Age of Empires 4 needs to team up with the Age of Empires 2 community to succeed

[_e_o_ka]

Aoe4 is already mostly a straight copy from aoe2, unlike its direct prequel aoe3.

Things taken from aoe2:

1. dmg system, flat not % based
2. era setting
3. blacksmith upgrades
4. unit types, counterystem, many units are 100% copy
5. similar maps
6. 4 ressources
7. same trading
8. 1 pop per unit, even for super strong knight
9. no limits for towers and keeps
10. ressources drop offs
11. same buildings mostly
12. siege weapons 99% same
13. wood, stone (also gold) not infinite
14. having to build farms 1 by 1
15. relics giving gold
16. monks being able to convert enemies
17. most civs only having weak light cav age2
18. no fast moving ranged unit to counter (heavy) melee cav
19. no snare
20. siege weapons not having a crew
21. fishing system
22. 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:

1. landmark age up (like asian civs in TAD)
2. farm offereing infinite food (good one!)
3. 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.

Poll: What is/are your favorite/s AoE game?

poll What are the current interests of the forum members in this section? (You can mark 2 options). The whole story that some people have made here about AoE4, being “the majority of players” from AoE3 and SC2 in AoE4, of course, is flat out nonsense. When you get out of the bubble and ask in a place like Reddit (where there are fans with different points of view on the direction that AoE4 should take) with 5 times more voters (even in discord there are more fans than in the subforum), where t…

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.