When I was 10 years old, I made up my own civilizations. Here is one of them: the Frontche

DISCLAIMER: This is very long, but not as long as it could be, because I only go over one civilization. I have too much free time 11

Hey you know the shit civilization bonuses ideas that people post on here that are super unbalanced and get tons of downvotes? Well here is another one!

Jokes aside, my brother and I both made up our own planets/solar systems and medieval style civilizations when we were younger, and I used to want to make my own AoE2 style game. It would be called Age of Empires: Rise of Piroedafer (LOL). That's the name of the main planet in my fictional solar system. It has a red sky instead of a blue sky (because of light dispersion through the atmosphere), and therefore its reflection makes the water also red instead of blue, and the grass and leaves are all blue instead of green, because of a substance called Lyphoric (the Piroedafer equivalent of Chlorophyll but it's blue instead of green). There are also a bunch of other planets; Dino, Onfercoucar, Pestforaed, Enforestert, Everest, and Kuiperat, but I won't get into those.

Back when I was around 10 or maybe even younger, I was super invested in my fictional stuff and made up my own civilizations. I used these in my old campaign scenarios that I made, about a hero called Uleas the Frontche (which unfortunately are forever lost and wiped from any hard drive because of switching computers, although I did recreate the main scenario; Saving Celtia). Saving Celtia was basically a Joan of Arc style scenario that was like the Orleans one, however it was sufficiently different and involved a bunch of different civilizations and some actual fictional history of my planet. I added a lot of this in my scenario hints/objectives.

The Frontche have never had much problem with the country of Kunjelia... until now. Keifulfeurth and Fronz have been great allies for a long time, and Fronz has a decent friendship with the island of Kunjelia. But Keifulfeurth and Kunjelia HATE each other. The city of Tathon has found itself sandwiched between 2 of its enemies; The Sendarands and the Kunjelians. Tathon lies to the north of the River Fronz, and was built there by the Keifulfeans because of the high amounts of resources in the area, especially fish. However, the Kunjelian king found out about this, and sneakily sent out many villagers to build a town next to Tathon! At first, Tathon had the upper hand against Kunjelia's new town, Cetrahange, due to its superior technology. But as time went on, Cetrahange became more and more powerful, wiping out almost all of the population of the grand city of Celtia, which had been expanding for hundreds of years and lies to the south of the River Fronz. Now Tathon is in danger from this threat. Meanwhile, the quite harmless but annoying nomadic Sendarands built a camp on the other side of Tathon. Can you save Celtia and help Tathon destroy Cetrahange?

So that's basically the entire plot of the scenario. People say "fictional civs have no place in aoe2, there's no history," but I do actually have history in this (although fictional civs still would never be added in an official expansion obviously). And I actually brainstormed bonuses for these civilizations (the Frontche, Keifulfeurth, the Sendarands, and the Kunjelians), and the Frontche I even added into the game with my old balance mod on Voobly. I have the tech trees/bonuses of all of my civs here.

The Frontche

The Frontche are a siege civilization. Its bonuses are as follows:

*Ballistics applies to siege weapons

*Murder Holes benefits Scorpions and Cannon Galleons

*Gold Miners and Stone Miners carry +20

*Heavy Scorpion upgrade free

Its unique techs are as follows:

*Armatura: Rams have +6 melee armor (from 0-3 to 0+3). Cost: 200 food, 150 wood

*Portata Massimo: Scorpion and Trebuchet projectiles move 75% faster; scorpions have no frame delay. Cost: 675 food, 475 gold

Its team bonus is as follows:

*Trebuchets 10% cheaper (180 wood, 180 gold)

I recently reworked this civ a bit, and gave it an early game economy bonus, which is that miners carry +20 resources. This bonus is not meant to be particularly strong, since the Frontche are more of a mid/late game civ. Nevertheless, the bonus does help once you start getting a very large number of miners, because they spend more time gathering and less time bumping into each other, so the crowding effect is almost completely nullified. You can also have an inefficient camp but still be completely fine because of this bonus. Still not a huge effect though, and they are quite weak in the early game, with no early military bonuses either. So their dark age is very mediocre and their feudal age is below average.

However, the castle age is where they start to shine. Not only does the eco bonus start to come into effect more because of increased miner numbers, which helps their xbow production more, but they have the unique tech, Armatura, which is actually researched in the Siege Workshop (unconventional I know) and only costs 200 food and 150 wood; it makes their Battering Rams very strong in castle age, taking way less damage from melee units. A ram push in castle age will be strong for this civ. Not only that, but they also have Mangonels which are affected by Ballistics, meaning that mid/late castle age, using Mangonels against opposing Crossbowmen or Elite Skirmishers will be incredibly effective for the Frontche, especially if they were going xbows and planning to get Ballistics for them anyway, which works for them in castle age because they have Thumb Ring too.

This civ has to transition into something slightly different for the Imperial Age, though. They can keep their rams and mangos, sure, but they don't have Arbalests. What are they designed to transition into? Scorpions! The Frontche have scorps with no minimum range, after researching Murder Holes. They are also affected by Ballistics just like their mangos. With these techs researched, their scorps will be very effective when transitioning into imperial.

Once they get to the Imperial Age, they importantly get the Heavy Scorpion upgrade for free! This is arguably the biggest scorpion bonus, since 1000 food and 1100 wood is a lot of money and often takes a long time to gather. This gives them an instant powerful power spike in imp, where they can follow up with building a Castle and making Trebuchets and/or researching Portata Massimo. The Frontche have Trebuchets which cost 180 wood and 180 gold, instead of 200 wood and 200 gold. This isn't the biggest bonus, but it certainly helps, and makes it easy for them to get massed trebs at the back of their army.

Portata Massimo is a tech that comes in after early imp and probably in mid/late imp. It's a very important tech, because it not only finalizes their Scorpions in terms of upgrades (making their scorps easier to micro and harder to micro against), but it also synergizes with how their Trebuchets are not only 10% cheaper, but are also affected by Ballistics. With ballistic properties and 75% faster projectiles, the Frontche's massed Trebuchets at the back of their army will be sustainable and also very strong, a great counter to opposing siege like Onagers and Bombard Cannons which are the main threat to the Heavy Scorpions of your army.

They also have fully upgraded Halberdiers (except for Tracking LUL), to put in front of their siege army as a cheap meatshield and deterrent against cavalry charges.

Their army composition of Halberdiers + Heavy Scorpions + Trebuchets is not the only thing they can do, though; Halberdiers + Siege Rams/Siege Onagers is also very strong and viable. Additionally their trash units are decent. While lacking Bloodlines and Husbandry, their Hussars have all the blacksmith upgrades. Their Elite Skirmishers are only lacking Ring Archer Armor. And they have FU halbs of course. If they want to save gold they can just go full trash with cheap trebs behind it, or something of the sort.

If you read this all, congratulations! This isn't one of my usual posts of my bragging about a new moment of stupidity (thanks u/I_hate_fun 11), although some people might consider it that. I genuinely put a lot of effort into making up my civilizations and my solar system, and I will make posts about my other civilizations in the process too, which would be I guess "sequels" to this. My Frontche civ is probably very unbalanced, and either too weak in the early game, too strong in the late game with their siege, or both (which leads to an unbalanced civ overall which either gets rekt, or completely dominates), so let me know what you think of it. Heck some people might not even like the Scorpion focus idea at all just because they think no siege unit should lack a minimum range, which is a fair opinion, although Scorpions function more like an archer unit in my eyes. Thank you!