I was pretty stoked as soon as I heard that they were making a HD remake of this great classic!
As a player who used to play multiplayer on a pretty decent level the main thing that bothered with AOE 1 has always been balance. E.g. some civilisations just overpower all the others in some game modes. But here are some things that come to mind:
- Persian (and possibly Macedonian, if it contains the expansion as well) doesn’t get wheel. This severely cripples this already weak civ (except for good elephants Persian has pretty much nothing). Faster villagers make a huge difference when running away from your opponent.
- Greek: All storage pit upgrades should be available in order to take full advantage of faster Centurions. Perhaps adding composite bowmen to their arsenal also would not be a bad idea. As greek is very weak in the bronze age.
- Hittite: Catapults with double HP is quite insane not to mention it is already a very good civ to begin with regarding their tech tree.
Regarding units:
- Chariot archers dominate the board in bronze age, camels are a good counter, but not all civs get them, so perhaps an upgrade that gives cavalry piercing armor, or upgrades that upgrade the range of slingers.
- Iron age camel rider upgrade
- CATAPHRACT: these are without a doubt the most useless enemies in the game. They are so useless in fact that I have never seen anyone using it in a serious multiplayer game. They are expensive to upgrade, build and die way too quickly. Make them either faster, stronger, cheaper, offer upgrades for extra piercing armor or a combination of these to make these units worthwile to make once in a while.
I hope it’s not only visual changes, but they looked and the gameplay as well.
That’s my 2 cents, I can’t wait for the beta!
http://www.forgottenempires.net/age-of-empires-definitive-edition credit for link @The Reimi
All-new graphics & artwork
Multiplayer
Remastered soundtrack
Remastered sound effects
Completely revamped UI
The good old campaigns with proper spit and polish
**Countless balance adjustments**
New terrains & scenario editor objects
Classic Mode — The original 1997 experience
Plenty a-wololo
I never played multiplayer back in the original or have much remembrance mechanically with units, definitely going to go back to play the original though. I think you can be rest assured that there’s going to be a good amount of adjusting with balance, note word countless.
http://www.forgottenempires.net/age-of-empires-definitive-edition credit for link @“The Reimi” Reimi
All-new graphics & artwork
Multiplayer
Remastered soundtrack
Remastered sound effects
Completely revamped UI
The good old campaigns with proper spit and polish
Countless balance adjustments
New terrains & scenario editor objects
Classic Mode — The original 1997 experience
Plenty a-wololo
I never played multiplayer for the first game or really have fresh remembrance of a lot of the units mechanically and stat wise, It’s been such a long time, which is why I’ll defiantly be going back to play the original, there’s not much knowledge or comparison I can add from my experience or lack there of… But I definitely wouldn’t doubt there’s going to be a lot of adjusting from the original, note word countless.
The team at forgotten empires have continued to try and balance aoe2 so I am sure they will do the same for this gem.
One of the core gameplay problems with AOE1 is gold. That leads to the dominance of Chariot Archer and later Scythe Chariot in the Iron Age.
Yes, gold is a problem. Plus the problem that you can only trade over sea. You should have the ability to trade over land as well, just like in AOE 2 to get gold.
Also, I cannot edit my original post, but I said that cataphracts are the most useless enemies in the game. What I meant to say was useless units.
Be careful with the balance though, I have experienced their ideas of balance on AoM, it was bad, very bad.
We still have a hopelessly overpowered civ that easily whacks all others and thats after they cut half of its bonusses down.
It would be good if they invited somereally experienced players (like me) that have played a lot of online games and know pretty much all the ins and outs of every civ.
@smitske said:
Be careful with the balance though, I have experienced their ideas of balance on AoM, it was bad, very bad.
We still have a hopelessly overpowered civ that easily whacks all others and thats after they cut half of its bonusses down.
That’s still a progress, right?
As an experienced AoE player who has been a top 5 player for the last 8-9 years (yes, there was still a very vibrant community up to 5 years ago) I don’t disagree with some balancing, but please keep in mind the following:
- don’t get rid of random maps; it is charming that there are sometimes huge imbalances in which player has more SF than the other
- don’t nerf or change the gathering rate of berries, SF, hunt etc. These differences make the game very dynamic.
- keep army micro as it was! Chariot archer wars are entertaining when you can dodge enemy missile fire. If this aspect is modified too much, then AoE will become like another starcraft or red alert; just standard build orders and who has most APM
- maintain the basic feel and control of the game. AoE was unique in the sense that it allowed various different strategies, tactics and some very nifty micro-managing tricks which made the difference between elite players and reg XP or XP+
If the above mentioned is kept to, then I’m sure all the high level players which are still playing will come back and share their experience with all the new players. Don’t forget that in China alone, there are still tens of thousands of players playing AoE!
@ProTagger1 said:
As an experienced AoE player who has been a top 5 player for the last 8-9 years (yes, there was still a very vibrant community up to 5 years ago) I don’t disagree with some balancing, but please keep in mind the following:
- don’t get rid of random maps; it is charming that there are sometimes huge imbalances in which player has more SF than the other
- don’t nerf or change the gathering rate of berries, SF, hunt etc. These differences make the game very dynamic.
- keep army micro as it was! Chariot archer wars are entertaining when you can dodge enemy missile fire. If this aspect is modified too much, then AoE will become like another starcraft or red alert; just standard build orders and who has most APM
- maintain the basic feel and control of the game. AoE was unique in the sense that it allowed various different strategies, tactics and some very nifty micro-managing tricks which made the difference between elite players and reg XP or XP+
If the above mentioned is kept to, then I’m sure all the high level players which are still playing will come back and share their experience with all the new players. Don’t forget that in China alone, there are still tens of thousands of players playing AoE!
Just another Starcraft you say? I only hope that AOE can have 1/10 the population of Starcraft players
I’m not 100% sure if I want them to balance the gameplay regarding the micro-managing tricks. Like, it’s super easy to dodge arrows as there’s even a campaign mission that you have to beat an entire map with only 1 archer. This makes the game unique, in my opinion.
@ProTagger1 said:
As an experienced AoE player who has been a top 5 player for the last 8-9 years (yes, there was still a very vibrant community up to 5 years ago) I don’t disagree with some balancing, but please keep in mind the following:
- don’t get rid of random maps; it is charming that there are sometimes huge imbalances in which player has more SF than the other
- don’t nerf or change the gathering rate of berries, SF, hunt etc. These differences make the game very dynamic.
- keep army micro as it was! Chariot archer wars are entertaining when you can dodge enemy missile fire. If this aspect is modified too much, then AoE will become like another starcraft or red alert; just standard build orders and who has most APM
- maintain the basic feel and control of the game. AoE was unique in the sense that it allowed various different strategies, tactics and some very nifty micro-managing tricks which made the difference between elite players and reg XP or XP+
If the above mentioned is kept to, then I’m sure all the high level players which are still playing will come back and share their experience with all the new players. Don’t forget that in China alone, there are still tens of thousands of players playing AoE!
What’s so bad about becoming just another Starcraft. It’s still the most popular RTS game
@NonprofitChunk1 said:
What’s so bad about becoming just another Starcraft. It’s still the most popular RTS game
If I wanted to Play StarCraft I’d play StarCraft though.
StarCraft is almost the FPS of RTS, how fast can you click, you’ve got a predefined set of clicks you’ll do as fast as you can, fastest one to click wins the game.
@Stephen_81 said:
@NonprofitChunk1 said:
What’s so bad about becoming just another Starcraft. It’s still the most popular RTS game
If I wanted to Play StarCraft I’d play StarCraft though.
StarCraft is almost the FPS of RTS, how fast can you click, you’ve got a predefined set of clicks you’ll do as fast as you can, fastest one to click wins the game.
Still better than AOE1 where you have only 1 or 2 viable strategy and how fast can you click your Chariot Archers is the main part of it.
1 or 2 viable strategies? I don’t think so… Come play some games with elite players and we will show you all the dynamics of this game. The fact there are so many imbalances in resource distribution on the map ensures a great diversity of strategy and tactics, even if it is just assy war!
Would giving slingers an upgraded version (akin to the Elite Skirmisher in AoEII) be a good way to balance Chariot Archers? CAs would have a counter in head-to-head fights but would be able to use their mobility to avoid many head-to-head exchanges.
This could also make slingers more prominent, which would be nice from a historical accuracy standpoint.
@Player084368818 said:
Would giving slingers an upgraded version (akin to the Elite Skirmisher in AoEII) be a good way to balance Chariot Archers? CAs would have a counter in head-to-head fights but would be able to use their mobility to avoid many head-to-head exchanges.
This could also make slingers more prominent, which would be nice from a historical accuracy standpoint.
The way i would want to see a good counter to CAs is providing the stable with some sort of arrow protection, so that way they can still be a mobile unit that can compete with CAs. However, mass archers like compy can still ruin a cav run with their +5 attack.
@ProTagger1 said:
1 or 2 viable strategies? I don’t think so… Come play some games with elite players and we will show you all the dynamics of this game. The fact there are so many imbalances in resource distribution on the map ensures a great diversity of strategy and tactics, even if it is just assy war!
You are day dreaming to think you are a pro player. The best player of this game are from China and my country and they far outclass the Westerners.
And even true pro-westerners know that this game all resolve arount Chariot Archer microing.
Pretty much sure “must” balances are:
Strong Civs: Hittites, while siege romans are a nice counter, Hittites excell at almost every scenario. Egypt: Schyte chariots and chariot archers are already strong, Egypt chariots are stronger and cheaper. I remember masses, real masses of schytes running around like crazy dodging siege weapons wrecking havoc since they only cost wood and some food in deathmatch, and extensive microing of archers on RM.
Underpowered: Yamato, I tried hit and run with their “strong” cavalry archers, never enough to actually win. Maybe I was bad at that micro.
Those are the most critical cases I remember after 20 years, has to mean something that I do remember those after a decade, lol.