10 things I hope I won't see in AoE4

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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As a former AoE2 and AoM player I would like to give my insight on things that I hope I don’t see on AoE4. I hope I don’t make anyone upset with my opinions, but they are true and my own and the only purpose of this topic is giving feedback on why I think AoE2 was the best game of the franchise and what annoyed me on other RTS games.

    1. Fixed TC locations. It was bad in AoM and it was bad in AoE3. I like the liberty of placing TCs everywhere and booming like a madman.
    1. Squads. When I heard that the company that made Company of Heroes was in charge of creating AoE4, I feared since day one that they could add squads in AoE4.
    1. Fixed base. Just like CoH, I don’t like the idea of having only one base and not being able to expand or even build outside the base.
    1. Lack of resource types. One thing I love in AoE2 is that I constantly have to command my villagers to gather an specific resource, changing my tactics. I really hope that we don’t see stuff like Starcraft and CoH where we only have 2 resources.
    1. Map objectives. I don’t wanna have to hold some terrain for X ammount of minutes to get resources or even win. My only objective should be destroying my opponent. I don’t wanna feel forced to do something just so I don’t lose due to forced gameplay. This concept is on most mobile games, like “hold 2 of 3 places to launch a nuke on your opponent” or whatever.
    1. Percentages. One of the best aspects of AoE2 was that I could do some “quick maths”, like upgrading forge to increase melee attack by 1 and kill a villager with my knight in 4 hits instead of 5. Adding armor percentages made it more confusing to know how many hits or arrows I would need to kill certain unit.
    1. Low population. It should favor both micro and macro plays. Games like Warcraft where I’m max pop with only 10 units is not fun at all, so I do hope we get some high max pop.
    1. One unit counting as more than one. Similar to low population, I didn’t like the “balance” of units in many games, like AoM, warcraft and SC, where one unit would cost 3-10 population slots.
    1. Reduced resources due to population. Annoying mechanic seen in many RTS games are not fun on my book.
    1. No dodge/luck. If we’re gonna have tanks (idk, people are talking) I wish it’s not like CoH2 where a bullet ricochet and bounces and kill the gunner, break the turret and all that nonsense. Just give the ■■■■ tank some HP and armor and give the bullet some damage + bonus vs specific targets.
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TC locations in AoE3 are not fixed; settlements are only a thing in AoM throughout the franchise.

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All good points. In theory the idea of powerful units costing more pop (like AoE 3) seems sound, but in my experience it led to drawn out stale mate matches because it negated some of the advantage of having a lot of resources

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Every time when you create a control group (Ctrl-0/9) that basically is a squad. Especially in AOE II where you have formation options for a squad. But you can’t queue to a squad which could be a nice addition as example given.

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The Relic idea of squads is a bit different than what you’d expect from an Age game.

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I was talking about squads as in company of heroes, where you build 1 unit and it comes out as a group of 3-6 units that can last minutes fighting on a cover and if you lost some squad units you were able to send them back to base to recruit more units.
I really like the idea of individual units that could all die if unattended for 2 seconds with a mangonel shot and not the CoH squad units that can run away getting shot at close range by 30 riflemen and barely taking any damage.
I wanna be able to build multiple barracks and stables and create an army very fast instead of having just three buildings, like in CoH and producing 1 squad at a time.

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I have read in the past somewhere on their own website that they stated that they will not turn AOE into some kind of CoH clone and will preserve the traditional feeling and game play. Why would they else hire all those new developers especially for developing the next AOE IV. They even developed a complete new engine (from one of their older Essence engines) for this game. I didn’t play CoH btw, so I can’t tell how bad it really was. Let’s see when they show the first in-game content.

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