The most successful RTS’s must have a huge collection of single player content, and an Esports scene as well. AoE2 has that.
AoE3 has more civ variety (which gives replayability) decent SP content (needs more tbh). The maps are interesting with the flora and fauna and treasures, native warriors etc. The card system is controversial but also very diverse and promotes replayability for casuals like me.
AoE4 has esports. But its fundamentally not fun. The pros will leave the esports scene the moment there is no 500,000 dollar tournaments. And then there’s no SP. So nothing for casuals.
I think AoE5 should take the best parts from all games in the series including AoEO and AoM.
Every game in the series has something I enjoy that others don’t have (never played AoEO but it has lot’s of good ideas).
AoE3 has the most things I like though.
It feels so wrong to not have batch training for example.
But I do wish things like ballistic arrows like in AoE1/2/AoM were still in the game.
And the gunpowder smoke of AoE4 looks so much better. AoE3 is really missing that.
It’s really sad that the coolest things about AoE4 are so useless.
I hope the DLC content will be a bit more creative.
AoE3 was the same. The base game was relatively simple but both the Expansions added civilisations that played very different.
As much as I enjoy the card system I do think it is a little overwhelming for an RTS, especially for new players.
It could be simplified to something like a support system from COH, where you pre-select some bonuses and some special units to unlock, which requires some xp equivalent to unlock, but not direct resource/unit shipments.
But neutral allies and interactive map elements should be kept and even expanded. Unfortunately AOE4 made a huge step backwards.
Even Warcraft 3 as a highly competitive game with a huge competitive scene had more interactive neutral units on the map.
Cards are not the real problem with AOE3 complexity, it play some role in it, but overtime it got lot of QOL features like copy deck, prebuilt decks, all cards unlocked…
Biggest problem with AOE3 is gimmicky mechanics that were added with all civs in expansions and these days with DLCs. They made all additional civs so much different from the initial European that new players and casuals have much harder time to play more then very few and definitely cant understand even half of them. Even the counter system is not obvious and makes it much harder with all special units game has.
AOE3 would heavily benefit from being less asymmetrical, closer to how AOE4 is (middle ground between AOM/AOE3 and AOE2 civ differences)
Card system would probably also benefit from having less cards and decks being smaller. There is no need for something like 165 cards for each civ… It’s too much fake variation as many of these cards have hardly any use. (it made more sense when they were originally unlocked and that was already a bad thing for multiplayer, for single player it was fine, but in the end it would work best for some kind of coop mode)
I would say reducing amount of cards per civ to 40 - 60, where majority is generic cards shared between civs and lesser portion, but still significant amount are truly unique special cards that help shape the civ would work much better for being easy to get into and still complex enough to enjoy and experiment with… (this would also mean to reduce deck size to 15 or something as there would be no need for current 25 deck size)
But that cant really be done for AOE3 anymore, it would disappoint lot of people who like the current game, thats probably single best reason why AOE3 mechanics would truly have a chance to shine with sequel that would take what worked and made it more approachable, sacrificing unnecessary complexity…
Me too…I was super hyped since they announced it in the gamescon 2017 until they showed gameplay in the X019, I saw that it was medieval again and my hype died, I played both betas (closed and public) and they also left me me very cold and then when the game came out I have been playing the campaigns so far and they also left me very cold and they are also super repetitive; at the same time I was playing the campaigns of aoe 2 and aoe 3 and there is no point of comparison… those of the 4 are generic but not be able to…
That already exists… is the AoE Online:mechanics of aoe 3 (treasures and the capital) in the time of aoe 1 (classical antiquity)…on the other hand an aom 2 would not be bad based on the gameplay of aoe 4 would not be bad…
That is the point. Many people seem to be assuming that I am asking for a replacement for AOE-3 DE, and they take a very short-sighted point of view. I am actually talking about a possible more distant future (more than a decade) and not what will happen in a year or two.
I, for one, actually love the card system of AoE3. I am also a huge fan of the (mildly) customizable home city, and of the treasures and neutral civs. Perhaps the only mechanics of AoE2 that I missed when moving from AoE2 to AoE3, was the limited availability of outposts, forts, and ships, which punished turtling gameplay which was my forté in my AoE2 days.
The flexibility, replayability, and diversity of gameplay enabled by the cards is leaps and bounds ahead of anything that AoE2, AoE1 or AoE4 can ever achieve with their current mechanics. I think the closest I saw to it in other RTS was the selective upgrade system used by Empire Earth back in the olden days.
However, I do think it is also important not to go overboard. For a while, Europa Universalis IV was my favorite game, however the devs kept on adding more and more complexity into the game that eventually I hit a brick wall and discovered I couldn’t handle all the miriad interconnected variables anymore and my games became more work than fun, and always ended in failure. I had to give up on it, the skill required was too far gone for a casual gamer like me.
Of course, everything that adds to an rts never comes bad, that is, everything good that the rts of the 90s are timeless classics, but you do not have to be conformist, the cnc in all their deliveries were adding something: Red alert 1 naval units, Tiberian Sun doors and air infantry, Red Alert 2 greater flexibility of the units, Generals the commanders, CNC 3 a lot of variety of unit, Red Alert 3 even more variety, and then CNC 4 it up taking out the economy and turning it into a kind of MOBA…
It’s an excellent game…it has a lot of content (seven civs (eight when the Indians are launched), such as those of the aoe 3; campaigns of 70 missions each, customization of the capital, seasonal events (summer, halloween, Christmas, etc etc etc), yesterday take a few photos playing it live…
Age 4 (1991-2035/2050) (Fall of the URSS,War on Terror,the rise of social networks with Internet itself,Space Colonization and the end of fossiles combustibles)…
yea…Puting AoE4 into the same historical age as AoE2 is really not the best decision. And back to Ensemble Studios’ time, they actually intended to make AoE4 themed on WW1 and WW2 then AoE5 would be based on space-technological future. things that happened later is what we all know, the AoE series went stagnant until now AoE3 DE saved it.
Tanto potencial desperdiciado, cuando veo esa imagen de la revista me da pena xd, es que joder 16 años para un nuevo age y nos dan esto es muy triste colega.
