Sure did! I mentioned that. 
The unit micro in aoe4 is no way near in aoe3 as it is in aoe2, so your statement regarding this is not accurate at all.
Aoe3 is heavily focused on unit micro moreso than macroâŠin aoe4 itâs the other way around.
In terms of asymmetry of civs in aoe3, I think your downplaying heavily the differences between the base aoe3 civs. From the different HC shipments, age up mechanics, even to the economic mechanics I.e. Otto free vills, Dutch banks and gold dependant vills, Port free tcs, brit manor vill spawn etc⊠and the way more unique units.
You are right, bigger asymmetry happened with the expansionsâŠbut then your theorising that more asymmetry in aoe4 is gonna happen in the future which is nothing more than speculation. If the game is following aoe2 moreâŠwhy would they go the route of aoe3 and get more asymmetric?
The only reason why some ppl I feel think that aoe4 borrows a lot from aoe3 is because of the graphics compared to aoe2
Also I want to add, just because something is easier in aoe3 than aoe2 and is also the case in aoe4âŠit doesnât mean itâs borrowed from aoe3. Thatâs being creative reasoning. When I say borrow, I mean a unique mechanic from aoe3, not a mechanic that is not in aoe2 but is in a lot of other rts games
1 Like
Good post, in general, but this quote is a little misguided. At least it is for me. You see, innovation for the series, in and of itself, is not the problem. There are a million ways to innovate. Innovating the AoE franchise is not inherently evil. Itâs the way they chose to âtryâ and innovate AoE3 thatâs the problem.
Iâm sorry, but playing cards, auto-shipments, an explorer, walls that canât seal off many parts of the map, build quantity limits, magical teleportation of resources from villager hands to TC, the exact same sound used for every building click, audio thatâs not well-rounded and full by any stretch, tiny maps, terrible camera angle, fisheye cam, bad max zoom level, an explorer was bad enough but one that canât really die and has a constant GoPro cam running even when immobilized (when he should be dead), the words âCommandemant, riggggghtâ ringing in my ears whenever I think of the game even though Iâve only played the game twice in 10 years, and several other reasons are why AoE3âs âinnovationsâ were not well received by myself.
For a franchise like AoE with a solid foundation, I prefer âintelligently evolvingâ rather than ââinnovatingâ by undoing a bunch of things that players expect in the franchise, and then randomly adding, I donât know, a deck of cards and a bunch of devolutions.â Unless you know youâre going to knock the game out of the ballpark, if youâre going to innovate by pulling the rug out from the franchise, itâs probably better to just make it a one-off and call it something other than Age of Empires III. I donât know, âAge of Empires: Colonial Warsâ or something. Save the official Roman Numeral designation for games that are truer to the DNA of the franchise, being AoE1 and AoE2; and from what Iâve seen and the direction I believe itâs going, AoE4.
AoE2 was able to innovate over AoE1 without wrecking things or alienating 75% of the AoE faithfuls, right? Certainly, AoE3 could have done the same, if they had chosen a different innovation path, imo
The unit micro in AoE4 is absolutely closer to AoE3 than AoE2. In AoE2, you can micro your units to avoid mangonel shots and archer/crossbow fire alike. In both AoE3 and AoE4, this is impossible, because both games have autohits on their ranged units. Itâs one of the biggest complaints that AoE2 purists have against AoE4 currently, is the lack of unit micro.
Iâm not really sure how you can say that AoE3 is more heavily focused on micro than macroâŠIt baffles me. They removed drop off points entirely and settlers just permanently farm a resource, until itâs gone. Farms have unlimited food and you only have to drop one down to support 10 settlers. Houses supported a population of 10, rather than 5, which meant you had to build less houses. You can batch train units, which requires less military buildings to be dropped. All economic upgrades were consolidated into a single market, rather than the different drop off points. These are just a few ways that AoE3 heavily reduced the micro required for competitive gameplay. How was AoE3 more focused on micro?
And, yes. There were differences between the civs. Iâm not arguing that. Iâm just making the point that there wasnât any more differences between the base AoE3 civs and the starting AoE4 civs. Theyâre fairly equal in terms of base game asymmetry. Otto got free vills, Delhi Sultanate get free upgrades. Dutch had banks, Rus have hunting cabins. Port got free TCs, Mongols can move their TC. Which game had -better- civs is going to be entirely subjective, but neither was any more or less asymmetrical than the other. Also, Iâm not really sure what you mean by civs having different age up mechanics. That wasnât introduced until the expansions. All of the base game civs aged up the exact same way: Get resources, click button, pick politician.
Donât get me wrong, Iâm not tryna hate on AoE3. I enjoyed AoE3 very much and I still do. It has a very different experience than AoE2 and it had many mechanics that I enjoyed. The only point that I am raising in this topic is that AoE4 was never going to be an exact clone of either game and, as a result, would never satisfied the die-hard fans of each respective game. AoE4 lies somewhere in between AoE2 and AoE3 (while also taking ideas from other games in the franchise). Overall, as mention in the OP, I think itâs important to look at AoE4 as its OWN game in the franchise, rather than looking at it through the lense and comparing it to either game, because both games are so vastly different that there is no world where they could have released AoE4 and satisfied both markets demographics. They had to strike a balance between both games somewhere, which I think they successfully accomplished. But that will always mean that mechanics from BOTH games had to be left behind.
I agree with you! I actually enjoyed AoE3. I didnât play it as much as AoE2, but I still have a couple hundred hours logged. Itâs a very different experience and absolutely suffered from innovation overload. The point I was trying to make, is that if they attempted the same thing with AoE4 and stacked it full of innovative ideas, they would have risked a massive backlash for the same reason that AoE3 did. So, I get why they played it safe and erred on the side of less innovation.
I think we also have to consider how much could they have realistically innovated over AoE2 without getting into unfamiliar territory? AoE2 was able to innovate over AoE1 in many ways, because AoE1 there was a lot of room too improve with AoE1 to begin with. All of the logical innovations have already been done and, imo, if they keep trying to push the envelope too far weâll start getting into âdonât fix what isnât brokenâ territory where devs start changing things just for the sake of change. A lot of the changes between AoE2 and AoE1 were minor, logical changes or features that they originally wanted to add in the original. AoE2 is such a timeless game that, personally, I donât think its really possible to have leaps and bounds of innovation without completely changing the game and undoing or reiterating a lot of what AoE2 accomplished.
They did add several features, such as the new scouting mechanics (sheep herding and hunting), which I LOVE. The ability to mount archers on walls. Adding asymmetrical civs, while not expressly âinnovativeâ, as it was an idea in AoE3, it gives the game a very different feel over AoE2. To me, AoE4 feels like the sequel that AoE3 should have been, without all of the innovative bloat. Just the right amount of changes and variance over AoE2, while still feeling like an Age of Empires game and having the same bones as its predecessors.
1 Like
What I mean about aoe3 micro more than macro is that the game gets players to focus more on microing units than macro / city buildingâŠbecause as you pointed out, some of the macro components were simplified.
AOE3 was designed to put less emphasis on city building and more on strategy (I.e. HC shipments) and army fighting
AoE4 does try to level that gap, between aoe2 and aoe3âŠbut aoe4 is a lot closer to aoe2 in this regard. No batch training, 1 vill farms,.resource drop points etcâŠ
However my point on this one is that it feels like aoe4 gets players to focus more on eco building than microing your units compared to aoe3âŠwhere microing is so important because game can snowball quickly if you are out microed.
In otherwords, Aoe4 (and aoe2) is a lot mire forgivng when u lose a battle compared to aoe3.
Im not knocking aoe4 here, donât get me wrong.
I do agree, aoe4 is itâs own game in the franchiseâŠI just donât get how ppl think it has a lot of aoe3 components
1 Like
this is where i stopped reading because itâs so detached from reality
1 Like
I totally agree that it did take more from and is closer to AoE2 than it is 3. I also get what youâre saying now about the micro in 3. It did have a good bit of micro in the combat with the snare mechanic and getting caught out of position could be very punishing. Iâm not sure that I would agree that it had more than AoE2 though. Maybe at first glance, but once you get into the more complex and micro intensive maneuvers, like using your scout to manually block vills running back to the TC, quick walling or manually dodging archer fire and mangonel shots, the micro in that game becomes so much more pronounced and it can and will make or break a battle.
Aoe 4 imo is a frankenstein made of at least 10 RTS games that i could find out the references
Itâs not a bad thing because that shows Relic really did a deep search for mechanics to be desirable on her game. In ways it shows respect for the genre but the only thing they did by themselves (UI decisions) was meant for a futuristic era.
If they ever do a Aoe5 for Microsoft, I hope more of our opinions be considered 
I would say, at this point in the genreâs history, there is a lot of overlap in general. New RTS games take ideas from older RTS games and add a few new mechanics or add variant mechanics that are reiteration of something that was present in a previous game. For example, every major RTS franchise (Warcraft, StarCraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, etc.) just built on the format that was established by Dune II (the granddaddy of all modern RTS). It established the core concepts and mechanics that effectively defined the genre and every single RTS that has released after it has built on itâŠand even it adopted a few of its concepts from Herzog Zwei. You can only advance a genre so much, before it loses the identifying traits that established the genre in the first place or becomes a branching subgenre (which is where we got MOBAs)
1 Like