Well, i’m sure people will love the Northern Expedition scenario, after all, its one of the most well known parts of the Romance. Also a nice map to play as Kongming.
was something that was requested a bunch of times, and is something that improves the game.
being able to tell when the attack is dealt is a very important visual cue, especially for pro micro.
they need to fix it for ranged units too. frame delay is way off for most units.
It isn’t just Song history though, Tang and Ming a repped as well.
1 Like
Pro mico was fine and if you asked the top 1% of players it would be like, no its fine to leave it, fix a million other things first, the animations are still not accurate btw they are just as bad as they where before and there is longer ms delays for the majority of attacks and the game lags more during mico then it did in the past meaning that the cosmetic change has lead to other problems. To sync attacks the game has adjusted attacks to round down instead of up. Meaning that during mico if you miss an attack you are 2x more likely to have an archer or siege unit do a false attack, meaning the animations start but then there is no fire because you tried to move the unit. Also I am in the top players on AOE and I am telling you that we did not want this. This is my pve account and not my pvp account so I dont want to share that but I am. This is really bad for archers while less for bombard and siege units. In pvp this “glitch” can win or loose you fights and was annoying before and had a 1/15 or so chance in happening, its now 1/6 which is much higher. Melee was 1/12 and is 1/10 so not much change.
So yeah as a pro player, old system better on mico. Period no debate.
I feel like there are two camps on this topic, people who love the game for what it is and what makes it great, and those who want the game to modernize and become something its not.
AOE 3 and AOE 4 both failed HORRIBLY compared to AOE 2 and AOE 2 DE.
The same people arguing that the changes are good are going to say that AOE 3 and AOE 4 are okay.
This game is loved because of what it is, not what it is turning into. They are morphing into slowly into what we hated about AOE 3 and AOE 4.
They are trying to do what they did there and adapt it here and some changes are nice, but the majority going back 2 years…no one cares. Meaning this update has shown players that the deves have lost touch and we are now waking up to the reality that the game and time of AOE 2 DE is officially dying and we are over the hill of the awesome years.
So we need to come to terms that in 2 years this game is done and we cannot do anything about it sadly. Due to modern gaming we cannot go back 2 years and save that version of the game and play it, instead we are stuck getting updates and the game not being fun for us.
The writing is on the wall and we all can see it now, we are just sad because we know its over. Anger sadness and love all coming to a head.
Was fun AOE 2 DE we loved you, sorry to see you go the way of all the other IPs.
GGs.
5 Likes
To me and many other ranked players its the best DLC by far in terms of value for money. 5 new civs with decent bonuses and so many new units and techs just for 16.5$. Myself and most others must have pre-ordered it already. Many others will be waiting for the mid summer sale or labor day sale.
Commmmooon. Charge mechanic, Dodge mechanic, Aura and now suddenly 1 Hero for 1000 resources is out of line? Its just 1 unit and you’re overestimating its impact.
I think the major issue for most people is the name of the 3 civs. Just push for renaming those civs instead of calling for a boycott.
V&V is a bad DLC which took custom campaigns, made minor modifications to it and charged 15$. This is an excellent DLC with a lot of great content except for the names assigned to 3 civ designs. So much effort into the design of several new units and civs.
The game was dead 14 years ago. Cysion and the other devs brought it back from the dead. At the moment we are competing for World’s edge’s money with aoe4, aom etc. After so much effort into developing this DLC, if the sales aren’t good, they’ll either give up or just make more effortless shit like V&V by translating other language custom campaigns or abandon Aoe2 for good like they did with Aoe3. That’d be terrible.
I guess this is all they need to do. Just change the names of those 3 civs.
After its dead, what’s the use in finger pointing. No servers, no game. You people will be enjoying your single player against AI. What will the multiplayer community do?
Exactly. I didn’t buy the last 2 DLCs but I didn’t create a thread trying to make everyone boycott against it.
1 Like
Civs cobbled together from several put together. Missing voice lines. Units that switch mode with no visible difference. 2 UUs minimum per civ. Wooden siege weapons that cost food. Random bonuses like buildings generating food.
This is not high effort.
Because those didn’t affect every player regardless if you bought it or not. Or ruined the designs of civs that you were looking forward to.
3 Likes
I won’t buy this dlc because it’s awful. Even if I’ve been waiting for years for jurchens and khitans (also tibetans, tanguts and, recently, bais or dali).
However, I complain and let my voice be heard because, unlike ror and chronicles, these 3K civs will be in ranked, the base game for all to see. With ror and chronicles, I could choose if wanted to encounter them or not.
Now they are forcing us to interact with this dlc, forcing us to encounter these 3K civs. Regardless if we buy the dlc or not, whether we care or not about this dumb 3K civs nobody asked for.
14 Likes
Not a single one of those civ is cobbled from others. There wasn’t any visible difference on any single unique unit’s elite upgrade until last 2 weeks, that’s a nice-to-have feature missing. 2 UU’s per civ is amazing when you have about 30 civs with just 1. And when you can have aging up generate food+gold or wood, berry generate wood, you can have buildings grant food. Its a very cool and useful bonus for multiplayer gameplay.
Thinking how a bonus can be given to that civ’s gameplay, how to justify certain units and techs through the tech tree. That’s high effort.
Just pause, pretend the names of the other 3 civs of this DLC are Tibet, Tangut and Song or whatever you were looking forward to. Have the remaining bonuses, units and techs as such. Now do you think it still ruins or affects anyone? If so how?
Don’t understand what’s the harm in it. You were also forced to encounter Romans, Dravidians, Armenians. Nobody asked for those either.
Khitans literally are a mess of them and Tanguts. Their castle and UU are Tangut. There is no way this was an accidental mix-up as you cannot find either of those elements by looking for Khitans.
Free update.
Depends on just how much you need to remember per civ and per DLC. This is a lot of new stuff for an already very complicated game. Normally I like a bit of this…but this is too much at once.
I never said they were good either. The berries making wood is dumb.
Because it’s not them. It’s not their units. The techs have nothing to do with them. Their bonuses have nothing to do with them. Their buildings have nothing to do with them. Their campaigns have nothing to do with them.
I didn’t want Tibetans or Tanguts because of name or branding. I wanted them to play with their units, bonuses, feel like I was playing them, and to play campaigns that followed their history.
When I bought AoE2 I bought it for Middle Ages cultures interacting with other Middle Ages cultures. This breaks that for the first time since the game launched in the 90s.
Literally wrong.
Armenians were one of the most requested civs for ages.
8 Likes
Except people wanted romans, dravidians (tamils), armenians and georgians. Like for years.
To the point of spamming reddit and this very forum.
Not me. I only wanted asian, african and american civs.
3 Likes
Not to mention that Wei were presumably mistaken based on the northern Wei, which hasn’t anything to do with the Wei.
And to simplify a good deal northern Wei = Xianbei = khitans. So we have two khitan civs while also not really having any.
How can this possibly be bungled so hard?
11 Likes
Something that I find annoying is that the civs are pretty much a butchered version of what they should be (khitanguts), and the 3K are a design mess. Those three are all over the place. It’s like they wanted to make something different but changed their opinions midway.
Not to mention that at least romans (kinda), dravidians, armenians and georgians fit the timeframe and core concept of the game. Unlike 3K which are a lot closer to aoe1 than aoe2. I wouldn’t mind if we get civs chosen arbitrarily, but they should at least be medieval and make sense for the game they are about to be implemented in.
6 Likes
Renaming still leads to false promotion… They explicitly mention Wei, Shu and Wu as playable civs instead of others.
Any meaningful solution will require breaking the promise in the promotion. Since the promise will eventually be abandoned when the developers are willing to make improvements, the best approach should still be to put the Three Kingdoms into a spin-off mode and add Tanguts, Tibetans, Bai and other non-Han civs later.
I would say that Xianbei and Khitans can be their own different civs, although the Khitans are able to represent Xianbeis if no Xianbei civ there.
The things look like they had developed an almost complete Xianbei and rudimentary Khitans and Tanguts, but due to unexpected requests, they transformed the former into Wei and merged the latter two.
After 25 years and from the same team that did the DLC.
To me its a civ that gets pastures, heavy CA in castle age and +2 attack on scouts from forging in feudal age. None of these are cobbled from existing civ bonuses. They’re structurally similar but still unique bonuses. You can give any title you want and I’ll accept that.
Its going to take a little bit more time compared to a few DLCs with vanilla civs but nothing overly complicated about it. By this time next year, most players would become used to these civs and their units.
Majority of the game mechanics could seem that way and its because it doesn’t depict reality or actual history. So the bonuses are about how its useful for the gameplay.
Lets say Wu was Tibetans and Fire archer were called some Tibetan named archer and the campaign story was some Tibetan history instead of Wu’s. And likewise for the other 2. Are you fully happy with the DLC then?
I can understand the campaign part but this rule was broken since Huns were released in 2000. You were already playing civ matchups that can’t chronologically fit.
By civ I refer to the set of RTS bonuses which is what matters in a ranked multiplayer game when you encounter them (the original comment being about forced to encounter them in a ranked game). Let me explain it this way instead - you didn’t ask for chakram throwers, Serjeants, Hussite wagons or Szlacha Privileges and irrespective of whether you bought those DLCs, you are forced to encounter it. Now how’s that any different from facing Tiger cavalry or Fire archer?
1 Like
That’s your personal take.
I believe, after reading most complains on reddit and here, they don’t like it because 3K are political groupings, out of the timeframe, a mishmash of boni, etc. In other words, they are not civs, they don’t belong to aoe2 game concept, design-wise they are a mess.
On another note, if we talk about what you are referring (based on your examples), 3K are still hot garbage as most of their mechanics are taken from aoe3. The difference is that in aoe3, the civs at least make sense and there is a reason why they got those mechanics as those represent things the civs had in real life. Unlike here with the 3K civs and their boni and mechanics that seem like pulled out from someone’s fever dreams. Not even the kind of mechanics (like what you described) they got make sense. Not a single one of their “unique” traits.
3 Likes
Personally i still think a rename is the solution that would make the most people happy, and affect negatively the least amount of people by a large margin. Lots of people just deeply dislike how at odds with the concept of a civilization the three chinese warlord factions are.
I’d tend to agree to that point of view. The civ design of the Wei faction is so Xianbei in nature it’d be just bizare if its accidental. And the Khitans have elements you’d never find out unless you specifically resarched for Tanguts.
7 Likes
The negative impact of this is far-reaching.
While the civs after renaming can still be displayed as Wei, Shu and Wu in the campaigns, this still goes against the promise of this Three Kingdoms themed DLC providing the Three Kingdoms themed campaigns with the Three Kingdoms themed civs. In the future, they will therefore be able to introduce civs in a DLC that are completely unrelated to the DLC theme and use those civs to create campaigns on that theme, as long as the tech trees are similar.
Those medieval things that are used as masks are also unfortunate. For example, the Bai, which are thought to be a good mask to rename Shu, clearly hadn’t used chariots and repeating crossbows. Their elite vanguard, Luojuzi, could become the new name for the White Feather Guard, but that would not fit the image, especially since they shouldn’t be so slow and shouldn’t be using the ji halberd as a weapon. Once Shu is officially renamed to Bai, it means we won’t have a more accurate, well-crafted Bai civ, because the “Bai” civ must maintain Shu’s tech trees in order to play as Shu in the campaigns.
If they’re willing to make official changes, please don’t just resort to such a negative compromise.
Move the Three Kingdoms content to its own mode, so campaign players can still enjoy the legendary story, and the devs can make even bolder modifications to the civs. Although people can only enjoy 2 new civs in multiplayer games for now, they can still look forward to other medieval non-Han civs with better designs.
If the devs want, they can make Wei more accurate in the future, such as renaming and reskinning
Xianbei Raider and Tiger Cavalry, and then try to introduce a more complete Xianbei civ.
3 Likes
Yeah all such solutions are pretty lame. Renaming a released civilisation into something else is not an actual solution to the harm that has already been done.
4 Likes
It’s actually a quite popular suggestion to rename those 3K civs. Instead of specific political entities, rebrand them into the regional culture where those kingdoms were.
e.g. Shu > ‘Bashu’ culture in Sichuan basin, where Shu was; Wu > ‘Wuyue’ culture in modern Jiangnan, where Wu was.
I think they’re already trapped when they:
- Decided to make 3K in the main game
- Made the announcement extremely close to the release date
- Opened pre-orders at the same time
I doubt that they have enough time to make any meaningful change, unless they want to delay the DLC, which is unlikely, giving evidence shows that this DLC is rushed for some reason.
They might also need to refund people, who pre-ordered exclusively for the 3K civ.
From the player’s perspective, sure, just refund and delay and rework the DLC, 100%. But renaming the civs into regional culture where those kingdoms were, is the best compromise for every party involved IMO.
(Personally I don’t agree with Shu > Bai, but Bashu. Bai is a too different culture and different place. But then again, we’re back into the question of “What OG Chinese are supposed to represent and why it coexist with those regional culture”. Sigh.)