Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (AKA AoE2 HD HD)

[Cael]

They are playing in a small map that is not restricted like Black Forest or Islands, and have the time to build reinforced stone walls. Chances are, they aren't exactly the best of players...

 

[a Goat]

They are playing in a small map that is not restricted like Black Forest or Islands, and have the time to build reinforced stone walls. Chances are, they aren't exactly the best of players...

It's Arena, but you can see some questionable decisions there(viking longswords when supposedly there were Bohemians bullying shit with wagons?).

Wagons have very awkard counters, either it's redemption monks or(defensively) onagers, but there are civs that have neither(huns...) so I dunno how they're supposed to handle them. They'll probably have some counterdamage/negative melee armour added in the future because yeah it's awkward right now.

 

[fantadomat]

They are playing in a small map that is not restricted like Black Forest or Islands, and have the time to build reinforced stone walls. Chances are, they aren't exactly the best of players...

It's Arena, but you can see some questionable decisions there(viking longswords when supposedly there were Bohemians bullying shit with wagons?).

Wagons have very awkard counters, either it's redemption monks or(defensively) onagers, but there are civs that have neither(huns...) so I dunno how they're supposed to handle them. They'll probably have some counterdamage/negative melee armour added in the future because yeah it's awkward right now.

Do the hun's unique units get a bonus toward the wagons? It seems logical. Also to be honest,both players were pretty shit in that video,the dude just let his wagons shoot farms and shit while the other one was trying to kill his trebuchets lol. Watching that massive loss of resources made me cringe.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Looking at Poland, I'm pretty disappointed to see yet another "we'll give yuge bonuses to a type of unit and then make the tech tree for the same unit completely suck" type of civ. It was kinda smart/interesting the first, and maybe second, time they did it, but please stop now.

 

[Preben]

Looking at Poland, I'm pretty disappointed to see yet another "we'll give yuge bonuses to a type of unit and then make the tech tree for the same unit completely suck" type of civ. It was kinda smart/interesting the first, and maybe second, time they did it, but please stop now.

And Poland should have palas, plate armor and hand cannoneers for the sake of freckin historical accuracy. Also lol at campaign praising Polish architecture (both in one mission and briefings) while Poles don't have architecture because reasons.

I think that Wladyslaw the Elbow-High would be the absolutely best character for a campaign. A fugitive barely escaping several times with his life who ultimately rose to be a king of a restored kingdom. Ruled through a constant warfare, freeing the writers from the burden of inventing conflicts, as it went with Jadwiga. Also, he was either a cripple or had literal dwarfism, making a good story about overcoming one's physical shortcomings.

 

[Endemic]

And Poland should have palas, plate armor and hand cannoneers for the sake of freckin historical accuracy. Also lol at campaign praising Polish architecture (both in one mission and briefings) while Poles don't have architecture because reasons.

They'll tweak it for multiplayer balance. Just like Chinese got the tech discount but no gunpowder units.

 

[fantadomat]

And Poland should have palas, plate armor and hand cannoneers for the sake of freckin historical accuracy. Also lol at campaign praising Polish architecture (both in one mission and briefings) while Poles don't have architecture because reasons.

They'll tweak it for multiplayer balance. Just like Chinese got the tech discount but no gunpowder units.

Which is kind off accurate when it comes to history. They did had fucking katiushas and other rocket weapons during their red banner revolt but decided to not use them much later on. It is pretty weird.

 

[a Goat]

What the game tries to pretend is that it was her idea, which from what I remember isn't really based on any sources at all, and in all likelyhood it was a decision made by nobility and some upper echelons of clergy, especially considering the talks started when she was like 14, and no fucking way would a 14 years old girl who just came to some kingdom she had no personal connections with would come up with a plan to marry a pagan barbarian in his 40's solely because that was in the interest of the state.

Apparently there's an anecdote written down by not-so-reliable chronicler that after she learned she's marrying Jogaila she freaked out, grabbed an axe and tried to chop the doors to run away. So yeah...

 

[Preben]

What the game tries to pretend is that it was her idea, which from what I remember isn't really based on any sources at all, and in all likelyhood it was a decision made by nobility and some upper echelons of clergy, especially considering the talks started when she was like 14, and no fucking way would a 14 years old girl who just came to some kingdom she had no personal connections with would come up with a plan to marry a pagan barbarian in his 40's solely because that was in the interest of the state.

Apparently there's an anecdote written down by not-so-reliable chronicler that after she learned she's marrying Jogaila she freaked out, grabbed an axe and tried to chop the doors to run away. So yeah...

If Jan Długosz is 'unreliable', then I do not know whom you would consider reliable. He's widely considered a master of historical writing on European scale.

And Jadwiga tried to chop the door to elope with Wilhelm abroad.

 

[a Goat]

If Jan Długosz is 'unreliable', then I do not know whom you would consider reliable

Długosz disliked Władysław Jagiełło, so showing him in bad light(so repulsive his bride to be freaked out) would be the kind of thing he would make up.

 

[pickmeister]

Don't play Definitive Edition. Play the original with UserPatch as God intended or at least HD. Yes, I am serious and yes, I am that autistic.

 

[Tacgnol]

Don't play Definitive Edition. Play the original with UserPatch as God intended or at least HD. Yes, I am serious and yes, I am that autistic.

DE improved a lot of the awful HD campaigns. Also worth it for autofarms.

With DE you have literally hundreds of hours of campaigns to play.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

DE looks gut and has lots of qol. It's 100% incline.

 

[pickmeister]

Which campaigns? The original (AoK + Conq) ones or those added by amateurs with civs like Italians or Slavs that make even less sense than scimitar throwing mamelukes?

 

[Tacgnol]

Which campaigns? The original (AoK + Conq) ones or those added by amateurs with civs like Italians or Slavs that make even less sense than scimitar throwing mamelukes?

The overscripted monstrosities by FilthyDelphia, a custom campaign maker with an ego bigger than Liluras. A lot of the HD campaigns were his work and it shows.

Most of his awful laggy (and boring) scenarios were converted to much more interesting maps.

 

[pickmeister]

That does actually sound interesting. I might try it for these campaigns at some point and not even hate it. But I'll still stick to the original whenever I can.
The new voice acting for old campaigns is soulless trash, as is the new graphics with overblown bloom and postprocessing (sure, you can turn off some of it, but not all of it). Especially the animations and unit icons I consider a lazy botch. And the new javascript main menu is low effort garbage. The old ones were pure kino.

Spoiler

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It has definitely been a struggle, but I've managed to sacrifice that menu to get soulless shit like much more content, ai that actually knows how to play the game or really great qol like villager counters. Also, what are you even talking about, DE looks great.

 

[Tacgnol]

It has definitely been a struggle, but I've managed to sacrifice that menu to get soulless shit like much more content, ai that actually knows how to play the game or really great qol like villager counters. Also, what are you even talking about, DE looks great.

Yeah the HD units and buildings look really great for the most part.

 

[pickmeister]

It has definitely been a struggle, but I've managed to sacrifice that menu to get soulless shit like much more content, ai that actually knows how to play the game or really great qol like villager counters. Also, what are you even talking about, DE looks great.

So you like it, great for you. I don't, because it's trash.
If this was the first AOE2 ever, I'd say "Meh. Looks serviceable. A bit too fairytale-esque for my taste.". But as this is supposed to be a better version, it's just garbage.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It is an objectively better version. It has much more content, much better ai, controls better, gets constant support and vast majority of the community has moved over. "I liked the old menu better" is not a compelling argument.

 

[Tacgnol]

It is an objectively better version. It has much more content, much better ai, controls better, gets constant support and vast majority of the community has moved over. "I liked the old menu better" is not a compelling argument.

The guy ain't kidding about his extreme autism I guess. But yes, unless you're obsessed with the voice acting changes in the old campaign and muh menues, DE is definitely the best version of AOE 2 to play these days.

 

[pickmeister]

It is an objectively better version. It has much more content, much better ai, controls better, gets constant support and vast majority of the community has moved over. "I liked the old menu better" is not a compelling argument.

It is a compelling argument. You just don't accept it as one because you care about zoom zoom more content zoom bloom zoom zoom patches zoom. I stated several things that I dislike and why I prefer the original with an amount of content I am perfectly comfortable with. Considering there are things like UserPatch and Voobly, I am obviously not the only one.
I don't understand how can you consider constantly shitting out updates as a good argument and even call it objective. Either the game is complete and there's no reason to patch it or it's incomplete trash that shouldn't have left the development for some time.
You can make the same argument about SC2 being "objectively better" over SC1 due to better controls, QOL, AI, and whatnot, and the majority of veterans still preferred the first, "objectively worse" one. Sure, you could argue it's them being too old with too slow reflexes to have a shot at competing but there's a number of old guys still playing (and usually streaming) SC1 on a decent level.

 

[vota DC]

Don't play Definitive Edition. Play the original with UserPatch as God intended or at least HD. Yes, I am serious and yes, I am that autistic.

They nerfed Huns horse archers discount from 35% to 20 because Huns were too strong late game in their crazy minds.
Changes were silly in aoe1 with hittite infantry nerfed and hittite iron age navy nerfed too.

 

[Young_Hollow]

It is an objectively better version. It has much more content, much better ai, controls better, gets constant support and vast majority of the community has moved over. "I liked the old menu better" is not a compelling argument.

Which is better is highly subjective. I liked the old voice acting better, even though I'm not a campaign guy and the remixed music of DE is worse to my ears. A whole lot of little thing add up to a lot differences and the newsfeed-ey main menu which displays tournaments and events just make it look like a Blizzard-level service rather than a game that survived 15+years without the ''constant support'' which is mostly due to them releasing unbalanced civs as DLC and working on it to save face and prove they're not releasing P2W civs.

There were much more advanced AI scripts for the base(nonHD) game and many of them got carried over to HD, and probably the same people worked on DE's AI. Something like Barbarian AI for HD is still head and shoulders more competent than the original AI, and that's been around since before HD.

Also, all the units are Warcrafty / Fortnite popamole-looking in DE compared to HD and the original. In the older versions you could tell from a glance whether you were looking at an archer or a x-bow or a skirm or an elite-skirm. In DE, they're all merged and similar looking. You'll have to have a 2nd look to separate militia from vills or cav archers from light-cav.

Also, the original is the best way to play the un-neutered Mangudai (I will say Huns are really OP in it though).

 

[Tacgnol]

Also, all the units are Warcrafty / Fortnite popamole-looking in DE compared to HD and the original. In the older versions you could tell from a glance whether you were looking at an archer or a x-bow or a skirm or an elite-skirm. In DE, they're all merged and similar looking. You'll have to have a 2nd look to separate militia from vills or cav archers from light-cav.

I highly disagree. Most of the DE HD units are the original renders re-rendered at higher res.

If anything you can tell units apart better in DE as everything isn't a low res mess, especially if you're running the optional higher res pack.