>mobile tier graphics >terrible mobile tier unit designs >laughable arrow trajectory and visuals >they thought fluent animations and shouting bands of units would compensate; they didn't >the most soulless UI ever conceived in an RTS game >instead of making shit feel more historical and appropriate, they deliberately made everything feel like an ass creed abstergo simulation down to siege weapons setup animations >by doing this fail to attract zoomie console audience and deter the actual historical strategy audience that would buy and play the game >introduce a bunch of gimmicky age up mechanics for like 6 different civs and call it a day content wise >no real innovation to the game except cavalry charges that were a thing in battle for middle earth, or mannable walls that were a thing even in 2d rts era >aoe1, 2 and 3 put you in control of the campaign, narrating everything as if you're a commander making the decisions and influencing the outcome >aoe4 sits you down in front of an ULTRA HD OLED TM SAMSUNG-SONY-CHING CHONG BIG ASS TV and a discovery channel live actor reenactment segment plays out with an authority figure telling you exactly how everything played out back in the olden days, and now you get to play this pointless simulation because it doesn't matter anyway it's not real and there are no stakes, we just told you everything about what happened irl, buy gamepass
AOE IV closed beta had more soul than current AOE. >Elevation used to matter, cav couldn't charge up hill, >Cannons and arty had range adds from height, >Mongols could set buildings on fire at at 75% health left >Kan used to be the bread and butter of the army, now its a bolt on >Scouts used to move faster, be easier to kill >Ranged units dropped ranged weapon and swapped to melee >Gave Streltsy a role and use >Lancers would swap to swords after charge to combat >China used to he the only civ to start with extra vills, now all of them start the same
I can go on but rly this game has gone down the tubes since they've tried to appease AOE2 players, all the factions that used to have flavor and asymmetrical gameplayer has been reduced to comp gay asiatic clicking rather than utilizing faction strengths and weaknesses. The game was also overall slower in closed beta and the early game actually allowed for interesting combat to happen around age I & II but they've since sped up the game to go back to the AOE 2 castle rush.
>all the factions that used to have flavor and asymmetrical gameplayer has been reduced to comp gay asiatic clicking rather than utilizing faction strengths and weaknesses.
AoE2 makes the greatest use of distinguishing faction strengths and weaknesses, anon. Just say what you really mean: You don't like the fact that the game no longer tells you exactly what to do, or that the civs aren't just simple onetrick victories like in your old SP titles.
>Elevation used to matter, cav couldn't charge up hill, >Cannons and arty had range adds from height, >Lancers would swap to swords after charge to combat
It's in a really odd space where the factions are distinct enough that you can't really just pick random and play. You need to understand build orders for each specific civilization since they all have vastly different requirements than +10% food gathering bonus.
But at the same time, everyone is using the same core of units. There's not that many upgrades to things either. Tower rushes remain a cancer.
The campaigns are absolute dogshit. The mission design is terrible and would have felt out of date in the late 90's. It's honestly amazing how badly scripted they are.
As always, it's because you can only make one faction so "distinct". It's defined more by its comparisons to other existing factions, than by its distance from a hypothetical "blank" civilization.
If you want a faction to be unique, add more factions, not more features.
English in Beta, Delhi when the game went live until they had that glitch that broke their research, then Abbassid until the spear glitch happened, and finally, HRE until I realized the game was just bad.
At the end of the day, it's the campaigns that keep me from recommending the game. They are just so fricking bad. And I beat all four of them on hard back when the game launched just so I could say I did. But man, the AI is totally braindead. Every single mission is just a 1v1 in a box canyon with no expansions, no significant other factions, nothing. Compare that to even Barbarossa 1 in AoE2 and you start the mission against 4 other factions that surround you.
Yeah, because you really can't reconcile the singature AoE start (TC + a few vills and natural resources) with a global trade setting and well-established empires. AoE3 had to get creative to get around it, and they never solved the issue of ranged unit recognition.
I think if AoE4 went with true Napoleonic style warfare they could have done it. Perhaps you'd start with a TC, market, and a couple houses to represent your "town". Basic combat triangle would be line infantry, cavalry, and cannons, but with a really large combat range so that things like bayonet charges feel appropriately dynamic.
I guess, but AoE2 already somewhat bled over to AoE3 time period wise. I think 1800-1918 would have been an appropriate shift for AoE4.
Mostly because tanks would be an interesting "end game" weapon as long as they had the right attention to how they control and aren't just nu-cavalry like in Rise of Nations.
>I think 1800-1918 would have been an appropriate shift for AoE4.
Wars of Liberty tried this, and the concept still struggles because you can't explain building up from nothing in 1800. There aren't even that many independent countries to play as. >Mostly because tanks would be an interesting "end game" weapon as long as they had the right attention to how they control and aren't just nu-cavalry like in Rise of Nations.
Make your own IP for the 0 players looking for this.
Doesn't solve the issue. I'm talking about large mercenary armies, thalassocracies, and the dominant powers all using their militaries primarily to increase the buying power of their dwindling silver reserves.
You also have to deal with the issue of there being very few factions to play with during this time, and then the original unit recognition issues of AoE3.
I think you could do at least 10. Yeah you'd have to make some concessions about the idea of building a town, but that's just standard operating affair in an RTS. Like how in Age of Empires 2 you have to repeatedly go through the ages and research the same technologies across a campaign.
Austia-Hungary
British Empire
China
Ethiopia (Italians btfo)
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Ottoman Empire
Russia
United States
Mexico
And, as expected, most of them are just Europeans. You're going to have a rough time selling people on that. Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets, using romanticized units like knights and swordsmen.
"Napoleonic Wars 5" doesn't really scratch the itch.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets
Excellent troll post, my friend.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ask yourself which historical strategy games are most popular, and how broad their respective scopes are.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Instance of chud not realizing he is a hyper-loud ultra-minority No. 6482910
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ask yourself which historical strategy games are most popular, and how broad their respective scopes are.
>let's just pretend Paradox doesn't exist to this day solely because of their fixation on Europe
here's a newsflash morons: games focused on historical settings ALWAYS end up selling the best in EU and US because these are the only two regions in the world where people are proud of their country's history and want to duke it out with other neighbor countries on vidya battlefields. >nuh uh what about ASIA
Chinks play three kingdoms and other shit focusing on the brief time in history where their mainland wasn't just a huge raping ground
Koreans play starcraft and league of legends
Jeets play mobile games only >nuh uh what about LATAM
Whatever they're playing, they didn't pay for it, so let's not pretend they matter at all in this industry >nuh uh what about AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
turks larp as ottomans in every game since forever, everyone else is too concerned with everyday survival to care about muh exotic new world colonization effort
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets
Lol no frick that shit, I want to play as Brandenburg versus Krakow.
Didn't feel like i was actually building an empire anymore. Felt like they tried to speed up the gameplay coz "the problem with rts is its too slow" or some shit
People are saying you can't do AoE in modern era. But you can if you follow the games evolution.
aoe1. you start from nothing. cavemen to roman empire.
aoe2. you start from nothing. dark age to colonialism. but here the issues start.
aoe3. you start from nothing. colonies to nations. Big empires are already existing but we play their colonies. But this is where the big issue start. Half the civs are already established nations like the asians or americans.
aoe4. you can't start from nothing. all nations firmly established, no colonies possible. But what you can do is focus on proxy states with the aoe3 mechanic of larger nations sending tributes.
SO instead of france, german, russia, etc. You have algeria with french tribute. poland with either german or russian tribute. etc. Each proxy state with different paths - monarchist, fascist, communist that correlates with a sponsor.
If you want to play the
4 could work in theme but not in marketing.
You literally can't sell a WWI-ish strategy game without germany playable.
Should've been a reboot to the franchise, starting again from the Stone Age but going only up to the Bronze Age so the new AoE2 goes for classical antiquity up to roman collapse.
>starting again from the Stone Age but going only up to the Bronze Age
Why would anyone play this? >so the new AoE2 goes for classical antiquity up to roman collapse.
We have AoE1 for that and it still sucks.
Botched release, incomplete at launch, too many resources on the history lesson part, no real need for it on a dormant RTS market, and they keep shooting themselves in the foot with each aoe2/3 update. They are even refloating aom to bury 4 deeper.
I tried a free weekend, it wasn't the worst shit ever. Ran very badly on my old laptop so I didn't buy it. The micro sucked though, I couldn't pull back wounded soldiers or get them away from ranged attacks, they would instantly march back to get killed like the aggro range was massive
I won't speak for the units but I think the architecture looks great, especially the damage model. Seeing chunks of wall torn off looks very satisfying. Also I like the roads and gardens that are automatically generated when you place buildings.
>All factions are boring, have boring bonuses and boring gameplay variation between one another >Music fricking sucks monkey dick so bad >Unit voices are just CoH screaming but 'ethnic' instead of AoE-style one-liners >Units look like shit at a distance >Interface is awful >Takes Ages (tm) to load a new map in multiplayer, legit 10 minutes in my last game
Let's pretend I already listed the reasons.
>mobile tier graphics
>terrible mobile tier unit designs
>laughable arrow trajectory and visuals
>they thought fluent animations and shouting bands of units would compensate; they didn't
>the most soulless UI ever conceived in an RTS game
>instead of making shit feel more historical and appropriate, they deliberately made everything feel like an ass creed abstergo simulation down to siege weapons setup animations
>by doing this fail to attract zoomie console audience and deter the actual historical strategy audience that would buy and play the game
>introduce a bunch of gimmicky age up mechanics for like 6 different civs and call it a day content wise
>no real innovation to the game except cavalry charges that were a thing in battle for middle earth, or mannable walls that were a thing even in 2d rts era
>aoe1, 2 and 3 put you in control of the campaign, narrating everything as if you're a commander making the decisions and influencing the outcome
>aoe4 sits you down in front of an ULTRA HD OLED TM SAMSUNG-SONY-CHING CHONG BIG ASS TV and a discovery channel live actor reenactment segment plays out with an authority figure telling you exactly how everything played out back in the olden days, and now you get to play this pointless simulation because it doesn't matter anyway it's not real and there are no stakes, we just told you everything about what happened irl, buy gamepass
>only innovation is charged cab attack
>aoeo did it first with lancer on bab civ
Those mongrels will never admit that aoeo did much better even thought it failed hard like aoe 4 is doing rn
Didn't take place from 1900 to 2000.
AOE IV closed beta had more soul than current AOE.
>Elevation used to matter, cav couldn't charge up hill,
>Cannons and arty had range adds from height,
>Mongols could set buildings on fire at at 75% health left
>Kan used to be the bread and butter of the army, now its a bolt on
>Scouts used to move faster, be easier to kill
>Ranged units dropped ranged weapon and swapped to melee
>Gave Streltsy a role and use
>Lancers would swap to swords after charge to combat
>China used to he the only civ to start with extra vills, now all of them start the same
I can go on but rly this game has gone down the tubes since they've tried to appease AOE2 players, all the factions that used to have flavor and asymmetrical gameplayer has been reduced to comp gay asiatic clicking rather than utilizing faction strengths and weaknesses. The game was also overall slower in closed beta and the early game actually allowed for interesting combat to happen around age I & II but they've since sped up the game to go back to the AOE 2 castle rush.
>all the factions that used to have flavor and asymmetrical gameplayer has been reduced to comp gay asiatic clicking rather than utilizing faction strengths and weaknesses.
AoE2 makes the greatest use of distinguishing faction strengths and weaknesses, anon. Just say what you really mean: You don't like the fact that the game no longer tells you exactly what to do, or that the civs aren't just simple onetrick victories like in your old SP titles.
>Elevation used to matter, cav couldn't charge up hill,
>Cannons and arty had range adds from height,
>Lancers would swap to swords after charge to combat
This is all still true though.
It's in a really odd space where the factions are distinct enough that you can't really just pick random and play. You need to understand build orders for each specific civilization since they all have vastly different requirements than +10% food gathering bonus.
But at the same time, everyone is using the same core of units. There's not that many upgrades to things either. Tower rushes remain a cancer.
The campaigns are absolute dogshit. The mission design is terrible and would have felt out of date in the late 90's. It's honestly amazing how badly scripted they are.
As always, it's because you can only make one faction so "distinct". It's defined more by its comparisons to other existing factions, than by its distance from a hypothetical "blank" civilization.
If you want a faction to be unique, add more factions, not more features.
To be honest, I only ever played Mongols since the beta, but I haven't played at all in the last year since they added Ottomans and Mali.
English in Beta, Delhi when the game went live until they had that glitch that broke their research, then Abbassid until the spear glitch happened, and finally, HRE until I realized the game was just bad.
At the end of the day, it's the campaigns that keep me from recommending the game. They are just so fricking bad. And I beat all four of them on hard back when the game launched just so I could say I did. But man, the AI is totally braindead. Every single mission is just a 1v1 in a box canyon with no expansions, no significant other factions, nothing. Compare that to even Barbarossa 1 in AoE2 and you start the mission against 4 other factions that surround you.
>medieval shit again
instead of getting an age of empires 4 we got age of empires 2-2
Yeah, because you really can't reconcile the singature AoE start (TC + a few vills and natural resources) with a global trade setting and well-established empires. AoE3 had to get creative to get around it, and they never solved the issue of ranged unit recognition.
I think if AoE4 went with true Napoleonic style warfare they could have done it. Perhaps you'd start with a TC, market, and a couple houses to represent your "town". Basic combat triangle would be line infantry, cavalry, and cannons, but with a really large combat range so that things like bayonet charges feel appropriately dynamic.
So, AoE3-2?
I guess, but AoE2 already somewhat bled over to AoE3 time period wise. I think 1800-1918 would have been an appropriate shift for AoE4.
Mostly because tanks would be an interesting "end game" weapon as long as they had the right attention to how they control and aren't just nu-cavalry like in Rise of Nations.
>I think 1800-1918 would have been an appropriate shift for AoE4.
Wars of Liberty tried this, and the concept still struggles because you can't explain building up from nothing in 1800. There aren't even that many independent countries to play as.
>Mostly because tanks would be an interesting "end game" weapon as long as they had the right attention to how they control and aren't just nu-cavalry like in Rise of Nations.
Make your own IP for the 0 players looking for this.
Just replace towns with military outposts and vils with logistics personnel, not difficult.
Doesn't solve the issue. I'm talking about large mercenary armies, thalassocracies, and the dominant powers all using their militaries primarily to increase the buying power of their dwindling silver reserves.
You also have to deal with the issue of there being very few factions to play with during this time, and then the original unit recognition issues of AoE3.
I think you could do at least 10. Yeah you'd have to make some concessions about the idea of building a town, but that's just standard operating affair in an RTS. Like how in Age of Empires 2 you have to repeatedly go through the ages and research the same technologies across a campaign.
Austia-Hungary
British Empire
China
Ethiopia (Italians btfo)
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Ottoman Empire
Russia
United States
Mexico
And, as expected, most of them are just Europeans. You're going to have a rough time selling people on that. Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets, using romanticized units like knights and swordsmen.
"Napoleonic Wars 5" doesn't really scratch the itch.
>Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets
Excellent troll post, my friend.
Ask yourself which historical strategy games are most popular, and how broad their respective scopes are.
>Instance of chud not realizing he is a hyper-loud ultra-minority No. 6482910
>let's just pretend Paradox doesn't exist to this day solely because of their fixation on Europe
here's a newsflash morons: games focused on historical settings ALWAYS end up selling the best in EU and US because these are the only two regions in the world where people are proud of their country's history and want to duke it out with other neighbor countries on vidya battlefields.
>nuh uh what about ASIA
Chinks play three kingdoms and other shit focusing on the brief time in history where their mainland wasn't just a huge raping ground
Koreans play starcraft and league of legends
Jeets play mobile games only
>nuh uh what about LATAM
Whatever they're playing, they didn't pay for it, so let's not pretend they matter at all in this industry
>nuh uh what about AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
turks larp as ottomans in every game since forever, everyone else is too concerned with everyday survival to care about muh exotic new world colonization effort
>Westerners generally want to play as/against exotic cultures with foreign architecture sets
Lol no frick that shit, I want to play as Brandenburg versus Krakow.
Didn't feel like i was actually building an empire anymore. Felt like they tried to speed up the gameplay coz "the problem with rts is its too slow" or some shit
>Felt like they tried to speed up the gameplay coz "the problem with rts is its too slow" or some shit
That's exactly what they did.
People are saying you can't do AoE in modern era. But you can if you follow the games evolution.
aoe1. you start from nothing. cavemen to roman empire.
aoe2. you start from nothing. dark age to colonialism. but here the issues start.
aoe3. you start from nothing. colonies to nations. Big empires are already existing but we play their colonies. But this is where the big issue start. Half the civs are already established nations like the asians or americans.
aoe4. you can't start from nothing. all nations firmly established, no colonies possible. But what you can do is focus on proxy states with the aoe3 mechanic of larger nations sending tributes.
SO instead of france, german, russia, etc. You have algeria with french tribute. poland with either german or russian tribute. etc. Each proxy state with different paths - monarchist, fascist, communist that correlates with a sponsor.
If you want to play the
And aoe5 is just aoe3 in space.
4 could work in theme but not in marketing.
You literally can't sell a WWI-ish strategy game without germany playable.
Should've been a reboot to the franchise, starting again from the Stone Age but going only up to the Bronze Age so the new AoE2 goes for classical antiquity up to roman collapse.
>starting again from the Stone Age but going only up to the Bronze Age
Why would anyone play this?
>so the new AoE2 goes for classical antiquity up to roman collapse.
We have AoE1 for that and it still sucks.
Or just not give a shit like every other RTS does.
why are you so fixated with this "ugh achtually you can't stat only with a town centre in 1800!"
yes you fricking can, it's a game
Botched release, incomplete at launch, too many resources on the history lesson part, no real need for it on a dormant RTS market, and they keep shooting themselves in the foot with each aoe2/3 update. They are even refloating aom to bury 4 deeper.
I tried a free weekend, it wasn't the worst shit ever. Ran very badly on my old laptop so I didn't buy it. The micro sucked though, I couldn't pull back wounded soldiers or get them away from ranged attacks, they would instantly march back to get killed like the aggro range was massive
Really the biggest and pretty much only reason is that it released in a horribly buggy and unfinished state that they took forever to fix.
Bad design choices and it competed with AoE2 for no reason when it could have been set in antiquity instead of the middle ages.
I didn't play it but the gfx look mediocre. It's hard to compete with AoE2 which looks incredible and has an active community and pro scene
Agreed going back to antiquity would've been a great choice
I won't speak for the units but I think the architecture looks great, especially the damage model. Seeing chunks of wall torn off looks very satisfying. Also I like the roads and gardens that are automatically generated when you place buildings.
New “expansion” just announced. Hopes? Fears?
I find it weird that it adds Japanese when it's advertised as crusades. It seems like they are just rushing favotires out in hopes to grab attention.
you know what? I'm gonna unironically try it on Xbox
Its already out?
Too Dota-ish for me for some reason
>All factions are boring, have boring bonuses and boring gameplay variation between one another
>Music fricking sucks monkey dick so bad
>Unit voices are just CoH screaming but 'ethnic' instead of AoE-style one-liners
>Units look like shit at a distance
>Interface is awful
>Takes Ages (tm) to load a new map in multiplayer, legit 10 minutes in my last game
I'm giving the frick up on this.
negrette vinagrette hoh
>mobile graphics