5 new civs, massive additions to existing civs, new skins for all elite units, castles, monasteries, and monks, and after 2 years of waiting, we only get 2 new variants…
Can the devs please pay more attention to Age 4?
Comparison is the thief of joy.
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DLC and updates are different. We’re also (over)due a new seasonal update for IV which is when we tend to see a lot of this kind of stuff.
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Yeah but the Templar civ alone is probably more content than the 5 civs combined, so the comparison is a bit disingenuous. It’s like me saying we’re getting 2 DLCs and they’re getting only one, if you know what I mean.
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AoE2 moving towards making the game MORE unique whereas AoE4 is slowly turning more towards variants and reused assets. The ONE big thing AoE4 had over AoE2, seems to be getting lost due to the decision to pump out lazy variants instead of real civilizations.
AoE2 is reinvesting back into its game. AoE4 is cannibalizing.
But HEY, Knight Templars are TOTALLY a new civilization am I right guys??? (95% of the shown images show assets that were already available. It’s a paid mod.)
Can’t believe people listen to Beastyqt on the matter. He is upset about people not wanting to acknowledge it as a new civilization, yet he can’t even recognize the buildings as French. Ridiculous community, unfortunately, the developers aren’t much better in terms of decision making.
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I wouldn’t listen to Beastyqt. As a pro gamer, he’s mainly interested in the mechanical aspects of the game and doesn’t care about what draws casuals in. I know he’s trying to discredit people’s feedback, which in my view is wrong because people’s feedback does matter and his is no more important. People do play games for other reasons than winning tournaments or trying to beat everyone on ladder.
And Templars are indeed a variant civ. Architecture, voice lines and sound are most of the work going into designing a new civ, and all these are borrowed from French. It would be amazing if they could make everything original, but in fairness they did overproduce these in the base civs, which now makes it difficult to turn a profit.
If AoE2 is getting more unique, and AoE4 is getting less unique, then we’ll meet each other halfway, which isn’t a tragedy considering their game is still twice as big while being many times as cheap to develop. The alternative for AoE4, if it’s not viewed as profitable is for development to be discontinued. I think I can accept variant civs in this context, even if I’m not excited about it, as long as we’re still getting 1-2 unique civs per year, if the gameplay for the variants is interesting enough to compensate.
If however I was in charge of AoE4, I’d try to find ways to bring in revenue, so that the civs being released were of the highest quality possible. I would start by adding a few vanity items like unique UIs for each civ, that are paid content. Also premium monuments / taunts / banners / animated avatars and other types of unintrusive cosmetics, so that people who can afford it can support the game further. I would also make the time limited cosmetics buyable for people who missed out on them.
We need to see the patch notes for AoE IV KoCaR.
What you linked is the entire patch notes for the expansion. What we got yesterday was a blog post detailing a brief overview of the expansion.
For example, compare the paragraph for Knights Templar with the first paragraph on the Ayuubids civ page:
Knights Templar
The Knights Templar, while a well-known historical group, were neither a state nor kingdom. As a Military Order, they were comprised of individuals from a variety of nations, this unique situation allowed our team some degree of creative freedom when exploring how to best represent the Knights Templar in gameplay. While their unit roster is powerful, it’s the Knights Templar’s unique recruitment system that we believe will give them a fun strategic edge.
Historically, Templar Commanderies were established in nearly every European Kingdom acting as a source of power and prestige for the Order. With Knights of Cross and Rose, this system is brought to life with the Commanderie Age Up system, in which you can select one of three allies with each Age to receive a permanent bonus and unique unit. Did we mention yet that Knights Templar have a lot of unique units?
Furthermore, the Templars built a lot (like a lot a lot) of Castles, Fortresses and various fortifications around Europe and the Levant. Thus, the Fortress, their unique keep, plays a key strategic role in their overall gameplay.
Ayyubids
The Ayyubids are a variant of Age of Empires IV ’s Abbasid Dynasty civilization and available with The Sultans Ascend Expansion.
At the confluence of continents, where trade and science meet, and where empires clash, the Ayyubids use their pursuit of knowledge to gain the upper hand. The House of Wisdom is the focal point of this combination of urbanization and science, unlocking powerful Golden Age bonuses and advancing through the ages. The Ayyubids focus on versatile units to gain a tactical advantage on the battlefield.
The Ayyubids possess powerful camel cavalry that lay waste to enemy armies, while their imposing siege weapons flatten defenses. With the calculated use of unique abilities, the Ayyubids can dismantle their opponent’s strategies and tear into their forces.
As you can see they are similar.
If you were to go to the Ayyubid civ page, or any other, you’ll see 4-5x as much context there, and that still doesn’t cover the full civ.
I know people hate to hear this, but you should really wait until we have every piece of information before making conclusions…
Edit: Ah, I hadn’t read these patch notes thoroughly before posting.
To put a cherry on top, we will also be releasing one of the biggest updates Age II: DE has ever had! (…) Why so early? These patch notes are long – legendarily long – and we wanted to give you an early look to take it all in.
You can’t compare something that is being marked as the biggest ever with something else that’s just a normal size DLC. Of course what they are getting is bigger!
Yes you can.
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Okay, you can do something like that but it’s going to lead to the obvious result of being skewed out of proportion and rife with disappointment and resentment.
Seems familiar somehow…
You can definitely compare what they’re getting with what you’re getting, when you’ve waited for a similar amount of time (actually you’ve waited for much longer, but we’ve also had the Relic fiasco). It’s awkward to use the fact their DLC is bigger as a reason to avoid comparisons, when that’s the whole point of the comparison. You can however argue that we’re getting a 2nd DLC this year, which we don’t know if it’s the case for them. And if it is, then maybe they are basing their financial decisions on the existing size of each game, and are not looking to grow AoE4.
and the gap of light of truth
I do think that AoE 2 is getting a style of communication that is so much more preferable. It’s not like I don’t appreciate what they did with the blog post, but I would have really liked to see what else is coming to the game with the expansion launch.
Every time we enter a new season we see a refresh to the meta through changes in gameplay. We’ve had siege changes, pro scouting changes, and in the past they’ve added units to the roster or changed landmarks completely.
I’m holding out hope that we get things of that caliber with the release of Knights of Cross and Rose. I want to make a comparison between the two, because as you said scale doesn’t change the ability to make a comparison, but it’s very hard to do that considering the difference between what we’re comparing. There are still too many unknown variables.
What I’m really trying to get at is that making a comparison between the blog post for AoE IV and the patch notes for AoE 2 DE is going to lead to a conclusion that says that AoE IV gets far less in the same time frame. I think something else getting lost in the comparison is that AoE IV got a massive amount of content with Sultans Ascend while AoE 2 got 2 new civs and 3 campaigns ( The Mountain Royals).
We just don’t get the same level of content at the same time between games.
If the order of the developers on the steam page is any indication, Forgotten Empires is probably managing content creation between 3 titles now. It’s going to lead to some things getting more than others at times. That’s all really.
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Its hard to believe good faith when you say this despite the new architecture being shown in the AoE IV DLC screenshots (you even highlighted them, maybe in another thread).
Quick question, hope you’ll answer:
Is a patch / update the same as DLC, or do they usually in AoE terms refer to separate things?
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I see your point. Maybe we should wait and see what the accompanying patch looks like for AoE4.
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this again? can u not make things up, at least read the patch notes
China alone has like 5 unique units now, they adding a shit ton of stuff and making it more unique like aoe4
castles 25 from various civs get new looks, same with regional units and monks etc
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its embarassing we get 2 variants after waiting for almost 2 years
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We’re getting another DLC in 6 months. Or half of DLC, depending on how you wanna look at it. They’ve probably taken more time to make the unique civs more fleshed out. I do think they should communicate this better though, because appearances matter.
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its obvious they focused and priotized other games over aoe4, its clear man.
we waited 2 years and got no content in between, no new factions nothing,
Despite best SELLING AOE DLC lol
rus hacker bug same with infinite byzantine oil takes 3 months to fix
and bug with matchmaking atm still not fixed after a month, u queue for the new mode but u get into full moon or season feasts
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That’s the thing, you need to read through corporate talk. They’ll always formulate the news to make it look as good as possible. “We’re releasing 2 DLCs”, instead of “We’re postponing half of the DLC”. “Sultans Ascend is the best selling expansion of all time” instead of “We’ve barely made our money back”. Think of it. If it was as insanely profitable as this tweet makes it seem, wouldn’t they have doubled down on it by making more straight away, instead of focusing on other games?
I do get your pain, and I agree that manpower is probably passed from project to project. This is why I didn’t buy AoM Retold or its DLC, and haven’t bought any AoE2 DLC for a while, because I wouldn’t have played them much anyway and I want them to focus on the game I play, so I’m voting with my wallet.
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Frankly, they should just announce their plans for the DLC later this year. I mean, it’s releasing THIS year already, so what exactly is the point of withholding information like that at this point?
It is embarrassing to be served by AoE2 just a day after announcing our own little DLC. Just what are the communicators behind the scenes thinking? They can’t genuinely think this is a good look. If they wanted to gain some trust from the community, they’d straight up tell us their plans.
Perhaps their plan is to have us drop AoE4 altogether and just move on to AoE2? Smh.