They did it… AoE 3 came out with only maps and campaigns in America, with The Warchiefs more of the same… that’s why until 2006 it seemed more like American Conquest than Age of Empires…
Yes, but people expected to play an Age of Empires set in the European wars of the Early Modern Era (which they can now do with KotM), not an Age of Colonies… that’s why I think KotM should have been released as content for the base game or as the first expansion in 2006 and then TAD in 2007 bringing the Asian civs…
I actually think TWC should be in the base game because it looks so much like that. It is the only expansion that did not expand the scope of the game (if we don’t count single civ dlcs).
An ideal start should be:
6 of the vanilla European civs
2 of the TWC civs
2 of the TAD civs
Maps covering all three regions so TAD and KoTM maps should be included.
Then two expansions to add the remaining 2 vanilla, 1 TWC, 1 TAD civs, and Inca. They don’t have to be region-focused because The Conqueror was not (that “tradition” is actually started by TAD).
Then American revolutions (US, Mexico and Brazil)
Then TAR
Then Italians+Poles+Swedes (Danes and Maltese could be of lower priority)
Yes, they should have left out Germans and Russians and put Chinese and Japanese in their place… then the native civs should probably leave out Aztecs and only have Iroquois and Sioux in the base game…
Of course, that’s why I say… if they included the Iroquois and the Sioux in the base game, then in TWC in 2006 they could have included the Aztecs and Incas and then started with the regional DLCs: The Americans Generals (USA, Mexico, Brazil) in 2021, TAR in 2022 and KotM in 2023…
However, AOM is much more popular, it is focused on 3/4 civilizations and is not a generic Age of Empires.
Also the greatest exponent of generic age of empires in AOE2 and I doubt they will ever dethrone it.
AOE3 never took off because it was robbed of the chance to shine on its own and thanks to stupid decisions by Microsoft and the original developers it was relegated to a shadow of what it once could have been.
False. While it is true that the original Age of Empires 3 only had maps of America, it did not have any American civilization, the Warchiefs expansion was a lazy response and under no circumstances justifies saying that the original game focused only on America. At most we can say that it focused on European colonialism on the continent, which is not the same thing.
I never expected such a thing and I honestly don’t think it’s true, one of the first and most popular mods was War of Triple Alliance which ended up mutating into War of Liberty.
Because it has been released a week ago. Do you think that is a fair comparison?
I’d say the reason “it is more popular” (assuming it is the case) is because it has chicken. I can make 1 million such arguments.
Reminder that AOM has 4 vastly different and distinct civilization groups each with 3 sub-civilizations each as different as civilizations in other games. So it is 12 civilizations. What if it has 12 Greek states?
You can shine by having better mechanics, better graphics, extensive advertising and MORE contents. Intentionally choosing FEWER contents and an extremely narrow scope (and not a very popular one) is not a way to shine. It’s a drawback.
The single most stupid decision they did was dedicate two versions exclusively to the Americas. TWC should be merged with vanilla and TAD should be the first expansion.
Well, it’s a spinoff and by including fewer cultures it’s easier to balance and expand for the future…
Well let’s stop crying over spilled milk, what’s done is done…we just have to keep receiving DLCs drip by drip and pray that the game does better when it’s released on Xbox…
So was Napoleonic Era and that’s why the modders of that mod ended up as FE devs…
Of course, I say the same thing… they are not comparable games since one is a spinoff and the other a main game and there are different expectations for both games and yes, TWC should have come out in the base game (5 campaigns instead of 3 and TAD should have come out in 2006 and then KotM in 2007)…
I guess not, but I didn’t find the legacy numbers to check if it’s more or less popular than AOE3.
I don’t know that expression, what do you mean by has chicken?
No, stop, that’s incorrect, there are 4 well-defined civilizations and each one comes with 3/4 variants with slight changes, such as technologies, mythological units and some buildings.
It depends, sometimes it’s better to limit what you’re going to do, otherwise what happened to the game could happen, I tried to do more than I could handle.
I don’t agree that this is the only stupidity of the original developers, but I do agree that TWC should have been part of the game, although as I said for me they should have only added 4 European civilizations and the rest should be native civilizations.
AOM has chicken (literal chicken).
Other games don’t.
That’s why it is more popular.
By that sense AOE3 has 5 “civilizations” only so far. And AOE2/4 each has only one.
And AOM chose Greeks, Norse and Egyptians in the beginning, which already covered a wide range of culture and geographical regions, and added even more distant ones (Atlanteans is half Roman half American, then Chinese), instead of Greeks, Minoans, Trojans.
Making a decent amount of unique civs is not really a humongous task.
One trap that they probably do have fallen into since AOM though is that each region has to have a set of unique mechanics. It’s not essential. AOE4 Chinese Mongols Japanese all have their unique mechanics, but they don’t really need to have a unique core design different from the Europeans. It is the sole focus at the beginning of AOE3 and subsequent region-based expansions that forced this pattern so adding new civs becomes more and more difficult. If AOE3 started with Chinese and Americans they don’t really have to get a whole unique wonder/federal state system which also adds to the basic workloads of future civs from the same region.
Do you realize that your argument is validating the AOE4 variant civilizations?
In fact, in a strategy game it is desirable that all civilizations are mechanically similar to make it easy to learn how to use them and that the only factor that decides victory is the player’s skill.
I think it is a good idea but executed extremely poorly.
Which is only weakly related to the scope.
Like I said if you feel compulsory to make every region very different from each other then it can contradict with the goal. But you don’t have to, in fact if AOE3 started with a more diverse roster that covers a wider region, they don’t have to make very region very different from each other in the following expansions.
That’s your criteria for good game designs btw not mine.
Yes, but the players who wanted to play a game that represented a large part of the world already had Age of Empires 2 and I highly doubt they would have moved to AOE3, they hate almost all of the mechanics that AOE3 has, for example the shipping and card system.
Also, my point is that you can try to compete with AOE2 and lose just like AOE3 did or you can try to do something unique and maybe stand out on your own merit like I think AOM did.
PS: I’m not the only one who feels bad seeing how AOE3DE and its community are being left aside, again, right?
Adding more nations from diverse regions to AOE3 is not to attract AOE2 players (who may also happen to like nations from diverse regions but that is just one very small factor), but to attract those who are interested in those regions in the early modern period.
Yes, the game where every civ has the same roster of European units totally represents the whole world. Not to mention it is set during a time where there are basically no historical records for a lot of the world so you couldn’t make a proper civ for many areas even if you wanted to.
I agree that it’s not a good representation, but there’s no denying that they have civilizations from all over the world in good numbers. We can argue whether their representation is good or bad, but unfortunately we can’t ignore it.
I hate this kind of comments, it forces me to defend a game that I’m not interested in. AOE2, unfortunately for us and despite your completely valid criticisms, remains a popular, competitive game with a loyal community. Whether we like it or not, it’s the game that establishes what a true AOE is.
Anyway, I don’t think we should continue this conversation, in the end what matters is that we like AOE3, we can all disagree with the direction the game should ##### ### at the end of the day we all play the game because we like it and it’s fun.
Hola a todos, navegando por internet me encontré con este video:
Lo que me gustó es que es un video reacción sobre un video análisis, por lo que además de recopilación de información también dan criterios desde un panorama más amplio:
Al principio no sabía si colocarlo en el foro de AoE 2 o AoE 3, pero analizando bien me percaté que al menos en AoE 3 tenemos un Hilo General Latinoamericano en donde podemos expresarnos en español jaja. Además de que este video da una perspecitiva latinoamerica en la cual muchos nos sentiremos identificados (advertencia de golpes de nostalgia)
Si bien hace un análisis especial de AoE 2, también hace un análisis interesante de otros juegos de la franquicia como AoM y AoE 3.
En el minuto 29:19 se habla de AoE 3 que en resumen es un buen juego, pero hubieron algunas variables interesantes como que AoE 2 dejó los estándares demasiado altos, en lo personal también un factor fué que en esa época se empatizaba más la temática medieval que incluso géneros de fantasía medieval (como El señor de los anillos) la estaban rompiendo en ese entonces, además, de estar indirectamente relacionados a otros juegos de la época como Warcraft 3 y Diablo (de ambientación de Fantasía Medieval y de Terror). También otras complicaciones como que AoE 3 era más complicado que el AoE 2 (y que pedía más recursos de la PC) además de que era más complicado jugar en LAN debido a que tenías que “levear” a tu metrópoli, lo que mermaba la posibilidad de juegos casuales con otras personas en un cibercafé.
Otro detalle interesante es que en el video, en el minuto 33:10, también mencionan que las campañas dejaron mucho que desear, especialmente la campaña china que es principalmente ficticia; me quedo con la frase de: “el concepto de Chinos contra Aztecas o contra Incas (en una campaña) suena genial, pero, estos son relatos históricos verídicos (en AoE), si quieres agregar cosas fantasiosas para eso está AoM.”
Sí, AoE 3 en busca de innovar cometió muchos errores todos juntos y el contexto del declive de los RTS también le perjudicó…si hubieran sacado algo como KotM primero y 3 campañas históricas con Solimán, Federico el Grande y Napoleón y las cartas disponibles desde el principio, le hubiera ido mucho mejor…
