RTS Age of Empires IV - Medieval Again

[thesheeep]

It's a known fact that people are generally afraid of change, regardless of its contents.

These days its only reasonable. Used be, when something got a new version, it was good. Now, you have to wait for other people to review it and tell you if it won't break fucking everything.

Well, just my experience obviously, but I did not yet have a Win 10 update break anything for me.* That's a first time in my Windows experience.
I still get that adrenaline rush when I get asked when exactly I need to restart my PC for an update, though. 20+ years of struggle don't just go away.

*Except the update from 8.1 to 10, but that is to be expected.

 

[Jimmious]

Also installing Win10 on a new PC is impressive. I still had in my mind the old days where setting up Windows was a procedure that needed some hours. Now you will be done in like 20 minutes. Crazy stuff

 

[IDtenT]

Col vid.

 

[IDtenT]

I just realised this is basically a nostalgia forum.

 

[karoliner]

Nothing good will come of this.

 

[Icewater]

At first I thought Microsoft were just clueless 'tards who had no idea what we want.

Now I think they know exactly what we want and just hold it in reserve, refusing to give it to us until they can couple it with a forced OS upgrade or something similarly faggy.

Windows 10 is garbage and go fuck yourself with a rake, Microshit.

edit: lol @ dipshits who think I give a fuck about their ratings

 

[Deleted member 7219]

It is doomed to failure because nobody knows how to make a proper RTS any more.

Age of Empires IV will skip the base building and the resource gathering and focus purely on action. I also expect there to be fewer civilisations and fewer units overall.

 

[thesheeep]

Age of Empires IV will skip the base building and the resource gathering and focus purely on action. I also expect there to be fewer civilisations and fewer units overall.

That would be weird as hell and extremely dumb.

So, yeah, quite possible.

 

[fantadomat]

It will be crap,Relic haven't made a decent game in a decade!Their last shitfall didn't even made half a million sales.It is shame that they give the IP to those retards.They couldn't even make a good game to save their lives.

 

[Tigranes]

Announces Age IV, releases retrospective videos of ES dudes talking about their passion for the game

Gets Relic to make it

 

[MilesBeyond]

I dunno. I feel like even if they manage to knock it out of the park, it still won't be as good as AoE 2, and it's likely going to be the sort of game where playing it just makes me wish I was playing AoE 2.

See, they've got a challenge. They've got to distinguish it enough that it's going to be able to compete with AoE 2. That'd be hard enough even if it hadn't just had an HD rerelease. If they don't, you get like what I said above. Why play it when we could play AoE 2. But they also have to make it similar enough that it doesn't feel completely detached from the series. Like, AoE's whole thing is that it had a hugely fleshed out econ (well, for an RTS). I mean, in AoE 2 you've got over a half dozen sources of food - sheep, deer, boars, farms, berries, fish, fish traps - each of which having significant pros and cons. Boars are by far the most efficient source of food, but you're lucky to get more than two of them. Farms and fish traps are slow, but they're renewable. This had a massive impact on the game because food was super important not just for villager and unit production but for aging up. Whether you won or lost a game could very well come down to how well you exploited the quick and efficient means of food and then how well you transitioned into more reliable means.

My point with all this is that I don't know if even old Relic would have been a good choice to do AoE 4. Nothing against them, they made some amazing games. Homeworld is one of the greatest RTS games of all time, and CoH and DoW (the originals) weren't too shabby either. But they had a drastically different design philosophy and approach to RTS games. In fact, they were kinda the opposite of Ensemble (full combat, minimal economy vs heavy emphasis on economy) while Blizzard held the middle ground.

AoE 2 also benefited (perhaps largely due to the time period) from a more defensive style than what we were used to in an RTS. Castles were incredibly powerful defensive structures, Towers had the potential to be awesome as well depending on your techs, and they cost stone, which wasn't used at all in unit production - meaning you weren't forced to choose between army and static d. Beyond that, their main counters weren't available until the final age. What this means is that AoE 2 ended up having a much slower pace than other RTS games, because the defender had a much larger advantage. While on paper that might seem like a downside, for many it was part of the game's appeal. It was a more relaxed experience than the frenetic pace of games like BW. So if they're going to recapture part of what made AoE 2 so successful, they're going to need to hit on that, too.

 

[fantadomat]

Well at least we will enjoy it,watching from the sides a shitstorm,is a fairly amusing thing.

 

[thesheeep]

I'd rather have something close to AoE 3 than AoE 2.

The card system really added some customization and support to try out different strategies - otherwise sorely missing from almost all RTS games.
Plus a couple other features like proper build and movement queueing...

I could do without stupid shit like completely useless walls (which you can't even build over caravan tracks), though.
And if there's going to be some kind of "native support" again, I'd hope it isn't as useless either.

The one thing I am somewhat sure of is that there will be different nations that actually are different and not just the AoE1/2 type of "different" where you have like one special unit and minimally different research trees.

Then again, given that this is Relic, they will probably try to do some balanced-to-total-boredom crap with MOBA elements and cash shop boosts, aiming for the barely existing RTS esports crowd
It would be a special kind of hilarious if they managed to kill another franchise in exactly the same way.

 

[fantadomat]

I'd rather have something close to AoE 3 than AoE 2.

The card system really added some customization and support to try out different strategies - otherwise sorely missing from almost all RTS games.
Plus a couple other features like proper build and movement queueing...

I could do without stupid shit like completely useless walls (which you can't even build over caravan tracks), though.
And if there's going to be some kind of "native support" again, I'd hope it isn't as useless either.

The one thing I am somewhat sure of is that there will be different nations that actually are different and not just the AoE1/2 type of "different" where you have like one special unit and minimally different research trees.

Then again, given that this is Relic, they will probably try to do some balanced-to-total-boredom crap with MOBA elements and cash shop boosts, aiming for the barely existing RTS esports crowd
It would be a special kind of hilarious if they managed to kill another franchise in exactly the same way.

It is shame that AoE 3 didn't have any good campaign,they were all some primitive countries and fantasy scenarios.

 

[Morgoth]

The best campaign of all Ensemble games had Age of Mythology. AoE 3 was okay-ish, but less inventive in its mission design.

AoE 4 will obviously be politically-correct boring banal shit.

 

[thesheeep]

I actually liked the AoE 3 campaign.
Incredibly lovely cheesiness and totally bonkers.

Of course, I can see why some would be disappointed coming from AoE2's total seriousness

 

[fantadomat]

The best campaign of all Ensemble games had Age of Mythology. AoE 3 was okay-ish, but less inventive in its mission design.

AoE 4 will obviously be politically-correct boring banal shit.

How could killing white people be boring?

 

[MilesBeyond]

The goofy accents alone made AoE 2's campaigns fun. When your first experience with a game is everyone yell-talking at you in a thick Scottish brogue, then you transition into "Ron hon hon kill les rosbifs" you know you're in for a good time.

 

[thesheeep]

I bet 4 civs max on release.

Which kinda sucks, but on the other hand is better than 10-12, of which all are 80% identical.

I'd love to see some rarely seen civs, but I highly doubt it.
My bet is on the typical ones, maybe this time with the addition of the USA.

 

[Fedora Master]

lol as if they are going to add any Hispanic countries. It'll be Germany/France/England and then perhaps a few token brown/yellow nations.

 

[Sentinel]

Let's bet on included civs. AOEIV will be Age of Imperialism, right?

Here's mine bets:

Great Britain
France
Prussia/Germany
Austria-Hungary
Russia
Italy
USA
Hispano-America
Brazil
Ottomans/Turks
Ethiopian Empire
Zulus (for the we wuz kangs experience)
India
China
Japan

DLC fodder:

Portugal
Argentina/Plata, as Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
CSA?
Spain
Indochina
Arabs
Scandinavia
Liberia
Sokoto
Iran?
Native Americans?

A modern RTS with more than 3 factions? Did you hit your head?
Also, Age of Imperialism and Brazil as a major faction but not Portugal. That's a good laugh, considering Brazil was the colony, and had no colonies of its own even after independence.

 

[thesheeep]

This forum will be a wealth of delicious butthurt when it turns out the campaign plot has something to do with slavery

 

[Fedora Master]

This forum will be a wealth of delicious butthurt when it turns out the campaign plot has something to do with slavery

Catching random black tribals on the map to add to your villagers would be a funny mechanic.
e:

 

[thesheeep]

For those unaware of the language of incline (or cannot decipher that horrible writing):

1. This is how the German colonizes
2. This is how the English(man) colonizes
3. This is how the French(man) ...
4. And this is how the Belgian ...

Didn't know about the 4. stereotype. How did that happen?

 

[Naveen]

It's a reference to the Belgian Congo and Leopold II of Belgium.