Fun thought: Is CoH3 based upon a discarded AoE4 Prototype?

Just a fun thought that came across.
Heavy speculation incoming:

  • With a reveal in 2017 and another year of pre-production I just put in leading to it, AoE4 is unusually long in the development, considering the rather conservative result and experience at Relic.

  • Relics most successful games are the CoH entries and in the “roadmap” from Ensemble Studios, a new AoE would kinda fall in the age of the two world wars.

  • It would make sense, that MS approached Relic to talk about an AoE4 in a WW2 setting when thinking of candidates to revive the franchise.

  • The (then) recent failure of DoW3(which got a lot of hate for taking it too far away from its roots), the enormous stress they probably felt by inheriting a so established and beloved franchise, may have resulted in the desire, to “keep it real” this time.

  • Instead of having a coh ~ish AoE4 and the backlash that this might’ve introduced, they went for fan service in going for a best of AoE as a starter to establish trust and test the waters.

  • The scraps of the first prototypes went straight into a new CoH with an added macro layer.

  • I don’t remember Relic as a multi-team studio, working on different big games. So CoH3, which came amidst the development of AoE4 along with a playable build, came quite as a surprise.

Have fun :slight_smile:

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I would have played the f out of a medieval CoD tbh

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Medieval Call of Duty?
Or was it a misclick?

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Not sure if a typo, but the idea sounds enticing! lol

First person man-at-arms? Sign me up!

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Chivlary 2 might entice you

Lol, mixed up my abbreviations

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Ancestors Legacy might be a game for you.
Multiplayer is completely dead tho.

I personally don’t believe that AoE got any commitment in these World War RTS games, but maybe :upside_down_face:

Ancestors Legacy is the medieval version of Company of Heroes.

I really doubt it. I don’t see any world in which they would have been going to make AoE 4 like CoH. They would definitely play it more safe, as they are. Keep it closeish to AoE 2, which is by far their most popular game in the series, and bring in some elements from other AoE games.

Rather unlikely tbh…