Aoe4 becoming aoe2 with each patch

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Hello there,

I’d like to share my thoughts and concerns regarding the season 2 patch that is currently being tested in the test realm and how it may impact the game in a negative way moving forward if all these changes come true.

I recently watched Beastyqt’s video on this patch and something that he mentioned stuck with me but in a negatively way, that with each patch each civilization becomes less and less unique and more of the same just like in AoE2 and I dislike this 100%.

A good example is that now the Rus can build stone walls in imperial age as well, like why was this needed? They have the better wooden walls for a reason and it makes them stand out more than other civilizations because of that.

Same thing with the changes to the Chinese, they just keep removing the identity of a civilization and I’m worried that we are going to end up with symmetric civilizations just like in AoE2 and that would destroy the purpose of AoE4 and that is to make it feel and play like a new game that it is and not a remake of AoE2 which we have already.

My advice to the developers is to stop listening to those who want everything to be the same, defeats the purpose for each civilization to feel and play uniquely from each other.

Edit: Not to mention all of the changes they make so for example that it now cost stone to repair a keep etc. All of this make it be more aoe2 and its wrong!

What are your thoughts on this?

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if I would like the battering ram to have less cost since it is the soul of the ruhs in feudal

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Why can’t AOE4 be its own game? It should be. Different game different dev and so on.

I don’t like things being same and identical. Imagine playing league of legends but each champion was exactly same with slight differences that do not matter like this champ has -5mp cost and this has 1 extra attack power etc.

Its great for balance to have things identical, BUT it makes ■■■■■■ boring and dull concept and stupid. Closer things are each other easier it is to balance, but more boring, stupid, dull, unfun it is.

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4

somehow i posted this in the wrong thread xD
But here is my thoughts on the matter.

I agree on the initial thought of keeping AoE2 and AoE4 seperate individual games.

As a person who actually plays both games activly, They have been different enough that I can actually enjoy both games without being burnt out from the other.

There is however a couple of things.
And something I see reflected quite a lot from people echo-chambering from the top gamers, streamers, etc.

While BeastyQQ and Drongo certainly makes a very solid point about IDENTITY OF A CIV.

This does should not shun us away that we also have the IDENTITY OF THE GAME.

This is still AGE of EMPIRES. not Age of Mythology, or Age of Civilization.

Age of Empires still has to live up to its predecessors.

This is both a good and a bad thing.

The good is that it creates a certain expectation a player, such as myself who comes from the AoE2 scene, can expect from a future game.

But it is also a bad thing, as it puts certain limitations on the game for developters.

While certainly there is no written rule that they have follow the limitations given. It does however create a risk.
A risk of breaking expectations that is set by choosing to continue a Franchise.
Which creates a rather big gamble on putting in “new ideas” to the franchise.

One has to also remember that Age of Empires III was Originally not ment to be a Age of Empire game even. and was suppose to be its own franchised title. But Microsoft decided otherwise and forced the Age of Empire title upon it.
Which did cause tons of backlash from the Age of Empires community at the time, because it was nothing like the former AoE series.

So what I mean by this, is that we can not simply ignore the games inheritance.

I agree, this game is different. and should stay different.
But there is no harm in looking back to previous titles to keep certain elements and to retain the elements that makes this a Age of Empires title.

One has to remember that one of the initiall success of this game and why it had such massive sales was simply becouse it kept a lot of elements and at first glance looked very much like AoE2.

We can not ignore, nor should underestimate that fact.

But here is the thing.

It is all a delicate balance. I think people are crying to pre-emptevily about the upcoming changes without even having tried them!

I actually have been looking at their numbers and stats, and in reality, it is as you say. They are Changing the siege into more AOE2 style.

Is this good or bad? We will have to wait and see.

I can tell you from experience from playing a lot of AOE2, that it turns the effectiveness of the siege on its head.

And that is not ment as a negative.

I personally think it is for the better.

It makes siege less effective in low unit-number fights.
But makes them far more effective in High unit-number fights.

By that I mean, There is a limit how many melee units can reach and destroy siege in mass numbers. which you will find more common in late game, Making the siege actually more difficult to kill and bigger number of siege harder to kill when stacked ontop of each other, and ontop of other units.

However in the early games, it makes siege much more vournarable and easier to counter.

So they become stronger against bigger masses in the late game, but weaker against smaller masses in early game.

I think this is where their idea of the changes stem from, and it is a proven concept in AoE2.

TL;DR

AOE2 and AOE4 should stay as different games.
We should not ignore what makes the identity of a CIV.
We should also not forget what makes the identity of a Age of Empires game.
Don’t cry for the changes one haven’t even tried out yet.
Looking back at earlier franchise titles is not all BAD.
Key is that this game has to find the right Balance between Innovasion and Tradition.

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Personally I think Rams should be available from Dark age (can be built by villagers).
Ram having half the HP of what it currently has. And through Siegeworkshop you can Upgrade the ram, giving it a upgraded version better fitted for Castle and Imperial age. (Such as rams have in AoE2,)

This would give us a solid counter against tower Drush.

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Abbasi has it but without archers in dark ages it is not viable

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I saw the massive typo i did lol.
I men Rams shud be available from dark age.

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So we are going to discuss this opinion because I also think that the game is slowly getting to a more aoe2 level .

But some of these changes are indeed good. First of all Rus not having stone walls was not intended .

Rus stone walls were ALWAYS enabled to build but just deactivated from the UI .

They seem to finally release them .

Rus is still really different from other civilizations but I agree that in this point of the game , Rus should have only wooden walls .

China has a main problem and because it’s the most asymmetric civilization it’s hard to balance . It’s still the most asymmetric civ atm . They have the most number of unique units in game and I think the only problem with Chinese is that they don’t know how to get to a sweet spot without destroying the identity .

But the identity of the civ imo should be farming (they have special rice farms with special bonuses) , defensive and boom gameplay (they have the best walls in game + an special landmark which literally is a wall gate) and gunpowder .

But civilizations having to restore buildings made of stone using stone it’s a bit obvious and honestly a good change. It will make stone A lot more precious .

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Tbh, this is just my personal opinion on the chinese.

For me the Chinese was never really a Gunpowder civilization. While they certainly used gunpowder from a very early age, it was never really massivly employed.
Tbh, it was the Mongols / Türks that started really heavily utilizing it for warfare, and then it exploded in the european nations quite literally.

But when it came to Asia, Koreas were far more into Gunpowder than the chinese, but in the form of artillery.

While the Japanese absolutely went ham on Matchlock rifles in the mid 15th century. Quickly making more gunpowder weapons than entirety of europe had.

So Personally from at least my Historic point of view, China was never really a “gunpowder” civilization.
It was certainly the father of gunpowder.

When China comes to mind, I actually think more of a Engineering civilization.

The Chinese identity is Innovation: Hence, wider unique unit rooster, Improved siege, and Beuracracy. Which I think they do have in this game.
And ofc. Making great Chitty walls to keep damn mongolians away.

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Im not against creating more strategies to counter something, but lets be honest there is already many ways to deal with tower rushes.

  1. Feudal to archer range and stop new towers coming up and ignoring towers / move villagers safe spot and part of walls in right spots.
  2. Fast castle into knights / lancers and counter attack or trebs.
  3. Villager pull to kill first villagers.
  4. Or simply current ram.

Like 4 ways to deal with them. But ppl feel like strategy has to be removed which affects also defensive play (shorter range means easier and safer raids)

Should they do very minor changes to towers? Maybe, but current changes will just nerf them too hard to be worth anymore which results for another strategy taken away from the game.

  1. Prof scout and stealing deer - REMOVED
  2. Firelancers and their usage - REMOVED
  3. Stone wall tower rush - REMOVED
  4. Feudal ram rush - Nerffed heavily and soon to be REMOVED
  5. Scout rush - REMOVED

Likie in few months of release game has removed so many things from the strategy table and its clear as day that no rush strategy is not allowed to be viable so only 30min casual booming in simcity and then fight.

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Oh, I personally don’t have to much issues with towerrushing.
As you mentioned, people utilize villagers far to little, They are stronger than what most people think.
I found out very easy way to counter them is get early Textiles. Then your vills becomes stronger than Dark age Spears lol.
but more importantly, you can quickly destroy and kill opponents towers and vills.

But I think acces to a early Dark age ram allows for more flexibility of strategy, and better timing with the ram. as waiting for the Feudal landmark sometimes becomes detrimental.

It also allows for interesting option of shielding your villagers against archers/towers. allowing you to hard counter them quicker.

And it could add some interesting more dynamic to Dark age play.

I find dark-age play highly underappreciated, as 99% playerbase just zoom past it and forget it even exists.

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The answer is very simple, if the numbers in the game had been good, these mechanic changes would not have been made.

They want the RBW to look like an AoE more like the 2 in battles to draw more attention, since it didn’t draw it in other ways.

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I don’t have problems with TR either. I think I got like 90% winrate against any TR, but I do play 2v2 and basically every time they rush my ally and my ally just either starts building mass towers or losses several villagers to towers for no reason. Then I have to clear up all the towers and go win the game.

I generally don’t do anything when I notice I get tower rushed. I just stare at tower and laugh, because I just relocate my villagers to another location and put couple of small palisade up to make it harder to get towers up.
I always protect my gold with BBQ so its always safe and food I relocate under TC with mill and wood I don’t really care too much because fast castle so I wont need much wood so stranded trees are enough if its only option. In the end opponent wastes lot of resources on towers that do nothing and if they upgrade them its even bigger jackpot because then I can just run to their base with lancers and kill all vills.

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I think Relic make changes to Chinese’s gunpowder tech is a preparation for the Turks to come as a real gunpowder civ

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Just to give the perspective of an actual aoe2 player, who played the aoe4 beta but didnt decide to buy the game because in its initial state it was too unfinished for its price and might buy it sooner or later now after proper hotkeys, better camera etc.:
Aoe4 felt a bit more diverse at start/early ages than aoe2, because of having unique units already in the 2nd age at landmarks or military buildings. This changes in castle age and especially imperial age. The more you advance in the game, the more the civs feel extremly generic and non-unique, because the techtrees are completly the same, apart from 1-2 unique units and maybe access to culverin or not. That’s where aoe2 is imo way more diverse in terms of techtree, UUs, unit comps etc. While e.g. 10 of 42 civs get acess to proper paladins (pendant to elite knights) in aoe4 every civ can make elite knights and franks/rus/english get some extra bonus for it (that’s at least what i still remember). Each civ feels quite different in imp in aoe2, in aoe4 for me they felt pretty much the same/kinda boring since everyone can make all armor ups, all upgrades for barrack/stable/range units, every siege unit etc.
Considering this calling the civs in aoe2 symmetric is quite wrong.

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I actually agree to this, I think there is a case of false perception coming from AoE2, that every Civ is the same but with slight diversity. and that comes from the unit design.
Every unit type except for the unique one looks the same.

But in AoE4 you have the opposite effect, where every unit looks different. and thus gives you a false perception of assymetry.

But in the whole picture of the game, they play quite differently.

People forget in AoE2, Goth’s dont have walls, and can spam unique units out of barracks. and has some mad production time and sort of akin to a infantry version on how Mongols play in this game.

Its just that in AoE2, you do have more Civs to pick, and some of these Civs are indeed very similar. But in the end, they did have their quirks that really played out in the late game and made you play them quite differently than others.

Not to mention TEAM bonuses. so making team composition is even more rewarding.
Going same Civ as your teammates in team games would be punishing!
But AoE4 encourages everyone to just play French and English. Which ironically having people like BeastyQT complaning about AoE4 heading towards a direction of streamlining. The game is already streamlined as 80% of player pop plays French or English to begin with!

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Age of Mythology is more of an Age of Empires game than Age of Empires 4. xD

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in sence it is, but it is in its own right, its own Franchise.

You don’t have the same expectations from the title Age of Mythology, that you do from Age of Empires.

It would be rather cheese if we suddently got flying carpets and dragons in Age of Empires, and people would be indeed shocked.

And the title Age of dosn’t really incur to the entire franchise.

we got Age of Wonders which is a totally different franchise all togheter made by a different company that also makes great games lol. (I really love their game Age of Wonders: Planetfall)

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That’s all fair enough to be honest.

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The more like AOE2 the better to me