So, what issues does it cause? You can still train 3 pop cav if you have resources and pop space, which is the same as in AOE 2. The only difference is that in aoe 2 most units take the same popspace but have vastly different prices, whereas in aoe 3 units have varying pop space requirement, but more similar cost per pop compared to AOE 2. That’s simply how the balance is done.
Ever heard of walls? Why would anyone use housewalls instead of walls when they’ve reached poplimit? The only civ that lacks walls is the same that lacks houses btw.
So it’s fine to have this very particular limitation, but it’s wrong to have limited factories in AOE 3.
Or, using your words: 20 pop for feitoria is a limitation, I want to be able to build 60 feitorias and so that enemy could counter that. It’s so unfair.
I said “Trashbows are only relevant in imp”. The fact that they are accessible in castle age doesn’t disprove my point.
Yeap. If 1k apm opponent in DE is alright for practise, then extra resurces are fine too.
So, the original AI of AOE 2 was worse than the one in AOE 3. And, perhaps, the AI in AOE 2 HD wasn’t better either (since it could beaten so easily, and behaved nothing even close to a human). Thus, the AI in AOE 3 was better, which was my point all along. And only with DE after several patches (i.e. 14 years later) AI truly became stronger. Even now it’s still worse in my eyes, because of how it conrols units.
Omfg you guys don’t get it… I never once said aoe3 is a more popular game yet yall think that’s what im trying to say. Like woeltowhattheeffhisname is.
Stop trying to imagine some fiction of what im saying and read it for what it is.
If you posted "vegetables or meat better? " on a VEGAN forum… You would get a completely skewed answer. The same applies by asking is aoe2 or 3 better… On an aoe2 forum… Do i need to get my wax crayons out to explain this obvious fact?
Yes instead i should be deceptive to prove a point. Because its not the truth that matters just my opinion
I don’t know what I’m allowed to mention from playing the beta so can’t go in depth on how they’ve balanced the Fort spamming.
Whatever man now its just getting into your flawed reasoning instead of a proven mechanism other games have used. You have your flawed opinion and you don’t want any facts to change it
If you could build them with villagers, I’d be less critical
But no, only 2 times and you have to spend 2 cards on them
Yeah, this proves you are not here for discussion. Just to defend AOE3 at all costs without accepting any flaws in that game.
Notice how I kept saying I had an issue with unit pops? But you had to bring Feitorias because you can’t find a better defense.
Also, Feitoria isn’t that great of a building anyways
It isn’t effective as 20 villagers it costs and is only very effective on maps that you ran out of stone/gold and can’t trade (1v1 or trade route being destroyed)
They are still pretty useful in Castle.
Well, whaddya know
A 20-year-old game has worse AI than a game that came about 8 years later
Well, of course a computer has better calculations than a human
If it doesn’t, the whole point of computers being around would make 0 sense
Still with that god-like APM, as you said, it’s not impossible to kill
The AI cheating basically means ES didn’t have enough knowledge of super-effective AI and decided to choose the easy way.
How is this a counterargument? Walls in aoe 3 have at least 2 times more hp than houses, and yet you complain that you can’t housewall your entire base and don’t want to use walls. Why? Just to make an argument? So far, you couldn’t provide a single example where
So it’s not like you have any reasoning for why it’s bad, you just don’t like not being able to do something clearly designed as single use bonus on a regular basis. In aoe 2 you can’t build factories (and feitorias are useless), in aoe 3 you can send up to 2 factories at a time. This is called “having more options”, not “extra limitations”.
So, what’s the issue with unit pops again?
Can you mass all generic units? Yes.
Are you limited by resources? Yes.
Are you limited by pop space? Yes.
So what is it, connected with say 2 pop cost, that breaks the game? It changes how you manage popspace. So what? You just want to have 60 falconets and say it has to be this way, yet struggle to explain how does it make the game better.
Sure thing, let me just dump 650 stone and 700 resources for a 10 resource discount on a unit that I don’t have bonuses for. Yes, maybe in some specific situations you could maybe find use for kamandaran in late, late castle age, but it doesn’t disprove my point that generally many civs feel very similar until fairly late into the game.
Let’s put it this way. Let’s say I’ve played both games for 10-20 hours. How many civs are there in aoe 2, for which I can notice a huge difference (not a free tech I will forget about in a minute) from any other civ within first 10-12 minutes? I can come up with huns (no houses), khmer (farms and no prerequisite buildings), cumans (SW and TC in feudal), Chinese (hectic starting eco), Meso civs (I have eagles instead of cavalry, but that only counts as a one unique civ idea) and that’s probably it. In AOE 3, on the other hand, almost every civ has a unique unit already in 2nd age, almost every civ has a unique eco setup that no other civ has, like free villagers for ottomans, or villagers in batches for russians, or portuguese extra TCs every age, or britain manors, or couriers instead of vils for france.
This is what I liked in AOE 3 and disliked in AOE 2. At least in DE they added proper soundtrack for each civ, so that they feel a bit more distinct from the start, even though it doesn’t change anything objectively.
If you want to say that, prior to DE, AOE 2 was worse than AOE 3 in terms of AI (with reason being that it’s older), I agree, and we can stop arguing about this.
Don’t go on tangents about the philosophy of computer science.
It’s not overpowered, but it’s obnoxious to play against, because you have to face constant conversion sounds for 20 minutes straight, individual unit micro, and 10 units army composition, randomly spread over 3 monitors in length. Cheating AOE 3 AI, on the other hand, doesn’t do anything to piss me off, and I’m glad that it doesn’t, so I can play for both the challange of arbitrary magnitude and for having fun, and not just for the excruciating challenge.
So all units should have the same cost, otherwise it’s unfair because you can’t create as many units as your opponent, if your army is more expensive. This point just doesn’t make any sense. If you want to mass falconets in aoe 3, you can do so. And the opponent will be able to counter it. I would go as far as saying that AOE 3 is more about counters than AOE 2, because in AOE 2 you can sometimes overwhelm counterunits with more pop-efficient power unit, which is far less likely to occur in AOE 3. But that doesn’t make any of the two games better or worse, it’s simply a different approach.
So, (again, if this is happening in AOE3DE, don’t mention it because of NDA) there are two ways to address it:
Increase the max pop (200 → 300 or more)
Decrease the pop from 14 to like 5-6 and maybe weaken the unit (by making cavalry stronger against them) so it doesn’t get broken
OK, the huge difference is in the UU and the lack of a unit line (it could be with Spanish and Cumans(?) lacking crossbow or Indians lacking knight or Teutons lacking Light Cav)
Tho, I can agree that they are not too different
See, my issue with AOE3 isn’t that the civs are completely different, that’s a good change
But the thing is, the unique choice is still not reflected in the most units
Europian civs still all have Musketeers and I believe they should have different looks and not exactly the same look for all the base units.
British goes for imperial Redcoats as the name for the last one, but that’s that (name-wise changes only)
I do
If they destroy your forts and Factories in AOE3, you cannot rebuild them
Why is the loss of factories that bad? Because you no longer can make your unique cannons. which are already 14 pop, to begin with. (The loss of resource trinkle is kinda fixable since you have Mills and the infinite gold buildings)
The loss of forts (which is easily done with enough units around it) will make your base fully defenseless. You cannot rebuild them by any chance unless you do a revolution, which destroys your eco unless you have a factory or two
True, but quickhouse (which is a method in AOE2 tbf, AOE3 doesn’t have much quickwalling) covers more tiles per placement
What I mean is that if the game wants to balance a unit, it should more rely on the counters than pop space.
Gold is harder to get than wood, that’s for sure
Also, you don’t make 1 archer, you make 20 archers
Them being trash is already a bonus
The point isn’t Kamandaran being a very useful tech’
The point is that even for Celts, going archers at first is a good choice because of the wood bonus the civ has
Indians without Knights
Spanish without crossbow
A lot more
Then again, they aren’t too different, I agree with that
My point is that if AI is gonna act better than humans in terms of APM, it’s natural
Let me rephrase that as if it was really that vague…
A game should focus more on balance and cost rather than huge pop cost
2-4 pop is fine, sure
But when it becomes 14 pop, it makes not much sense
AoE2 was a huge upgrade of AoE1, it brought a lot of QoL, new mechanics (garrison, gates, farms not blocking the movement), better graphics, better sound, and the core was the same.
AoE3 instead of being an upgrade of AoE2, messed the core and was a total change. AoE3 offers me things I don’t care about.
Now that I see it, only warcraft 3 made mechanical changes (heroes, no sea warfare) with success. The other RTS in he 2000s just made bad sequels that buried the RTS genre for a good amount of years (empire earth2-3, empires damw)
The default siege elephant also costs 7 pop.
The unique variant that BTW you only get if you select a specific upgrade path to the next age does cost 14 pop, but has double the HP and provides a buff to nearby siege elephants.
It’s also probably the only unit that has such a high pop requirement.
Also if iirc indians have a home city card that allows their elephants to cost 1 less pop.
I’ve personally never found the popcap to be an issue, because most of the units you’ll make anyway are 1 or 2 pop cost, with artillery being the outlier .
On the other hand artillery is extremely strong, think 3-4 onagers fused into one artillery piece.
As Sporty said, it’s a different approach to balance, and it’s present in a lot of other RTS games.
Alright, I’ll do a rundown of pop costs for britain, a pretty standard vanilla civ, so you can understand
vil: 1 pop
Barrack units:
musketeer: 1 pop
pikeman: 1 pop
longbowman : 1 pop
Stable units:
Hussar: 2 pop
dragoon : 2 pop
Artillery foundry units:
grenadier: 2 pop
falconet: 5 pop
culverin: 4 pop
mortar: 4 pop
horse artillery : 6 pop
petard: 1 pop
And of course the unique factory arty unit, the rocket (that replaces the heavy canon), costs 7 pop
As you can see, all the infantry and what you’ll be using the most has a pop cost of 1, with cav being 2, and arty falling between 4 and 7 (grenadiers are a weird unit).
The Indians will have a similar type of deal, however instead of being able to make artillery, they make elephants, that have a pop cost between 4 and 7 pop.
The 14 pop unit is a big outlier, honestly I have no idea why you keep bringing it up because in 99% of cases the most expensive unit you’ll find pop wise will be a 7 pop unit.
Well, cavalry counters siege, that’s kind of what it’s meant for.
On the other hand, a 5 pop worth of falconet will happily blow away more than 5 pop’s worth of infantry, considering its immense multiplier and AOE.
Please, give me some further examples. I can’t even find mercenary units that have a higher pop requirement than 8 (Lil’ Bombard)
All those units are exactly the same concept: take the elephant unit, double its HP, cost, pop cost, and slap an aura bonus on them. I don’t know what kind of point you want to make. You’ll only make one of them anyway, and they are really situational. And they are limited to one faction. And there are no higher pop units for other factions. So yeah, sure, they are a bit dumb and I’ve never seen anyone make one. But it’s nitpicking, I’m not going on a tangent to say that aoe2 is totally unplayable because huns have a useless imp UT.
4-7*
I personally don’t find it too much, whenever I play the game it doesn’t bother me. I find the pop cap in age 3 as natural as the popcap in age 2.
And since this only applies to arty and you’re not making a ton of those, it’s really not consequential.
Don’t forget that you’ll also not make more than 80-99 settlers (you’re capped at 99 for most factions anyway). Capping your pop would only happen in the very late game or on treaty matches.
5 to 7 hits from a hussar (the most basic cav unit) kills a falconet, in mere seconds. Arty is absurdly weak to any kind of melee attack, and some cav units even have a multiplier against them. Think the mongol bonus VS siege but applied to every unit in the game that attacks in melee against arty. Arty is also really slow and need to be unpacked to fire. Basically, if you have arty out of position, then they are just dead.
But the tradeoff is that they deal an insane amount of damage to infantry. If it was nerfed for them to cost 1 pop, then arty would probably feel less fun to use. Or if you reduced them to 1 pop without nerfing them, enjoy infantry being rendered absolutely useless past age III and games being centered on who can balance culverin, dragoon and falconet production in the late game, not to mention natives being blown into oblivion.
I’m not trying to nitpick, but why am I not allowed to make 120 vills (boom heavily, on treaty ofc) and then when I have enough eco, I start deleting a few vills
Which begs the question, if they are only good against mass infantry and archers and suck against any melee attack, why the 5(?) pop? make it 3
I know you said 4-7, but for me even 4 is fair
I don’t intend to say make them 1 pop, but 5 is just not fair for them
Some of them have super strong cav tho (I think Aztecs, but I haven’t played those much)
Yes, that’s another issue, and it is limiting in treaty games. I guess the devs wanted to play around with different vil popcaps for the various factions.
Personally I don’t play treaty too much, so I don’t feel too limited by that, but I’d understand the frustration coming from playing age2 with no limit to vils.
You could give them +33% damage and hp (in the very late game), it would be the same. Arty is already good at doing what it does, no need for it to be spammed more.
Also don’t forget that usually you’re not making arty fight on its own, they have to be supported by a meatshield of some kind, like musketeers/pikemen/halberdiers.
Well there ya go. We both have a different opinion on the subject matter. I feel it’s fair and you feel it’s not. I don’t think we can really dig it further really, but you could hop over to the aoe3 discussion board and go from there
Pretty sure you’d see the argument turned around with people complaining about the 1 pop cost for all units in aoe2.
I mean, AOE2 is balanced around counters and cost and bonus attack
So that argument would be invalid
We know AOE3 is imbalanced (The french cav, the Mameluke even is really strong)
Because its not the truth that matters just my opinion 
