New Things:

Chinese get Villagers.
Use "Storage Pit" which is a merged Granary, and Storehouse
Get Horse Archers (Most likely Anti-Cavalry Ranged Hit & Run Unit)
Get "Chu Ko Nu" which if you've played AoE3 or AoK, they are automatic crossbowmen.
Get "Steppe Riders" probably cheap cavalry units like the Raiding Horseman.
get "Chiang Dao Spearman" Spearman who have less health and more attack.
Gets "Military Blockhouse" which can train Archers and Cavalry.
Gets "Academy" which trains Infantry.

New Nature:
- Tigers: Just reskin lions that are as fast as wolves.
- Bamboo: Yields less Wood(?) but is gathered faster.

Speculation on Favor Gather: They may pray or Build Shrines which can be used to either export resources for favor or pray at (a merged Greek/Egyptian Favor systems)

Probably will get a "Castle" Fort which will train elite units.

Second Civ to get Siege Camps?

Probably will get a Flamethrower Siege Weapon, and a Siege Crossbow, and a Catapult.

omg...

Edit: Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgeofMythology/comments/3lhp92/age_of_mythology_tale_of_the_dragon_announcement/

[This message has been edited by CeaseDaFire (edited 09-18-2015 @ 06:51 PM).]

!!!

Yes! Childhood Resurrection!

Kinda disappointed in that screenshot, everything appears to be a reskin or extremely slight modification of the greek civs.

Houses, barracks, stable, granary, nothing really new.

Compare it to the massive changes the atlantean civ brought with it's expansion and this just seems a bit lame.

But will it contain a campaign with Arkantos' original voice actor? I can only spend my nostalgia bucks in a few places ya know.

I doubt any reference of the Original Campaign is returning, it's most likely going to be a different campaign either based on real ancient Chinese events, mythological stories or an entirely new campaign.

Such a pity it's an expansion for AOMEE and not compatible with the original game...

I would be disappointed if the campaign were completely unrelated. Part of what made AOM great was having 44 missions driven by powerful narrative and throwing away all those characters would be stupid, and come on, the end of the titans campaign was just had us begging for more story! Do we not want to see what a new atlantis would have been like?

Exciting stuff
Can't wait for the 2nd.

Oh man, this is great!

What has awakened me...

:| Sweet Mother of Gods.

SPECULATION

Infantry:
Qiang Spearman - Classical Age - Anti-Cavalry Spearman
Changdao - Heroic Age - Anti-Infantry Swordsman

Archer:
Javelineer - Classical Age - Anti-Archer.
Chu Ko Nu - Heroic Age - Anti-Infantry Auto Crossbowman.
Mangudai/Keshik/Horse Archer - Heroic Age - Hit & Run Cavalry

Cavalry:
Unknown - Classical Age - Anti-Archer Cavalry

Siege Weapons:
Siege Crossbow - Heroic - Anti-Building
Catapult - Mythic - Good versus Hordes.
Flamethrower - Mythic - Anti-Ship/Anti-Infantry Siege

Hero:
- Monk: Attacks using Martial Arts, can train 2 white tigers.

Unique Buildings:
War Academy: Can train Infantry.
Storage Pit: Stores Food, Wood and Gold
Shrine: Nearby Animals are attracted to the Shrine, the more animals, the more favor.
Military Blockhouse: Trains Cavalry, and Archers
Siege Workshop: Trains Siege Weapons
Castle: Trains Elite Units

Interesting, the units and buildings look very similar to the Chinese civ in AoE3. Even the trees look almost identical to the ones in some AoE3:TAD maps. If it wasn't for the watermarks and the distinctive AoM goldmine I would have assumed this was a mod for AoE3.

Also, looking at Steelion69's unit list, a lot of those units appear to be taken straight out of AoE3. Cho Ko Nu, Steppe Riders, Chiang Dao, Castle, Academy, and the flamethrower are all in AoE3. I have a feeling they will call the horse archer a Keshik like in AoE3 too. The Shrine system seems to have been taken from the Japanese civ in AoE3 as well.

AoE3 also had trainable "pets" (basically animals) like Tigers, Jaguars, Monkeys, Dogs, etc. which the white tigers in the screenshot seem to be inspired by. I mean the main AoE3 campaign had white jaguars as one of the enemy's go-to units.


Also, take a look at the Steppe Rider from AoE3 (below) and compare it to the cavalry in the image in the OP.


Steppe Rider

The villagers look similar too, and the large building in the bottom left is almost identical to the Chinese town centre in AoE3.

EDIT: I didn't realise that BronyKing11's post was speculation when I wrote this (and I hadn't even seen his most recent one). My point still stands about the visual similarities though.

[This message has been edited by anterior2 (edited 09-19-2015 @ 06:46 AM).]

Great, new content!
Hopes it doesnt feck up with the balance too much though, probably will be fine i guess.

This is amazing! I really hope there is some kind of tie in with the original campaigns, at least...

I'm sure the 12 year old writing the script will fill it with Adamantine doors.

lool =))

Nice new stuff. Hopefully I won't have to load all my submitted maps again.

NEW UNITS NEW TERRAIN TEXTURES NEW GOD POWERSWPENVUHGAOGJTONRUEIKFNJGNSLOGPAHSDKJ

One thing that bothers me slightly. The norse, greeks and egyptians feels more related in a way. The norse were all over Europe with their sailing and raids, egypt and greece are really not that far from each other, and probably had plenty of dealings in the past.
Atlanteans, well, they are more of a fantasy civ, so no further comments.
Now there is the chinese? I mean, norse and egyptians are hardly had much to do with each other, but China is literally on the other side of the world. I fail to see how they would relate to the others. Im no history expert, but China and Europe hardly had much contacts and dealings at these early stages, did they?

Romans would probably be the more sensible civ, but they share alot in common with greek mythology, so perhaps not.
Im not saying this wont be great fun, and the dlc could be very well made, i just dont see the connection with the other civs.
Hope they also buff the norse sligthly, but i dont expect them too.

[This message has been edited by Aoe_1337 (edited 09-20-2015 @ 06:53 AM).]

The Silk Road allowed the Hellenics/Alexanderines to trade with the Chinese, that and Egyptian Traders in Babylon.

posted 20 September 2015 06:52 AM EDT (US) 19 / 20 Aoe_1337's Profile Edit This Message
One thing that bothers me slightly. The norse, greeks and egyptians feels more related in a way. The norse were all over Europe with their sailing and raids, egypt and greece are really not that far from each other, and probably had plenty of dealings in the past.
Atlanteans, well, they are more of a fantasy civ, so no further comments.
Now there is the chinese? I mean, norse and egyptians are hardly had much to do with each other, but China is literally on the other side of the world. I fail to see how they would relate to the others. Im no history expert, but China and Europe hardly had much contacts and dealings at these early stages, did they?

Romans would probably be the more sensible civ, but they share alot in common with greek mythology, so perhaps not.
Im not saying this wont be great fun, and the dlc could be very well made, i just dont see the connection with the other civs.
Hope they also buff the norse sligthly, but i dont expect them too.

AOM is kind of asynchronous. The trojan war happened in about 1200 BC, Hoplites, the main greek infantry unit in the game, didn't appear until 500 BC.

The Norse as we see them in game (i.e. the vikings) were not the established culture in scandanavia until about 1100 AD.

There is nothing wrong with this though, because AOM is a fantasy game at heart, it just uses the common tropes of the ancient world and mingles them with mythology to create a narrative, and they did well.

Also Steelion69 is right, Asia and Europe, and for that matter, Europe and Africa, were far more closely related than you might think. The ancient chinese were (and this is a fact) very aware of the Roman Empire due to trade on the Silk Road, so once again this is just an example of use of narratives from up to 3000 years ago to create a story, I for one am looking forward to seeing what they can do, and I hope that they can tie it in with existing characters, rather than simply leaving the cast of main characters from the past AOM campaigns behind.

Did not see this coming. I still play the game regularly but there are no where near as many people playing it as there are AoE II. Still looking forward to trying out this expansion pack. Buildings are looking very "Greeky" at the moment, so I hope that changes.

Looks lazy.

Well looky here

Disappeared for 3 years

Came back for one day

Era of Myth > AoM:EE

Hey everyone,

I'm one of the project managers for Forgotten Empires on the new AoM expansion. I'll answer a few questions that came forward in this topic.

Rest assured, the Chinese will in no way be a copy of the Chinese in AoE3, nor the Greeks in AoM. All models and textures have been newly created for this. One of the dev blogs will probably highlight the graphical pipeline. On the livestream we'll also elaborate more on why we picked the Chinese over other pantheons.

If you have any other questions, fire away. Although I'm bound to an NDA, so I cannot reveal too much :P

You could go ahead and make a new thread dedicated to Q&A and that way I can round up everybody who has something to ask.

Maybe that's something for later, at the moment there isn't a lot I can reveal anyways

Yeah, I see that the models aren't reused

but the skeletons are (hint hint, monk, Chu Ko Nu)

I wasn't suprised that the Chinese weren't going to be Greek/Chinese AoE3 clones.

especially since gunpowder wasn't even used in warfare back then, so i'd guess the chinese won't be a "trash civ"

(If you can't answer them in this thread, do it in the livestream please)

Also:
- Any Hints on how the chinese gather favor (I guess it's exporting resources at their shrine for food)
- Any new game mechanics?
- Will there be any be any new trash units/elite units for the old AoM/TT civs?, since just minor changes would make people think, all it added was a new campaign, civ and big fixes)
- Is the campaign a continuation from the Atlantis one? or an entirely new story?

Anyway, there is a main reason why you picked the chinese, most likely because they were the easiest to research, the silk road (which I presume will be a tech for a minor god, or the chinese in general), also because that the chinese were not just around that time frame (3600s - 500s CE) but because they had relations with the greeks, egyptians and norse (and atlanteans obviously)

- Is the campaign a continuation from the Atlantis one? or an entirely new story?

Mostly a new story, but there will be references to the old story. For The Titans expansion, the continuation made sense since the story was all about Atlantis, so when adding the Atlanteans they had a perfect segue. The Chinese will start almost anew.

- Any new game mechanics?

Yes, although nothing as invasive and game-changing as the Titans.