I don’t like how players are free to place buildings far away from their TC. This looks wrong (how can a building be so far away?) and opens the game up to strategies that look cheap.
Consider that in Age of Empires 3 they implemented a ring that could be built in. This shows that it was definitely a problem. The freedom to build anywhere makes me less interested in playing the game, because I don’t think a war game should be like that.
Its unfortunate that you dont like how the game was played for 25+ years.
AoE3 is a terrible, one-dimensional game BECAUSE it imposes such limits. You’ll never see ridiculous strategies like Castle drops, treb wars, and tower rushes like you do in AoE2. Its lack of depth and flexibility gives it far less replayability, and it just isn’t as fun.
In other words, AoE2 is the GOAT, and if you don’t like it, don’t play it.
I think I’ve noticed AoE3 fans really latch onto the “looks” of the game, where the visuals are super important. What “looks” good… like:
In the case of this thread, it “looks” wrong (bad, unrealistic) to build things far away from your TC as it opens the game up to strategies that “look cheap”.
I noticed this in AoE4 threads before AoE4 launched, for various requested AoE4 features. As time goes on, it just seems to solidify my thought. Although, I’ve always known it’s a thing for AoE3 fans, considering the significant importance of ragdoll physics for cannon blasts, and for being able to zoom in to see (exaggerating) the eye color of units, and things like that
There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, just a different mindset than me where I like AoE2 and wouldn’t want gameplay and the options I have as a player impacted by ‘looks’… or by the devs deciding for me that “it would look lame if the I built 50 towers next to each other in a random pattern, with 20 castles, and 10 TCs” and, so, they implement build limits. Or they decide, “It would look lame to build outside my sphere of influence,” and, so, restrict my ability to do so.
This thread reminds me why I like AoE2 far more than AoE3
To be clear, I don’t care if players make 20 castles. Why it looks wrong is that a player shouldn’t have the resources to make a tower on the other side of the map. I get that global resources are for simplifying the game, but this is more like a clear abuse case of that rule.
People in europe went to india to setup trade posts amd towns in real life and you are saying it dosent look right in game?
It’s inconsistent with the games own rules, not reality. We see the workers have a 10-17 stone limit. I agree with global resources in that there’s less boring tasks to do, but building in the opponent’s city is a clear oversight to me.
How would this cool game have occurred if there were artificial restrictions placed on players…
Sometimes (ok, usually or always) a game should just be a game with emergent behavior possible. AoE3 constantly throws dev-created restrictions at you. So many and so frequent I refuse to play it. Let AoE2 be AoE2, and AoE3 can be AoE3
I tthink it looks dumb that sheep are used as scouts, and the AoE3 explorer never dies and gives you a permanent periscope of the enemy, but oh well
Ah yes, “building a castle near enemy territory is unrealistic”, that old chestnut.
Here’s a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, in which some Normans are building a castle at Hastings. This happened before the Battle of Hastings, so they’re building it not just near but in enemy territory, in a location not connected by land to their territory. They did something similar in Pevensey and Dover as well.
So this is essentially contemporary evidence of a medieval castle drop that actually happened…
But sure, building a castle or tower near your enemy is unrealistic because it “looks wrong”! /s
Did they get the stone from nearby, or back from their country?
It’s perfectly realistic for a single villager to travel across the map, from one kingdom into another, to single-handedly construct a huge tower with a hammer using all the stone they could stuff into their pockets. I see nothing wrong with this
Look at the number of castles in France or Germany. If that isn’t spamming castles, I don’t know how to call it.
And a similar thing is done in a Longshanks scenario in which you have to protect the construction of 3 castles in hostile Wales. The very strategy he used to conquer the land.
Its unrealistic to have population limited or have units that dont need to eat anything for decades, towers firing without population cost and siege weapons without operators
'Tis a silly game
The freedom to build anywhere is one of the reasons why AoE2 offers more strategic choices than AoE3.
It offers me less, because I have to respect the tower rushing meta or I lose.
All those things are easily accepted as you play. Tower rushing looks like an exploit of the rules. No-one playing single-player makes buildings in the enemies base, and if they do, they know they are being a bit lame.
???
Tower Rushing is far from dominant
I easily accept tower rushes, I have a harder time believimg the way the town center works
I disagree. Putting castles in disputed territory plays great for map control
It doesn’t matter. I’m just going to stick to custom games, because I see proxy buildings as cheesing the rules. The pros do it because they are playing for money and it is technically allowed. Don’t care about them.
Theres plenty of stuff I dont like about the game, like the limitations of water gameplay. That dpesnt mean I ask for water to be removed
You can dislike the towers being able to built everywhere, but AoE2 is very abstract and simple. Tower rushing isnt cheesing the system, it is a comsequence of it