sick of europe

[Freedom Onanist]

sick of those who are sick of europe

What that man says.

I am sick of people trying to populate TW with their bizzare, twisted and narrow nationalistic versions of history. Moving away from Europe and/or further back in history simply introduces more and more fantasy stylee units. Someone mentioned the Boxer Rebellion, can you imagine the kind of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" fantasy type units that might be included? If anyone remebers Shogun they will remember that guy with the super-samurai sword who could take on a whole unit by himself . Maybe the Boxers would have the power to stop bullets with the power of deep meditation - as the poor saps were told. What about the arcani, wailing women, amazons, etc...

Setting the game in an 18th cent Western context seems to me to be a great way of restricting some of the wilder enthusiasms for "cool" units and grounding it in some kind of reality. At least the re is plentiful historical reference material to stop them going mad on "machine gun" Chinese Xbows (I know they existed, but they were relatively useless) - a weapon that looks "cooler" than it had any significant impact on the battlefield.

Plus, the game is developed by people who are either European or closely associated with European history so why shouldn't they do a game about that?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Seeing as the game is focused on conquest and battles (at least this was the case for previous TW games), with much less focus on diplomacym politics and culture, the decision is rather obvious: you must include the continent where the most militarily powerful nations existed. The exclusion of China I guess is mostly because of the problems of creating so many factions. If you include China, you must include Japan, for instance, and a lot of other neighbors of China. The Himalayas and the Siberian steppes otherwise provide a good "natural" border to let the map end. If China is included, some 5-10 other factions with very big differences in culture between them have to be included as well, and that's a lot more work for the CA artists! Expanding the map to include China and Africa, as well as adding more material for the Napoleonic wars, seems to me like a good content for an expansion. The 30 years war will probably be the next full game.

[Zenicetus]

Seeing as the game is focused on conquest and battles (at least this was the case for previous TW games), with much less focus on diplomacym politics and culture, the decision is rather obvious: you must include the continent where the most militarily powerful nations existed. The exclusion of China I guess is mostly because of the problems of creating so many factions. If you include China, you must include Japan, for instance, and a lot of other neighbors of China.

I think the main reason to exclude China and Japan is that the game will focus on projecting power overseas, colonizing the New World, with big fleet battles. China was sending HUGE sailing ships to India in the previous era, but due to political factors (the fall of the eunuch faction at the Court), the fleets were scrapped, the shipbuilding dockyards abandoned, the technology and seafaring experience was lost. They became very insular nations, not interested in exploration and founding colonies overseas. So the Empire game will reflect that, and leave China and Japan out as major players (or even minor factions, I hope).

China, Japan, India etc. could have been in the game as targets for land invasion and conquest, even if they weren't operating modern navies. But why bother with something that hard, when the New World is a shorter hop across the Atlantic, with a low density population of very low-tech natives to deal with?

Fewer principal factions also makes it easier for CA to do a better job with the main factions they do have. I'd rather see just five or six main factions, fleshed out with unique dialog, governments and rulers, than a large number of factions that aren't as immersive to play.