And? That doesn’t counter the fact that people are attracted to variety in how the game plays, not variety of toys.
That goes for so many other RTS like historical Total War. Historical TW is basically the same: Infantry, Ranged, and Cavalry. Different factions have slightly sifferent stats like AoE4. But they’ve been played non-stop. The game is all about how different factions utilize them, not how unique they are.
A popular strategy game has never really been about how many unique units you have at your disposal.
You compared AoE2 Longbows to English Arbalesters but AoE4 Longbows to generic Archers.
An AoE2 Elite Longbowman has 5 more range then a fully upgraded Arbalester. That’s a massive difference.
Also they fulfil the role of the Gold Archer unit compared to AoE4 where the Archer is a trash unit.
Yes good players will likely use the British Arbalester over the Longbow but that doesn’t make the Longbow less cool.
You can look at the data in Steamdb when the civs released, and the price drop with the sale.
You will see that civs didn’t do a lot and kept people hooked on the game.
While the price drop significantly increased the player base and still is the main reason why there are more players than before.
It is just more affordable.
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If we are to take videogame out as a factor, games like chess will exist as long as humanity exists.
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Chess ain’t popular, only old people play it.
Especially in my country.
People who do not have any job or are pensioners.
It is not interesting for the newer generation.
It is an old game.
And that is why it is not popular
People do know about chess, but they rarely play it.
That is another point, of why it gets not interesting really fast and gets abandoned.
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That goes for so many other RTS like historical Total War. Historical TW is basically the same: Infantry, Ranged, and Cavalry. Different factions have slightly sifferent stats like AoE4. But they’ve been played non-stop. The game is all about how different factions utilize them, not how unique they are.
A popular strategy game has never really been about how many unique units you have at your disposal.
[/quote]
I deny your point!
Historical TW games have a lot more unique units!
AOE4 got the same archers and spearmen, horsemen etc with the same stats.
And when it comes to combat, most of the time the same units with different skins meet against each other.
And that is where it dies. It is too predictable if you compare it to TW.
It has all factors starting from morale, exhaustion, flanking, generals are alive, food, terrain, climate etc way too many factors. Really well done and units perform differently in many similar situations due to lots of factors and make the game really good and satisfying as the results are incredibly different.
Well, it is if you do calculations that way.
However, not all people do that kind of calculation when they consider purchasing the game.
1st of all, AOE4 was released as Beta and is now still on Alpha.
Dont know when it will go GOLD.
in that case why aoe 4 has to use an high demanding graphic card engine that not everyone can get it according to ur pic about demographic. If it wqasnt an high demanding game it would use that engine in the first place.
The most significant increase was in August when both the base price was lowered (iirc it was super cheap in Taiwan) and the free weekend took place. While people appreciated the new civs, they indeed didn’t do much, I guess mainly due to the civ choice as people rather exptected Byzantines instead of Malians as a perfect couple to the Ottomans. The civs came in late October, which is why you have +387 in November.
Not to forget - AoE 4 requires a CPU with AVX which excludes players with old hardware by default.
you understimate what a low end computer and the low bar are on those player profiles can be . let say gt 800? even that one seem to be high and as other said most cares to have it on its everyday computer/laptop which dont require high resources.
Ye, my PC has a 3770k, so also one of the first gen to use Sandy Bridge with AVX. However, there are still players with CPUs older than that and there also newer CPU that don’t support AVX.
If in my third world country, I can run the game on a 2011 machine, second generation, and with a graphics card that is no longer manufactured, well, what more can you ask for from Relic!
According to Steam Hardware Survey 97.25% of computers support AVX.
The new Macs with M1/M2 chips don’t support AVX so they likely make up a large part of that 2.75% of users that don’t have AVX.
Also people with older hardware are less likely to buy a new full price game, right?
