About 2 years ago Age of empires 3 Definitive Edition came out of early access, and a lot of dramarama was generated by the Microsoft-peepeelet devs having changed the Indigenous Indian civilizations to to be more accurate about their representation blabla you get the idea.

I don't remember the exact timeframe, but early access was October 2020, and the release in 2021.

AOE3 GAYMERS GOT NERVOUS ABOUT THE CULTURAL SENSITIVITY ISSUES:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/ixz8mg/is_anyone_else_worried_about_the_cultural

I don't remember all the details of the changes, but the devs would change the names of two of the prominent Indian civs.

The devs had also made a big show of having had actual natives in their studio to give them "advice" on what was historically accurate and stuff, and this caused uproar, as one of the most major things they changed

ARTICLES COME OUT ABOUT CHANGES FROM THE ORIGINAL TO DEFINITIVE EDITION:

https://screenrant.com/age-empires-3-definitive-edition-changes

"The last change, and one that's nice to see, is that World's Edge Games is altering the Native American civilizations. In the announcement post, the studio says that they always strive to represent different cultures and peoples, and the Native American civilizations simply weren't meeting its standards. Although the studio hasn't said exactly what will be changed, it did work with tribal consultants to more respectfully portray the civilizations in the game."

https://www.cbr.com/age-of-empires-iii-definitive-edition-changes

"The Native American civilizations have also been overhauled to give a more realistic depiction of each tribe. The Sioux have been renamed Lakota and the Iroquois are now the Haudenosaunee. Some of the buildings have also been remodeled to portray the tribes more accurately. World's Edge, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition's developer, worked with Native American consultants to ensure each tribe is represented realistically. The Age of Empires series has always strived to be as historically accurate as possible, so tweaking the Native American tribes to represent them faithfully was the right decision."

FIREPITS CHANGED:

https://www.theg*mer.com/age-of-empires-3-definitive-editioin-everything-new-changed

========(from article)

"You now build Community Plazas instead of Fire Pits; they function the same (set gatherers to it to get special benefits).

What were referred to as the Iroquois in the first game are now the Haudenosaunee; the former Sioux are now the Lakota. They are otherwise the same, mechanically.

The Haudenosaunee and the Lakota do not gather from mines directly; they must build special buildings (Tribal Marketplace) adjacent to mines to gather coin from."

========(article end)

Context from the firepits: the Native indian civs had the unique RTS ability which basically gave them very powerful bonusses for "free" - in the sense that letting their gatherer units (villagers) dance around the fire pit would generate powerful bonus shit based on the civ. Other resources like food/coin and wood deteriorated over time as they were used up, while Fire-Pit dancing was "infinite" and could be used indefinitely, with caveat of the time and opportunity cost you lost with your villagers dancing instead of gathering the other 3 main resources. But a skilled RTS player could juggle the advantages of using their villagers to dance instead of gathering resources. The Souix for example could generate an extremely powerful Cavalry unit every 30 seconds if like 5 villagers danced around your fire pit, and spawned a cav unit every 15 seconds if you had 10 vils dance, you get the idea.

With the usual early access tweaking and altering of an established Meta, the change in the Fire-Pit completely fricked over the strengths of the Native indian civs, at least early i don't remember when or how it resolved.

This put in the view that the Devs were more focused on Woke-shit, rather than using their time economically to improve upon the AOE3 remake in terms of mechanics or whatever.

SUB ERUPTS IN INFIGHTING:

Opposing opinions :

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/tyxe4z/how_is_the_definitive_edition_in_its_current_state

The view that devs focused more on woke stuff was compounded upon its release, as the AOE3 was much more buggy and unfinished than the Definitive Editions predecessors of AOE1: DE and AOE2: DE. Both the AOE1 & 2 remakes were buggy, not nearly as buggy or unfinished as AOE3 was incomparison. You'll note the game was in early access about October 2020, fully released in 2021 Feb/march (i dont remember) - but it took another 6 months before the game was in a state comparative to the AOE1 & AOE2 remakes.

Thus the player base which was much smaller than the cult following of AOE2 was split even further by the culture-war skirmish and the multiplayer being divided between two set of games - much salt for everyone!!!

https://www.reveddit.com/v/aoe3/comments/jzqm5l/age_of_empires_iii_definitive_edition_honest

"It's a shame because I was hoping that definitive edition would revitalize the player base yet all it has seemed to have done so far is fragment it further."

"I have been waiting for age 3 DE since they announced it back in 2017. Even took a week off mid October to play hundrets of 2v2 ranked games with a friend of me. We had been PR 40 back then in 2005/2006. But it was so buggy and i had so many drops, crashes and disconnects that we couldn't even manage to play 100 games in first week. After they fixed some crashes they destroyed ranked / games wouldn't countThen there was the file deletion bug. After one of my friends lost his files i had enough. I deleted the game. Pre ordered World of Warcraft Shadowlands and didn't look back. Played 200h and didnt had a single drop / disconnect / game crash. I was the definition of a die hard fan back then and i would have paid 150 euros for a stable and good working remaster. I would even buy a new pc for it. But they fricked up so hard that i wont come back, its not important how many fixes they do. I had been so angry after dropping / crashing 4-5 times a day in the first weak, that i would rather work for free then play this game any longer. My vacation week has been destroyed by Microsoft. Never again. 1 month later and it still sucks. They should have delayed it by 1 year."

"Me and others continuously asked the developers to postpone the release when it was still in what they called "beta " stage (which felt like an alpha stage to be honest). We told them this would happen, just as it happened to AoE1. Yet, here we are. It's really sad. I've been playing AoE3 since it released but I'm not going to buy the DE. Not unless they fix the game for good, and I don't see this happening any time soon..."

This is the uTube vid causing the bussy blasting

MONTHS OF INFIGHTING:

Months of drama and passive aggressive posting on the sub. Just scouring top of controversial section:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/rc5m5s/the_real_aoe3

The racists want the fire pit back!

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/rc5m5s/the_real_aoe3/hnv3twa

UNBALANCED GAME

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/13ram9r/lakota_eco_is_ass_omg

THE WHITE MAN'S GAME!!!

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/mkdi57/for_what_its_worth

filthy mayos takes offence to that!

Don't say it's just a game - EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL

Some drama from the steam forums: where majority of forum posts were bitching about race!

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/ms55kw/aoe3_steam_discussion_the_blatant_racism_in_the

"I feel like the developers cant win. If they dont include any POC models for the US civ, people would have started a witch hunt. They added POC units and now there are people calling them racist.

Just frustrating to see all the negativity over this addition to the game. Especially over such small details. IMO Age of Empires should never be looked to as history. It should inspire people to look up the real history of the material in the game. That's it. If the game is fun and it pushes people to find real information then its done its job in the history mindset. I find it hard to believe anyone plays AoE and thinks, this is how it was."

BBC POSTING:

The black washing of scandinavian Gingercide angers the Swedistan cucks:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/jc9pjv/they_made_indians_accurate_but_two_out_of_4

Hey look it's an Amazon series in the game!

"Have you seen Sami? They can be pretty dark. Plus every Euro civ in the original game was like this."

"Yep, most Euros civ have (and have always had) black/brown settlers. It's a way of acknowledging slavery without, you know, explicitly having a slavery mechanic. Sweden had slaves in its colonies, so all this fits. What is your point, exactly?" Swedistan has always been a New York Subway conglomerate of ethnic diversity sweaty!

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/mqdp4b/racial_imbalance_1819th_century_us_army

Amerimutt complains that 90% of revolution army was

"This mf's thinking that he's playing a documentary"

Lots of minging about the proportion of the US army was black or not.

Some random: Why do the devs hate the Swedes?

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/149yz2e/why_do_the_devs_hate_sweden

Because Allah has not yet purged europe from the Cuck yet1!!!

RENAMING DRAMARAMA!

Holy shit almost forgot about the renaming drama! The devs also renamed a bunch of shit in the AOE3: DE

THE COLONIAL AGE TO COMMERCE AGE:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/j2b9gt/de_colonial_age_renamed_to_commerce_age

So in age of Empires they have the tradition to have your civs evolve into incrementally more powerful technology tiers, by advancing through what's called Ages , to simulate the evolution of a civilization through time - it's been a staple of the Age of Empires since the 1st game and is kind of part of its name.

In the AOE3:DE they fricking renamed the Colonial age to a more "politically correct" term.

Even the more liberally slanted subreddit found this one change indifensibly stupid.

"And the Discovery Age is called the Exploration Age and plantations are called estates. I get why they did it: They don't want every article about it on sites like Kotaku to be about how "oppressive and pro-slavery and glorifying of colonial atrocities the game is. C'mon, it's 2020." In this day and age, people would get hung up on that and Microsoft just wants to avoid the problem altogether.Doesn't make it any less stupid, though. It's still referring to the time-period colonization started; if anything, it's worse because they boil down colonialism to "it's great because they made a lot of money." And the Imperial Age is still called the same thing and obviously refers to the the time period the British Empire was at its peak. And, surprise! It was a colonial empire."

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/j2b9gt/de_colonial_age_renamed_to_commerce_age/g75q81v

"I am so disapointed with the rework's direction. Most major changes focus on BS instead of actual gameplay improvements. I wont support this game despite being a huge fan of the original AoE3."

PLANTATION RENAMED TO ESTATE:

https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/the-removal-of-the-term-colonial-from-the-game-why/104051/4

Chud gaymer mod the old names back in

ESSAY POSTING:

One Non-chud definitively (TM) owns the chuds with facts and logic

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/oracex/rant_some_points_about_that_pc_correction_in_the

About the politically correct

"Trying to be brief, since there have been lots of posts complaining about these changes:

I've seen several people saying that changing terms like “colonial age” or “plantation” is political in some way. One the one hand it's true, but people shouldn't forget that the original terms and framing were also extremely political. Not saying they were good or bad, but the concept of a game which is depicting the era of European Imperialism and framing it as a glorious age of discovery and conquest - that is inherently political, there's no getting around that."

"[Edit: many commenters don't seem to be getting this point, since they're still complaining about “political correctness.” If you think renaming the colonial age is political, but have never thought about the political implications of the term “colonial age” ... ask yourself why one bothers you but the other doesn't. Maybe some kind of bias?]

In a way, sanitizing that time period by replacing all the labels with neutral terms is even more PROBLEMATIC!!!!!!"

==========

Chuds disagree

Chud owns definitively (TM) the soys with facts and logic

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/oracex/rant_some_points_about_that_pc_correction_in_the

"I think this 'correction', somehow specifically servicing Native Americans, is a very conspicuous insertion of PC values, and coupled with the self-congratulatory blurb that we all see when we open the game, really calls attention to how hollow this is. Here's why."

Boils down to that the politically-correcting is haphazzardly applied and not even, especially to the Asian civs: He points out how full of it the devs were

====

"(1) Arbitrary name changes

Iroquois is changed to Haudenosaunee, and because that's what they called themselves and apparently calling it a foreign-given name is offensive. But then we don't see the game changing 'Germany' to 'Deutchland' or 'Japan' to 'Nihon' to afford everyone the same kind of respect. While we're at native civilizations, the Aztecs weren't accorded the same kind of respect either, because they're dead - they're called Aztecs instead of say, Mexica, the name they called themselves."

====

"(2) Cherry-picked dialogue updates

The native dialogue is changed, while the Chinese and Japanese dialogue at least, remain at 'shamefur dispray' levels. A lot of the Asian characters are also voiced by half-Asians of the wrong ethnicity, or outright non-Asians, and the grammar and pronunciations are both wrong."

====

"(3) What measure is a magical Native American civ?

They took out the things like fire pit dances because it's offensive to portray magical native americans, but the Chinese being led by this shaolin master who is in turn improved by technologies like 'supreme ultimate fist' is apparently ok. Magical natives no, magical Asians sure."

Plz pin this @XY