It’d be nice to have an Automatic Story Player in AoE.
If you don’t feel like playing a campaign yourself, you could just let the game run it while you watch the story. It could use 8x or 16x speed most of the time, then slow down for dialogue, cinematics, or important events. You could also take control anytime, then hand it back to the automatic player.
It could be a mix of scripts and adaptive AI, so it wouldn’t have to rely entirely on AI. A successful playthrough could even be turned into a playback script.
There’d be no achievements in this mode, no matter how much assistance it uses.
WE could also use it for Scenario QA. If it repeatedly fails under the standard data and rules, that could help find problems while saving developers a lot of repetitive testing time.
It could work with Mods too. If I make a new civ but don’t feel like playing through an entire Scenario, I could just let it run and see how it plays.
The story data and playback scripts could be downloaded only when needed and kept up to date.
It’d basically let you watch and play AoE stories in your own game without having to play through the whole thing yourself.
This is the Suggestions section, though. I’m just suggesting a possible feature.
YouTube is an alternative, but it’s not really the same thing. This would let you watch the Scenario directly in your own game, use your own Mods, choose the story branches, and take control whenever you want.
And the same system could also be useful for Scenario QA and Mod testing. That’s the part YouTube can’t do.
That sounds like a monumental amount of work to make It possible and a lot of maintenance for something that would see very little use, that could be spend better in other features.
They already tried with co-op scenarios and gave up fast adding more because It was a lot of work and almost nobody was playing them, and your proposal would require a higher amount of work
I get that it could take a lot of work, especially to maintain.
But I’m not suggesting WE would have to build everything from scratch. AoE II already had replay functionality back in Age of Kings, and there was even a replay bug in The Conquerors that could let the player take over during playback (It might even have been a bug in AoK). So switching from playback back to player control isn’t exactly a completely new concept.
The first version could also be much simpler than a fully adaptive AI. A successful developer/QA playthrough could be turned into a fixed playback script, with adaptive AI added later if needed.
It could also have uses beyond just watching campaigns, like Scenario QA and Mod testing.
I’m not saying it’d be cheap or easy to maintain. I just think there are ways to build it incrementally rather than treating it as one huge AI system.
Yes, or as a last resort, a story mode (like AoM and AoE 3) where the AI never attacks you (and on the other hand, a ludicrous mode) where it attacks you with everything from the first second…
Actually, I think cheats could be a very convenient part of this system rather than something that replaces it.
For example, you could use cheats as commands:
Start Playback: lets the AI take over.
Stop Playback: gives control back to the player.
Next Trigger: assumes the current trigger conditions have been met and moves to the next trigger.
Trigger #3: directly executes a specific trigger while assuming its conditions have been met.
The important part is that Next Trigger or Trigger #3 wouldn’t replace normal Scenario testing.
You’d still need normal playback to test whether the actual conditions can trigger the event correctly.
If a trigger requires building a Castle, collecting a certain amount of resources, or reaching a specific location, you’d still need to test those conditions normally and make sure the trigger actually fires.
The direct trigger commands would just let you skip the earlier parts and test what happens after that point.
For example, if a Scenario has 20 triggers and Trigger #12 has a problem, you shouldn’t have to manually play through the first 11 triggers every time you want to test Trigger #12.
You could just use:
Trigger #12
and test the logic from that point.
Once Trigger #12 works, you can run the Scenario normally from the beginning to verify that the actual conditions really do trigger it.
So I don’t really see cheats as a problem here. They could actually provide a very simple and convenient debug interface.
And since using cheats already disables achievements, there’s no need to treat these commands as part of normal achievement-enabled gameplay.
The first version also wouldn’t need a fully adaptive AI. A predefined playback script could be enough to start with.
The same system could then be useful not only for automatically playing Scenarios, but also for Scenario QA and Mod testing.
That’s why I think this could be developed incrementally instead of requiring a full adaptive AI system from the beginning.
I think this is one of those things that may take some development effort, but once it’s built, the benefits would outweigh the costs.
I think skipping the scenario completely may be harder, since the triggers and events still need to play out.
A simpler solution would be to allow much faster playback speeds in Story Mode. If 2× is the current limit, maybe 5× or even higher could be allowed.
That way, the scenario still runs normally and achievements can remain enabled. Players just don’t have to spend the same amount of time watching the parts they’ve already seen.
The system could allow even higher speeds internally if needed. 5× doesn’t have to be a hard limit.
Another option is to let Scenario creators place a specific unit or object as a Skip option before a long scripted sequence.
Clicking it could apply the same effects as completing the sequence normally. The dialogue could also tell the player that the Skip option is available, so they know it’s intentional.
It could be placed somewhere visible but unlikely to be clicked by accident. This way, the Scenario creator controls exactly what gets skipped.
