Once you’ve tasted food better than what your mother makes, there’s no going back.
People have experienced games so much better than this one that they get drunk on disappointment and wind up here or elsewhere to take part in the semi-illegal act of making comparisons between games they consider better to this one.
Most players of AoE 4 have either gone back to their preferred titles or moved on to other games.
The ones that are still here are either enjoying themselves, like you, or bearing with the Devs.
Yes, it is brilliantly done. Think about even a unit like the GLA Rocket Buggy. The unique voice each unit has adds so much personality to each unit. Some units just have the ‘x-factor’ or ‘coolness factor’ or whatever you wanna call it.
I’d say AoE4 units completely lack this.
There are many possible ways to diversify military. The Chinese palace guard for example is a man at arms unit with armor sacrificed for speed. Arguably, all civs could have had all their units unique, i.e, different versions of the base unit with different stats to suit the history of the civ.
One only needs to look at AoM and AoE3 and AoEO for inspiration. The age franchise has done it before and could have done it again.
Do you mean graphically? different skins are irrelevant to gameplay. In aoe2 they play out very differently due to different blacksmith upgrades being available to different civs & a wide array of civ bonuses changing how their units play out.
I have played maybe 10 hours of aoe4 so forgive me if I am wrong, I just don’t remember the MAA or Spearmen being different gameplay wise. Maybe I just didn’t stick around long enough to learn.
I wrote my opinion about this already but I have to add, that the Icons used in this game are great. They include everybody who plays the game even colorblind there is no need to look twice because the little picture cant be distinguish from another one. they have sharp clear edges and you always know what you build which is the porpuse of this said icon. there is litteraly no need for fancy “cool” little images…
I think the game has a lot of personality and has already generated its fair share of meme’s mostly around the English with the villagers voice lines that are very memorable. ‘I’m ya worka!’ and the English Longbowman screaming STREAL BORA.
The voice work is excellent with units dynamically changing tone depending on situation. Units whisper when sneaking in forests and shout when battle begins. When a large army marches the sounds of the march are laced with murmers and chatter between the men. Units under attack will sound rightfully distressed.
None of the previous games come close to that level of atmosphere. Age of empires 3 added battle noises when large groups of units fought and then AOEO took a step back and added an awful repetitve combat music that awkwardly interuppts the normal music whenever fights occured.
The sound and music design is where AoE4 outshines every other age game.
But that’s it…
Rest of the military is super boring. Units don’t even have memorable icons and idk I’m not an RTS expert but I find each civ to be very one dimensional when it comes to gameplay.
Unit icons is a tricky thing to discuss I’ve had similar discussion in the Total War forums with the unit cards that serve the same purpose as unit icons in AOE. Many people could not stand the ‘Greek Pottery’ style Total War Rome 2 cards had but I personally loved it.
None of the AOE2 icons appealed to me on an aesthetic level, just 3d models on a black background. AOE4’s look a bit better to me in that regard but I’d say AOE3 had the best ones.
Oh yeah that’s true to an extent you have the forced march speed of Delhi men at arms and the longer range phalanx of Abbasid spearmen? Plus French crossbowmen can deploy a shield.
Activated abilities like forced march don’t mean anything in this game. Why is this relevant to Delhi? My guess is that it’s purely a balance decision.
Compare this to a similar ability that the Swedes in AoE3 have for their Carolean unit. It has an ability by which all Caroleans drop their muskets, pick up their swords and charge and have a high speed for a few seconds. This is based on real history. Swedish Caroleans used to do the melee charge tactic in warfare by dropping their firearms and going melee.
But no…most AoE4 stuff don’t really have much history behind them at all.
In one of the history videos in AoE4, they showed that even English crossbowmen deployed shields to hide behind during reload. Yet in the game, only the French get it. Again, a balance decision. Also, Arbaletrier literally means crossbowman. A lazy way to make a unique unit in my opinion.