You’re making this up.
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I think at least ZXL and House of Lancaster should well be alternative upgrade options to their base civs. They are both in terms of the name and design part of the base civ, in any sense.
And “House of Lancaster” would look really strange when placed next to “English”. C’mon, even Warhammer TW renamed “Empire” to “Reiksland” to avoid the “Empire” being a small faction along with multiple members of the Empire.
For the rest, Ayyubids are legit. Knights Templar is fine as a faction too, but the name should be Crusader States or Outremers. It seems to already have Teutonic elements not just the Templar.
OOTD is complete nonsense (it had only tens of men at peak) and very likely a cheap filler (same landmarks, no new units, and the “unique” models are just scaled up with slightly different color palettes). Anything new it offers is no difference from some limited elite units from a new HRE landmark like the English ones. JoA should also be no more than a new landmark that gives a hero unit for French.
But they cannot sell base civs again. AOE3 added similar amounts of new options to play the base civs in their card and revolution updates for free. Maybe they have “learned the lesson”.
Shhhhhh
Whenever someone says something like the last part, there are people who jump out and scream “Oh you are an AOE3 fan and hates AOE4!”
No. I say this because many people here are so unfamiliar with what the other games in the series have offered, especially AOE3 (or pretend to be), and the officials are downplaying them too. Because of that, whenever you criticize some of their practices, people try to defend it like “this is the only way to do such things”.
No. There are other ways to do such things. Even in your own series. I’m simply pointing that out. They want to make you think “this is good enough” “this is the best you can get”. They want to gaslight you into buying (pun here) whatever the company does and says.
Maybe that’s why they are downplaying certain games.
It’s very dangerous nowadays suggesting companies make such moves to generate more revenue. They will tell you it’s out of passion, good will and well thought-out designs.
But if you directly criticize such moves, they will in turn tell you the companies need to generate more revenue.
The explanation of whether they did it out of good will or for $$ is monopolized by the corporate fanboys.
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Age of Empires has never done this. The one time they sold skins was for aoe3, and that game isn’t supported anymore.
Give them some credit where credit is due… they are not making a lackluster product with the intent of fleecing their customer base.
Talking about the Age of Empires team being revenue focused is so off base I have nothing to say. It simply isn’t happening.
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Why are these things not compatible with one another?
You do understand that developers only get resource to work on something after said resource has been greenlit? The decision to “make money” happens well before the developers even start work.
And even if the management position is to “generate revenue”, that doesn’t mean that the developers can’t also bring goodwill and well thought-out designs to the table.
But then again, considering you rely on the scapegoat of “corporate fanboys”, I’m not sure how much room for nuance there is here.
Scapegoat? Ask your colleague:
You even agreed with that.
Ask yourselves why you guys keep manipulating revenue and goodwill at your convenience and never acting like they are compatible.
The problem is that if this were the case, some civs would be weaker than others for balance reasons, especially those that don’t currently have variants.
Because variant civs start from minute 0 with a different combination of resources, extra units, or bonuses than their parent civs, an alternative upgrade is no longer an option, at least for now.
Now, the problem is that they’ve already sold the product as DLC. Unless in the future (10 or 15 years) we have as many civs as AoE2, and the devs would have earned so much that to attract players, they’d have to make the variants of each civ free (like in AoE2), only then it would be possible to implement it.
- In fact, by then, people might have gotten so used to playing the variants as something distinct that the idea of being like the revolutions of AoE3 just won’t stick.
I think it’s a good name. I think most people in England should know what the House of Lancaster is, unless they’re no longer taught history in school, and if it’s about identity, that’s exactly what it achieves.
Of course, Warhammer will always have an opportunity for cooler names because it takes place in an epic fantasy universe. Here, we have to stick to the story.
Of course, if you come up with a cooler name, share it. It could be like what happened with Jade Empire and Sultan Army, and they give it a different name.
The civ is fun to play because it’s very simple and its lore is also (Nobles in super-armor), but yes, it has the problem that since it’s the same as the HRE but with improved versions of its units, it leaves its base civ in a bad light.
At least to differentiate them better, the HRE should have more unique units and different technologies, ones that don’t copy OotD, or at least different landmarks or functions with them. Let’s hope that if they release Black Reiters and Cistercian Monasteries, as leaked information has announced, it’s something specific to the HRE and not to OoTD.
In fact, I have a theory that at some point they considered adding Landsknecht Pikemen and Landsknecht Arquebusiers to the HRE, but they didn’t because they were afraid that, having created the Order of the Dragon and the concept of variants that assumed they should be 80% similar, they wouldn’t be so similar anymore.
- BUT, the reality is that NO ONE wants them to be so similar, and it seems they listened to the feedback when making the Templars and the Landcaster House, so let’s hope they do something in the future to differentiate the first four variants from their parent civs.
I also think that if they don’t give more units to the HRE, it’s because it’s already very broken with its limited setting, even though it deserves more. Well, if it’s an opportunity to give her more, I wouldn’t mind if they reduced the economic boon from 40% to 30% or something like that.
I think France should have at least 1 or 2 unique units other than Joan, at least for variety, and they still have a chance with the Scottish Guard, French Archers, or Hundred Swiss. Now, the problem is that France is already top-tier in the game, so it’s hard to add more unique units without nerfing them elsewhere.
And it took 13 years (2008 Asian Dinasties → 2021 DE). Because the way the revolutions were originally (With Ottomans evolving into Peruvians, Oh No!), it was an eye-sore, and in fact, it was one of the reasons I stayed away from AoE3. Now that they’ve updated them to be more historically accurate, I’m happy and even play AoE3 in multiplayer.
Of course, AoE IV has the opportunity to learn from its mistakes or flaws and improve between seasons, and well, I see that it does and I trust them.
Not 13 years. 10 of those 13 years saw no active development.
And the point is they are almost added for FREE.
Having more options does not necessarily mean stronger.
Abbasids already has effectively fewer options than the other civs and it’s by no means weak.
Even when that is the case, they could save some designs for real new civs.
It’s not a good faction name. It’s part of another existing civ and does not fit into the main roster.
My point with Warhammer is the reverse: even with a fantasy setting and “fancy names”, they still tried to make them more consistent.
Yeah, i know it, pero solo quería aclarar las fechas de diferencia entre Asian Dynasties y los cambios fuertes del DE, que pasaron por el 2021. Pero sí, el juego fue abandonado de desarrollo por 10 años.
Eso sí, también AoE IV recientemente ha tenido también problemas donde al parecer “no pudieron hacer nada” y estuvieron tiempos en blanco:
1).- Los despidos de hace un año causados por Sega para ahorrase costos.
2).- Cambio de inversor de Relic.
3).- Cambios de logística, al ver como recibió la gente las variantes, los defectos de las mismas y como debería operarse el concepto a futuro (eso lleva tiempo, supongo, meses).
Si todo eso afecto el desarrollo, diría que recién han podido trabajar en nuevos DLC recién desde Julio 2023.
Quizás en unos años se revele por allí que ideas originalmente tenían mientras hacian cada temporada y cuanto cambió en base al Feedback.
Es que están rotos. De hecho en Juego de Equipos, están rotísimos con su combo de Camellos Arqueros.
Hasta ahora creo que hay muchos problemas para balancear el juego de equipos, algunas civs son TopS y muy rotas en 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4, pero TierC en 1vs1, o al revés.
Esperemos que sí.
I understand, and I say again, if you come up with a better name, you could propose it.
The problem is that the civ hasn’t revealed much yet, aside from three possible unique units different from its base civ.
Depending on how much of the 100th War period this house wants to represent, or if it’s just the Wars of the Roses, then I’ll also be critical of whether it’s a good name.
Colleague?
I agree that the developers care about the product and the care that goes into its design. If you want to read other things into that, be my guest, but I have an established and oft-stated rule of not engaging with moving goalposts.
That said, my PMs are always open. Threads always get weirdly personal for some reason.
Now who is acting like they are exclusive.
Just because
it means you CANNOT say the game is revenue-focused?
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I never said you couldn’t. Don’t expect or demand agreement, though.
Hey yo all
Please check this out
Honest Talk About This DLC & Variants…
He has some point in there but he is closing his eyes to the truth yes latest released variants was cheap work.Some of them isnt a civ.I understand devs maybe get low fund or resource to work with then make less civs and cheaper dlc with good quality.By the way doing a campaign is hard but making variant civ is so easy because everything is there ready for you.You dont need to do new voice lines or new models.
I liked the upcoming dlc dont get me wrong but we cant close our eyes to reality.I hope things will get better.
Im sure they have splitted the DLC in 2
We have to wait until the larger one around fall
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Couldn’t say better than you!
This DLC needs to be integrated into the free seasonal update.
Value wise this DLC looks worse than the AOEII’s free update and I agree with the most folks who say this here. People who do not believe this, can go and look at the AOEII’s free update. And it is much more transparent than the AOE4’s DLC.
I know many koi try to brain washing us that it’s a whole new civ but I only see a lot of reuse assets. What on earth they just cannot do some new buildings or even new wonders to fit? To be honest, I bought last DLC for Byzantine and Japan, they are really amazing, not for variants. They could have put better effort on visual and make it a real new civ it speaks itself, rather than explaining.
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Exactly!
I also bought the 1st DLC for the 2 actually real civilizations. If it was possible, I would have removed Joan the Arc from that DLC. It could have been my main reason not to buy that DLC. But later, I told my friend to no buy the Sultan’s Ascend DLC bcse of Joan and Zhu xi and he didnt buy since he was also no interested in Byz and Japanese civs.
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Well, that’s true in the sense that the Knights Templar weren’t a standalone historical civilization but rather a multinational organization with members from various countries and empires. That’s exactly why classifying them as a variant makes sense—it reflects their historical reality rather than forcing them into an artificial “civilization” label.
That said, in terms of gameplay, the Templars share almost nothing with the French apart from similar architecture. Their economy, military, and mechanics are completely different, making them feel like a brand-new civ in practice. The only reason they’re labeled a variant is for historical accuracy, not because they’re just a slight modification of an existing faction.
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Exacly!
100% accurate!
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