Many of you may not know this but I’m a huge fan of the Age of Empire series. The amount of hours I’ve spent as a little nerd playing Age of Empire in my old PC was unreal. My summer was literally sent building the perfect empire, waging wars and learning about all the historical figures and the marvelous achievement of various nations spanning across time. With Age of Empire IV in the horizon, there’s a lot I’d like to see, but the biggest being a better representation of the many great and powerful African Kingdoms throughout history.
When it comes to African history, it’s rarely, if ever properly represented in any form of video games. I mean, there’s so much history and legacy in the continent of Africa that any game developer would have a field day with. Anyways, with Age of Empire IV, I believe this would be the prefect starting point to introduce more kingdoms and empires from the African continent throughout times.
As a fan of the series, I enjoyed seeing civilization like United Kingdom, France, Germany, China & Japan (Europe & Asia respectively) been represented but I also feel like Africa is always just seen as a landscape for Europe to do their battles (African scramble for example), however they too had more civilizations that just Ancient Egypt alone that could finally get the representation they deserve and would help educate a lot of people.
Yeah, I’m aware that the series has had an expansion pack called Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms, however like I said, Africa is a huge continent with some huge kingdoms and the Malians and the Ethiopians were just a drop in the bucket when it comes Africa history.
Age of Empires has had a twenty year problem of acting like the Mediterranean (and particularly Europe) were the only important empires to come from and relegate many other continents to expansion pack afterthoughts. I think now is the time to really make a change.
It could be a great way to introduce civilization such as Songhai Empire, The Ashanti Empire, Kingdom of Benin, Nubia Kingdom and many more just to name a few to people who’ve probably never heard of them before. It’s one of reasons why I’m excited for Age Of Empire IV, to see what civilization they could add to the new installment. Oh and please release the game in Steam, no one wants to use the Windows Store!
Aside from what I’d like to see a sleeker UI, revamped unit tactics. I liked the current strategy options in Age of Empire IV but lets be real here, largely fights are won by the biggest army. I’d like to see more tactics play a bigger role in battles. And lastly, multiple cities. I’d like to see Age of Empire IV allow multiple hubs for different, specific productions types. I think that would make having multiple cities more fun,
Anyways, let me know what you guys think?
