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

[Luka-boy]

Finished the first mission of the Sargon campaign. I turtled behind a wall with some towers while trading with my allies, built up fifty hoplites and wrecked everything while feeling like a complete degenerate

 

[Feyd Rautha]

This is very much Age of Empires 1's show. Sure the Romans are nice, but they don't get a campaign or anything.

Farming in the winter?! This game is unrealistic!

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The realism ship has sailed when it turned out african civs have villagers that work.

 

[Deadyawn]

Roman scorpions actually give Celt's a run for their money holy shit.

 

[fantadomat]

Roman scorpions actually give Celt's a run for their money holy shit.

Which is retarded,should have been infantry civ,not siege lol. Or at least give them the carroballista which was a chariot with a mounted scorpio on it. This feels like a lazy cucks doing a poor job. Also i noticed that they have modeled the units after the late western roman units,which is retarded since there is already Byz which were pretty much romans. They should have added a good Byz campaign,like Belisarius or maybe abbasid invasion in the 860s . It is pretty obvious that those campaigns are made by trannies that could only google about wiki shit to make in to a campaign.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

What annoys me the most is that farms still cost wood. Why didn't they take the opportunity to change the cost into food?

 

[JarlFrank]

They should have added a Roman campaign for AoE2 too.

 

[Caim]

They should have added a Roman campaign for AoE2 too.

There already is one.

Spoiler

 

[fantadomat]

It is pretty boring lol,everyone have the same units more or less and there is hardly any age upgrading in the game,once in 10 missions. Also archers are useless and the pathfinding and the ai are worst than original aoe2. The enemy just cheats and spams endless hoplites.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Ok so we can bring back one of the original campaigns. Which is the best?

e: I will vote for the one you think is best.

 

[JarlFrank]

You can vote for two, actually.

I picked Greece and Babylon.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Played a couple of missions and skirmishes, not very good tbh. Instead of bringing back the spirit of AoE1, the UI, graphics and mission design all make you feel like you're playing a poorer version of AoE2 DE. There are also a lot of issues with unit clipping and pathfinding, for example when shift-queuing some buildings with multiple villagers. I don't know if it's a global issue brought by recent patches or RoR-exclusive.

Overall the weakest dlc by far, despite theoretically offering a lot of content. It really should've been a free AoE1 DE update with maybe the new campaigns and bonus civ as a dlc. For AoE2, if they added the 2 version of Romans with their own campaign and 2-3 more campaigns for old civs that don't have one yet I would've been much happier.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

You can vote for two, actually.

I picked Greece and Babylon.

Those two won! I voted for them as well as nobody suggested any other campaigns.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's probably because these were the most played. I doubt a lot of people who played the expansion campaigns have voted.

 

[JarlFrank]

That's probably because these were the most played. I doubt a lot of people who played the expansion campaigns have voted.

The expansion campaigns were weird and never really fit the AoE1 timeframe. The game started in the stone age and went to the iron age, it's very clearly intended to be about pre-classical antiquity... but the Rise of Rome campaigns were set in classical and post-classical antiquity, with some missions even featuring civilizations that aren't in the game at all, like missions where you conquer Gaul as the Romans, but the Gauls are represented by Hittites because the game has no Gallic faction.

The Greek, Babylonian and Hittite campaigns were the best and most historically fitting to the game.

 

[Lacrymas]

Eh, it's not like AoE2's original campaigns didn't feature civilizations that would only be added 20 years later. I was mostly concerned with the gameplay aspect. I've only played RoR's campaigns once as a kid, I haven't finished them in the DE yet, so I don't remember them very well and decided not to vote for anything because of it. Either way, I'm not surprised by the results, but I'm hoping they'll eventually port all the campaigns over.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Historical accuracy was never the point of AoE to be honest... in fact I remember it being something of a common criticism for both games back in the day.

 

[Lacrymas]

To be fair, I can't think of a single game which isn't hyperautistic that is super historically accurate. Even Field of Glory 2 has some sussy parts, especially in the ancient era DLC.

 

[Caim]

Historical accuracy was never the point of AoE to be honest... in fact I remember it being something of a common criticism for both games back in the day.

When the Aztecs are rolling around with dudes in metal armor with two-handed swords you know it's not really going to be accurate.

That's an issue that COULD be solved by giving all units from a similar region their own look like how it works for buildings, but it would kill the readability of the units. Sure, Galactic Battlegrounds did it but you only had eight factions in that game.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I picked Greece and Babylon.

They added Ascent of Egypt and The First Punic War campaigns in the latest update.

 

[JarlFrank]

I picked Greece and Babylon.

They added Ascent of Egypt and The First Punic War campaigns in the latest update.

Yes I already started playing them yesterday.
Greece and Babylon will be added later.

As I had played the Ascent of Egypt campaign in AoE1 DE earlier this year, the differences are very apparent. It's just so much easier to manage your armies with the AoE2 pathfinding. Return of Rome is what AoE1 DE should have been from the start.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Codex-focused expansion inbound, we are getting Georgia (and Armenia). Also persian campaign. Which is fine, though I'd definitely prefer seeing viking, jap or turk campaign first.

 

[Lacrymas]

Afaik, every nation has some kind of single player content, the ones who don't have full campaigns have historic battles.

 

[JarlFrank]

Afaik, every nation has some kind of single player content, the ones who don't know have full campaigns have historic battles.

Yeah but full campaigns > single mission, obviously.

Looking forward to finally getting a Persian campaign, also looks like the Persians are gonna get the Central Asian building style, which fits them a lot better than the Middle Eastern because it's literally a Persian style.

In the meantime, you can try the fan-made Apranik campaign, designed by a chick who was later hired as a level designer by Forgotten Empires because of how good her campaigns were.
It's hard. Really hard. More challenging than any official campaign. If you're up for getting your ass kicked, go play it.

 

[what am i doing]

Historical accuracy was never the point of AoE to be honest... in fact I remember it being something of a common criticism for both games back in the day.

When the Aztecs are rolling around with dudes in metal armor with two-handed swords you know it's not really going to be accurate.

That's an issue that COULD be solved by giving all units from a similar region their own look like how it works for buildings, but it would kill the readability of the units. Sure, Galactic Battlegrounds did it but you only had eight factions in that game.

Easy readability fix is having an option for strategic icons overlaid on units. SupCom does this when zoomed out but has an option to always show icons over the unit model. Makes it easy to instantly know what type of unit it is regardless of how the model looks.
And people who are less concerned about readability and more about aesthetics & don't like strategic icons could just turn it off on their local settings.

I.E. here: + sign is tanks, upward-pointing arc is anti-air, vertical line is rocket artillery or launcher site, dot is gun artillery. Diamond is land units, usually tracked (elongated hexagon is mechs), square is buildings. It could be hard to tell, say, a tank apart from self-propelled rocket artillery at a glance, especially when not zoomed in close, but the strategic icons make it easy.