Age of Mythology: Retold

[Feyd Rautha]

So this new DLC called Immortal Pillars seems to be some Chinese thing. Is it a reimagining of the Tale of the Dragon (2016) expansion for the original Age of Mythology?

 

[Lacrymas]

It's more likely a bid to get into the Chinese market while claiming it's a remake/reimagining/whatever of Tale of the Dragon.

 

[JarlFrank]

Is it a reimagining of the Tale of the Dragon (2016) expansion for the original Age of Mythology?

It's more likely a bid to get into the Chinese market while claiming it's a remake/reimagining/whatever of Tale of the Dragon.

The original Tale of the Dragon was an obvious bid to get into the Chinese market, and as an official part of the first AoM remaster, it was expected for the second remaster to receive a Chinese civilization and campaign too.

But the original version was so half-assed, they decided to scrap it and make a new Chinese civ and campaign from scratch rather than straight up port Tale of the Dragon.

The Chinese DLC was pretty much known to come out from the day the game released. I have the Premium Edition which includes the first two expansions for free, and it was always known the first expansion would be a complete ground-up overhaul of the Chinese from Tale of the Dragon. Such a fundamental overhaul that they're barely recognizable as the same civ, but considering how much Tale of the Dragon was disliked (half-assed implementation, broken balance, boring campaign) this was the correct choice.

 

[Lacrymas]

Does this DLC come with a campaign? Not that I'm overly interested in the Chinese as a civ for this game, but I might grab the premium edition upgrade whenever it's on a sale or something.

 

[-M-]

Does this DLC come with a campaign?

It does. But Microsoft has been incapable at producing quality content for these games for a long time. The first attempt at the Chinese was awful, I expect this to only be marginally better.

 

[Dark Matter]

Does this DLC come with a campaign?

It does. But Microsoft has been incapable at producing quality content for these games for a long time. The first attempt at the Chinese was awful, I expect this to only be marginally better.

Nah, it's a massive improvement. It's similar in quality to the Freyr DLC except expanded to a full pantheon/campaign.

 

[Lacrymas]

I really have to start playing some PvP of this game, but I'm sure now is not the right moment because the Chinese are most likely grotesquely overpowered and everyone will be playing them.

 

[karoliner]

Wow they really improved the Chinese civ! Now is actually fun to play, the campaign is great too.

 

[Lacrymas]

I played the first mission of the Chinese and it's immediately obvious it's a modern RTS mission ;d In a good way, I think. There's some emphasis on micro and ability usage, which I like. As far as the Chinese go, they aren't as over the top as I had imagined them to be, but I'm still on the fence whether they fit the entire rest of the game. I would've preferred some other ancient civilizations that would've realistically made contact with Egypt and Greece. As it stands now, the Chinese are just hanging in the air a little bit. To be fair, I said the same thing about the Norse when I played AoM for the first time. My opinion about them has mellowed out a tad (and it helps that Retold has made them more engaging to play), but I still would've preferred a geographically closer civ. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Canaan, Carthage, Hatti are all underrepresented and underused.

 

[Elttharion]

I played the first mission of the Chinese and it's immediately obvious it's a modern RTS mission ;d In a good way, I think. There's some emphasis on micro and ability usage, which I like. As far as the Chinese go, they aren't as over the top as I had imagined them to be, but I'm still on the fence whether they fit the entire rest of the game. I would've preferred some other ancient civilizations that would've realistically made contact with Egypt and Greece. As it stands now, the Chinese are just hanging in the air a little bit. To be fair, I said the same thing about the Norse when I played AoM for the first time. My opinion about them has mellowed out a tad (and it helps that Retold has made them more engaging to play), but I still would've preferred a geographically closer civ. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Canaan, Carthage, Hatti are all underrepresented and underused.

The Celts are right there too.

 

[Lacrymas]

I wouldn't say the Celts are on "the same level" as the big/influential empires I listed because they were essentially tribes. Just like the Scythians, Thracians, Goths, Numidians, and so on.

 

[Elttharion]

I wouldn't say the Celts are on "the same level" as the big/influential empires I listed because they were essentially tribes. Just like the Scythians, Thracians, Goths, Numidians, and so on.

I was thinking more on the underrepresented and geographically closer side of the argument. Mesopotamia would have been a much better choice, like you said.

 

[JarlFrank]

I played the first mission of the Chinese and it's immediately obvious it's a modern RTS mission ;d In a good way, I think. There's some emphasis on micro and ability usage, which I like. As far as the Chinese go, they aren't as over the top as I had imagined them to be, but I'm still on the fence whether they fit the entire rest of the game. I would've preferred some other ancient civilizations that would've realistically made contact with Egypt and Greece. As it stands now, the Chinese are just hanging in the air a little bit. To be fair, I said the same thing about the Norse when I played AoM for the first time. My opinion about them has mellowed out a tad (and it helps that Retold has made them more engaging to play), but I still would've preferred a geographically closer civ. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Canaan, Carthage, Hatti are all underrepresented and underused.

The Norse are cool because they have one of the most recognizable mythologies. Chinese are fine too, those were obviously intended as a cash-in on the Chinese market back when AoM Extended Edition got its Chinese DLC, but now they actually turned them into a cool civ.

What pissed me off more was the first expansion introducing the Atlanteans as a new civ. There's so much potential in Mesopotamia, you could do Celts too, maybe Indians if you wanna stretch east. But they just re-hashed Greeks and made them too fantasy-like. The Atlantean style really doesn't feel like anything historical or mythological, particularly the way their human units are designed.

 

[Elttharion]

Going from the mostly 'historical' descriptions for the units and buildings on the original 3 civs to the completely made up crap for the Atlanteans was a huge decline too.

 

[Lacrymas]

After having done 60% of the Chinese campaign, I can say I like them more than I had anticipated. It helps that the campaign is not the easiest and has some cool objectives. I'm looking forward to more content for this game and hopefully the next civ is something interesting and not just Indians or Japanese.

 

[Castozor]

Well I know these are different Developers now and AoM is a bit different from the main series but i wouldn't be surprised if the next one is another Aztec or similar (Meso-) American Civ.

 

[Lacrymas]

Maybe Maya. The Aztecs did not exist during the time frame of this game. I was hoping for one of the civs I listed before (Hatti, Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Carthage, etc.)

 

[Narax]

Maybe Maya. The Aztecs did not exist during the time frame of this game. I was hoping for one of the civs I listed before (Hatti, Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Carthage, etc.)

The norse, bronze age egyptians, and ancient greeks do not exist during the same timeframe either.

 

[Lacrymas]

I finished the Chinese campaign. The last mission is "inspired by" Warcraft 3's last mission. Overall, I liked it. It's not as good as the original campaign, but what is? The story is kind of meh. It felt a bit homosexual due to one of the main characters rejecting the hot witch in order to cross swords buddy up with the other main character and frolic in the woods together in the end. The maps are the most beautiful out of any of the other campaigns. My biggest problem with it is the same as all other campaigns of this game - it's all mirror matches all the way down. It makes sense in this campaign since there 0 chance the ancient Chinese are realistically going to battle ancient Greeks or Egyptians, but that just goes to show how alien the Chinese are to this game. Don't get me wrong, it's a well made civ with its own quirky mechanics and unique myth units and shit, but it just feels like a bid to get into the irl Chinese market. if I were to ignore that fact and critique the civ on its own, I'd say the mortal units are a little bit too samey looking. I literally can not tell the difference between them at a glance with the exception of the Chu Ko Nu. I have no idea how balanced they are compared to the other civs because surprise, surprise, there are only mirror matches and there's 0 way to tell unless you play skirmish or multiplayer.

Will I play the Chinese in skirmishes or PvP? Probably not, but that's not because they aren't well made, it's just that the Chinese/Asian aesthetic isn't for me and has never been for me, so ymmv. It'll be fun playing against them, though.

 

[whocares]

Been playing the Retold campaign a bit and I'm honestly impressed by the remaster. Sure, the new art for gods and convos (that you can remove) is eye-gouging, and voice acting (that you can't remove) is terrible decline. The ultimate jewness of the business model is also appaling (circumvented by sailing the seas). Paying for new gods is annoying, but we've all seen Paradox games before, nothing new here. But then hiding old god art behind DLC so you have to pay to not see AI slop, that's a move worthy of Abraham himself.

But in terms of gameplay, it does so many nice things that feel refreshing. How you can set a rally point from a building on a unit in a control group, and the units produced there will go to the unit and be autoadded to that control group. Or seeing all your control groups and what's in them, as well as all your active production at a glance. Autoproducing workers is a godsend. Just right click them and rally them to a resource and go actually play the game instead of the tiresome busywork of hitting 5 (my preferred hotkey for town centers)Q every 20 seconds, or you're throwing. There's also some form of worker automation between resources, but I don't fuck with that, that's too hands-off for me.

Another great thing are tooltips that show exactly what every unit does. No more vague descriptions, no hidden armor and damage types. You have all the information you need on demand. The controls customization is also unrivaled. Everything can be rebound. And you'll want to do it, because by default, a-click doesn't exist and instead it wants you to use space as A. But you can in fact rebind A from some useless formation to attack, and space to take you to the latest alert.

The new abilty to use active unit skills is fun. And reusable god powers make using them more engaging, and they're balanced in a way that you can't just spam them, as subsequent uses cost a considerable and ever increasing amout of favor. Now this last thing I'm not sure about but AI seems better now, as it actually microes its siege engines, forcing you to chase after them into unfavorable engagements.

This time around, I'm loving the Egyptians as a faction, while I remember hating them when I played the game last. One thing I don't get about them is how do you fight myth units as Egypt? I don't play AoM PVP, and in the campaign you have your Greek heroes to take care of them. But on a conceptual level what do you do if you have a group of trolls or cyclops in your backyard? Pharaoh is one guy and is better used back in base, overseeing production. And priests, even with their bonuses deal pathetic damage as they're primarily healers.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can remove the new voice acting. There's a mod in the built-in mod manager. As for how you fight myth units with Egyptians - you spam priests. They aren't as weak as you make them out to be. You have to micro them a bit, though. It's actually pretty scary to go up against a wall of priests when you have a lot of myth units. Greeks, ironically, are the faction with the most problems against myth units. I remember I couldn't really do anything as Greeks back in beta when Gaia was freakishly overpowered.

 

[Lacrymas]

Here's a good Chinese vs Norse game if anyone is interested. I think it showcases the strengths of the Chinese but he also lost, so you have to know how to use them. Imo, he allowed the Norse player to boom too much and he overinvested in Tiger Cavalry and couldn't deal with the Huskarls. The Chinese were recently nerfed too and I think it was after this game was recorded.



And yes, people already figured out early tower rush with Creation. Oh, and yeah, Chinese heroes are maybe too powerful. They powercreep the Greek ones hard.

 

[Lacrymas]

Some of the scenarios in the Arena of the Gods mode are more difficult than anything any of the campaigns have to offer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The Prometheus twist with the slowly building titan gate cripples your economy.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I finished the Chinese campaign. The last mission is "inspired by" Warcraft 3's last mission. Overall, I liked it. It's not as good as the original campaign, but what is? The story is kind of meh. It felt a bit homosexual due to one of the main characters rejecting the hot witch in order to cross swords buddy up with the other main character and frolic in the woods together in the end. The maps are the most beautiful out of any of the other campaigns. My biggest problem with it is the same as all other campaigns of this game - it's all mirror matches all the way down. It makes sense in this campaign since there 0 chance the ancient Chinese are realistically going to battle ancient Greeks or Egyptians, but that just goes to show how alien the Chinese are to this game. Don't get me wrong, it's a well made civ with its own quirky mechanics and unique myth units and shit, but it just feels like a bid to get into the irl Chinese market. if I were to ignore that fact and critique the civ on its own, I'd say the mortal units are a little bit too samey looking. I literally can not tell the difference between them at a glance with the exception of the Chu Ko Nu. I have no idea how balanced they are compared to the other civs because surprise, surprise, there are only mirror matches and there's 0 way to tell unless you play skirmish or multiplayer.

You ever think that maybe all wypipo look the same to the Chinese, you racist jerk!?

 

[JarlFrank]

Some of the scenarios in the Arena of the Gods mode are more difficult than anything any of the campaigns have to offer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The Prometheus twist with the slowly building titan gate cripples your economy.

The 3v1 scenarios are brutal.