How should Civilizations be designed by AoE4?

TouchierFiend53 · May 1, 2020, 6:42am

1: In practise native villages are not key points, map control always is. Thats what i ment because mercenaries are random you can make it less so.

2: AoE III cards are pretty much balanced for little examples. The “strong” cards you mentioned can be send in Age 4, by that time it is to be expected to have created atleast a basic army. The 20 unit you mentioned is really garbage, you can deal with them with like 5 hussars, you need to know the counters leading to your point:

3: AoE II has no counter chart either at least versions before DE not, and this is a valid comparison because AoE III has never had such updated versions like HD or forgotten empires etc.

The information is btw pretty clear in game because every unit has icons which they counter.

The very basic counters is very easy to remember and understand.

Mounted range is generaly speaking good vs cav and arty. Skirmisher type, so more range damage less melee is good versus infantry and mounted range. Heavy infantry like musketeer is generally good vs cav and if range a buffy unit. etc these are not hard to remember just like the counters arent hard to remember for AoE II

TouchierFiend53 · May 1, 2020, 6:51am

You are a little to focused in you arguments about their previous games, that is not the point of this thread, the point is to say which additions you want, microsoft still has a part of the games control and could influence the dev team, they also could have learned from their mistakes and make it better this time, but we dont know that seeing we only got a small time trailer.

AoE II players mostly didnt like the cards, because of the progression, if they implement it in a good way, balanced and withouth progression there is no reason for it not to implement, and now dont begin with, but they did such stuff with this and that game. AoE II isnt that different from III as you think it is.

About your mythology point, the home city cards is very well history backed, the theme of AoE III was colonization by europeans and trade and the nations involved with it. The home city just like the name says is the motherland where goods are shiped to the new world and with the expansion also asia to support the colonies development and with the expansion the civs trying to repell the europeans in a strive to keep existing.

In a medieval game you could make it about the capital city or something. The game indead is very historical influence but like the original dev team said, history shouldnt influence the gameplay itself too much.

Huge5000RTSFan · May 1, 2020, 7:07am

TouchierFiend53:

You are a little to focused in you arguments about their previous games, that is not the point of this thread, the point is to say which additions you want, microsoft still has a part of the games control and could influence the dev team, they also could have learned from their mistakes and make it better this time, but we dont know that seeing we only got a small time trailer.

AoE II players mostly didnt like the cards, because of the progression, if they implement it in a good way, balanced and withouth progression there is no reason for it not to implement, and now dont begin with, but they did such stuff with this and that game. AoE II isnt that different from III as you think it is.

About your mythology point, the home city cards is very well history backed, the theme of AoE III was colonization by europeans and trade and the nations involved with it. The home city just like the name says is the motherland where goods are shiped to the new world and with the expansion also asia to support the colonies development and with the expansion the civs trying to repell the europeans in a strive to keep existing.

In a medieval game you could make it about the capital city or something. The game indead is very historical influence but like the original dev team said, history shouldnt influence the gameplay itself too much.

I am just pragmatical how their skill as developers could influence the game. Considering how they did implement in their games version of “city cards/doctrines” and different factions, it might be for the best not to have it in AoE4.

CastSheet777881:

Like touchierfiend said, there’s no particular reason that you have to have card progression. If they used it as a kind of “skill gating” and the progression was there to stop you from picking trickier cards until you’d used easier to use ones… that would have made a lot more sense than what they did. But there’s no need to have a progression at all. I’d have been much happier with it if they had just unlocked all cards at the start and gotten rid of some of the lower level filler cards. And they could easily have done that. These days there’s a mod you can use to easily get experience to unlock cards so at least you don’t have to go through that grind now.

The ESOC patch makes it much more obvious what native units/mercs are available at the start of the match, by putting that on the game loading screen while you’re waiting for the game to start. Pretty easy fix. Having you be required to take points on the map to hire the units is a very good thing IMO. It rewards map control and presence, which ups the pace in the early game. Personally I really like AoE3’s increased early activity levels, and the trade posts are a big help in convincing players to not just sit in their bases running scared.

If your opponent is spamming the 20x macehualtins shipment, he’s in age 4. It takes a lot of time and resources to get into age 4, unless you don’t pressure them at all. If he’s just rushing age 4 then you can easily build a big army, and send your own unit cards. You really need to use mostly the resource crate and unit cards, plus some upgrade cards in supremacy. Other cards are more useful for treaty games. It’s a well designed system as long as you understand it, but it may be that the card system is a bit too open ended for players with less experience to make good choices.

And for the record the counter system is available in the game, if you examine individual units and read unit tooltips. It probably takes a few games to recognize all the units on sight, but the info is there on each unit’s unit card what kind of damage it does and the bonuses to what kinds of units.

I do think that a new game needs to be more than just a re-skin. For a game in a series like AoE, you should try to keep what’s good and then build onto it. AoE 3 cards were an interesting idea, a bit poorly implemented but adds some strategic planning to the game, though I know a lot of people didn’t like it. They don’t need cards in age 4, but making a clone of age 2 with just nicer graphics would be boring. At minimum, better pathfinding, perhaps some quality of life command improvements (a-la Zero-K, which btw is an amazing Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander-esque game on steam) would be a must, I could imagine things like letting units stand on walls or siege ladders being things you could add to age 4 without making people too miffed.

But is new Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, FIFA 20 a bad game just because its clone with nicer graphics? Why must by RTS each sequel be a back-flip, that is barely related to source material?

I think the right approach would be like by Starcraft2,
from Total Annihilation to Supreme Commander and Total War.
Where you are improving the game, by not presenting something very different.

TouchierFiend53 · May 1, 2020, 7:17am

I am going to ask you a question, do you think that people are going to buy AoE IV, when it is almost the exact same as AoE II? Specially sinse we just got AoE II DE? Do you think AoE I and III fans would be happy to buy it? Do you think new players to the franchise are going to buy it?

Huge5000RTSFan · May 1, 2020, 7:19am

But what if they turn it into a very bad game?
We won’t than even have the existing fan base on board.

Huge5000RTSFan · May 1, 2020, 7:52am

The big issue I see, what they could turn AoE4 Into.

Each of their games was so far very repetitive, to destroy some kind of central structure on small maps with handful predictable key locations.

A very lame game flow, as they tried to present some very raw ideas and neglected base build.

Worst of all how they handled factions, presenting by 1 of factions some kind of very over-buffed units, with no means to deal with it. Resulting in very monotonous get exactly same unit in same order and move it to exactly same location. And not approaching it later on at all.

Each original unbalanced and unpolished idea like: Epic Units, Super Summon Powers, Strong Unit Abilities, Mobile Bases, Completely different Factions base Build, did more contribute to make game feel uninteresting and boring, as it did rather enforce repetitive gameplay.

The game is going to be majorly judged for its functionality, not for its originality.

CastSheet777881 · May 1, 2020, 5:26pm

I would argue that AoE2, Mythology, and 3, are all fairly different but still following a progression. In age 2 you have a base set of identical units and techs which are shared by everyone, and 1-2 unique units and techs. In mythology, you get a new resource, different ways of acquiring it, two new unit types with new counters, god powers (which are remarkably like aoe3 cards, if often more over the top), and a version of aoe3’s politician system with god choices. And each civilization has very different hero mechanics, costs, ranges of archer units, etc Otherwise it plays fairly similarly to age 2 in a lot of ways, but there’s very large faction differences.

Age 3 games between serious players are frequently over in 15 minutes or less. It has a very fast ramp-up to the fighting stage (you can hit age 2 in under 4 minutes) and losing buildings is a lot more consequential. Defensive buildings are very weak, and really are just places to shelter villagers. You can’t garrison military units anymore, so building an army when you’re under attack can be a challenge. Friendly fire artillery and projectile dodging are gone. Treasures are scattered over the map to fight for and claim, with certain treasures being worth a lot more. Units in proximity to enemy units slow their movement speed, making cavalry really important to catch and kill running enemy armies. Obviously the card and governor system. No trade caravans, but expensive, slow-gathering infinite resource buildings. Natives, mercenaries, trade posts, limited numbers of certain units, powerful card-only units, etc.

There’s already big changes in between the different Age games. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were something similar to a card system in Age 4. Say, a Political Reforms system, where you can make certain choices at various points in the game that increase your bonuses to x, while losing the ability to do y or lessening y’s effectiveness. For a semi-believable example, let’s say that you’re playing as the English, and you have a unique Longbowman unit. Maybe one political reform increases your farming speed at a cost of either making longbowmen more expensive, removing them entirely from being trained, or making them cost more population, or limiting the number buildable. That could easily be in the game, make sense, and be balanceable, while providing valid strategic long-term thinking questions.

You still don’t have to have a card system. You just can. Regardless, a game that offers nothing new to its predecessors just feels like a cash grab. If Age 4 is just re-skinned age 2, there is no compelling reason to buy the new game when Age 2 DE is so new. I wouldn’t necessarily say that a new call of duty or assassin’s creed are bad games, but they’re pretty pointless games, unless you are really just in it to enjoy the story. That’s slightly different, but if you’re using it as a storytelling game, why make a whole new game of Age 4 vs just releasing new single player campaigns for age 2 that cost maybe $2-$5 to buy for those that want it?

There needs to be new/different mechanics to explore/master for the game to have any meaning. It could just be a combination of what worked best in the previous age games. It could be new ideas like manning walls, relocatable bases, being able to make land unusable for farming or spreading diseases, who knows. They should be bold and creative and try to bring new ideas into the frankly stagnant RTS genre, but be willing to say “okay, this isn’t working, let’s dial that back and try something else”.

iesth · May 1, 2020, 6:15pm

i love the god select system in aom and we saw a similar thing in aoe3
but card system?it is not good.

different factions,if they can make that balanced and without lack important techs it is good.(i meant i don’t want a mongols without walls or a french without pikemans)relic did coh2 and dow2 with different factions and they were successful.

Huge5000RTSFan · May 2, 2020, 5:39am

I think the only way for it to work, is to separate card system from Multiplayer, it does rather fit into single player and co-op.

CastSheet777881:

I would argue that AoE2, Mythology, and 3, are all fairly different but still following a progression. In age 2 you have a base set of identical units and techs which are shared by everyone, and 1-2 unique units and techs. In mythology, you get a new resource, different ways of acquiring it, two new unit types with new counters, god powers (which are remarkably like aoe3 cards, if often more over the top), and a version of aoe3’s politician system with god choices. And each civilization has very different hero mechanics, costs, ranges of archer units, etc Otherwise it plays fairly similarly to age 2 in a lot of ways, but there’s very large faction differences.

Age 3 games between serious players are frequently over in 15 minutes or less. It has a very fast ramp-up to the fighting stage (you can hit age 2 in under 4 minutes) and losing buildings is a lot more consequential. Defensive buildings are very weak, and really are just places to shelter villagers. You can’t garrison military units anymore, so building an army when you’re under attack can be a challenge. Friendly fire artillery and projectile dodging are gone. Treasures are scattered over the map to fight for and claim, with certain treasures being worth a lot more. Units in proximity to enemy units slow their movement speed, making cavalry really important to catch and kill running enemy armies. Obviously the card and governor system. No trade caravans, but expensive, slow-gathering infinite resource buildings. Natives, mercenaries, trade posts, limited numbers of certain units, powerful card-only units, etc.

There’s already big changes in between the different Age games. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were something similar to a card system in Age 4. Say, a Political Reforms system, where you can make certain choices at various points in the game that increase your bonuses to x, while losing the ability to do y or lessening y’s effectiveness. For a semi-believable example, let’s say that you’re playing as the English, and you have a unique Longbowman unit. Maybe one political reform increases your farming speed at a cost of either making longbowmen more expensive, removing them entirely from being trained, or making them cost more population, or limiting the number buildable. That could easily be in the game, make sense, and be balanceable, while providing valid strategic long-term thinking questions.

You still don’t have to have a card system. You just can. Regardless, a game that offers nothing new to its predecessors just feels like a cash grab. If Age 4 is just re-skinned age 2, there is no compelling reason to buy the new game when Age 2 DE is so new. I wouldn’t necessarily say that a new call of duty or assassin’s creed are bad games, but they’re pretty pointless games, unless you are really just in it to enjoy the story. That’s slightly different, but if you’re using it as a storytelling game, why make a whole new game of Age 4 vs just releasing new single player campaigns for age 2 that cost maybe $2-$5 to buy for those that want it?

There needs to be new/different mechanics to explore/master for the game to have any meaning. It could just be a combination of what worked best in the previous age games. It could be new ideas like manning walls, relocatable bases, being able to make land unusable for farming or spreading diseases, who knows. They should be bold and creative and try to bring new ideas into the frankly stagnant RTS genre, but be willing to say “okay, this isn’t working, let’s dial that back and try something else”.

There is simply a limit how a game can be creative and be still playable.
Stagnant are rather other genres. We are no longer in the experimenting phase.
By now people have simply an expectation how a game has to function.

Each RTS title tries to bring new ideas, new different mechanics, is bold and creative.
RTS is rather a genre that does mutate a lot and has cancer due to it,
because it doesn’t meet peoples expectations of a functional game.

TouchierFiend53 · May 2, 2020, 6:47am

If they would turn it into almost a copy of AoE II, sorry to say the franchise fans probably wont buy it.

TouchierFiend53 · May 2, 2020, 6:54am

I am now just going to say,please stop with the limit about creativity stuff, we are not asking for space marines or a faction were you have to micromanage for 30 minutes before you can do anything. We or atleadt i am asking for elements from AoE II and III and perhaps I combined and that plus some interesting new things. AoE III is very much playable, now with DE comming more than 3000-4000 players at the same time. And dont forget that the AoE II fanbase got multiple rereleases already and dlc long afther its release which would also boost playerbase. There would be no ground breaking or just generaly breaking things with a good working card system, there is just not. Same for mercenaries, villages and ■■■■ even treasures. They work withouth breaking gameplay. People enjoyed these mechanics, most AoE II players didnt like them, because they felt the game itself was to different from AoE II in other ways.

TouchierFiend53 · May 2, 2020, 6:55am

I did not really test it but heard it from others, you can actually doge projectiles in AoE III but is limited to arrows, so mostly longbow and cav archer, i mean go try and doge bullets or watch mythbusters about it and you would understand why you cant doge bullets in AoE III.

Huge5000RTSFan · May 2, 2020, 7:02am

If it turns into a bad game, people won’t buy it either.

I simply would like them to fix first their fundamental design problems.
Just compare official trailer from Supreme Commander to the games they did make.

While Supreme Commander has also big strong units, there are several significant differences
-first of all, SupCom strong units do appear as you have already the means to deal with them,
in their games they do present strong units at a point where people can’t prepare jet.

While in Supreme Commander you have counter units for anything, in UaW and DOW3 you don’t have.
And that’s a huge issue, there are no means to stop huge walker from stomping your base or heroes not to activate their abilities to instant wipe armies.

Secondly how the normal units actually do play, in SupCom units are across factions quite similar, but at least you have the means to counter. The different factions of UaW and DOW3, do make counter system look completely broken, as counter units are simply not included.

I know balance is not an easy thing, but a unit designed to kill another units, is something very fundamental. Age of Empires II has a very clear smooth countering system. That’s a thing I do miss for years in the genre, a proper counter system.

We have it in Dawn of War 2, as regular shooting units can kill heroes and regular anti tank units can kill strong units. Its quite odd to me why such huge issue of DoW3 was greatly overlooked, despite long development time and a beta.

TouchierFiend53:

I am now just going to say,please stop with the limit about creativity stuff, we are not asking for space marines or a faction were you have to micromanage for 30 minutes before you can do anything. We or atleadt i am asking for elements from AoE II and III and perhaps I combined and that plus some interesting new things. AoE III is very much playable, now with DE comming more than 3000-4000 players at the same time. And dont forget that the AoE II fanbase got multiple rereleases already and dlc long afther its release which would also boost playerbase. There would be no ground breaking or just generaly breaking things with a good working card system, there is just not. Same for mercenaries, villages and hell even treasures. They work withouth breaking gameplay. People enjoyed these mechanics, most AoE II players didnt like them, because they felt the game itself was to different from AoE II in other ways.

I don’t see how messing up with AoE2 counter system can turn any good,
include there unit abilities, people are going to hate instant army wipes.
include there card power system, people are not going to like it if it does mess up the balance.
different factions can only lead to broken counters.

I just doubt the team we have, can appropriately handle it.
I don’t want AoE4 to turn into another Dawn of War 3.

TouchierFiend53 · May 2, 2020, 7:12am

You forget microsoft is still part of AoE and if Relic fucks up the game and says well we did what we can and dont release any patches they are going to be in trouble or even when they release a broken game.

You just wrote about something that has nothing to do with my point? AoE III has no instant army wipes not atleast what AoE II doesnt have. Explorer has a abbility to shoot one unit and it has a cooldown, even then he is limited to units he can shoot, he cant shoot for example artillery and econemy units.

Because you do not have faith in a team doesnt mean you can just say, you know what make a copy of AoE II just to be safe. The game will sell poorly. These types of mindsets are also reasons why games fail, same why fallout 76 failed together with the bugs bethesda just didnt want to move on from the current engine which was heavily outdated. Now i have made a comparisson you made also a lot. Now we stop comparing to other games that have almost nothing to do with AoE alright?

Huge5000RTSFan · May 2, 2020, 9:11am

TouchierFiend53:

You forget microsoft is still part of AoE and if Relic fucks up the game and says well we did what we can and dont release any patches they are going to be in trouble or even when they release a broken game.

You just wrote about something that has nothing to do with my point? AoE III has no instant army wipes not atleast what AoE II doesnt have. Explorer has a abbility to shoot one unit and it has a cooldown, even then he is limited to units he can shoot, he cant shoot for example artillery and econemy units.

Because you do not have faith in a team doesnt mean you can just say, you know what make a copy of AoE II just to be safe. The game will sell poorly. These types of mindsets are also reasons why games fail, same why fallout 76 failed together with the bugs bethesda just didnt want to move on from the current engine which was heavily outdated. Now i have made a comparisson you made also a lot. Now we stop comparing to other games that have almost nothing to do with AoE alright?

I just would like to see an RTS that is not another predictable complete failure.

I understand, we have for years a request for an good innovative RTS.
After all for over 20 decades several teams try to do it. Shouldn’t it be out by now ?
If they have to change everything for it, ok they should do it.
If they have to change make a clone, ok they should do it.

Maybe it’s simply not possible to be innovative and good in same time?

I don’t want them to make a clone or creative game, I want them to make a game that is good.

M4YB32448 · May 2, 2020, 10:11am

The game market changed. I cant think of an AAA RTS games in years, because the genre doesnt have that much of a playerbased compared to other genres and devs have to think about profit aswell.

Were the main entries of Age of Empires ever a “complete failure”? I don´t understand why you try to compare different rts-game series from relic with age of empires. Age is pretty well defined and unique and has clear foundations that you can build upon.

If the devs are afraid to try new things then they better don´t even make this game. Unique mechanics for civs is a must. It should be rewarding to invest time into a civ and master it. In age2 its pretty easy to pick up any civ if you have some basic game knowledge, therefore the overall game knowlegde is the main factor that measures players skill.

AuroraStardaze · May 2, 2020, 11:15am

For all the reasons you find the game to be ’lame’, I enjoyed.
A foe’s settlement to beat, diverse armies, local variations, access to small maps, economies & raids.

I enjoyed there existing no truly OP units. All units can be countered, although some harder than others…

AuroraStardaze · May 2, 2020, 11:26am

I am going to resign my further interest in AoE IV, the graphics plagues its use, too heaviliy for me. I’ll be looking forward to AoE III DE & AoE V, if there will ever be one.

iesth · May 2, 2020, 2:39pm

i understand you
i am not excited for game,but also i am not pessimist.i think best thing we can make is wait for real gameplay video.

CastSheet777881 · May 2, 2020, 4:59pm

I’m pretty sure no one is trying to get rid of the counter system? Age 1 had it,Age 2 had it, AoM had it, Age 3 had it (almost identical to age 2, if you abstract the unit types), and it’s really hard to imagine age 4 without the counter system that’s been a part of AoE from the beginning. Literally no one wants DoW 3 out of this. Build on the foundations of the previous age games, incorporate parts that worked from the various games, bring in historically sensible and strategically interesting faction differences, this is pretty easy and basic stuff here. And I would think relic is pretty sensitive to their own failures with DoW 3 and would want to produce a better game that makes them look like competent developers again…

I really don’t know how you can think that the RTS genre isn’t stagnant when the only rts game with more than 10k players right now is Age of Empires 2, a game that was first released 2 decades ago.