I like having a primitive dark age start in Age of Empires 2. The classic Age of Empires 2 start is, town center, three villagers, and a scout, with a few exceptions with civilization bonuses. Don’t change what isn’t broken.
The basic gist of the dark age is the Western Roman Empire is gone and you are nothing but a bunch of scattered tribes trying to rebuild civilisation from the ashes. The role of the dark age is to scout for resources/enemy and set up some very basic defences if necessary.
Some might consider this boring, however I would find it quite boring if I just start off with a barracks and a archery range, and I’m immediately able to attack within five minutes. If you find the that boring just play Empire Wars or some other setting. Or even non ranked.
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I like the low-resources 3 villagers start of aoe1 and aoe2 and the low-resources 5 to 6 villager pop start of aoe3 and warcraft 3 Because I like starting slow with few things to manage and incrementally increase the complexity over time.
Among these games, aoe2 feels to me like it has the most neef of a slow start because it has:
- very random resources dictating your strategy
- a black fog of war hiding your opponent and his situation
- a scout to explore the map
- no strict build order forcing you to age up at a specific time, because there is a economic inventive to stay longer in dark age
I get why many people like 9 villagers start more, and see no problem seeing it in tournaments or conditionally ranked (eg. map pool, checkbox majority to activate, or checkbox any to deactivate). It is fine/good, but not my favorite.
I dislike empires wars, especially the aoe3 version, but I am fine watching it occasionally in tournaments, if that is what the pros/casters/hosts/prizepool-providers want.
I do not get bored watching the slow start 3 villagers start, as I feel that the usual aoe casters are good at talking about stuff such ad the map generation, the civ matchup, the player matchup, or random chat.
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That’s totally fair. Personally I loved death match, it’s removed. I play empire wars now as my main game mode.
We all like different things, the importance is not raking them away (like what happened to death match)
Thought I would love to play, a faster dark age start with 9 villagers instead of 3
To be fair that’s not historically accurate. “Barbarians” such as the Goths Franks… took over the local administration and kept it running, with the Church expanding as a concurrent institution. Some places didn’t feel the difference (Italy barely felt it but go devastated under Justinian’s gothic wars) while in other places, dropping the roman command economy (it had turned to that since Diocletian) made the standards of living improve. Some say the Western Empire didn’t fall but was decentralised. Trade remained dynamic and was killed a bit later by the muslim conquests who extensively raided the Mediterranean, no longer serving as a trade highway. The darkest part of the Middle Ages in Europe was around AD 900 when under the triple threat of Saracens Magyars and Vikings, while trade to the east was mostly cut.
So it wasn’t anywhere near as severe as the Bronze Age Collapse that saw civilisation utterly collapse in most places, to the point even writing disappear (Mycennean Greeks forgot writing and were re-introduced to it by the Phoenicians).
But for gameplay reasons starting small makes sense, even though it’s weirder for the time period than in AOE1 (stone age) or AOE3 in colonial areas.
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Wait, death match has been removed??!
Nevermind the fact that outside of Europe most places didnt even have an equivalent dark age.
China had a chaotic period before the Tang dynasty established itself, in India the Gupta Empire fell in the 6th century, everybody got affected by the colder climate in the 6th century due to some big volcano erupting, so there are some parallels.
As for Persia and the Eastern Empire it would be by their own hand in their total war in the early 7th century that made them vulnerable due to weakening both so much.
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there used to be a queue for it. I think it still exists as a lobby setting, but the competitive scene has collapsed
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Did something prompt this, or just a random thought?
I trust the Dark Age isn’t going away or being made even easier to advance out of?
My guess is this post or something similar.
There has been quite some complains that Dark Age is boring / too repetitive and should be shortened for a while now.
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Ahh, the 7min mark. Got it, thanks! Your link jumps to much later than that in video
Meh, he’s talking about an overhaul mod idea, thankfully, as he says at begining of video. Sure, he can make it a mod or yet one more game mode choice I don’t play if he wants.
It’s Conquest mode 100% of time for me! No conplaints here. I actually want Dark Age longer and more fleshed out. And a few more suggestions, but def not Dark removal
Perhaps call that new mod or mode, “Fragfest Call of Duty mod/mode”. Description: “Removes the slow and boring Dark Age to get you straight into constamt, non-stop battle action where all the fun is!”
OP could have made or put a little more ccontext. Thanks for linking to that
It had it own ranked queue and elo rating. Was replaced with empire War
Oh, Empire Wars mode. There we go. Dark Age already eliminated with that, so those who hate slow econ building in Dark Age should rejoice in the existence of that. Per Google:
" Empire Wars in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is a game mode where players start in the Feudal Age with a pre-established economy, bypassing the initial Dark Age to accelerate gameplay. Players begin with a set number of villagers (typically 27-29), existing buildings like a blacksmith and barracks, and basic economic structures and resources. This format encourages quicker aggressive strategies and reduces the time spent on early-game economic development, making it a faster-paced alternative to the standard Random Map mode."
I wish more people played empire wars. It’s a ton of fun.