Hard disagree. This is an incredibly subjective take, I see none of the issues you’re describing with the building above (especially the shiny roof which is kind of what metal tends to do.) and as a whole it actually fits that architecture style very very well. I also don’t agree with anything you said on the landscape, which is actually one of the most agreed upon portions of the graphics in the community.
I will agree that the landmark placed on the river during the last showmatch looked ugly because the surrounding embelishments were painted on top of the water. However thats a pretty specific case, one that would not require a “complete redesign of the majority of content” but a simple check for water. I also think they should vary those embellishments based on the biome, as bright green grass doesn’t generally grow in the middle of a desert, no matter how much you water it
They look great when viewed that way. But when playing I also want to identify stuff fast and from a realistic zoom level. That’s where AOE4 fails hard for me: It’s missing the consistent silouettes AOE2 offers. Every TC, blacksmith, barracks, etc., no matter the civ, is recognizable as such. In AOE4 I have trouble finding the monastery between my other buildings at a glance… how and why is it designed that way?
At the same time buildings that could afford to be flashy and have unique silouettes because they stand out by size anyway (castles, the dummy thicc stonewalls and towers), are symmetrical and samey between civs.
Agreed. This post was about detail so that’s what I responded with. Buildings and units overall need a bit more work to make them easier to identify. As it currently stands, they’re okay to get used to, but far from ideal.
Sure, didn’t want to take your post out of context.
I also think it’s not reasonable to expect them to 1:1 use the AOE2 3D models regarding the amount of detail. Thats one of the benefits of pre-rendered sprites: You can go wild with poly count on the 3D models since those don’t end up in the actual game.
While no pure objective perspective can exist, I would argue this is rather measurable by comparing it to other things. So maybe it was the lack of a comparison to make the issues I have more clear:
So I took a similar shot from an Anno building and set them side by side. So, my issue with AoE4 as a whole, but for me very noticeable in this close-up of an AoE4 building, is that it basically looks like the chimneys on the Anno building. Not connecting to the rest, an accumulation of things rather a whole organic scenery. The rest of the Anno building on the other hand looks way more like a self-containing structure. I also talked to some artists to double-check my sanity and it was mostly agreed upon the issues revolving around scale, texel density, color code/material setup, and maybe some lighting tech (but that’s my personal addition).
This might sound nit-picky, but for me, it ends up in the whole game basically looking like this:
(also illustrates very well imo, why I can’t understand people claiming the landscapes look good. Just look at the foliage stuff!)
The things just aren’t connected to each other what breaks the immersion for me considerably. And I don’t think it’s a tech issue or the result of readability, especially as Relic has done a good to a great job in this regard on older titles. I would even argue there are mobile games that look better because they just stuck to a coherent design language.
But I gonna rest my case here. I went often over it, partly quite detailed but I said what I had to say and don’t want to spam like one of the “y-not-my-civ-is-here” guys. Just one more point: I wouldn’t buy this game for 60 Currency because of these issues, I just happen to have the game pass.
Although I don’t see what you are trying to say with the chimneys, what I would agree with is that the roof looks like a plastic cap on the top of the buildings. But this I think is due to lack of detail. Like for example, wood has wood grains to make it look wooden. If you got rid of wood grains, there’s nothing for the visual eye to say it is wood. It might as well look like a plastic or ceramic instead when it’s supposed to be wooden.
Metal has a specific texture, that deflects in lighting. Which makes it look a bit abrasive. Especially metal that’s out in the open, beaten by weather or war etc. one of the reason why the metal armour on units look like plastic. When Steel reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere, the iron in the steel combines with the oxygen and produces this blackish/brownish/greyish stain colour. Which is why you see blackened parts in many medieval armour. And it loses its shine. And many games usually present this amazingly. For steel to look like the way it does in AOE IV, they’d have to be wearing freshly made steel lol.
I think I know what you mean environmentally. It seems the grass might be part of an environment texture or texture map while the foliage are individual models. It’s basically like having a flat image of a room but putting a 3D cup in it. Sometimes the discrepancy is visible. But I feel that is something that can be fixed by adding more texture to the environment which the devs might do after launch. The screenshots you posted, are they from an old trailer?
Anno games are the best counterpoint to people saying “creating detailed 3d building models is hard, AoE II had it easy being 2d”
Plot twist: This is Anno 1404, a game from 2009 already looking better. And you know what? A lot of the visually appealing heavy lifting is done via great textures here, not polygons:
Jesus… Imagine auto generated streets would look like that Anno screenshot… the auto generated eye candy textures and items are some of the worst clutter in AOE4. Especially the chinese stuff, with those flat ponds without animation everywhere, make the scenery look worse, not better.
I do agree they have traded a lot of animations for static images. And the Auto generated scenery looks nothing like that photo. Although I am glad they added it. I’d just prefer more animations. The less the game looks static, the more vibrant and alive a game feels. Like having people come out of houses to interact with the benches that pop up. Or water fountains like AoM.
AoM has so many little ornamental clutter that looks amazing. Like the little fountains.
Most people in this thread have written mainly about 2D versus 3D graphics, and haven’t really addressed this:
In the case of the English buildings, this is true. (I don’t have the architectural knowledge to comment on other civs.) The official website says the English ages correspond to the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, English Gothic and Tudor eras, which gives a good indication of what to expect architecturally. The Dark Age Anglo-Saxon buildings are pretty accurate, but from Feudal Age onwards, there are a few anachronisms and inaccuracies that really stand out to me.
Almost every building has a slate roof. Slate was difficult to transport with medieval technology, so it was only used in a few regions where it was available close by. The majority of medieval English roofs were thatched, with clay tiles becoming common later in the middle ages, and lead roofs for more important buildings like churches.
The Council Hall – one of the landmarks to advance to the Feudal Age – is in the Perpendicular Gothic style. Given the time periods the ages are supposed to represent, this is being built c. 1066, but Perpendicular Gothic didn’t exist until almost 300 years later.
The Monastery and Wonder are oriented the wrong way. Medieval English churches are always oriented with the nave in the west and the chancel in the east, but the Monastery and Wonder have their naves in the south-east. The AoE2 Wonder has the same problem, but it’s worse in AoE4 since the map actually has north marked on!
The University seems to be based on Keble College Oxford, which was built in the 19th century.
I understand that this is probably a pretty niche thing to care about – but it does feel like the designers had the idea that anything pre-1900 is from “the olden days” and didn’t really think about the chronology of it.
(The Britons’ architecture in AoE2 is much more accurate, except in the Imperial Age, where it seems to be a confusing combination of Romanesque and Georgian, with a made up Wonder that looks off in all sorts of ways.)
The Monastery and Wonder are oriented the wrong way.
Always meant to check but then forget when in game
Apart from the mentioned units production buildings, what I find off in the game is that the keeps are all the same, contrarily to how distinctive they were in AoE2:
They were the most visually powerful building in the game, while in AoE IV they all follow this same shape:
(I feel like I want to knock down those two high white turrets)
The design feels very generic and bland, and reminds me of playmobil. Which is odd because the game is full of characteristic beautiful buildings, which have been reserved to the landmark’s roles:
(I feel like this would’ve been a great Keep design)
So Keeps feels the less uninspired of the lot.
It’s funny that AoE 2 initially had a set of bland and lookalike castles, which almost seems to follow the “same and generic” rule of AoE IV:
I look forward to the day when Age of Empires IV: Definitive Edition comes out. The textures will be fixed, the added Zoom level will make the muddy textures and unit/building models a minor issue, and the game will be better balanced.
The pre-release AOE2 castles show nicely how bad mirrored buildings tend to look in isometric perspective. They worked really hard to achieve the same off-putting visuals in 3D.
It’s about the style and layout of the building, not the resolution of textures or the polygon count.
They are distinct and civ-specific in AOE2, while being copy paste reskins in AOE4.
AOE2’s castles are mostly keeps ( a single building). For AOE4 they took the most basic english concentric castle layout (many buildings) and shrunk it down to fit the desired dimensions. That’s why it looks like a toy, rather than a real life structure.
The tall turrets are off as well: They make no sense with that height and thickness in relation to the towers. Too chunky for lookout purposes and too small and exposed to house cannons (which they are used for ingame, lol)
Simplification like that are necessary, and present to some extent, in any game, even ones trying to be as believable as possible.
But it is true that for a few reasons certain assets look a step closer to being board game tokens compared to what was before.
I’m not necessarily against direction like that as long as it’s cohesive, model and textures are high quality etc. But certainly, there are more side effects - changes like that are diminishing grounded, believable, historical tone of the whole thing.
