AoE4 Gameplay. Is it possible to bring it up to date and keep people happy?

Huge5000RTSFan · February 24, 2020, 4:18pm

BarrelWave63606:

One more mention though we were discussing graphics; Ancestors Legacy is technically a fantasy game. I thought you were going to post a video of another competing game within the historical context of real-time strategy games being accurate to actual historical events and civilizations. Every Age of Empires campaign has a relevance and accuracy to historical events which occurred in history. Every single player empire building scenario is also historically relevant. When the story-lines are fictional they take place within an actual historical timeline. Because of the historical relevance means to me, the Age of Empires franchise is the most accurate and finely detailed when viewing their units and environment at once; which means they are equally realistic than the historical story-lines of other competitors. Civilization: realistic environment, but cartoon styled military units and buildings; Total War: similarly realistic units when compared directly to their environment, but no resource gathering by villagers, no visible villagers, larger than life military units reminded me of playing Chess; and their turn based game-play slows the games progression dramatically. The Total War franchise is a historical game experience I believe to be Age of Empires largest competitor because both occur within a historically relevant context during game-playing.

Because Ancestors Legacy is technically within a Fantasy category means when viewing their graphics for units and environment often included one aspect which is most realistic and detailed than the rest and to a greater degree. So if I were to design a PC game which belonged somewhere within the Fantasy genre and it was a top-down perspective of many units; you would notice how it might contain ultra-real units, but something else in the environment which is not as realistic and thus fantasy. The budget for Age of Empires is lesser than games with both ultra-realistic environments and units.

If two studios were given 1 million each for their game budget; the realistic graphics and design for the entirety of the game would depend upon whichever studio was able to source the better game engine and likely hired the best artists.

BarrelWave63606:

Age of Empires IV will likely succeed because of its ease of use, clarity of detail; combat style, villager resource gathering, campaigning, and all during real time playing with strategy involvement which allows players to test their military strategies and empire building with expansion and conquering techniques.

Ancestors and Ancestors Legacy seemed more comparable to Lord of the Rings.

Ancestors Legacy: I do agree the game you posted for, Ancestors Legacy, is very detailed for an environment art form; however, it was too dimly lit to enjoy their fine detailing. The constant energy bars below military units seems to me as being too much of an arcade style with their addition of a constant icon below each unit was cluttering the playing field. I preferred the icon selection 1C created during Men of War. In fact I would only compare Men of War with Age of Empires III graphics.

After viewing those two games you provided I can understand why they are your preference up to now. They won’t compete directly against Age of Empires because they lack historical context.

Guys, we have already several threads for the graphics.
I would like to focus here on the gameplay.