there better be pathing and crash and desync fixes that come with this DLC
a crash was introduced like 3 patches ago to do with buildings + annex with 0 z-collision and reported. mp games desyncs like 40% of the time or more depending on server or lags, and pathing gotten worse for about 4-5 patches straight.
fixes first pls thnx microsoft
Donāt challenge themā¦
Campaigns never did much for me, in terms of gameplay enjoyment level, unfortunately. Itās hard to get excited for anything campaign-related.
Something about the pre-programmed linear progression of matches within the confines of scripted boxes bothers me. Enemies acting on triggersā¦ economy and age advancement limited by what was authoredā¦ pre-scripted enemy attacksā¦ enemies meandering just sitting there until you get closeā¦ caps on your age advancement or some things you can doā¦ some techs locked off as I recallā¦ etc.
Honest questionā¦ am I missing out? Have these things changed, or are things still pretty much the same with campaigns
If you primarily play campaigns, what is it about them that you enjoy so much? I want to enjoy them, but I think theyāve historically been too much āon railsā for my tastes
Same, I pretty much will buy any campaign. Any civilization without one as protagonists would be great!
Iām in a similar boat. In theory I like the idea of campaigns because they can provide continuity, story, and exciting features beyond what you can experience in MP or a random map.
In practice, most of the official campaigns are too āpaint-by-numbers.ā I havenāt played them all, but of those that I have, I donāt consider them to be in the same league as the top tier of amateur campaigns or mods. Mostly thereās too much hand-holding and not enough challenge, and many of them seem to optimized around (forgive me) the interests and aptitudes of the most basic players. Which makes sense, but I wish the ceiling was higher and that the āHardā setting more reliably lived up to its name, as well as perhaps offering more variety. I tried playing one of the official campaigns again recently, and found it much less compelling than playing Multiplayer or just making my own stuff in the Scenario Editor.
AFAIK though this is very much a minority opinion as most people here seem to enjoy campaigns.
Will we get a hint about the new DLC on the start of Lunar New Year on February 10th, I wonder?
For me its all about the story youāre playing out. I enjoy the story that youāre playing through, and the way things are triggered in my opinion feels natural for what the enemies are supposed to be doing within the confines of that story (ie if an enemy is besieging an allied castle, and your job is to break the siege, the enemyās focus is going to be on keeping the siege, and defending itself against your attempts to break it; they arenāt going to abandon their primary focus (the castle theyāre besieging) to all-in you)
If youāre just viewing it as any old game, yeah some of what the AI is doing might be wonky, but if you view it in context of the enemyās goals within the storyline, it fits really well; especially in the newer campaigns.
I would love an āeven harder campaigns DLCā, could be from those we already have, like a Hardest and Extreme Saladin, balanced to be a nightmarish experience, that will make restart and rant about a mission time and time again.
Iād love this. Some people also want an Easier difficulty, too
Oh, I thought this might be the case, but didnāt know. Iāll see if a few more replies happen
For me, gameplay is very important. And if a game relies too heavily on story, where I am mostly along for the ride or the gameplay and my freedoms as a player feel too noticeably restricted, then itās not usually something Iām drawn to.
This is why Iāve longed for DLC or more updates that benefit the base game itself, like weather and time of day options, added visual effects touches, cosmetic changes that are not civ-specific, more map aesthetics/additions, maybe some audio updates/additions, and so on. Things I could see while playing my unranked Skirmish matches. And, likely, could benefit all players.
If the engine isnāt very conducive to such things, I would understand. But Iāve never heard anyone say that
AoE, to me, is more than just a pretty chessboard to have battles on, or to have historical campaign stories unfold on. (AoE4 seems a bit like they just aimed for a glorified chessboard, in some respects.) For me, graphics help immerse me, and adding more graphics stuff would be just as appreciated as others probably feel when getting new civs and camaigns. (And I donāt mean confetti guns or golden cannonballs, or cheats from events.)
Everyone else gets added variety by way of new civs and campaigns, while Iāve really just want added variety in the base game for my Skirmish matches for years. I know my wishes arenāt very popular, but it is what it is. There are some gameplay updates Iād be cool with, too
DE brought a lot of great, fresh, graphical enhancementsā¦ but Iām just hoping for another round of cosmetic goodness, I suppose
Iām surprised the campaigns donāt catch your eye more. Visually they are the best part of the game. Some of the levels have lots of little attention to details that make the map really feel like youāre in that part of the world. The kinds of things that multiplayer just does not replicate.
Plus you get campaign exclusive models that help make some civs feel more āauthenticā.
Oh, yeah, youāre very correct. That is one thing I remember that I really liked! But it isnāt enough to overcome the scripted/linear gameplay of campaigns, Iām afraid
Yes, once while dabbling in making random map scripts for AoE2:HD, I was shocked to see how many cool things I could add to maps that I had never seen when playing the random maps given to us by devs.
Needless to say, after refining/iterating my learnings, I made a random map script a friend and I loved playing vs. AI in HD. Some flags plopped down, some rubble, some cemeteries, a shipwreck or two in the water, etc. Unfortunately, I heard early on with DE that my script would not workā¦ so it has just collected dust.
Iāve always wondered why random map skirmishes have so much cosmetic stuff missing from them that is available in campaigns and the editor. Weāre stuck with whatās given to us.
Unless and until I find out if I can pretty easily re-create my own random map script again that uses decorative objects only available in campaigns/map editor, and terrain height customizations Iād like to make, Iām locked into what is delivered to us via the dev-provided random maps.
In the meantime, I will try a newer campaign or two to see what extra graphical goodness exists these days 
I hope so. Otherwise what is the point of giving the info of the DLC on the announcement?
For me itās mostly for the variety. I like skirmish, but it can get quite repetitive even with variation between maps, and it only ever puts you in ābalancedā situations ā i.e. you and your opponent(s) start with the same things, in areas of the map that look roughly the same and have the same resource distibution. Thatās really good from a competitive point of view, obviously, but itās not the only way I want to play. Campaigns can put you in situations that skirmish canāt, e.g. maps that are very assymetrical, have uneven resource distributions, and where you and your opponents start in very different positions with different buildings and units.
I also like the experience of playing a map that someone has designed deliberately, rather than one thatās been randomly generated. I realise that the randomly generated maps have an element of this since someone has written the map script (in fact, I sometimes write map scripts myself, so I know exactly what is and isnāt the work of the author in those). A map thatās entirely been designed by a person is quite different from one thatās been generated from a script.
Iām actually not that interested in story. I think itās nice to have an over-arching narrative mostly to give some theme to the scenarios, but itās very much tertiary for me, and I get annoyed if the story takes up too much time (e.g. long intro and ending sequences, portions of the scenario where the player has no control).
Have you tested it on DE? I think you heard wrong. At least, I have run map scripts from The Conquerors on DE with no problems, and I think the HD ones should work as well.
Interesting that you should say that, because my experience is the exact opposite. The custom scenarios Iāve played have typically been very heavily controlled by triggers and/or have significant tech tree restrictions, to the point that there are few options for how to play them, and the gameplay is very much on rails. Presumably Iāve played the wrong custom scenariosā¦
On the other hand, official campaigns tend to give more freedom to how you approach the scenarios. There are some exceptions, of course, but I donāt think thereās anything I would describe as āhand holdingā in many of them. Occasionally thereās a hint thatās perhaps too helpful ā but hints that are unhelpful seem at least as common.
I love playing campaigns and it doesnāt matter for me which civ will get the campaign.
I just hope they make the campaigns a bit more challenging than the previous 2 dlcs.
I feel like they could even give a new hype to the campaigns if they added a more difficult version than āhardā to the campaigns and add on top a steam achievement if you completed all campaigns on this difficulty.
Am I getting better or the old Dracula campaign used to be really hard? 
The floor is certainly lower on custom scenarios, and probably the average as well. But I also vet them and only play a handful of those that come highly recommended. Some of them are indeed limited or overstructured, but as far as I can tell, even that seems to be a design meta that grew out of and is still present in the official campaigns, (especially spanning the AoK-AK) era where youāre limited to Castle Age, 75 pop, and the same old units, sometimes minus whichever one would be most helpful, say rams or a UU.
Anyway, some of the official stuff is restrictive and annoying as well. Best example in recent memory is the Dos Pilas battle, where I held a position in a town that I āwasnāt supposed toā be able to hold, so it activates a trigger that just makes all your units there disappear. And an example of a campaign that I think is overly paint-by numbers is Alaric - thereās little more than a predictable betrayal to break the monotony of nearly all the objectives being ādestroy this town,ā especially in the first 3 scenarios.
We may agree to disagree, but I maintain my position about custom scenarios being able to offer more positive variety. Partly because theyāre not necessarily in a rush to get to the next plot point or force a certain outcome because āthatās what happened historically.ā You can have RPG-styled scenarios like the Lord of the Rings, open world adventures like Ragnarās Saga, or āCivilizationā style diplomacy maps, all of which bring about flavors of gameplay almost entirely absent from official campaigns. Phillysoulja in particular I think shows more variety and novelty in his custom content than in his official campaigns. Furthermore, having a larger pool of creators suggests that at least some of them will have found ways to positively differentiate their works from official campaigns. There have been at least a few custom campaigns that either do (good) things Iāve never seen in official campaigns, or just implement a common premise in a more interesting and fun way that what Iāve seen in other campaigns, official or not.
I entirely agree with this though. AoE2 is not a great medium for storytelling, except to the extent that player choices influence the story - but thatās little different from saying itās all about gameplay. Iād much rather have a fun gameplay premise with minimal storyline than a campaign with amazing cutscenes, voicelines, plot twists, but unremarkable gameplay.
I think people improve(iām not the same guy i used to be before de due to playing online)
But i also think they often adjust some scenarios, which i personally dislike. I havenāt played it again but i think the 3rd bulgarian and the 2nd cuman scenario became easier over time?
If thatās true then iām a bit disappointed. Making scenarios on āeasyā less challenging for people who struggle is fine for me, because they should get a chance to see the restā¦but why would you make it on āhardā less difficult if some people(without cheating ofc) already made it through?
If you are not good enough to play it on hard then play"medium(?)" Or āeasyāā¦or just try to improve.
Either way itās the wrong way to make everything easier so as many people as possible can farm gold medals
Yesā¦ although I think I might have misinterpreted what you meant by paint-by-numbers, and we definitely agree on some things, e.g.
I think Dos Pilas is my least favourite official campaign scenario. When I first played it, I had a couple of failed attempts, where I restarted because it was obvious I couldnāt win (but not obvious I wasnāt supposed to). After a few attempts I figured out how to defend the town and got locked in a stalemate. Eventually I looked up a walkthrough to find that I wasnāt supposed to win that battle.
On the other hand, this is exactly what I meant by the gameplay being on rails, and Iāve experienced this kind of thing more in custom scenarios than official ones.
Kind of funny youāve included the Vietnamese campaign here ā Iām pretty sure that is generally regarded as one of the more difficult ones, with Ornluās review describing it as āthe single most difficult campaign in the entire gameā. Difficulty is subjective, I supposeā¦
I suppose. There are a few ways of interpreting difficulty as well. For example, I can say that Pachacuti and Tariq were quite difficult because I had to constantly reaffirm my will to live finish them. The low native difficulty was compounded by the tedium and lack of rewarding gameplay. Whereas other scenarios and campaigns objectively require more of the player in terms of unit/eco management, strategy, etc, which is what most people seem to refer to when they talk about something being āhard.ā But where the gameplay is rewarding, those scenarios donāt feel āhardā in the previous sense of unpleasant or tedious.
Regarding the Vietnamese campaign, that was the one I replayed recently. As a rule, I donāt consider official campaigns to be hard, so I wouldnāt read anything into the (im)precision of considering any particular one of them to follow that rule. Although even that campaign was easier than I remember - Iām quite confident in saying that balance and/or AI changes seem to have made it easier than in the past. The second scenario in particular was a breeze as I was able to smash the eastern camp about 12 minutes in, and then itās just a matter of playing Whac-A-Mole with the enemies who try to snipe the evacuees. No particular effort was required to ādefend the fortress,ā which is unfortunate given how thatās (theoretically) a key premise of the scenario. In case you havenāt played that one in a while, I suspect you may find it easier now than itās ever been.
