I think aoe1 and aoe2 had different scales, and they wanted RoR to still feel like aoe1.
Still I think it’d be pretty easy to just loop through, rescale, and add to aoe2. If it’s not automatable then maybe it’s work for an intern.
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Sometimes I wish I was in a universe where they decided to rescale everything, add unique units/technology and new civilizations. It would have been cool to add Gaels, Hebrews and Huns.
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Yeah, I agree. To some extent it kind of works if you envision the RoR houses as antique/peasant houses and the AoE2 ones as newer buildings or villas for merchants and nobility, but even so, the AoE1 buildings would definitely look better if scaled up a bit.
RoR is growing on me for sure, but this is one of many things that I wish was implemented better. As well as RoR having been done 3-5 years ago at least if they wanted to keep the Multiplayer community alive.
It also bugs me that they didn’t port over all the graphics that were in the original AoE. Like I remember the black horse unit from old scenarios, but they just used the AoE2 horses. Same with terrains and some other objects.
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This was one of the discussions at that time. One argument against it, which I agree with, is that that would make the game AoE2 with AoE1 assets, no an AoE1 port
Well there is already an AoE1 port. RoR should’ve been a bigger improvement.
This is exactly how I imagine I would recreate Rome or something.
But that’s exactly what I want. Base AoE1 is absolutely awful.
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Just played Manzikert last night.
When you finish a campaign scenario you are given the option to “return to campaigns”. When you finish a historical battle scenario you’re given the option to “return to battles”.
Presumably then, somewhere in the middle of playing the scenario, the historical battles lose their campaign-ness, which is why when the scenario is finished, you return to “battles” and not “campaigns”.
Or maybe UI doesn’t dictate reality. Definitely one of the two.
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This doesn’t change the fact that Historic Battles as well as V&V is part of the campaign screen, thus a campaign, even if it doesn’t follow the 5+ missions scheme of the other campaigns.
To return to the Conquerors example - in AoC, the main menu showed this when clicking on Single Player:
Note how the Battles of the Conquerors campaign didn’t had its own menu point and how the description mentiones is as "other conquerors in a series of related games.
When clicking on the campaign button, you had this menu:
In AoK and AoC, Ensemble put the campaigns in numerical order, so they wanted the player to play the Battles campaign after finishing the other campaigns.
So you invoke UI as good evidence when it supports your argument, but when I find UI evidence counter to your argument it’s not good evidence anymore?
If Historical battles and V&V are campaigns because the UI says so, then by that same reasoning, they must stop when the UI says differently.
No, I don’t.
I simply state how they are handled in game and use an example from the Conquerors expansion to point out how they’ve been always treated even 22 years ago - as a campaign.
The button saying “battle” instead of “campaign” doesn’t change that, it’s just a nice touch added by the devs to be in-line with the Battles campaign.
Historic Battles having a shortcut in the original DE menu (like William Wallace) also doesn’t change this.
Even the corresponding Achievement from HD Edition calls it a campaign:
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So the 22 year old menu is evidence but the 22 year old button isn’t.
“22 years ago they had a button differentiating historical battles as not a campaign. The menu saying campaign instead of historical battle doesn’t change that.”
This is the entire point I’ve been making. Trying to determine what things are based on ui is meaningless. Doing that is no better than insisting panda and koala bears are actually bears.
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This button was named differently on CD and HD. It was simply said “OK”. As said, they did this as a nice touch.
Edit: for the sake of completion, this is the stats screen after Hastings. Button still says “OK”
They did the same with the scenarios. Only Historical Battles has no order to the scenarios, no start and no end, they’re all disconnected, there’s no narrative tying them all together. A very clear difference from literally any other campaign in the game.
Following that logic, it’s more reasonable to think that a campaign is a series of either 5 or 6 interconnected scenarios based on historical events, put together to construct a simple narrative, rathen than… whatever the Main Menu sometimes says is a campaign.
Yes because Battles of the Conquerors is a campaign with a set of narrative-wise unrelated scenarios that overall follow the same idea - depicting Historic Battles from famous Conquerors such as William of Normady. That’s basically how the campaigns in AoE 1 and 4 work as well, just with the exception that you have to finish a mission to unlock the next one.
The only kind of order is having the year these battles took place attached to the mission name.
So - a campaign can be both.
So the button was changed in DE. Wouldn’t that imply they changed historical battles to not be a campaign when leaving a scenario? If ui dictates what something is that’s what we must conclude.
OMG that’s literally the entire point. Those campaigns have a unifying narrative that is told sequentially, satisfying the “organized course of action” requirement, as explained in the dictionary definition.
And no, individual objectives wouldn’t satisfy the requirement. If they did you could have multiple campaigns within a scenario, and I don’t think anyone is advocating for a definition that allows that.
You’re arguing a false equivalency between unifying theme, and organized course of action.
If I created a mod that had unrelated scenarios, one depicting a LOTR battle, one depicting a sci fi battle (let’s go with terminator cause why not), one depicting a historical battle (let’s go with cannae, and one that via copious triggers, recreated the game of monopoly, would that be a campaign simply because they’re in a set? If they were accessible via the campaign menu, would they now be a campaign?
It’s not a campaign but not because there isn’t a unifying theme but rather no organized course of action.
If instead I had a mod that recreated various board games as scenarios, thus having a unifying theme, would that be a campaign? If they were accessible via the campaign menu, would that be a campaign?
No, again not a campaign cause no organized course of action.
Now if I had a series of scenarios that replicated board games (hypothetically even the same board game repeatedly), but they were unlocked in order, and by defeating the opponent in every scenario completed some unifying goal (lets go with being crowned the “game king”), then yes that’d be a campaign. The dumbest campaign ever to have been conceived perhaps, but a campaign nonetheless.
And for giggles, if in my mod I made my “game king” campaign accessible via the multiplayer menu, would that be a campaign or would it actually be multiplayer content?
The historical battles aren’t a campaign. They’re only navigable via the campaign menu because of multiplayer, SP random naps, and campaigns, they are the most similar to campaigns. In the same way that dogs are more similar to cats than fruits, or rocks. If I had menu items for cats, rocks, and fruits, and had to place a single dog somewhere, I’d add it under cats without thinking for one femtosecond dogs are now cats.
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What makes it a campaign, if they’re all unrelated? Does Art of War qualify as a campaign?
That’s not an order, really. People just order them that way for convenience, we could also order them alphabetically but we don’t. Scenarios in a campaign are numbered 1 to 6, otherwise it’s not a campaign.
No, it can’t. Again, there are 39 campaigns in the game, or 40 if we include Historical Battles. That means that out of 40 total, 97,5% follow the same mold, whereas only 2,5% exists as an outlier, meeting none of the characteristics of a campaign, but still found alongside other campaigns.
Now tell me, when the devs announce a “campaign-only DLC”, what are people most likely to expect? An actual campaign? Or something that represents barely 2,5% of singleplayer content? Think about it, and you’ll see why so many people were disappointed with the reveal…
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V&V is a failed experiment. They’ll probably return to the standard DLC format with some price adjustment as the 50% price increase for TMR was badly received (a price increase the Swiss store front had starting from the first DLC).
To fix V&V with staying true to the no-new civ formula, a patch including a Japanese, Viking and Chinese campaign with some price adjustment could probably fix the DLC, though for all those people which still have SP campaigns to play from the base game as well as DLC, there’s no value in what V&V offers.
V&V could have probably come with some new graphical assets for more value, as the lack of those makes the DLC pretty barebones.
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Yes. And while the Battles campaign doesn’t have an over-arcing narration, it still is a campaign as the scenarios follow the same base idea - dipicting Battles of the Conquerors and of the Forgotten.
Not my point, so not applicable.
Same here.
You should maybe quote my entire sentence as I literally give the answer:
And yes, Art of War is a campaign, it’s a tutorial campaign. Same with William Wallace.
Hence “kind of order”. It’s a loose one.
Yes, it can. One campaign deviating from the 5-6 mission pattern with a narration and whatnot does not make it not a campaign.
Players expecting something and the game that has always handled Historic Battles as a campaign are therefore two contradictory things - and that’s not the game’s fault.
I absolutely understand the disappointment and frustration from V&V from players who expected something else but as said - this doesn’t change that fact that both Historic Battles and V&V are campaigns.
When hovering over Historic Battles, the info box on the top right, says this:
It doesn’t say “The Conquerors & The Forgotten Scenarios”, it says Campaign. And it says so since DE’s release in 2019. Where were the complaints back then?
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I would not call it an “experiment” if near zero effort is put into it. Nor would I draw any conclusion from the results.
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