RTS Age of Empires IV - Medieval Again

[Lacrymas]

It just looks like ghetto Stronghold to me, and Stronghold has been ghetto for quite a while now. I would've made it 2D maybe.

 

[Tacgnol]

Others have mentioned it, but it really does seem like their big goal with this is to create a big competitive multiplayer scene.

The MP has become rather popular again with AOE 2 DE and it sounds like they are keen to capitalise on that and the esports market. A lot of the changes and features seem to be coming from feedback from their MP focus group.

I hope the campaigns turn out alright, but I'm not convinced they'll be able to pull that off.

 

[Cyberarmy]

It just looks like ghetto Stronghold to me, and Stronghold has been ghetto for quite a while now. I would've made it 2D maybe.

Exactly my thoughts.

I'm between this

and this

 

[Calthaer]

I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being one of the type of games that sells a sufficient amount of copies on release but almost immediately dies once people return to the game(s) they are familiar with.

AOE2 is just too good. The problem with creating one of the two most popular RTS games of all time (other is Starcraft, I would say) is that it's all downhill from there. I have never played AOE3 and have no intention of doing so.

Also, the pink shirts don't inspire confidence that this game will be great. Mindshare taken by figuring out how to shoehorn SJW into a game is mindshare not spent on ensuring this thing is amazingly fun, and when you have to surpass AOE2...

 

[Lacrymas]

Warcraft 3 is also popular. Technically AoM too, but it's a very distant fourth.

 

[Calthaer]

Warcraft 3 is also popular. Technically AoM too, but it's a very distant fourth.

This is true, forgot about Warcraft 3. Probably in third place, as you're indicating, especially after the whole "revised" or "remastered" or whatever that nonsense is they recently released.

 

[Lacrymas]

Almost nobody plays the Remastered version because it sucks.

 

[L'ennui]

Not thrilled with how the game looks, but I'm pretty sure they'll throw lots of resources at it and support it for a number of years, even if initial reception were to be lukewarm or even negative (no reason to think that'll be the case). Interesting that they're banking on asymmetric factions, looking forward to seeing how the gameplay works out.

 

[vota DC]

I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being one of the type of games that sells a sufficient amount of copies on release but almost immediately dies once people return to the game(s) they are familiar with.

AOE2 is just too good. The problem with creating one of the two most popular RTS games of all time (other is Starcraft, I would say) is that it's all downhill from there. I have never played AOE3 and have no intention of doing so.

Also, the pink shirts don't inspire confidence that this game will be great. Mindshare taken by figuring out how to shoehorn SJW into a game is mindshare not spent on ensuring this thing is amazingly fun, and when you have to surpass AOE2...

Aoe2 Is strange because Dark Age Is ooogabooga with militia instead of clubmen. Only difference from Stone Age of aoe 1 Is that you can at least build farms.
But this seems just a remake....they could have tried something like from Stone Age to late medieval since after all melee stay important from beginning to the end.

Only novelty is very different civilization (you can do the same modding the original with genie editor) and ambushes that are better than unpassable trees that make siege civilizations too strong in black forest.

 

[d1r]

Wow, this game's art style looks atrocious.

As if they were going for a mobile phone release first.

 

[Alienman]

Compare this video



to the PR video they did for Relic studio. (and weep)

 

[smaug]

Saw the trailer, female knights ?

Game looks garbage compared DE and HD, fugly 3D lmoa what a failure

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Why does it look like Empire Earth?

although I don't know if they can convert

(click it, video will play at relevant time)

There are some interesting game play ideas there, and while I don't want to be a graphics whore holy shit do the units, animations and especially projectiles look like absolute dog shit.

 

[Galdred]

Saw the trailer, female knights ?

Game looks garbage compared DE and HD, fugly 3D lmoa what a failure

Indeed, but posting archers on walls and having tower integrated to the city walls is incline for me.

 

[d1r]

Why does it look like Empire Earth?

although I don't know if they can convert

(click it, video will play at relevant time)

There are some interesting game play ideas there, and while I don't want to be a graphics whore holy shit do the units, animations and especially projectiles look like absolute dog shit.

It's not even the graphics. It's the fucking ugly art style. Even Age of Mythology (fucking 2002) looks better than this crap.

 

[BrotherFrank]

"In Age of Empires 4, a unit of pikemen looks like three men instead of 100, and cavalry seem to gallop up to an infantry line and then sit there dueling instead of smashing through it in a realistic show of physics."

Can someone who speaks gamejourno translate this into english for me? As amusing as the idea of pikemen being marakov dolls is.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Seems like someone who thinks AoE should be Total War? Modern journos completely lack exposure and compare everything to what they know, which isn't much. It's fabulously optimistic to expect some modern neckbeard to know much about classic rts.

 

[AgentFransis]

Seems like someone who thinks AoE should be Total War? Modern journos completely lack exposure and compare everything to what they know, which isn't much. It's fabulously optimistic to expect some modern neckbeard to know much about classic rts.

On the one hand yes. On the other hand AoE2: DE averages 25K concurrent players on Steam today. Between that, all the streamers and constant tournaments the game is probably as popular as it's ever been.

That said I looked up the article the quote is taken from and it's from a paragraph making an explicit comparison with Total War. He doesn't list it as a negative point, merely as a point of comparison perhaps for the benefit of total newfags.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

On the one hand yes. On the other hand AoE2: DE averages 25K concurrent players on Steam today. Between that, all the streamers and constant tournaments the game is probably as popular as it's ever been.

Yeah, I know, I'm playing it regularly. But it's largely based around (competitive) multiplayer community and expecting a modern journo to know much about that is even more fabulously optimistic.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Why does it look like Empire Earth?

although I don't know if they can convert

(click it, video will play at relevant time)

Sorry for the late reply. Mass conversion is a bad idea, IMO since current conversion is cheesy enough as it is. It unfairly favors archer / castle heavy playstyle in order to defend from it and adds more RNG to the game. If given an opportunity to make an entirely different game, why keep the old game's shittiest elements?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

It just looks overwhelmingly shit, but I am grateful to them for one thing. Making it a medieval setting again means there's absolutely no reason to abide by its shittiness as AoE 2 already exists. It can be safely ignored.

 

[Preben]

"In Age of Empires 4, a unit of pikemen looks like three men instead of 100, and cavalry seem to gallop up to an infantry line and then sit there dueling instead of smashing through it in a realistic show of physics."

Can someone who speaks gamejourno translate this into english for me? As amusing as the idea of pikemen being marakov dolls is.

In real world a cavalryman would never fucking fence with guys who hold long pikes. Nobody was that suicidal.
He would either charge though them and then cut down them from the flank or rear or bounce off and try again in hope of finding a weak point.

 

[Mr. Pink]

"In Age of Empires 4, a unit of pikemen looks like three men instead of 100, and cavalry seem to gallop up to an infantry line and then sit there dueling instead of smashing through it in a realistic show of physics."

Can someone who speaks gamejourno translate this into english for me? As amusing as the idea of pikemen being marakov dolls is.

In real world a cavalryman would never fucking fence with guys who hold long pikes. Nobody was that suicidal.
He would either charge though them and then cut down them from the flank or rear or bounce off and try again in hope of finding a weak point.

Cavalry does not charge into sufficiently motivated groups of spearmen because warhorses are not suicidal. Cavalry charges in pre-industrial warfare are done at a moderate pace and can stop and turn around right before impact if they feel that the enemy will not immediately break to try again later.

Also, the more gameplay details I read about Age of Empires 4, the less interested I am. AoE2 is an elegant game because the factors that influence the outcome of battles are relatively few and tied directly into the core gameplay. Aside from civilization bonuses and blacksmith upgrades, there are no global "buffs" or "debuffs" that have are applied to soldiers by a wizard like a Blizzard game. Civilizations have very subtle economic bonuses that compound into meaningful differences in gameplay rather than tacked on civ-exclusive mechanics like dynasties or nomadism. Choosing the correct globally applied bonus every once in a while doesn't sound fun to me.

Differentiating civilizations by giving them their own unique mechanic as opposed to just tweaking aspects of their economies or military options strikes me as something someone who doesn't understand why people still play AoE2 would do.

In AoE2: All civs work mostly the same and it's up to you to use your skill to leverage the seemingly small bonuses into a big advantage. For example, one of the most boring civ bonuses: Japanese resource collection buildings cost 50 wood instead of 100 wood. This isn't very exciting until you realize that it opens up the opportunity to build your barracks a couple seconds faster than your opponent, which in turn gives you a 1-2 militia lead if both of you choose to do a dark age rush at the same time. You could also leverage this bonus by using that saved wood to make two docks at the start instead of the usual one (most civs can only afford one dock in dark age) to boost your food fishing ability. Another way to leverage this bonus is to double up your resource collection buildings for efficiency and defensive reasons. A tiny 50 wood discount becomes huge because AoE2 is a game of compounding interest from decisions you make in early game. As a player, you are constantly looking for ways to exploit the bonuses you get.

In AoE4: If you play as Chinese you are given a popup with the option to get a bunch of eco upgrades or a bunch of military upgrades. You pick eco because the game just started and you are not retarded. You play the game the way the developer intended you to play it.

Obviously I can't judge yet because it hasn't come out, but everything listed here seems too straightforward and linear. It's clear which dynasty is for which phase of the game.

So both the Chinese and English are confirmed to have ways of generating infinite gold in the late game. In AoE2, resource scarcity makes the late imperial age interesting because gold becomes increasingly more valuable to both players as time goes on. Despite being the same age, imperial age and post-imperial age (after all easily obtainable gold is exhausted) feel completely different. Imperial age will feature the coolest unique units, paladins and other high quality units while post imperial is like a ww1 meat grinder but everyone is a halberdier, elite skirmisher, hussar or champion. I wonder how they designed the terminal stage of AoE4, if they thought of it in the first place.

tl;dr: AoE4 seems more like a game you'd lose interest in a couple months like Company of Heroes or AoE3 rather than a timeless classic like AoE2

 

[Tacgnol]

It just looks overwhelmingly shit, but I am grateful to them for one thing. Making it a medieval setting again means there's absolutely no reason to abide by its shittiness as AoE 2 already exists. It can be safely ignored.

I bet they'll abandon it within a year of release and just keep making expansions for AOE 2 DE.

 

[vota DC]

"In Age of Empires 4, a unit of pikemen looks like three men instead of 100, and cavalry seem to gallop up to an infantry line and then sit there dueling instead of smashing through it in a realistic show of physics."

Can someone who speaks gamejourno translate this into english for me? As amusing as the idea of pikemen being marakov dolls is.

In real world a cavalryman would never fucking fence with guys who hold long pikes. Nobody was that suicidal.
He would either charge though them and then cut down them from the flank or rear or bounce off and try again in hope of finding a weak point.

Cavalry does not charge into sufficiently motivated groups of spearmen because warhorses are not suicidal. Cavalry charges in pre-industrial warfare are done at a moderate pace and can stop and turn around right before impact if they feel that the enemy will not immediately break to try again later.

Also, the more gameplay details I read about Age of Empires 4, the less interested I am. AoE2 is an elegant game because the factors that influence the outcome of battles are relatively few and tied directly into the core gameplay. Aside from civilization bonuses and blacksmith upgrades, there are no global "buffs" or "debuffs" that have are applied to soldiers by a wizard like a Blizzard game. Civilizations have very subtle economic bonuses that compound into meaningful differences in gameplay rather than tacked on civ-exclusive mechanics like dynasties or nomadism. Choosing the correct globally applied bonus every once in a while doesn't sound fun to me.

Differentiating civilizations by giving them their own unique mechanic as opposed to just tweaking aspects of their economies or military options strikes me as something someone who doesn't understand why people still play AoE2 would do.

In AoE2: All civs work mostly the same and it's up to you to use your skill to leverage the seemingly small bonuses into a big advantage. For example, one of the most boring civ bonuses: Japanese resource collection buildings cost 50 wood instead of 100 wood. This isn't very exciting until you realize that it opens up the opportunity to build your barracks a couple seconds faster than your opponent, which in turn gives you a 1-2 militia lead if both of you choose to do a dark age rush at the same time. You could also leverage this bonus by using that saved wood to make two docks at the start instead of the usual one (most civs can only afford one dock in dark age) to boost your food fishing ability. Another way to leverage this bonus is to double up your resource collection buildings for efficiency and defensive reasons. A tiny 50 wood discount becomes huge because AoE2 is a game of compounding interest from decisions you make in early game. As a player, you are constantly looking for ways to exploit you

In AoE4: If you play as Chinese you are given a popup with the option to get a bunch of eco upgrades or a bunch of military upgrades. You pick eco because the game just started and you are not retarded. You play the game the way the developer intended you to play it.

Obviously I can't judge yet because it hasn't come out, but everything listed here seems too straightforward and linear. It's clear which dynasty is for which phase of the game.

So both the Chinese and English are confirmed to have ways of generating infinite gold in the late game. In AoE2, resource scarcity makes the late imperial age interesting because gold becomes increasingly more valuable to both players as time goes on. Despite being the same age, imperial age and post-imperial age (after all easily obtainable gold is exhausted) feel completely different. Imperial age will feature the coolest unique units, paladins and other high quality units while post imperial is like a ww1 meat grinder but everyone is a halberdier, elite skirmisher, hussar or champion. I wonder how they designed the terminal stage of AoE4, if they thought of it in the first place.

tl;dr: AoE4 seems more like a game you'd lose interest in a couple months like Company of Heroes or AoE3 rather than a timeless classic like AoE2

Mongols generate Stone........but they don't have walls. It Is a very strange choice.

In vanilla aoe2 only Goths with their lack of walls were different (and sucked since huskarls couldn't reach archers and no huskarls from barracks).
With the expansion they added huns that had no houses and meso civs that lacked cavalry and their Eagle Warrior line was the opposite of a scout cavalry being very good early but really bad late game because gold heavy.