaign has the mexican-american war as a backdrop and the war chief campaign was set after the civil war.

The indian campaign is set during the sepoy rebellion which is around the same time as well.

then there just small card references. the latest reference is the boxer rebellion which is 1900.

A lot of these things are contemporaneous to one another.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Mr_Bramboy »

Peachrocks wrote:the community that kept aoe3 alive all this time
This is what some people like to believe but it's not true. This community kept competitive aoe3 alive. I would guess that community is maybe 5% of the total community. In the aoe4 scene, EGC's Genesis tournament was dwarfed by an FFA tournament that was being streamed at the same time. These new civilizations are aimed at the casual player base, which is much larger than any competitive community will ever be.

This was also the case in SC2. More than half of the active players exclusively played CO-OP campaigns. Coincidentally, Blizzard actively released new CO-OP leader packs at a prize.

On the topic of aoe4, why do you think springalds haven't been nerfed yet? Because it is not profitable nor desirable to assign developers to high-level balance issues.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by DNLgibraltar »

Mr_Bramboy wrote: There will be a new civilization every 3-4 months. That is the revenue model of AoE3:DE. As viewer numbers, compared to other age titles, are staggeringly low, it is clear that AoE3:DE does not have a competitive future. It makes complete sense that the competitive scene is not something that FE pays attention to. The priority is to churn out new civilizations and missions, and perhaps campaigns in the future.
I've been thinking that that is going to happen after the African civs. There were plenty of stuff to balance (USA was a meme, Sweden was nerfed into a joke, several legacy cards and units under shelved) but they went 3 new civ in less that 5 months. It was clear that DLC was their model the way to keep the game but I didn't want to accept it.

I know I'm the minority but my greatest fear was that AOE3 would follow AOE2 modus operandi about so many civilizations. It worked for AOE2 but it pushed me back at the time because I felt it didn't fit the setting. Again I'm highly doubtful it will fit AOE3.

I'm down for all those civs but stacking so many new civs in such a short period of time, not balancing the current ones (+ picking up controversial nations because "got pump them up fast to cash in") will lead us to a bunch of non sense and unbalanced civs.

I expect several revolutions becoming civs in a near future because they already exist in the game. If that's the price of keeping the game alive so be it, but I'm not buying Mexico in particular.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Peachrocks »

Mr_Bramboy wrote:
Peachrocks wrote:the community that kept aoe3 alive all this time
This is what some people like to believe but it's not true. This community kept competitive aoe3 alive. I would guess that community is maybe 5% of the total community. In the aoe4 scene, EGC's Genesis tournament was dwarfed by an FFA tournament that was being streamed at the same time. These new civilizations are aimed at the casual player base, which is much larger than any competitive community will ever be.

This was also the case in SC2. More than half of the active players exclusively played CO-OP campaigns. Coincidentally, Blizzard actively released new CO-OP leader packs at a prize.

On the topic of aoe4, why do you think springalds haven't been nerfed yet? Because it is not profitable nor desirable to assign developers to high-level balance issues.
Yeah I guess that's true. Years ago I got the numbers from an Ensemble Dev and I ran them again roughly just before DE came out, you can't really do it now since it doesn't tell us how many people are using the multiplayer. The online community makes up roughly 12% and yes of that a small percentage of that would be part of this community. Very interesting about the FFA tournament though but I wouldn't expect such attention to stick for long which is the problem with trying to appeal to casuals. It's not reliable and there isn't even talk of new content for that game yet (to my knowledge) which is even more ominous regarding casuals.

On the other hand if that's what they believed why bother with balancing and adopting esoc patch notes? I guess to make a few extra sales... Why is the AI and single player experience still pretty mediocre? There's a lot of questions even if you try and see things from a casual point of view. Historical battles and what not are pretty... meh to be honest, it's a fire and forget deal rather than a story that aoe2 and aoe4 have.

As for AoE4's deal? They'll learn pretty quick what happens if you take too long to balance the game. This is one of the things that destroyed aoe3's player base early, combined with a non-historical mediocre single player campaign. I suppose they don't have to worry about the latter at least.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by aaryngend »

Mr_Bramboy wrote:This was also the case in SC2. More than half of the active players exclusively played CO-OP campaigns. Coincidentally, Blizzard actively released new CO-OP leader packs at a prize.
As a SC2 connoisseur let me quickly chime in ^_^
Co-Op didn't exist until LotV came out. Took a few months but then it became the most popular game mode (ladder was still prominent, but co-op was just more comfortable and you could use interesting units with abilities and upgrades that dwarfed the battles you could take in the standard game).

Before that, the Arcade and Custom maps never rose to popularity (becaues the lobby system was god awful, they changed that later but it was kinda too late by then), so co-op finally gave casual players a fun way to play the game with much less stress.
Before LotV, people just got burnt out on competitive 1v1 and some team games (because this was everything SC2 had to offer at that time) and many people quit. This coincides with the rise of the MOBA genre.
I also don't know what you are trying to say with "Co-Op campaigns". Co-op is not a campaign mode at all, just commanders with special abilities, units, passive bonuses and interactions where every map has a different objective. You play with an ally vs AI.
But much more interesting than comp stomps in aoe.

Oh also, about your point with devs focusing more on casual players vs competitive ones. Do you know which part of SC2 was actually only aimed at casual players? :ship:

The big units like Thors, Battlecruisers, Motherships, etc. !

Many units which were big, slow and mostly useless (especially in 1v1) were only created and kept in the game (with barely any balancing over the years) for noobs to enjoy.
They love making big, mighty units.
(At least with Battlecruisers and the Mothership they got changed later in the game's lifetime and they actually have a use now, but you get my point)

I think Mexico wasn't needed at all. I'd also like more idle time between civ releases.
So the game came out with Swedes and Inca in it already. Then we got USA, Ethiopia, Hausa and now Mexico. 4 civs one year after release already..
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Jets »

Is there any info about native units balance? I've seen they're replacing the Maya pikemen.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by DNLgibraltar »

Jets wrote:Is there any info about native units balance? I've seen they're replacing the Maya pikemen.
There are TWO VERY interesting topics about Natives and at least one got a reply from the devs. We'll wait and see.

Edit:
I've found one:
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/minor ... 169231/146

What do you mean by replacing Maya Holcan Spearman?
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Jets »

DNLgibraltar wrote:What do you mean by replacing Maya Holcan Spearman?
Maya Holcan Javalineer, on the Mexico cards.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by DNLgibraltar »

Jets wrote:
DNLgibraltar wrote:What do you mean by replacing Maya Holcan Spearman?
Maya Holcan Javalineer, on the Mexico cards.
Funny thing is that one guy suggested Maya Holcan Spearman being able to throw javelins through one tech...just CTRL+F "Javelin" there. However this javelin thing might have been created before his suggestion.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by jonasnee »

so maybe a crazy request but could anyone with access post all of the benefits of the revolutions including their home cities? i think it would be interesting to see what exactly you can gain from the revolution options in game.
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Re: Viva le Mexico!!! New DLC

Post by Jets »

I predict there might be some bugs with that mechanic, like the Spain with half the revolt deck if you copied someone's deck.

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