It's Over Anakin, i have the High Ground

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Ahhhh the High ground… An extremely important estrategical asset in all of the battles throughout history.

This is reflected in AoE since AoK with bonus and penalties depending if you are or not on the High Ground.

But what about AoE III? The manuals, foruns and in game files that i checked do not speak about this high ground. Is fighting on the plains equal to fight on the hill?

Why is fighting on the water on the Swamp (Bayou) equal to fighting on the plains? Is there no penalty?

Does anyone have any data on this? Is there a bonus/penalty for fighting in the high ground or against it?

If there isnt, could the devs please explain the rationale for not having (and why is it oposite to what happens in AoK and AoM)?

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High ground means nothing in this game and it should. Unless I am wrong.

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Not only it should, but it wouldnt BE that much of a change since most maps do not have much elevation.

And they could use the values from Aoe II DE where they studied that issue (the whole tartar bónus is high ground based)

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there is code for high ground advantage already in the game, you can enable it yourself by modifying the text file game.cfg in the startup folder.

look for a setting called BallisticHeightBonusPercent. here you can also modify other game settings such as market rates, certain particle and ui effects, default map, editor and zoom settings, and what appears to be an unlimited gold mine feature that greatly slowed mining speed after mining a certain amount.

as for why it was disabled, you can read it directly from the devs here, Ask Sandy archive | Remember Ensemble Studios. search for elevation bonus. basically they thought that elevation bonuses favored ranged units over melee units too hard, and was detrimental to balance on certain maps.

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Maybe you discovered the secret of AGE4

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next aoe3 DE patch : you underestimate my power !!!

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The issue is not using in my games at home but in games in general.

The game should not BE throwing units one at each other. If i have a fort in a Hill it should gain Los range and attack bonuses.
Melee units always had those disadvantages. Crossbowman can kite units. You are not supposed to make head on charges with heavy inf. UP a Hill and not expect them to die

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Totally no to that suggestion.

Man, it’s a 15 years old game, there is no way that kind of mechanics change now. You can suggest it to AOE4 but AOE3 is build the way it is.

And even, what you suggest would just mean rework everymap, which is a bad idea.

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This is a new game, with new civs and with each civs you introduce new mechanics (example the carolean charge) and even in Aoe II you still are introducing new mechanics (like auto scout).
This is not a 15year old game for at least half of the player base and you are (not considering the fact that many players from the player base also come from AOE II which has this mechanic).

No justification has been made to why not implement it.

Why would you have to rework every map? In Aoe II the elevations and hills are generated randomly, and you just have to work with it. Its just something you have to take into account. Just get and hold the high ground (unless you are obi wan).

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First of all, there was several thousands of players on legacy everyday, now the game turn around 5000-6000 everynight, i’d say way more than half players are old RE players.

But this won’t be implemented so I don’t even know why i argue to be honest.

It is not a new game at all, adding civ isn’t the same as changing the core gameplay. I’m not against the idea in another game, I’m against changing years of learning micro for everyone in the game because someone posted on a forum. That’s all.

  • I see it terrible for the fun, AOE3 is a fast RTS with a lot of actions from the very start in contrary to AOE2, defending on a “high ground” is anti-gameplay here.
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