Age of Empires 2 represents the foundation of what a successful Age of Empires is!!!
Age of Empires 2 has the essence of Age, from the mechanics, gameplay, story, narrative and the entire veteran player base, it’s all contained in Age of Empires 2, this is where it really started, Age of Empires 2 just continues what started in Age of Empires 1.
Age of Empires 4 brings a lot of these mechanics and gameplay from Age of Empires 2, and it even evolves with new mechanics, and it still brings good things from Age of Empires 3, the big problem is in the essence, like arrows, flanking formation, monk, quick wall, map editor and much more, of course it doesn’t have to be like age of empires 2, but everything bizarre about age of empires 2 can evolve.
Maybe I’m wrong, but the impression I have is that the community and Relic, the developer of Age of Empires 4, should look to the larger Age of Empires community.
Maybe I’m wrong but I hope Age of Empires 4 succeeds, I’m just saying Age of Empires 2 is a success maybe we should look into that!!
aoe 4 already embraced it. for the type of units, civ design and medieval setting but most aoe 2 players already return to aoe 2 (at least for pros)
Aoe4 is already mostly a straight copy from aoe2, unlike its direct prequel aoe3.
Things taken from aoe2:
- dmg system, flat not % based
- era setting
- blacksmith upgrades
- unit types, counterystem, many units are 100% copy
- similar maps
- 4 ressources
- same trading
- 1 pop per unit, even for super strong knight
- no limits for towers and keeps
- ressources drop offs
- same buildings mostly
- siege weapons 99% same
- wood, stone (also gold) not infinite
- having to build farms 1 by 1
- relics giving gold
- monks being able to convert enemies
- most civs only having weak light cav age2
- no fast moving ranged unit to counter (heavy) melee cav
- no snare
- siege weapons not having a crew
- fishing system
- military units only have 1 mode, not melee+ranged
This list I wrote in like 2 minutes, I’ll edit it later when I have time.
Things oriented on aoe3:
- landmark age up (like asian civs in TAD)
- farm offereing infinite food (good one!)
- archers always hit (good one!)
It’s quite obvious, they tried to copy aoe2 and build on its success, almost completely ignoring aoe3 as a direct prequel.
We see the result, aoe4 is not a big success and people in this forum love aoe3.
It was a big mistake to ignore the amazing innovations and improvements of aoe3.
-Snare for spear vs cav and cav vs archer
-no drop off, dnymamic gathering (not batches of 10+ ress but instant “drop off”)
- batch trainig… you have to spam buildings in aoe4
- focus on micro instead of macro was forgotten about in aoe4
→ similarly (and even worse) to aoe2, aoe4 is age of spam instead of controlling your units actively - smart fights and good micro completely turning games around
- %based resistances
- dragoon-like light ranged cav to hunt heavy cav
- interesting and powerful aoe dmg siege weapons to both fight infantry and destroy buildings
- less powerful tc that doesn’t machine gun down light units
- tc building age3
- much action from age1 on
- homecity and shipments
- realistic beautiful 10/10 graphics, siege crews, realistic weapon sounds
- diverse biomes
- beautiful maps with tons of detail and little turtles, birds, realistic water to please your eye
- amazing counter-dmg system → units have base dmg and multiplicator against other units
→ for example skirmishers 15 base dmg, x2.5 against light cav, X2 against heavy inf, X0.6 against heavy cav
→ dragoon 22dmg X3 against heavy melee cav, X2 against artillery, X0.5 against villagers - ranged military units having 2 attackmodes, melee and ranged → when caught in melee combat, having to fight with melee mode, which ususally puts ranged units in disadvantage
→ being able to set ranged units as dragoon into melee mode to snare fleeing enemies
There are many many many many more things which were innovative in aoe3 and made the game a LOT better compared to its prequel aoe2, which were completely ignored when designing aoe4.
No wonder aoe4 is no real success.
Just (poorly) rebaking a (in year 2021) 22 year old game doesn’t work when you try and sell it as something new.
You forgot a 4th one: units throwing torches when attacking buildings.
- Every civ except Mongols and Malians start with a scout.
No, not really. If it was a straight copy, it would be completely different from what it is atm.
As for your points:
The Blacksmith upgrades in AoE 2 and 4 work differently.
In AoE 2, you’ve got general attack upgrades for melee and range of which the latter also adds +1 range to units and buildings + armor upgrades for infantry, cavalry and archers. The melee and ranged upgrades work similar in both games (except the range attack upgrade in 4 doesn’t add extra range to archers or Keeps) but there are only two type of armor upgrades that add +1 melee/range armor for all units. In addition, there’s also the Siege Engineering and Military Academy upgrade of which the latter works similar for AoE 2’s Conscription.
It’s a game set in the Middle Ages so you can’t avoid having similar counters. However, the countersystem is not 100 % copied. Counters in AoE 4 tend to be harder than in AoE 2 as almost all projectiles are homing and counter units such as the Skirmisher that counters the Archer-line in AoE 2 are missing. The Men-at-Arms and Militia in AoE 2 and 4 also mostly only share the name as the Militia-line in AoE 2 remains situational.
AoE 3 also has 4 resources with the 4th resource being Experience. Some civs such as the African and Asian ones even have a 5th resource. AoM also has 4 resources with Stone being replaced by Fervor.
AoE 2 also has units such as the Karambit Warrior that only takes 0.5 pop space but in return is fragile. AoE 4 however has units that cost more than 1 pop, such as the Counterweight Trebuchet. The Ram used to have 3 pop (it probably still has in the Campaign) but it’s been reduced to 1 pop.
Building limits is a design choice of AoE 3.
Also a design choice. There is already a civ in AoE 2 with the Khmer, where farmers don’t need drop offs thus give a constant food trickle. The idea of not having ressource drop offs in AoE 3 comes from AoM’s Atlanteans.
As with counter system, that’s something you can’t avoid when you go with the same setting. AoE 4 however named the buildings accordingly to the culture groups, so civs like Abbasid will have a Mosque instead of a Monastery.
Kind of. The Springald however doesn’t work like the Scorpion as the latter is anti-infantry. 4’s siege has more variety tho with the early artillery in Imperial Age.
With Trade Posts as well as Relics, Gold is theoratically infinite. Ensemble also planned for houses in AoE 2 to generate gold in order to simulate taxes.
With the exception that AoE 4’s farms don’t cost resources when you have to reseed them + Farm transition happening much earlier in AoE 2 than in AoE 3 or 4.
That’s because in medieval history, travelers came to churches to pay to see relics.
With the exception that AoE 2 monks don’t have to hold a relic and conversions aren’t mass conversions
Imo AoE 4 doesn’t need snare, so it’s gone for good. I guess they also won’t have it in AoM Retold
There are siege crews in AoE 4 in the editor that strangely don’t appear in the game. In AoE 2, some units by default (Bombard Cannon, Organ Gun) have an operator pushing them and meanwhile there’s also a mod that adds siege crews for Mangonels and Scorpions.
With the exception that in AoE 4, there are no fish traps (basically farms on water)
Units in AoE 4 change their weapon depending on the action. Infantry and Cavalry will use torches against buildings. Also, AoE 2 got its first unit with two fire modes, the Ratha.
Tbh - I hate that. 11 (or 21 for AoE 3 players). Imo projectiles being able to miss adds a fun strategic layer in battles. Also, you’ve got Ballistics and Thumb Ring in AoE 2 that will make archers always hit.
Burgrave Palace used to have Batch training. I see that more as a design choice of AoE 3 instead of being an improvement.
Maybe like AoE 2’s Mangonel and in addition, allow it to cut down trees and do friendly fire
It’s interesting how AoE 4 is the only game in the series that doesn’t have them.
There’s no “better” or “worse” as both AoE 2 and 3 are amazing games. But yes, AoE 3 is an innovative game.
To link back to the beginning of my post - if AoE 4 was a straight copy of AoE 2, it would be a lot more on par with 2’s player numbers than it is atm.
Sorry dude, this post is just hilarious.
If something is 99% close to aoe2 and even has the mildest hint of aoe3 like 0.001%, you keep arguing
“this is like aoe3!!!”.
Seems like you don’t wanna see, that this game is an 80% aoe2 copy with 3D graphics, but (compared to aoe2) poor coding.
Don’t get me wrong, I love aoe2. I’ve been playing it all my childhood, after playing aoe1.
My friends and me played it on lan, playing 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 , over years.
I really like aoe2. But the game is over 20 years old, it’s time to be open to new stuff.
It seems like you can’t accept that aoe2 is not the NORM.
Just because things are not like they were in aoe2, it doesn’t mean they are like game xyz.
Aoe2 is NOT the norm dude…
Edit:
The last part from your post:
“To link back to the beginning of my post - if AoE 4 was a straight copy of AoE 2, it would be a lot more on par with 2’s player numbers than it is atm.”
Well, very honestly, aoe2de is polished and devs have worked TONS on it.
Yes, it has 2D graphics, but damn it’s well made! Quality at least 9/10, if not 10/10.
Whereas aoe4 is just super poorly executed. Full of bugs, missing tons of QOL features, really bad graphics and boring gameplay.
It’s like a weird and cheap, quickly made make-shift copy of aoe2.
Of course people won’t switch to a game which is of a poor quality, even if devs tried to copy the game you came from.
Not that I know of but feel free to quote where I argued like that.
If it was like that, it would be like Cossacks 3 which itself is a 3d remake of the first Cossacks.
I personally don’t like the “Old = outdated (and bad)” mindset which is quite common these days. (Edit: And just to remind you - AoE 3 turns 20 in two years as well, so this “old” argument doesn’t work)
I’m sorry but I don’t get you here? I don’t see AoE 2 as the norm. I just wanted to point out that things you call improvements in AoE 3 are rather just design choices that work well within AoE 3 but wouldn’t work without heavy reworking the game in AoE 4.
Also the Ottomans per se as a civ, plus the vizier points aka cards, the pens (European building from AoE 3) and automatic mines (taken from the Ethiopians from AoE 3),stealth and the griot festivals (taken from the abilities and ceremonies of the minor and major native civs from AoE 3) with the Malians…
You have some landmarks that make it… Wynguard Palace with the English, the Khaganate Palace with the Mongols, the first Burgrave Palace with the HRE, the Farimba Garrison with the Malians…
Of course… in theory there would be about 7 resources in total (the usual 4 resources) (Food, Wood, Coin and Experience) plus the 3 that are exclusive to native civs (Dancing Seconds), Asian civs (Export) and African civs (Influence)…
No, because AoM didn’t have snare, but they can put it in if they see it as necessary to balance the game…
Maybe they originally planned to include it (Relic’s CoH saga has siege units with crews), but they decided to remove it for “competitive” reasons…
Because Relic games don’t have birds…they went extinct during World War II or because of the purges of the Human Emperor xd…
It would be amazing if the whole community was united in one single game. Age of Empires deserves a union…
Since 1997 when the first Age of Empires game appeared, then Age of Empires 2 in 1999, until today with Age of Empires 4, that’s where it all started, the community loves this franchise.
well just the settings (Medieval), it ignored a lot of things from AOE2. Those are one of the most important things, such as realistic projectiles, varying castles, unique units, GAIA, terrain bonus, UI with images, lots of campaigns, better AI etc
The thing is that Relic focused on SC2 players mostly.
This is why SC2 pros are shining in AOEIV.
Almost all other AOE pros left the game. Its combat is so boring.
Just boom and spam.
Nothing more.
I’d 100% sign your statement.
Coming from sc2 myself as many people here it’s really offending to make comparison between sc 1 or 2 and this game.
1.Game requires little to no micro , starcraft is all about micro.
2.Game is slow paced, long, with 20 minutes starting period. In starcraft you can die to 1 reaper, 2 adepts, 6 zerglings at 2, 3 minute.
3.All units here are a-move. Starcraft have casters, medivacs, warp prism. You have abilities which are really important, literally 1 storm or 1 force field can change the whole game.
4.In starcraft 2 there is nothing like boom and spam. No one will ever let you boom and spam. You litterally have to play better than your opponent to make yourself reach that phase. There are so many harassing tools like oracle, adept, reaper, helions, helion drops, marine drops, banes, lings, storm, banshee, phoenix. Everything can be used to stop your boom. No walls, no turtle. Defensive playstyle requires skill.
Whoever comes from other aoe and think this is how starcraft players play, Just boom and fight, please queue for couple games and do that.
Don’t forget to send replays, ill be waiting with my popcorns.
I don’t get it. Don’t you just spam units in all the other games at a certain point
in actual late game, imperial, yes, in feudal age like you can in aoe4, good luck with that, and yes feudal age allowing multiple tcs is the problem here
I still wish TCs would be moved to Castle Age in AoE 4 like it’s the case in any other Age game. This would mean heavy rebalancing for some civs but would make booming less rewarding.
its also compounded by tc’s auto firing arrows at anything, which cannot miss once fired, with no garrison required, the whole point of garrisoned vills being required for arrows before was to make it a tradeoff situation, a hit to economy in exchange for defensive boost, aoe4 however missed that detail, now they not only made it possible to do multiple tcs in age 2, you are ENCOURAGED to do so by the game’s design itself
Oh yeah, that one as well. I actually think AoE 3 has the best system here where TC attack increases the more vills are garrisoned with 0 attack obviously for no vills inside the TC.