I'm worried about the future of the Age of Empires franchise

[MatM1996]

@Moonshadow7475

There’s no need for an aoe5. Aoe2, aoe3 and aom cover all historic eras nicely.

We still need to cover the modern/contemporary era (1914-2035)…

@M00Z1LLA

A game covering ~1820 to late 1920s would be a great option to feature all the post-colonial nations and cover WW1 and its immediate aftermath. That works better than putting Mexico and the Aztecs in the same game.

Nah, I’d go for 1870 to the late 1970s… the 1820s is the industrial age of AoE 3 and the 1870s is the imperial age…

@M00Z1LLA

And a game covering ~330s BC to ~70s AD would be great to showcase the classical period featured in the Chronicles spinoff that is between AoE and AoE2.

That would basically be Chronicles…

@Tomfire123

I’m really interested in World War I with an Age of Empires style. It would be more diverse and fun.

Yes, it would be like the campaigns in the World Wars of EE1 and EE2…

@Moonshadow7475

From a history geek perspective yes maybe, but from a business perspective, aoe3 can easily cover the pre ww1 era, and it has long moved past the colonial theme. It is much cheaper nowadays to just add content to existing games than make a new game which covers a hyper specific historical period and targets a specific niche. Costs don’t scale with the number of players, there’s a baseline you need to pay to even get a game off the ground. AOE3/AOM engine is in a pretty good shape, so all that we’re missing is tons of content, and I certainly hope they shoehorn more stuff into aoe3. Aoe3 hyper asymmetric design is much better suited for shoehorning than aoe2.

Yes, I think that adding Belle Epoque content (through revolutions and technologies) to AoE 3 would be enough…

@Moonshadow7475

They are better off reviving aoe1 than start from scratch with an idea like AOE5

They already tried it with AoE 4, since it was originally going to be AoE 4 but then it morphed into an MMO spinoff…

@HoopThrower

I think the real problem here is expecting Age of Empires to be an AAA blockbuster rather than a mid-budget game built for a niche as it should be.

Of course, I think AoE 5 is going to be an AA instead of an AAA…

@Darkness01101

There’s a big need for AoE5 and a new AoM in some fans’ minds, due to large gap in what was delivered vs. what could have been since AoE2’s launch. My opinion only, of course. Player stats might back that up a bit

Yes, or at least an AoM 2…

@Darkness01101

Did you play Rise of Nations before? If not, you might enjoy

Or Empire Earth saga…

@Soaring_Crow

There is a scarcity of WW1-era RTS games so it would have a niche at least. Not sure how AoE would handle trench warfare and the like.

Yes, there are a couple like Battle of Empires and then a couple of games like The Entente Battlefields, World War I and Agression: Europe under Fire from the 2000s (actually this one is set the first half of XX century from 1910 to 1950)…the last big game from Petroglyph Games (formerly Westwood Studios) was a WWI RTS from 2023, The Great War: Western Front…If you enjoy Age of Empires-style games, the most highly recommended one today is The Great War: Western Front. As a history buff and lic. student, I should warn you that many Great War RTS games suffer from a design flaw: the actual war was very static. The best games tend to focus on trench management, artillery, and attrition, rather than fast-paced maneuvers like Age of Empires or StarCraft.

@HoopThrower

There’s simply no other games set in this time period and genre. It stands on a league of its own.

You have American Conquest, the Cossacks saga (the third one is actually a remake of the first) (although neither of them delves into Asia like AoE 3 does), Rise of Nations (in both its New World and Napoleon campaigns), Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2: Total War… As an AoE III fan, I would recommend:

American Conquest if you want to conquer America.
Empire: Total War if you’re interested in running a global colonial empire.
Cossacks 3 if you’re looking for massive musket battles.

Rise of Nations if you want a combination of classic RTS and empire building.

In fact, American Conquest is probably the closest thing to an alternative Age of Empires III focused exclusively on the colonization of America (in a historically accurate way, not just a family fighting against a fictional order).

[TheLiberator236]

Bueno hay Cossacks y American Conquest, ambos hechos por la misma compañia

[TheLiberator236]

AoE III was meant to be a great game
The devs have made obnoxious decisions with it, since OG 2005 release

[HoopThrower]

¿Alguna vez los jugaste?

No son precisamente la experiencia más emocionante. Es como si… existe.

Ojala te entretenga tirar millones de unidades contra un edificio a ver si se rompe

[TheLiberator236]

Obvio que si por eso los menciono

Tampoco es que sea tan desesperante, pero si

[NotOnline123134]

ETW and NTW will enter a rennaisance now, that modders have unlocked the campaign map.

But yeah, currently flares are massivly delayed, sometimes getting attacked alert doesn’t sound at all, balance needs a look at and activision as an entity is not helping.

[MatM1996]

Sure, they just unlocked the campaign maps shortly before Medieval 3 launches…hopefully ETW and NTW will reach their peak before Empire 2 and Napoleon 2 are released later this decade…

[OperaticShip743]

The fact that a 2021 game isn’t better than a 2010 game gives you the answer.

[coffeeco01]

that assumes that technology for these things are linear and its clearly not at this point.

to answer what is modern we need a arguable more recent example that would need to be what aoe4 and aom should be.

if not and sc2 is the considered to be the pinacle of pathfinding then its not something to be solved anymore, its about what you are designing and what are the trade-offs.

Like with AOE4, part of what made the behaviour the way it is was that they didnt want it to be a micro intensive game, which imposes hard limitations on what it can be.

One of the hardest limitations that AOE have as a whole are Collisions which is a design choice at this point not a technical issue

What that choice causes is a thing to argue about but on some level its not a thing that can be “solved” or improved upon without losing something else.