Well the sale discount for AoE2DE stands at half its usual discount. -33% discount compared to -66% in the past.
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Letâs hope that thatâs the worst they do and that itâs the price for 10 more years of good DLCs.
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It is indeed strange but at the same time Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (2023) is on a 75% sale. So I donât think there is a connection. It is still strange though since all previous sales were -66%.
I wouldnât jump to quick conclusion. If we see a Battle Pass we know who to blame though.
Compare the inflated base price of Modern Warfare III (2023) with Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. I used UAH pricing as an example: 2,449â´ with a 75% discount, bringing the final price down to 612â´, compared with 880â´ at a 33% discount, bringing the final price to 589â´.
Yeah AAA have gotten expensive recently.
AoE2DE is still pretty cheap though compared to most games on Steam. I think itâs probably one of the best values you can get out there. I know it used to be cheaper but now you get half of the DLC bundled with it.
Itâs cheaper now because before he was at 20⏠+ 3 DLC at 10 ⏠each, total 50 âŹ. Now we have the same content at 33âŹ, 17 ⏠cheaper.
The original base game with 20⏠was already an amazing value. Same for AoE3DE. Itâs crazy having a 20⏠game in a 60⏠world having more and better content then all those 60⏠and now 70⏠and 80⏠games.
At this point, there is nothing I would like more than an AI that is at least somewhat more âopen.â It is so tedious that the AI ââoperates within such narrow, rigid constraints. It would be great if those limits could at least be loosened more easily via the editor.
Take town centers, for example: if only there were a wayâvia a trigger or an editor optionâto stop the town center from being the focal point for everything. You design maps and create specific zones for food production, yet the AI ââalmost completely ignores them, remaining fixated solely on the town centers. Then there is its inability to utilize units or technologies not originally intended for it. Having to handle everything through triggers is an absolute chore; the AI ââreally ought to be much more âopenâ in that regard.
These rigid limitations make the AI ââfar too predictable. That might be intentional for standard gameplay, I suppose, but it is incredibly frustrating when you want to get truly creative. There is no aspect of the game that reveals its age more clearly than its completely outdated AI.
This is kinda off topic but whatever. The issues is that you kinda have to code your own AI scripts to make a good scenario. AoE1 scenarios were entirely done by scripting AIs because there were no triggers yet. AoE3 has a lot of triggers to command units around so the AI is a lot easier to script. AoE2 sits kinda in the middle. The triggers are limited so you still have to relatively heavily rely on coding your own AI.
It would be nice if they at least gave us AI personalities like in AoMR. Though those are not available in the AoMR editor yet.
Okay so Iâm gonna try to calm down abit the things about this Activision madness.
However before I start, consider that my words are not Facts but informations anylsis, and deductions based on my own knowledge of the video game industry so I may be entirely wrong and none of my words are âinsider infosâ. The infos are neither pure speculations, itâs strict analysis and guessing based on datas such as release scheduling, canellation logic, etc.
It seems that someone from the inside of that mess confirmed that at least one future project got cancelled since Activision introduction at the head of the ship.
AoE3 baltic powers is a first âcanceledâ (delayed) dlc that finally came out after month of silent.
AoE4 norse dlc announced for a long time without date finally came into pre-order and is coming at the time it was meant to come based on the initial informations about it.
AoE2 Viking Sagas came at the announced date, while the three other unkowns dlcs are still in the steamdb registery which basically means the work is kinda already done, so money is already lost and content canât really be cancelled or it will cost even more than it already cost.
So what project has been cancelled ?
I remember in one video that some people confirmed about Worldâs Edge hiring some very specific people, with Unreal Engine knowledge on their hiring process. So far, none of the age product is using Unreal Engine, and nne will get a portage to it it would be senseless as they master their own engines.
Why no portage ? Because you generally do a portage only when youâre not owning the engine, and want to move to a more flexible engine cause the one youâre using (not owning) is not meeting your needs.
I worked myself with Unreal Engine for a long time, and this engine is a Beast, but is also easy to get hands onto. So when I heard about Worldâs Edge hiring specific Unreal Engine specialist, I directly understood that the type of people they hired was not just programmers used to Unreal Engine, because itâs just a C++ engine with some very userfriendly tools, so it was a very very very deep usage of the Engine that requires specialist to be hired.
What that can mean ? When you hire someone specialized on a product that doesnât really require specializing, it means you aim for âmore than the engineâ. Keep in mind that Unreal Engine is getting frenquts updates due to Fortnite requiring new features, which the engine inherit for free.
The other possibility about those âspecialistsâ may be not directly related to the engine programming but for stuffs like Niagaras, and other built-in tools that requieres knowledge. itâs bascially all the fancy particules and physics related stuff or even VR but I think we can dismiss VR here.
One key strenght of UE is the multi-platform, but it doesnât really requiere specific knowledge, itâs just good for everything when you do it right. So I think we can also discard that, which leave us with only the visual effect team or the deep mechanics team,
Both of those jobs share something in common, Modern Era design. Fancy particules and deep code altering means âmodern style RTSâ.
All of those hints, combined with the info that one future project is cancelled, to me, means that itâs this very project that got cancelled.
Why this one ? Because itâs the only project we have NO info about so itâs the best candidate to be cancelled. Reason is that when you cancel stuff, all contract you already signed and promised result for are also cancelled. Those cancelling, when you signed to pledge something, you generally have to pay compensation to those involved. Generally those contract takes part once the content is ready enought to start the advertising, the trailer making, all the promotion and speech in fromt of cameras etc. The schedulling of a release is also part of those type of contract that will cost more to cancel than carry to the end, and when a product is uploaded on a database such as steam, generally itâs already advanced at the stage where the promotion campaign has already been scheduled and payed for.
In that regard, I think we can say without fear that the three next age of empires 2 dlcs will be released. The two oldest will probably have no impact or very little due to the situation, and maybe the youngest one may suffer from decision by Activision on how they manage the thing, like quality vision changes from the old team to whatâs left of it with their new boss decisions.
We already saw in the past bosses forcing decisions to be done in AoE2 with The Conqueror update including Koreans due to microsoft pushing them to be added cause of Starcraft success in Korea. The team at that period managed to deal with their boss demands, while keeping the game identity as intact as possible. Forgotten Empire was a fan company that brought the game back to live and kept working on the entire Age Saga since then. Those guys are passionnate, and some modders joined the team with time, some left, thatâs todayâs world reality. But there is one thing we canât doubt, this game is surviving due to the community and how far that community went in the past and is still going today. Iâm not just saying that about the modders, the esport scene that appeared is crazy, it wasnât there at the time of the Forgotten. We had to use some third tier tool to play online before the HD version on steam, faking LAN connection to be able to play with friends, and now we got tournaments IRL. Thatâs crazy and thatâs also part of the reason why the game is still getting content in 2026.
Age of Empires is also the first and only video game that parternered with a Museum. I doubt you all realize what this thing means. An historical exposure about one ancient group of people had a partnership with a Video Game, in Le Louvre at Paris. Video Games tend to be categorized as âitâs not real, blah blah blahâ, but that very specific partnership tied our game with reality in a much stronger way than any other game ever did, even those getting movies adaptations.
So yes, team reduction may have impact on content. But guess what ? The team is the team that brought to us all the content since the Conqueror, and they never let us down. Maybe they added content that some dislike, but is it letting us down ? No itâs not, itâs just risk taken, that maybe were not the right one to take, but by looking at the rating of the Viking Sagas, we canât say theyâre killing the game. You canât really kill age of empires 2 anyway, community will always find its way.
In the end, the project that probably suffered the most out of this mess is that supposed âAge of Empires UE5â. But guess what, Age of Empires 4 also suffer such thing, it was axed back in the days when Ensemble Studio stopped to work on the Age games, and it rebirth from ashes under Worldâs Edge, and caught its public, so Age of Empires already prouved its reliability at the good old time when AoE1 copies sold in mass even after the game dev was finished, at the time of all those Definitive Edition release, at AoE4 release, so even an blind would âseeâ that this franchise can still create money.
At the very worst, no new content will appear after 2027, at least no new official payed content. But with all the tools we got todays, the XS scripting, PC players, Xbox Players, PS5 players, MacOS Players, and even Linux players using Wine/other emulators, the playerbase has never been that strong and the content all can access has never been that crazy. I canât insist enought on the scale at which editors can today work without datamods, even just with scenario triggers we can do crazy stuff, but with the XS scripting we can do total conversion that runs on a simple script file to be loaded by the map starting parameter, without any datamod.
So keep faith in Forgotten Empire, the will not forget us.
(if Amazon would have taken the lead over Age game, then I would have had concern for the future. #SaveStargate)
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Thatâs exactly my problem. And I lack the experienceâand admittedly the inclinationâto write my own scripts (especially the sheer number required). After all, the AI ââdoesnât even man towers on its own; you have to issue a specific command for that. Since the AI ââis so monotonous and fixated on a single objective, you basically have to script everything that deviates from an economic boom and unit spam. Itâs a shame, really. But oh well, thatâs just how it is. It would be great if it were more adaptive and intuitive regarding the elements provided via the editor. Unfortunately, the game leaves a lot of potential untapped in that regardâat least when it comes to scenario design.
while its the most likely that this was for a future Age game, it could be for something differen, because Forgotten Empires also develops for other games:
and 2 projects are unannaounced:
one could have been Age of Empires 5, but we cant know for sure.
The joke about AoE5 was because it was under UE5 xD, not especially a 5th age of empires game.
Yes, anyway, I donât think theyâd do anything with AoE 5, except maybe DLCs (since Relic would be developing the main game)âŚ
Oh I never knew they did a Stellaris DLC and had no idea they worked on Anno 117 too. I even played that game recently.
It is pretty safe to assume that one of them is âAoE5â but the other one could be anything.
No Relic would certainly not make AoE5, they are barely doing anything for AoE4 at this point. Relic is a much smaller developer now and they are working on their own games, they donât have any resources to be making another Age of Empires. Plus they have their own engine and Worlds Edge was looking for Unreal Engine developers.
I think one of the main issues with AoE4 is that it uses Relics engine which makes them dependent on a developer that is owned by a different publisher.
Then AoE 5 will probably be made by Creative Assembly (like what happened with Halo Wars 2)âŚ
Civ splitting is old news. Letâs start merging them back together
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As far as we know AoE5 was only being worked on by Worlds Edge and very likely Forgotten Empires.
Creative Assembly is currently also too busy with their own projects. Ironically both Relic and Creative Assembly are working on a Warhammer 40k game despite not being owned by the same publisher anymore.
As a 4th unkown dlc app appeared for AoE2De on the steamDB today, and that app last update is 2 month ago, I think we can definitly relax.
AoE2 future is not threatened at least until mid to late 2027 so far, according to the past scheduling rythm for dlcs.
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Thatâs so surprising. Iâm torned about the end of preorder discount. Having one is nice, prices already increased (both nominal and content wise) quite a lot in recent years ; but I love the game so muchâŚ