A few things I want changed in Age2

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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1. Remove the “camel sound” when the Hero Joan of Arc dies. It is weird that that exists. Please remove it, or replace it with a horse-death sound.

2. Give the “Mounted Samurai” hero/special unit have a mounted samurai design instead.

→ While the Hussar design by itself is cool to look at…I for one would appreciate it if the Mounted Samurai showed an actual Samurai mounted on horseback. This should not be very hard to do, especially since we already have a Samurai design in the game to work with, and we already have special units like the Eastern Swordsman, the Legionary, the Frankish Paladin, etc. with their own unique designs.

3. Remove the glowing feature that all Hero units receive OR provide an Option feature so that the Hero-glow can be dimmed down or removed from all Hero/Special units.

→ While it is nice that the glow helps to identify Hero units quickly, at the same time it can be somewhat weird to look at, especial in the LARGE Hero units like the Elephant Archer Hero Khosrau and the Turtle Ship Hero Yi Sun-Shin.

4. Make “Wonder Race”, “Capture the Relic” part of the Ranked Game lists. (at least for experimentation purposes)

→ The removal of Deathmatch (DM) and Team Deathmatch (TDM) from the Ranked Game pool has understandably created a lot of stir in the Age Community. But I fail to understand the proper justifications for the game devs to take away DM and replace it with Empire Wars, which is more or less the same as normal Random Map games, which the difference being no Dark Age, and a pre-built economy. Why not add the games “Wonder Race” and “Capture the Relic”? And for those who might argue, “But @Antelope962027 , those games are rarely played in the Lobby” I answer: Well, what if we added them to the Ranked Queue and see what happens? They might be more popular and played more often as a result. But on a gameplay perspective, I rather like that Wonder Race is a purely-economy driven game, where you can practice you eco management as well as your Age times (which means that you are training up for your Random Map games competitive edge too!). Capture the Relic is also neat, because of the “race” element in it, which can help in encouraging players to perform microing with Monks and with other military support units as you jostle for control and capture of the Relic. I think that adding new gamemodes in general into Ranked Queue BESIDES just Random Map and Empire Wars would do well for this videogame, in appealing to new Age2 players, as well as expanding the game’s advertisement as a videogame of MANY unique gamemodes.

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I wont really comment on 1-3, since that seems like single player related and i dont play the scenarios. So i dont really have any opinion that matters about those points.

Can you give me any proof that those settings will be popular?

Just creating a ranked queue for random settings isnt a good idea. You need something to back it up why you think it will become popular. For EW we have the hype around the RBW tournaments and the many requests on this forum to add EW to ranked. There arent really things for both of your suggested games modes. So there is no reason to add these mods to ranked.

If anything needs to change for ranked, then it is to put DM back in ranked, so we have RM, DM and EW.

The build for FI into wonder is pretty straight forward. Only one civ will be viable in the end. Then it is only about perfect execution. There isnt really a reason for playing this mode as all in ranked. It is pretty boring. You can already train against the AI if you want to train for RM.

I dont think so. Small communities benefit much more for being lobby only. Match making will only works for large communities. Many small game modes with very few players will lead to long waiting times or unbalanced match ups. As result people just stay away from the game. So for me it isnt an advertisement for the game.

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I have found a temporary solution for this one: someone created a software (Reddit - Dive into anything) that let you disable various effects that can’t be disabled with just the in-game options, and the hero glow is among them.

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There’s also a mod that removes the hero glow or makes it less noticeable

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Thanks for that! I will check it out.

Is it already published in Age2: DE? Or is it a separate download?

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I do appreciate you making in answer to my Age2 proposals in this post of mine, Woodsier. I always love a thoughtful response made to my own statements and ideas.

Could you give me any proof that that will actually happen???

…I could not help but throw your question back to you. :laughing: But seriously, I made a post stating my opinion, and you asked me to back it up with hard data. So I am asking you to back up your opinion with hard data too. Otherwise, it seems a bit hypocritical to ask me to provide evidence to back up my statements when I can ask the same of you of your statements.

Now…as for your original question of:

I shall answer you by saying: it is all based on my own experience playing lobby games in both HD and DE. Back in HD, there were a lot more games that were not just Random Map, but more Regicide, Wonder Race, etc. But…here in DE, the popularity has shifted more to a “conquest” style of games: Random Map, Deathmatch, Empire Wars, Battle Royal…

(side note: while it is true that Deathmatch is not THAT popular in DE compared to the other gamemodes, it nonetheless is relatively more popular than Regicide and Capture the Relic, etc.)

…the only thing that has changed about Random Map is that all the games now are preset to “Conquest” instead of “Standard” which would allow Relic and Wonder victories. The devs just made the decision to set up Random Map like that. Do I know why? No I don’t. Nor do I know any data—if there is any–to show WHY Random Map was changed in DE. But I do know that games in DE have been tweaked significantly in HD, but in HD there WERE games hosted that included the supposedly “upopular” gamemodes of Build the Wonder, Capture the Relic, and Regicide. I know because I literally saw the Lobby in HD filled with them, and that was only 1 year ago.

Now, I like many other Age2 players, shifted from HD to DE because (1) HD lobby was becoming scarce of players that could fill up the game slots and (2) DE offered improvements like better graphics, more civs, better gameplay balance etc…

But as many of us migrated to DE, we began to notice that the game was specifically set up to emphasize Conquest gamemodes more often than the other gamemodes. Why?

My guess is that the devs thought that Conquest maps were the biggest attraction for competitive AGe2 players to play (they are not entirely wrong in thinking that) but that they are mistaken in believing that the other gamemodes were wholly unpopular—they are NOT unpopular, just not as common as Random Map games are–and as a result, the devs, going with what they think is the biggest money maker, made a conscious decision to make Ranked Gameplay fully “Conquest gamemodes” and to delegate all the “non-Conquest” gamemodes to Lobby matches. This only served to make the other gamemodes seem to be less popular than they already are. And, as Spirit of the Law has pointed out in his video “The Death of Deathmatch?” Should Empire Wars replace Death Match? (AoE2) - YouTube the devs have certainly made a mistake in miscalculating the supposed “unpopularity” of Deathmatch.

DE skews players–especially new players–into thinking that Random Map is THE gamemode of Age2 and no other. That all the other gamemodes are just “extras” when in fact, when Age2 first game out in 1999 in Age of Kings, the original Age2 devs made Random Map, Deathmatch and Regicide all “equal” gamemodes, in that all three modes were available to click and select in the game startup menu. By making Ranked Matches in DE host only the “conquest” gamemodes, the new Age2 devs pretty much made the other gamemodes less and less common in terms of playing.

THAT is why I strongly believe that if the Ranked Queue was to include the other game modes of Regicide, Deathmatch, Wonder Race, and Capture the Relic, they not only will be making the videogame appear to have more variation and diversity, they will have the videogame appear to not be so 1-dimensional and linear with just one main gamemode style.

Now…in a fashion the SOTL video and the explanation that I have provided above, should properly answer you question on what “proof” that I have to support my idea.

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I ask this question everything such thread pops up. Match making only works for big enough games. So if you want to add something to ranked, at least it has to be big enough to justify its own thread. The initial proof is for the user that came up with the idea. Based on those argument we can have a discussion. You made such post, so i shall react to this arguments.

Pre DE we had different platforms to play the game. HD and Voobly were the most notable two. Players from both platforms moved to DE and merged into one community. Both platforms had a different playerbase. Voobly was much more competitive, HD was more casual. At Voobly the golden standard was playing with the conquest setting, not by the standard setting. RM was by far the most common game mode. There was also a decent DM community. As third you had players that like CBA and other custom scenario maps. All other maps are pretty rare.

DE introduced ranked and all the top player moved to DE for ranked. As result many other follows the top player and many other players will also play in ranked. I think for many players from voobly nothing really changed in the setting (except they dont play arabia (or another map) only).

Non ranked game modes can still be hosted in the lobby. If a non ranked game mode is still popular, then we will see many lobbies with this game mode. In reality we dont really see many. Build the Wonder wasnt really popular at all. I havent played much at HD, but i cant remember seeing such game mode. You might meant Defend the Wonder. I have seen such game mode sometimes at HD. Currently there arent really games hosted by this game mode, which mean that there isnt really any demand for this game mode.

Capture the relic is kind of a different version of KOTH in which you try to control the middle. Such game modes are mostly popular for community games or playing with friends. Most of the games hosted with this game mode are indeed community games or with friends. That is not the type of game mode for ranked. You dont need match making, you already has all the players.

Regicide was only popular as regicide fortress. I wouldnt really mind if they replace the fortress map that sometimes pops up in ranked with regicide fortress. That is the only think that can be part of the RM ranked queue. The difference between RM and regicide isnt also that big. Only real difference is the starting position and if you loose you can try to go for a king snipe to still win. Most regicide games are still decided by RM conquest settings.

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I already did this in my mod Historical Accuracy part1 and Historical Accuracy part 2.
The mod contains an abundance of content and I can’t play this game without it.

Perhaps you might enjoy it.

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Many thanks! I will try them both out.

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It’s in the Mod Managers just subscribe and restart your game.