What does everything think about that RTS coming out this week? It looks like it has some AOE in it.
Not my taste, copy paste of AoE 2 gameplay mixing some unique civs features like AoM/AoE 3.
Poor civilizations roster.
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I’m in the beta, and according to Steam I’ve played it for 50 hours now. I like it quite a bit. I’ll refrain from making more posts about this in other threads from here on in because these are the Age of Empires forums, the people here have been nothing than nice to me and they didn’t set up this forum for me to promote other games, but I’m still going to give it one good post, because I think it’s possible to love more than one game.
The obvious thing is that is was made by Age of Empires 2 fans. That’s not even an elephant in the room, that’s the room itself. The theme and even many of the units are very similar. Hence why anyone looking at a stream for five minutes comes out saying “Ugh, an Aoe2 clone”. But it doesn’t feel like a clone while playing, more like a different take on the same concept.
Some of the differences:
EA is faster. Gather rates are faster, maps are (or at the very least feel) smaller, scouts discover the relevant area around the base camp in one or two passes, “age ups” (more on those later) don’t halt villager production, there is more food on the map, stuff builds faster, stuff destroys faster, relics give combat bonuses, trading can be done with yourself but trade units cost gold. The goal was to have matches of around 20 minutes, 30 for a good late game match. (I don’t know what more than two players does yet, but I’d assume if anything a bit longer matches.) And as a result the game feels more streamlined. There is less of a need to send the first villagers to sheep and then find the boar quickly and… to continue villager production. You have a bit more elbow room. Of course, so does the opponent. And the game is also going to feel a bit more snowbally.
EA has more unique civs. No contest. The Mongols are just downright weird. No infantry, no foot archers, no ships other than a transport, no defensive buildings. No buildings being build by villagers, rather you produce settlers which turn into buildings. The French are much more vanilla, but even they get towers before they get any upgrades, they get cannons as unique siege units and they get an extra upgrade level on all cavalry lines. Priests work differently for each civilization. The Chinese one heals (and knows Kung fu) and the Arab one converts, but others have different powers. This setup is harder to balance than a game with a larger common core to the civs, and in fact at least one player in particular is already making a name for himself for wanting to play NM/“no Mongols” matches, but overall they seem to be managing it relatively well.
EA is multiplayer focused. It has a well functioning 1v1 competitive ladder with matchmaking and at least a 2v2 ladder should be coming as well. The game launches with a tutorial level, a number of short challenge levels to teach advanced mechanics of each civ, a skirmish against AI mode and a survival mode, but those are clearly bells and whistles. Could still be worth buying the game for, but it’s not like the campaigns of Aoe games. The AI is supposed to get another buff at release, it will be improved further post release and it’s possible they’ll add a cheater AI (they’re very proud the current version does not cheat by for instance getting extra resources). But for all that, the current beta AI is quite bad. I’m one of those players who have trouble against the moderate AI on Aoe2HD, or the hard one on the original Aoe2 build. The hardest AI of EA is good enough to entertain me for a match, but it has never beaten me or come close to it.
EA does not have “proper” age ups. Instead it has a system where you can buy two levels of military research and two of economic research. This allows for much clearer immediate choices in gameplay. In Aoe2 the first 16 villagers of gameplay are roughly the same for any build, after that you slowly start deviating for a drush or a flush or a fast castle build. In EA you can get away with that for maybe 4 villagers. The first of these upgrades also usually comes in after about 4 minutes, with the second one often under 7 minutes, and many good players do it even faster. This all ties into the “faster, more streamlined” thing above.
EA is designed to be as consistent as possible. While all the civs have unique looking units and in fact even units in the same function differ a little mechanically between civs, they are designed to be recognizable. All anti-cavalry units for instance have long weapons. Their anti-cavalry power even has that name, “long weapon”. It comes in two levels, a smaller and a larger bonus, and that’s the extend of what you need to know about anti-cavalry bonuses. There’s no different bonus vs cavalry archers or vs anti-cavalry cavalry or… Buildings are consistent as well. If you can gather infantry in a building you can gather cavalry in it. If you can hand in fish at a dock, you can hand in any resource there. In Aoe2 there’s always another bonus or another trick or another anything to explore, which is part of the fun. EA is designed to get you familiar with how to play well as soon as it can, which is their type of fun.
EA has heroes. They can be made only ones per game, but they’re clearly worth their cost, and in the case of Jeanne D’Arc maybe even more. I’m not overly hyped because I don’t like heroes in general, but so far most of them seem manageable. The upside is that it allows for another level of strategic choices. Each civ will launch with two heroes, and you have to pick before a match which one you might be wanting to go for.
Graphics is maybe a tie. EA’s look grows on you, it looks nice and clear, you’re able to find all your units and it still looks pleasant to the eye. But then again, Aoe2 already had all of that. EA is rendered in 3D in real time, so it does go a bit harder on the processing power. My over 6 year old, at the time of buying already kind of lower range laptop handles 1v1’s, but at least in the beta team games or games against multiple AI’s give me problems. Aoe2 never gives me trouble, HD or not. So if your setup is lower end than mine this category goes to Aoe2.
EA has a bunch of quality of life features that more oldskool RTS players might dislike, like automatic farm reseeding, command queueing (which you’re going to need with the pace of the game), easy unit queue management from a control group containing multiple of the same buildings, the works. Aoe2 was already pretty on the modern side of this one, but EA takes it just a step further.
…
Conclusion:
It’s not Age of Empires, and if you go into it expecting basically Age of Empires 4 or even Age of Empires 2.2 you will be disappointed by the lack of historic campaigns with voice acting and the works and by the streamlined almost Starcrafty gameplay simplifying your beloved early game. If you go in looking for a game where you can jump into the multiplayer, have a good time and be done in time for dinner while not losing strategic depth you might be pleasantly surprised. Because it really is a fun game. Don’t take my word on it though. The Viper and TaToH already streamed a bunch of matches, and more are sure to follow. So join one of those and ask them.
The game releases two days from now in the Steam store and on the Slitherine store (where you get a Steam key, but a tad more money might go to the developers). The price is unknown but “should not be surprising”, according to the makers.
(I had quite a long reply, but I edited it too often zo it decided to take a detour past moderation. I still have the text, but I know reposting it would flush that one into the spam filter as well. The suspense is always the best part.)
It looks…okay? I’m not a huge fan of the art style. It looks a little lifeless, to be honest. That, and I guess I just don’t like the illustrated/ borderline cartoon look in RTS games (though granted, this isn’t nearly as off-putting as AOE Online’s full on Asterix style).
From what I have seen, the buildings / cities also look less vibrant and impressive than they do in any of the AOE titles. Don’t know if that’s just the art style again, or the small scale (everything I’ve seen so far has only shown small settlements and armies compared to what can be done in AOE 2 or even AOM ) .
With all that said, just by virtue of it being like AOE, I will certainly keep an eye on it, though I’m definitely waiting on AOE 2 DE way more.
@Eininfar said:
It looks…okay? I’m not a huge fan of the art style. It looks a little lifeless, to be honest. That, and I guess I just don’t like the illustrated/ borderline cartoon look in RTS games (though granted, this isn’t nearly as off-putting as AOE Online’s full on Asterix style).From what I have seen, the buildings / cities also look less vibrant and impressive than they do in any of the AOE titles. Don’t know if that’s just the art style again, or the small scale (everything I’ve seen so far has only shown small settlements and armies compared to what can be done in AOE 2 or even AOM ) .
With all that said, just by virtue of it being like AOE, I will certainly keep an eye on it, though I’m definitely waiting on AOE 2 DE way more.
Is even worse without shadows.
The next time they should be worried to make a good game(more than rip off) instead pay youtubers as sponsors to talk of the game as
Check the commentary section vs the “game play”.
The game isn’t , bad but isn’t any new. And feels incomplete.
Multiplayer focused, bad Ai.
Poor content, even AoE 1 have more animal diversity.
Units with wrong timeframe names.
French civilization that doesn’t speak French.
The game is so irrelevant they haven’t a properly review in metacritic.
In steam haven’t enough positive reviews.
Basically this the Forints of RTS.
Same mistakes as No Man’s Sky with don’t release full content or mechanics
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Yes promised infinity of features.
The developers completely ignored the importance of single player aspects in RTS games and now they complain that people are giving their game negative reviews due to the absence of a campaign even though they clearly stated that the game has a strong focus on multiplayer.
First of all, the lack of a campaign is not the sole reason why people are giving the game negative reviews, its the fact that the game is an early access title which took a lazy shot at replicating AoE and its success. The game has atrocious pathfinding, a lackluster of an AI, does not allow buildings rotation, does not have game speed options, is extremely poorly optimized, features a low polygon graphic style which requires even less effort than designing 2D sprites for something like AoE RoR. The explanation that is being given by the developers is that they were focusing on a multiplayer experience, well guess what. StarCraft 2, which has an immense focus on multiplayer and E-Sports has three ♥♥♥♥ing huge campaigns. It features loads of single player content and does not negate its playerbase to play the way they want to, all that while providing an impeccable multiplayer experience.
But you will say, well its Blizzard, they can afford to do that. What about Cossacks 3 and Northguard? Both of which feature numerous campaign while offering an oustanding multiplayer experience? Not even mentioning about the fact that those games are filled with features that Empires Apart doesnt have, and all that while looking and running better as well as costing less.
Don’t get me wrong, the developers definitely worked hard on this project but that doesnt justify what they have released and in what kind of state. The entire project looks like an attempt at a quick money grab basing on hype and AoE similarities
You raise a lot of good points on the content of the game Augustus, but I would like to contradict you on the story behind it.
The game is not quick cash grab, rather a passion project which had to stay down to earth and practical to not sink the whole company before it properly got started. It’s been under development for four years. Sure, the genre was reviving, with Aoe2:hd and SC2, but it’s not like they were planning to ride the Aoe4 hype. (Like they did end up doing, because Aoe4! Hype!) This game took four year because the core team is mostly three people, with a dozen more involved at one point or another, like artists. The youtubers you show weren’t paid for their opinion, as far as I know. I know The Viper was offered the grand sum of one pizza, and he had a steam key giveaway for this game of which I honestly don’t know where he got those keys, but it seems reasonable to suspect those came from the developers. These youtubers did all get acces to the game before release and were allowed to give their opinion before the non disclosure agreement for beta members was lifted, so they did get a degree of exclusivity.
And because this is an indie game and it is limited in scope it’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. That’s fine. It’s not bad that more people played Skyrim than Eurotruck Simulator. And if you’re reading this and you still have your doubts it’s fine to wait for a sales price. You know it will come eventually, if the game is dead by then congratulations on dodging a bullet. But I think there certainly is a market for it, because the game is a lot of fun.
(Minor note: the Steam averages for reviews take into account only ratings from people who bought the game on Steam. The beta participants all got a 10% discount on the publisher’s own store, so the average leaves out many of the game’s biggest fans.)
@“Pan Calvus” said:
You raise a lot of good points on the content of the game Augustus, but I would like to contradict you on the story behind it.The game is not quick cash grab, rather a passion project which had to stay down to earth and practical to not sink the whole company before it properly got started. It’s been under development for four years. Sure, the genre was reviving, with Aoe2:hd and SC2, but it’s not like they were planning to ride the Aoe4 hype. (Like they did end up doing, because Aoe4! Hype!) This game took four year because the core team is mostly three people, with a dozen more involved at one point or another, like artists. The youtubers you show weren’t paid for their opinion, as far as I know. I know The Viper was offered the grand sum of one pizza, and he had a steam key giveaway for this game of which I honestly don’t know where he got those keys, but it seems reasonable to suspect those came from the developers. These youtubers did all get acces to the game before release and were allowed to give their opinion before the non disclosure agreement for beta members was lifted, so they did get a degree of exclusivity.
And because this is an indie game and it is limited in scope it’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. That’s fine. It’s not bad that more people played Skyrim than Eurotruck Simulator. And if you’re reading this and you still have your doubts it’s fine to wait for a sales price. You know it will come eventually, if the game is dead by then congratulations on dodging a bullet. But I think there certainly is a market for it, because the game is a lot of fun.
(Minor note: the Steam averages for reviews take into account only ratings from people who bought the game on Steam. The beta participants all got a 10% discount on the publisher’s own store, so the average leaves out many of the game’s biggest fans.)
I doubt that, because many of them try the game for free and mostly of them said is perfect better than AoE 2. Even one of them admit they revive the game for free.
I personally test the beta and follow the game since 2 years ago.
The game is fun, but still a beta, no enough polish and not enough civs.
As other guys said, I miss the times when developer finish the game before charge.
If you are thinking of this guys don’t were used as part of advertising or sponsor check their own fans and read commentary box.
Only few of them I’m sure will be play this game without be sponsors.
They starting try to sells DLC’s…
3 people are an excuse to be greed.
@Augustusman said:
I doubt that, because many of them try the game for free and mostly of them said is perfect better than AoE 2. Even one of them admit they revive the game for free.
I personally test the beta and follow the game since 2 years ago.
The game is fun, but still a beta, no enough polish and not enough civs.
As other guys said, I miss the times when developer finish the game before charge.
If you are thinking of this guys don’t were used as part of advertising or sponsor check their own fans and read commentary box.Only few of them I’m sure will be play this game without be sponsors.
They starting try to sells DLC’s…
3 people are an excuse to be greed.
Many of them did say they like the game, but many of them are also playing the game, so that doesn’t seem like too much of a coincidence. The Viper has been playing it quite a bit. He’s on the scoreboard/ladder as Lord DauT, and I see he managed to grab the number 1 spot since yesterday. That ladder is one of the things he’s gone on record as saying he preferred about this game over how it’s handled in Aoe2 where he has little control over the level of the people he plays. No, I don’t expect him to switch completely, that would be silly. But he obviously has found things to like about EA.
I would have liked the game to be more finished by the time of release, and in fact some really wild “let’s see if this works” balance changes were made in or just before the release patch (French elite light cavalry in mil1, madness), which was a weird thing to do. (These changes have been re-changed since.) Releasing later would in fact have been better for the game, since most sales still happen near release and a game that has problems on release doesn’t sell as well. But the game was supposed to release in 2017, so the date if anything seemed to have been motivated by the small company plain running out of money. That’s a thing that happens. A project is never completed, merely released. And thankfully since the age of patches for games at least this does not have to mean the end. That dropped connection ones every so many matches is not going to haunt the game to its grave. (And, you know, at least I haven’t heard of anyone completely unable to open the game upon release yet, so DestinyBit might be ahead of Forgotten Empires there.)
I also think you’re being hard on the game. There are six civs, for a game with substantial differences between the civs that’s a very normal number, maybe even on the high side. Aoe2:hd with all expansions is simply not the standard for these things, more like the ceiling. You’re also reading quite far into things. There is no sign of DLC’s on the horizon yet (to be completely fair, they are selling the soundtrack, but in their defense it’s a good soundtrack), but you’re acting like three of them will release next week and one of those will do nothing but add low poly nipples on the female villagers. Zoom it baby.
I guess we´ll just have to agree to disagree, because the impression I get from the game and the team is different than the one I see projected in your posts.
There is no sign of DLC’s on the horizon yet (to be completely fair, they are selling the soundtrack, but in their defense it’s a good soundtrack), but you’re acting like three of them will release next week and one of those will do nothing but add low poly nipples on the female villagers. Zoom it baby
not all are only my personal opinion, is steam and YT feedback.
Forgive but a oat must be selling part of DLC in this circumstance?
Why selling a broken game?
Why rip off AoE and offers less?
Where are mostly of game modes?
They copied AoE at their convenience. Even Empire Earth 2 have more game modes. Many are argument the fault is by the distributor.
And have in mind they planning more things, I hope they fix the game, because have good requisites of gameplay. a mean, finish the game. No this beta release.
And no scenario editor…
He isn’t the only one.
You can read commentary box in YouTube.
Do not get fooled… This guy from empires apart is great at speaking and promising. However if you play, test and communicate for yourself you will realize very soon that what I say is correct… i had so much hope for this game. I supported this game for almost 2 years. Been there since alpha version… btw i have been banned twice now for quoting/screenshotting what he said and a second time for making an edited, “truth related”, UNLISTED video on youtube and sharing it with people who already own the game and a tiny group on facebook who dont give a shit about empires apart so it was taken down there immediately. And since I was banned from EA discord again I made the video public now.
Almost no one of the early alpha stages plays the game anymore: thats how much he listens to what the community asked for… → CASH GRAB EA
Same case.
RTS focus in multiplayer…
More humble and less YT sponsorship.
Would play anything that includes Byzantines. And this does!
Another devastating issues.
@UrbanizedGem684 said:
Would play anything that includes Byzantines. And this does!
Buy it, I recommend this one.
