AOE 4 needs to follow AOE I & II not III

I’ve played AOE III DE Beta and it was worse than the original. Super clunky and not as fun. I hope the AOE4 dev’s focus on making the mechanics similar to AOE II DE.

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its a beta its not even flushed out correctly and probably got alot of technicallitys and bugs

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As long as its better then the Age of Mythology Expansion mess

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I’d like to see a mixture of both.
I loved the story(still do) elements of the AOE III Campaigns and would love for AOE VI to have a similarly extended campaign. However, for multiplayer/offline skirmishes, they might need to look more for elements from AOE I or II.

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If anything, I would like a mix of 2. I didn’t like shipments, unit counters, the whole experience resource as a whole, or trading posts in general from AOE3, and from what I see most players just build the safest one to get the shipments edge.

I didn’t like the fact that AoE 2 is mostly base building for 10-15 minutes, and it encourages turtling so much, and some people just straight away spam castles for defense.

I liked a lot more the game speed in AoE 3, as well as guardians and treasures, as well as having less units, but much more variety, and certainly no trash units as each unit served a purpose throughout all game, as well as each civilization feeling more special than “I have this special unit, and a few minor bonuses to fishing and wood cutting”.

I loved from AoE 2 that bases end up feeling like whole kingdoms, whereas in AoE 3 they feel much more like outposts. I would argue however that AoE 3’s style of not having farms, but rather mills and plantations, was a better idea to make your base not so ridiculously big.

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True, I’d like to still keep Shipments in the game, but keep them to the campaign/story mode only, this allows the player to make choices and allows the story to unfold and makes player choices on cards have an impact. However, for the multiplayer experience, I agree that it makes the game less competitive and just doesn’t make as much sense. The Multiplayer should just follow normal RTS rules and gameplay.

And I agree that it is important to have each faction feel different and have them play on each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I hope they expand on this and give certain factions unique playstyles that will allow for people to learn how their favorite faction works and rewards said players with unique benifits that come with such knowledge!

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to the interviews,there won’t be card shipments in aoe4

“The feedback from the fans was sometimes blunt,” Mann remembers. Players know what they want. But you can’t follow their wishes blindly. “We had Age of Empires 3 players who would have liked to have had the card system from that game in AoE 4,” Isgreen says in disbelief.

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Well,it makes sense in aoe3 but it is no sense for aoe4.in aoe3 you are a colony and receiving reinforcement from your main kingdom.
But in aoe2/4 you are already main kingdom.

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I disagree, I hated the AoE III campaign

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Hi PCM4st3r,

People have different tastes, I guess we differ on this one :slight_smile:

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Hi @ENDA061,
I guess you are right indeed, but instead of shipments, they could have renamed it, changed some of the mechanics but still allow for a card system.

Instead of shipments: Reinforcements, these would come from allied kingdoms.
But I guess better to let them out so AOE2 players are kept happy am I right :joy:

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im mainly an aoe2 player,and i love aoe3 too.card shipments is a good mechanic,imo.

well it would be still a good campaign element.(for example in a hre campaign you are receiving reinforcements from your vassals)

but in competitive scene,balance it is so hard.
already they are going to more assymetrical civs,it is hard to balance.plus balancing cards would be very hard for devs.

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Problem is, I think you’re more fond of the “American” way of playing the game: build fast, kill fast, end fast and let’s spend the whole time fighting, cause there’s where the fun is.

AOE 3 was built on this premise and, while it is an OK game it never got the following AEO 2 has got, where you had to think about what you were doing, plan a strategy, lure the enemy, change the rythm, sometimes play fast, sometimes slow, etc.

I love “ridiculous” big bases. I love attacking a turtled player. I love strong walls. I don’t want AEO 4 to become too much like AEO 3.

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I have to say, I’m not hopeful for AoE IV, from what I’ve seen. The graphics look similar to AoE III, and most AoE II players I’ve talked to about it seem to dislike the AoE III graphics to the extent that it’s a major reason why they stick with II. The grid based non-perspective graphics in II are nigh on perfect IMO. Moving away from having a grid is like trying to change chess to not be based on 8 x 8 squares. And having “more sophisticated” graphics just creates more visual clutter that detracts from being able to clearly see buildings and units.

There’s nothing wrong with having AoE III style graphics for those who do like it, but there should be an option to have a non-perspective view like in II. This shouldn’t be hard to do within a 3D rendering engine. It’s a common feature in CAD software, for example, and someone I know whose full time job is CAD work always works with perspective turned off, and I imagine this is common among CAD professionals. I can’t emphasise enough how much this one thing will kill the game for so many people if there is no option to turn off perspective. If the devs read this and think “we don’t see many requests for this”, that’s because most people don’t know why they don’t like what they’re seeing. They just tell me “there’s something weird about the graphics in III”.

Similarly with complexity and visual clutter. It’s fine to have options to make it look photo-realistic and hard to pick out units and buildings for people who like that, but you have to remember that there are people who even go so far as to use the cube mod in II, to make it extra easy to identify the different game elements. There should be graphics options in IV to give a similar ease of seeing and identifying buildings and units to what exists in II, otherwise people will just go straight back to II.

Of course, quality of life enhancements such as being able to rotate a II-style view would be welcome.

I just feel like there is a lot of scope for making a much better AoE II. DE was a nice refinement, but the game could be improved so much more without breaking what makes it so good. AoE IV looks like it’s trying to be quite different to II, though not necessarily in the same ways as III is quite different. If they really are determined to make IV quite different to II, I hope they can also re-visit II some time to really move it on far beyond what was done for DE.

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Yes. I don’t know if it’s the “American” way as you put it, but I definitely prefer it when games don’t encourage defense. I’ve had my share of defensive RTS, and it bores me a lot when I have to defeat turtlers.

That’s one reason why I don’t like AOE2 too much, people are very prone to build walls and spam castles to defend the border, and those buildings imply you’ll have to wait until you can build a decent amount of siege weapons, which also mean you’re artificially delaying the match until the army size is big enough to both destroy the static defenses, open holes in the wall, and not lose too many troops in the process.

And that’s about it, the fun for me in there is being able to optimize resources vs creating troops vs teching up and finding a suitable balance, with options to delay the enemy and having to take calculated risks to contest advantages. I guess it’s a matter of preference.

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Definitely. I think AEO 2’s success is based on that, precisely: people can choose between turtling, booming and rushing or a mix of all those. I spoke about the “American” play style because it favors speed vs say an “European” play style which also allows for “watching how things develop”, instead of (mostly) proactively managing circumstances, i.e. for a more passive/contemplative playing style.

In fact, I could imagine that a Chinese play style could even allow for the opponent to come to you instead of looking for him actively, that is, creating a “void” where the opponent would fall into, like a trap. You just create a circumstance and wait, confident in your superiority, but making believe that you are the weaker one.

I think AEO 3 didn’t allow for all those possibilities and concentrated on the “speedy/active” one in detriment of the others. AEO 2, allows for more playing styles and is, therefore, the preferred version of the game so far.

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No sure what you mean here. In age 2 you can wall around your base and sit there turtling for 20 minutes while you oponent tries to dig a way through a wall. What is there to think about?

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Well, I spoke about the difference between AOE 2 and 3. In AOE 3 there’s no turtling at all, with those ridiculous walls and train tracks cutting trough them… It has speedy playing in mind, that emphasizes attack and aggressive behavior. AOE 2, on the other hand, allows for more playing styles. It is more tactical and flexible. There’s more variety because it suits more player personalities and became therefore, I think, more successful.

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How can you say that Age 3 is more speedy and aggressive and then say that it is less tactical and less flexible than Age 2?

If i am missing something, please let me know.

In age 3, a player needs to interact with everything that the game has to offer. A good player will do that.

In age 2, you can mass a unit and fight with the same unit for a long time. Even the AI can make archers and then micro them to kill other units. The AI with perfect archer micro can kill other units easily.

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more speedy and agressive because its only the one tactic because there is not much one can effectively do defensively and only one tactic is certainly less flexible

of course interaction with the world is important and can bring a huge boost if you are good - but that looting gives mostly recources and a few units which in turn (again) speed up the game, same as the railroad
and theres not much one can do for defense

and ‘perfect archer micro’ can be countered by enough cavalry
you can mass a unit and fight with mostly that in most strategy games (in wc3 with the right setup using a single specific unit of your faction can be quite efficient even)

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