Maybe add a bracket briefly indicating the function.
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Just learn how to play the new civs ugh. Or don’t play, your call. Loads of people here claiming to be masters of great RTS design.
I see other RTS games (looking at you AoE4) and many of them are just boring because they are so … um… featureless.
If you want to play AoE3 just because you like strategy, youve come to the wrong game.
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I agree to an extent. I enjoy all the historical references and the civs being unique, but they should standardise some of the units. There are shipments that send versions of units that are almost exactly the same as other units but have a slightly different name. It makes everything so complicated. Sometimes different versions of a unit even have the same name but are technically separate units so can’t be double-click selected together. I get that there are gameplay reasons but OP is right that it makes the game less accessible for new players.
I’d like to see a mode for single-player where you can play with all a civ’s cards available so you can experiment without worrying about decks. That would at least allow players to try to get across everything and see what works for them in a shorter time.
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I also suggested that when they renamed a batch of team cards, where functional names have been an intentional UX feature that makes them easier to communicate.
as I played this game from my childhood, I never did read the names lol
I just looked to the picture and the direct built point effects
so what matters is the built points are clear and the picture is enough to describe
it was about the pictures and visuals for me all the time so I didn’t had issue
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This would be super useful for experimenting with new stuff. And it would be fun to see the unrestricted potential of the cards.
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ironically you’re right, I don’t play aoe3 anymore
Even AOE4, the “welcome to competitive AOE” game, has started to add “meme” units and more diversity.
Also I feel there is a generic trend in every long-lasting series of comparing the “good old days” when you were just randomly clicking around for fun versus your serious, extremely competitive perspective of the game now, and claim is no longer fun anymore
I wonder if competitive gameplay would ever be “fun” for any game. Did you enjoy spamming ashigaru? It’s extremely simple and straightforward. Fun?
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On the other side, AoE IV has all icons, upgrades and names standarized without a soul…
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I dip in an out of AOE3, I play it maybe once a month, and it IS absolutely getting harder to comprehend with every new update.
I don’t always use the same civ, I like to play a different civ every time. And I’ve got NO idea what most of the units are or do once they’re on the battlefield, away from the building that trained them. For the casual player, it’s not easy to visually tell if a unit is infantry-line or archery-line, or whether any given cavalry unit is one that should be used in a close-quarters melee or to be held back for shooting from afar. It’s not the graphics, they’re amazing. It’s the overwhelming complexity and diversity of units that often have no clue in their name how to most effectively use them. As units recieve more authentic names, their purpose becomes less clear.
You could argue that I should spend an hour to read up on it before I play - but I rarely have free time to game. If I only have an hour to spare, I want to play, not read.
You could argue that I should stick with the same civ each game and learn what each unit in that civ does. But it still doesn’t help me decide how to counter enemy units that have unique names and no obvious weapon. If an enemy is carrying a pointy stick its not obvious whether they’ll hurl it from a distance or stab with it from up close. Honestly I have no idea how to most efficiently counter any African, Ottoman or native American units - they’re all so similar looking and confusingly named. I detest playing against these civs.
So I agree with the OP. As cool as it is to have such rich historical accuracy and a host of uniquely skinned and named units for each civ, the game game has become so very much harder and less accessible for casual players.
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There is no “infantry-line” or “archery-line” at all since day1. This is not AOE2. There is only one infantry class and split into heavy infantry and light infantry.
Under each subclass there are several different units with distinct weaponry even within the same civ (polearm, sword, musket for heavy; bow, crossbow, rifle for light) and that is also a thing since day1.
Their pose is more than obvious and they all serve the same role.
If you scout them you can see their stats by clicking on them.
If you are encountering them for the first time, do you expect to come up with a counter right within a few seconds before they make the first attack?
Ottoman and native American have been around for 17 years.
The recent Ottoman updates are all visually reskins of existing European units.
Is there any unit like that? Maybe spy?
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Come on, you’re splitting hairs in my use of terminology to deny my experience.
Ok, fine, no infanty-line or archery-line, if those terms don’t apply. But there are still infantry units. And there are archery units. There are rifle units. There are units that fight in close quarters, and those that fight from a distance. And as a casual player its not obvious in the heat of a battle which does what.
It’s a complex game for casual players and its getting ever harder to stay on top of it all - as all the “flawed arguments” in my previous post should make immediate obvious.
And these unit types have been there with the same set of weaponry since 2005. In fact there is only one “new” unit type added to the game and that was in TWC in 2006. If that is a problem you should have given up long ago.
What do you mean by “casual”?
PvE: not a problem at all.
PvP: I wonder if there is any game that can get you familiarized with everything and every match-up easily and quickly.
Think about how you get into any PvP game. First there is tutorial and single player contents. Then you learn what you should learn through several matches. It should take far more than 1 hour combined before you really become familiar with everything, but that effort is split throughout your games. (But, if you just want to learn about what the unit does beforehand, it takes less than an hour to read about them. Even though it is totally unnecessary because again you learn them by playing the game).
Even for the extremely fast-paced games:
FPS: how long does it take to remember all weapons and all maps?
Card games: how long does it take to remember al cards and how to deal with them?
MOBA: how long does it take to remember all characters and all skills?
And some of the games would overhaul the entire playstyle every few months.
And more importantly, you are never memorizing every single matchup. You are learning “meta units” against “meta units” and “meta strategies” against “meta strategies”.
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You restarted this thread after all this time to say this?
BYE, boy!
I think (hope) they are making a right decision for not esport-orienting the designs too much.
On the other hand, even the with extremely simple and non-unique names like “extra material”, does anyone have any idea what it does by just looking at the name?
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Agree.
For a new player, it is difficult to visually distinguish the unit type of many units. When he see some foot units carrying melee weapon running toward him at high speed, these units could be Heavy Infantry, Hand shock infantry, or even Melee Light infantry. The approaches to deal with them are totally different.
And there are too many tags to remember. Many tags are unnecessary and make this game more complex and more unfriendly to new players.
For example the “Pikeman” tag, people have no clue which units have this tag (Halberdier is not). Is it really necessary to create a tag just for 2 “Mercenary ranged Heavy Cavalry”? I thought the Spanish Lancer Calvalry with multiplier against Infantry is already counterintuitive enough… 
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If “at high speed” and not a polearm, there are only two cases of heavy infantry (rodelero and barbary corsair, the latter you rarely see) and one case of melee light infantry (urumi; which I would not even count because they are not really “high speed”). Even AOE2 has more unique units to remember than this.
Some tags are there just to prevent things from being totally broken. Not for you to build strategies around them.
Idk why people are so over exaggerating the differences and under estimating the expected learning time for any game.
When one first plays AOE2, does he immediately realize skirmishers counter bows (on foot or mounted) as well as firearms, or light cavalry are more resistant to conversion, or onagers are really medieval shotguns not siege weapons, or what any unique unit does, just by looking at them at the first glance?
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I wonder what the game would be like if the developers listened to you and simplified the cards and units.
In AoE2 there are Militia line, Archer line, Skirmisher line, Knight line, Chevalry Archer line, etc. People can more easily integrate the relations between each unit into a counter chart. When people see something different, they can immediately know it must has something unique. In AoE3 it is more difficult.
For me the reason why aoe3 is fun is not because of these complicated tags. Will the game become boring if we let Mounted Riflemen just be a more powerful Dragoon? I believe the game would still be fun even we take out these tags and exceptions. If the game is easier to be understood, maybe the game would attract more new players?
If you discard the 40+ unique units then maybe.
AOE3 actually have comparatively fewer counter system outliers (compared to the number of unit types) than AOE2 because almost every unique unit of AOE2 is an outlier.
Some of these units look similar and some look different. Can you immediately recognize which are immune to arrows and which are vulnerable to arrows? And which part of the units tell you that?
Which part of the cataphract is so unique that tells you it is totally different from the knight line?
Which part of the janissary is so unique that tells you it has no minimum range but a hand cannoneer does?
Yes, because there are already 4 more powerful dragoon mercenaries. There is already risk of drawing 3 mercenaries of the same role. If there are more duplicates then the probability becomes even higher.
I can hardly believe one would want to step back from the far more flexible tag system. Does anything from AOE2 tell you why the swordsmen counter eagle warriors? Why light cavalry are resistant to conversion? If there are even more units can you list every one-on-one bonus in the panel?
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