Building range indicators now in game

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Summary

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Are building range indicators good for the game?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

I am very against this. It already existed as a mod but is now being added to the base game. Go and right click the game in your library, go to properties then beta and select the April patch beta. You can see this setting has been added to game options. I tested it out against AI. It allows you to see a circle indicating defensive buildings’ (castles,town centres, towers) attack range. You see it on your ones and enemy ones.

A lot of people considered this mod to be cheating or against the spirit of the game and I understand why. It should be down to experience/intuition to know whether or not your units are in range of enemy buildings. Aside from this, the uncertainty is just part of the game. This takes away part of the risk and charm from the game in my opinion. Not everything should be known 100% in numbers or UI you should have to feel some things. I hope the developers change their mind about introducing this feature. I am sure some others feel the same way?

Imagine if in future we also had it for units like archers and mangonels. A mod for mangonel range already exists (not sure if one for archers does). In AOE 3 they put it for ranged units.

This would completely destroy part of the micro skill in the game. All of these changes remove skill and unpredictability from the game and thus limit the amount of possibilities for how games play out. I feel these are against the spirit of the game.

Some argue that because they already exist as mods they should be put in the base game. By this logic any existing mod that gives a gameplay advantage should be added even if it is detrimental to the health of the game? I don’t believe the character of the game should be dictated by what is and isn’t possible for modders.

I believe it would be better to limit certain mods that give gameplay advantages/ change how the game plays but that is a slightly different issue.

Malkop from this thread gives a great point:

“I am firmly against this. Even at high levels, tower placement isn’t perfect in rushes because there’s so many things to manage - checking range and counting tiles is a conscious decision you make. “Do I take the time to do this or rely on intuition?” It leads to more dynamic gameplay.

Funny thing, if we had this feature from the beginning I wouldn’t care in the slightest, but I’ve seen the games that develop from this firsthand in casted/streamed pro games and it’s definitely more fun without an indicator like this when games are developing. The intuition makes it fun, and interesting.”

Edit: It’s now in the game.

Adding some early impressions from people:

I agree with Viper that it takes some skill away (instantly knowing where to place an archer to be out of range of tower was his example) from the game. I also agree with him it should not be used in tournaments. Nili also didn’t seem overly keen. We will see what happens.

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AOE 3 DE has this feature and hardly is something that changes the game.
Damn, when auto scout was announced the endless non sensical rants that "change the game, take away something 11.
We live in 2021 to be against with that small things.

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EDIT: I forgot to reply to poster.

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Current year is not an argument. I’ve never played AOE3 but I gather it’s a very different game from 1 and 2 which is part of the reason I never got it.

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It is, if you played a lot you have that experience.
The thing is, as ui mods are open, there are already range indicator mods. It would be unfair if only layers who now about that would profit from it. So it’s definetely better from the devs to add it to the core game.
I like that decision to make it equal conditions for all. I don’t like the other way like riot does it, not allowing any mods.

thumbs up for that decision

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By this logic every mod which gives a gameplay advantage will eventually become part of the game? Even if it’s detrimental to the game?

It would be better to limit what mods are allowed to be used/exist.

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Why? This is so great about AOE that modding is so open to anybody. I like it a lot. We have so a good and nice community. Why make it complicated only because of a range indicator not everybody likes. T-West also made just a mod allowing to click individual trees. Should this be forbidden too?
Who decides what is allowed and what is unfair?
I like it exactly how it is handled by the devs right now. If there are really helpful mods, just include them to the core game, so everybody has access to them.

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This was my first reaction to this feature. I already expected some controversy.

Personally i dont think it is cheating in any way. It is just showning you more clearly for what was already part of the game. It wont give you more info. It only give you the same info more clearly. Now it is not just a number if you click on the tower, but it is made visual.

If this is cheating, then the small tree mod is also cheating. Smaller trees lets you see more easy what is going on behind the trees. It has kind of the same impact for the game.

These mods were already available by everyone. You could already select the mod and use the mod. So there was already an equal playing field. There isnt really a big difference between a mod you can pick or not or a setting you could use or not.

Making the range indicator part of the game only change how well know the feature is. If it is a mod, then it might be hidden for some people. Not everyone knows the greatest mods. If it is a feature of the game, then it is much more well known.

So i do agree with you that it is great that this feature become part of the base game.

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Even small trees mod give you advantage you will notice holes you otherwise wouldn’t.

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And small walls
S yeah there are a lot of those mods.

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If mods are never restricted/every advantageous mod is added to base game we’ll be left with a sterile husk that used to be AOE2.

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For example this makes getting your scout sniped by the enemy town centre much less likely. This is something that still happens a lot for noobs (and even some pro games I’ve seen). It changes the way the game plays out and removes a variable. I don’t like how these mods remove variables from the game and limit the possibilities of how games can play out.

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Noobs most likely wont even do active scouting more likely they will do with waypoints so they will get killed anyway.

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I consider myself a noob and I waypoint scout a lot (bad habit I know) but I tend to take manual control if I know it’s near a town centre. I sometimes lose my scout to the TC still because I’ll be squeezed by a building/trying to kill a unit or just being careless/hoping enemy vills won’t garrison. I feel I’m much less likely to lose it this way if there’s a big circle showing me a danger zone. I’m sure it’s the same for lots of others.

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Mods are already restricted: Visual mods are fine. Data mods are not fine.
Visual mods dont give you new info. They can only display the known info different.

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Visual mods can change how the game plays still.

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Why don’t you make a poll?

I think this feature makes the game fairer, for those who don’t know the name “Age of Mandala", and those who are slow on counting tiles.

Even better, it is adaptive to terrain and tech upgrades.

But one issue I noticed is that the enemy building’s range is same as yours, even if you have different upgrades. Example: I researched hill forts as Lithuanians and my Teuton enemy’s TC has 9 range shown as well. I consider this a bug.

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So, since you, as a player, know the sight range of buildings (you have them) would having a sight range indicator, with different lines indicating the different upgrade levels be considered cheating? What’s the harm? You know what the range of buildings should be generally, now you can see the exact spot you can drop that tower, castle, or forward without your opponent noticing.

Where do we draw the line between what we should need to estimate vs what information we’re given as an exact figure? There’s no such thing as “cheating” when everyone plays with the same options, the accurate term would be “cheap” and I’m going to state unambiguously that this, and a sight line indicator, would both be extremely cheap.

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You could already count the spots based on a grid mod (or just the grid settings ingame) to be just outside the range of a tower. So it is not like you couldnt find the exact spot for dropping the tower, castle, … It is already doable. This was already done in a second. So it wont really change much to me. It only makes it a little bit more easy to find the good spot if you arent really used to it.

It just makes the game a bit more accessable for noobs, while changing nothing for pros. I think that is a good change. Getting into multiplayer is already pretty hard for some players. Just having some visual help for info that is already availible is just fine to me.

The building range indicator wont add any new info to you. It just shows the known info visually.

That would be something different for sight range indicators. You cant see if someone has town watch or other techs like that. As result a sight range indicator makes new info available to you. So a sight range indicator is already something different. So they arent equally. Under the right circumstances, a sight range indicator wont be an issue if it wont gives you new info that was previously not available to you.

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that’s why I said with separate lines for each one, so you’d have to guess whether or not they had the upgrade but with the capability to place a tower grid-perfect, everytime, for the sight range of your choosing.

again, it’s a matter of cheapening the experience in my eyes, dumbing down the game’s core gameplay to basic shapes rather than estimation.

1 Like