It’s clear that Return Of Rome DLC was a good DLC but executed poorly only because of M$ wanting to cater Vietnamese audience. However at this current stage, let’s think of several ways to “fix” the historical mistake M$ did.
Firstly we should make it completely standalone purchasable game independent of buying the base game. Meaning, M$ should make an offer where if you only buy the DLC, you will be locked out of base AOE2DE but will be able to play AOE1 civs. In this way Vietnamese audience whom M$ will just buy this game instead of everything. Also just make AOE1DE, a free update to AOE2DE engine.
OR just forget this audience altogether since it already failed. Introduce complete balance overhaul. Which is inspired from AOE2/AOE4 and diversify gameplay. Meaning Asian and many Mesopotamian civs if possible getting completely new units, techs, etc. Almost following R@W approach of balance design.
Add proper matchmaking system RtR. Currently there is like only few dead matchmaking system and its pretty bad.
I like this one. Since AoE1 purists are not playing this game, might as well make it a lot like AoE2. Make the game more defensive, with Fortresses, sturdier buildings, and Town Centers that cost stone but shoot arrows after the Watch Tower upgrade is researched (the Fortress also requires the Sentry Tower upgrade). Also introduce a Heavy Slinger, Armored Camel Rider, and improved counter units to make the game fairer. Nerf the Hoplite line significantly and give Chariot units a gold cost. Introduce a unique unit for each civilization available at the Fortress, and perhaps a unique tech as well. Also, give each civ a unique Wonder.
For fun, let’s give the Choson a bonus for free tower upgrades like the AoE2 Koreans, and add new civs like the Mauryans, Guptas, Israelites, and others.
This. Also make offers so that 1DE who brought the game can come and play Return To Rome as a free update. I really dont know what goes to M$ minds but Vietnamese audience plays the ancient version because PCs there are still using decades old Pentium processors and buying a game on steam is more of a hurdle when you can just pirate. Even you need to get steam dollars through black market. Legal mean is already hard and I would blame on steam for not coming up with more alternatives.for non-western countries.
Right now you have more options to make the game more asymmetric with existing engine since civ counts are low and no purists are there. Have huge options to make it like AOE4 even.
Either that or would be saddening to ruin a golden goose like AOE1 to die prematurely.
Give each civilization unique voice commands, not the original gibberish. Romans should speak classical Latin, Sumerians should speak Akkadian, Persian should speak Early Persian.
Add new civilizations, at least Mauryans, with barbarians civilizations like Gauls, Scythians, and Germans.
Add a campaign for the “Medieval” Romans. Aegidius is a great mod, just very, very frustrating levels.
Quite enough irrelevant & needless suggestions. There’s a concept called imagination with which you can create independent routes; you don’t have to copy-paste everything from aoe2.
For example,
you should calculate whether you can make it more defensive with its existing buildings, before suggesting to copy-paste the aoe2 Castle as “fortress”, or to have TCs that cost stone but shoot arrows (which is already in the game). So, you can have Villager garrisoned Towers that shoot more arrows, or abolish the Tool age techs that enable Walls & Towers, or TCs can’t be garrisoned anymore (because… they are plazas apparently) but Towers support 10 population, and/or adjust starting Stone stockpile, and/or Towers need the Tool age upgrade to shoot own arrows. This way, underplayed Towers would look more like your “fortress” or citadels.
since aoe1de up to ror, the existing Slinger has been massively adjusted and buffed, to be less oppressive offensively and more effective at countering archers. You don’t need to have an ahistorical “heavy” Slinger to make that unit work, it already works, even in Iron age; heavy Slinger didn’t exist either, they were light, support units (you could have asked for Elite Slinger, just to make the unit look better in the later ages, still not very important tho).
Chariot is somewhat equivalent to the aoe2 Scout-line, it’s a lightly armored mobile unit, why should it have gold cost? Chariot Archer can be dealt as a ranged Scout-line, unique to this game.
Hoplite-line should be able to destroy light infantry and every melee unit, as it does (because light infantry counters Archers and FE doesn’t mention it in the tech tree tooltip, which is misleading to the players - it even mentions that light infantry is weak to Cavalry which is not accurate… how is this possible when light infantry wins Cavalry cost efficiently). Hoplite is already weak to all archers because it needs many upgrades to have the same movement speed with the foot archers at least, and enough pierce armor to not die to them easily; tech tree tooltip doesn’t mention any counters to Hoplite as well.
UUs can be added to an existing building, like Academy… or even to that improved Tower-line?
better yet go AOM style balance where land units are well made. AOM infantries doesn’t feel like trash compared to AOE2. A;sp AOE1 doesn’t have enough civs + have tons of room to change it completely since no purists are playing.
If you google “Assyrian slingers” you will find plenty of pictures slingers wearing helmets and armors.
Slingers currently are already weak in bronze age since they lack range and are totally outmatched in iron age because of non existent range they have compare to iron age archers.
Slinger lacks range (4+2), but has enormous attack (2+3+3 versus all archers), enormous pierce armor (3+3), occupies half population space per unit, and costs much cheaper than any archer.
Yes, but if enemy micros chariot archers or horse archers they cant catch and kill them. If slingers would get upgrade and new tech which also improves their range they could effectively counter even mounted archers and then game would actually have decent counter unit vs mounted archers, beside siege, mass cavalry or your own chariot/horse archers (many civs lack final option).
Without a doubt this topic had already been touched upon before and the fact that the slingers, axeman and camels need an improvement in the Iron Age is indisputable, in fact there is an old mod for the original AOE 1 that updates them with new technologies in barracks and stable, I am in favor of these units having improvements in the Iron Age to make them more profitable in later ages, I also think that all civilizations should have a unique unit in the academy and it would also be good to add a technology to that the urban centers shoot arrows, this with the purpose of making the game a little more defensive and not as aggressive as it is at the moment, the idea of this post is to improve the ROR DLC not to make it worse
First thing that needs to happen is fixing the AI difficulty. Single player against the AI is brutal and not fun at all. Maybe I’m wrong but I thought the devs acknowledged this after the initial post-release backlash, and flagged it as something that would be fixed. But so far, it doesn’t appear to have happened. At least, I still get pantsed every game.
But I do love RoR - I’m still getting more enjoyment from it than the main game at this point, and I’d love to see continued support for it. I’d buy future RoR DLCs if they added the missing civs we’re all asking for.
Yes, I agree. It’s about 200% more intense than the AoE2 AIs are. It is extremely aggressive and always builds up a large army that cannot be stopped by anything in the late game, meaning you have to take it out early.
@coconutcrab1234@Apocalypso4826 by saying that the AI is difficult to you, I guess you refer to specific difficulty levels below the highest, that should be refined; because, to me, the extreme level seems already too easy and helpless, when I faithfully follow a build order.
And I’m nowhere near to be called pro, or even high elo player.
Correct. Moderate is extremely difficult, and I almost always lose by a significant margin. Compare this to AoE2’s Moderate AI, where I can now win every time, and the Hard AI, where I can win about 50% of the time. Obviously the difficulty scaling is off somehow.
