I can still remember waiting for each addition of AOE and ripping open the box during what seemed like the longest ride from the store back home. I remember the hours and hours of building the perfect village, accumulating masses of troops and then wrecking havoc on the easy AI.
Now after many many years of gaming, doing the above in a new AOE is interesting, but I don’t know if I am excited at the thought of repeating it. I find myself interested in making something unique that I can share with others.
After that spiel, I have thought about something that would make me feel like that kid again;
A weekly league, competitive multiplayer experience.
- We would have a designated home area that we can build up week after week. Possibly AOE could control our ability to advance by allowing advancement through the ages via conquest, trade or meeting a weekly building/resource challenge.
- Our home would be offline for the week, allowing us to build and grow, on the weekend each of our homes are uploaded to servers and matched to say up to 25 other players. These 25 home maps would create a world. Which for that weekend we could trade with or conquer. Depending on you success your ranking could change, thereby next weekend you may be dealing with more or less advanced players.
- Possible option would be for when your home goes back offline any conquest damage done is reversed i.e. you get your buildings back, but keep any of the trade or conquest bonuses.
Ideally all other AOE gameplay we are used to would still remain. There should be NO pay to win micotrasactions. However I would understand if there were cosmetic micotrasactions i.e purchase of a unique looking building or unit, that has a free equal but less attractive counterpart.
Also no rubbish hours, days, months wait time for building, like these free games. I expect to pay for AOE outright, I wouldn’t mind weekly quests to advance but not huge wait times for buildings.
Hope someone at Relic runs with something like this idea.