I know this is not a deal breaker… but have you seen AoE and AoM wonders? man those are beautiful masterpieces that are visually stunning. In AoE 4 I cant tell the difference between a keep and a wonder… even the church is more imposing… what do you all think?
and… -_-
I agree that they are harder to spot, since they are more realistic than all its predecessors.
On the other side I like that they are more realistic.
Another example is the AD wonder:
Good point. I’ve always felt the wonders are pretty epic looking and feeling in AoE2, for the most part… and felt there was room to make them even a little bit larger.
I don’t recall ever building a “wonder” in AoE4… unless it’s one of the buildings you’re required to build when going to the 4th age in a match. But if the one you circled in the screenshot is, indeed, a wonder, it’s definitely cool looking, but you’re right – it doesn’t have much to differentiate it from the keep/castle next to it.
I feel it should be at least 33% taller, and have at least 25% larger footprint there.
I wouldn’t mind even bigger and more imposing than that, but with the camera zoom level and map sizes, I can see why making too big isn’t ideal/realistic, unfortunately
For AoE2, that game has camera zoom level and map sizes to accommodate larger wonder sizes, no problem
yeah and yes that is a wonder and that was my favorite, the other ones from abassabi, hre and china is so common that even the market looks more imposing hehe
It’s not really a problem just with wonders- they are a part of general visual style.
And yes - after the first game in closed beta I had the same thoughts as during ther last one in stress test event - it looks nice, but nothing here is really impressive or memorable in a way that will stand the test of time or become memorable like art in AoE1, Age of Kings or also often III.
While high stylization might give advantage over realistic approach when it comes to aging, it still will leave us with the same ‘umm, ok’ level of detail and technological refinement…
I do agree that there needs to be some form of clear distinction done for both the wonders and landmarks. In a constructed, busy town, it gets tough telling what’s what if you have multiple castles, landmarks, and drop a wonder in between.
And it’s made worse by the decision to rely on multiple military production buildings due to cutting batch training mechanics as a base for every civ. It’s cleaner and less busy to look at when you have 2-3 stables, instead of 7. Not a fan. Feels clumsy and oldschool but in a bad way. It’s not a problem to tweak training times and cost of buildings to balance that change.
At one hand they want to super speed up feudal with fast sheep, more starting vills etc. on the other they go back to 90s when batch training wasn’t really a thing in RTS games and you had to brute force training large number of units. You end up with the entire screen (zoom!) covered in the same looking (no rotation :P) archery ranges, barracks etc.
What’s worse- it stands completely opposite to some design shown in promo materials, where settlements are protected by walls. It’s completely impossible due to map size, building scale and no batch training to secure your town with walls.
When you’re in imperial age you have a billion military production buildings all over the map, it’s a mess!
Instead of focusing on putting archers on walls, people search for free spot to erect another mil production building.
I don’t want Feudal faster
Awesome! I’m not a fan of getting squads of military units. 1 means 1; not 5 or 9. Making a block of 6 military buildings to mass-produce is fun for me
PS: 2005 wasn’t too far from the '90s, tbh. But, thankfully, they didn’t go back to 2005 with audio, playing cards, invincible explorers (to my knowledge so far), and build limits (e.g., 6 towers max or whatever) – again, to my knowledge
True. I don’t really care too much about rotating buildings, but the entire screen is pretty full due to extraneous visual clutter and spaces between buildings; and it’s a bit hard to distinguish what is what. I know it’s a design choice, but I just personally prefer the tighter AoE2 style
PS: Here was pre-production AoE4 concept art by Sasha Beliaev. The proportions and everything looked pretty awesome!
https://sashabeliaev.artstation.com/projects/58RLJz
This is very true
thats so true, game needs some more work in the visuals
correct, wonders are supposed to make you wonder, if you are not wondered, it ain’t a wonder.
Some wonders from AOE Online, they ooze with so much character
Dude, don’t confuse landmark with wonder.
I highliy doubt that this cncept art would have ever made it to the game, just from common sense and scaling points.
You can barely see the keep /castle, you then have walles in a realistic, but very un-age way, with towers in between, very stronghold style. But then look at these tiny trebs - far too small. Also the encampments in the background - this looks like a great ulrtra realistic stronghold game though 
In general, all the buildings in the game share the same colourscheme with the environment, making them not really stand out at all.
Pair that with the minor difference of building differences over the ages, and (for me personally at least) you don’t really have a feeling of an “ageing” culture.
But indeed, especially wonders just blend into the landscape and buildings around it, without standing out at all.
Hmm, I think you’re right. I didn’t notice it before, maybe because I’ve aged up in AoE games so many times over the years so I’m maybe a little numb to it, or I was worried about/paying attention to other things… but as I think back to my AoE4 Tech Stress experience, it really does feel like time was a smudge of paint blurring the lines across four ages rather than hard cuts, more momentous leaps, I felt and saw in buildings in past AoEs.
I’ll pay more attention to this in future tests or viewings, in case I’m wrong, but I really liked feeling as though you truly are in Dark Age, and then the other ages, with seemingly big steps happening between ages. Personally, I want to see and feel giant leaps between ages, but that’s pretty subjective and harder to pull off
Talk down Age3 all you want, but it’s still got merits.
Making 5 units at a time is cleaner than spamming 5 military buildings. Whether you like it is a different issue.
With the fast pace of Age4, sometimes in the late game, buildings producing one unit at a time gets very cumbersome.
AoE4 is a very fast game whether you like it or not.
I think there are (at least) two other factors contributing to the Wonder looking underwhelming.
First, the graphic style. AoE4’s graphics have a sort of vague quality to them – everything is hazy and a bit blurred. Consequently it’s hard to make anything stand out. In contrast, the other Age games have a very crisp/sharp graphical style, so making things stand out is comparatively easy.
Second, the architectural style of the other English buildings. From Feudal Age onwards, they mostly have dark slate roofs, which (in part thanks to the graphical style) are barely distinguishable from the lead roof of the Wonder and some other Landmarks. I don’t understand why they did this – slate is hard to transport and only found in a few regions of England and Wales, so wasn’t widely used during the AoE4 time period. It would make more sense to have thatched roofs for most standard buildings, with some tiled roofs in later ages, and lead roofs for the Wonder and Landmarks – that would be more historically accurate and make the Wonder and Landmarks stand out more clearly.
As for the Wonder itself, I actually like the design – it’s a much more convincing depiction of an English gothic cathedral than the Britons’ Wonder in AoE2DE. It annoys me that the west front is facing south-east though – one of several grievances I have with the English architecture (the Monastery is also pointing the wrong way; the University building seems to be based on Keble College Oxford, built in the 19th century; you advance from the Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman age by building a perpendicular gothic hall, etc.).
Never said it didn’t 
I was replying directly to someone who felt AoE4 shouldn’t mimic a game from 1999. (A game that was just three months shy of having its release date in the 2000s). They were implying AoE3 and its gameplay features somehow isn’t antiquated because it came out after the '90s; even though AoE3 was released 16 years ago (only 6 years after AoE2). If the age of a game is being used as a slight jab against a new game’s feature, cherry-picking a feature you like from a 16-year old game isn’t any more valid or better
JjForcebreaker wrote: on the other they go back to 90s when batch training wasn’t really a thing in RTS games and you had to brute force training large number of units.
Of course! I agree. Everything about any AoE game is open for debate and discussion… and being that this is a forum, we all talk about our personal likes, dislikes, preferences, suggestions, and the like
On the contrary, for me, I’d say the low (200) pop cap limit is very cumbersome 
I don’t mind having to construct 2, 3, or 6+ military buildings to crank out units. Been doing it since AoE2 and personally enjoy it. The strategic construction of buildings and units is just as fun for me as sending them to try and conquer the enemy. I don’t need my army to be 30 units wide within two minutes from just one building. I derive too much pleasure from the journey in regards to this topic
You keep saying AoE4 is fast paced. I haven’t really gotten that vibe in my games so far. Pace seems pretty decent in my limited number of games played. It is true that I don’t want it to feel fast. I don’t need constant frag fests and quick games on account of the game heavily favoring offense over defense, fast resource gathering, and/or accelerated abilities to age-up. But if it does, then it is what it is, and it will weigh into my decision to buy
nope , i wont agree with someone that makes 5 topics to complain about the same thing sorry .
Why do you are like this : hey guys , lets admit that this game looks bad (proceed to makes 3 topic about visual things about the game)
im gonna count them :
AoE 4 vs AoE mobile, lets compare them - Age of Empires IV - Age of Empires Forum
Game is a desaster, admit it please - Age of Empires IV - Age of Empires Forum
and there is another but i cant find it.
I understand that you want to get some real changes but lets be realistic they are not gonna change or improve the graphics at this point of development. maybe if they delay the game more but i dont see that happening now .
The philosophy behind unit training design is interesting. Obviously, there is no one, best solution or way to do that. Even if did exist it would be, at best applicable only as a part of the greater design in a specific type of an RTS game, not as the end-all gold standard for the genre.
What you mentioned is not wrong, invalid and not even debatable - everyone has own preferences and expectation.
And there is not a lot of point in arguing how should it look- I think it’s the best to leave it to devs because they know what are they good at at they are responsible for the design of the entire game.
Maybe on the stage of alpha, but game is done now.
But since you mentioned me, all I could add to what I’ve said- this system is just a very old, basic and just uninteresting way to do that, we had few daced when it was a standard and I want something new, fresh and exciting. AoE2 already exists and this game is not trying to remake it and I don’t think 2’s approach ought to be replicated.
On top of that it enhances-puts a spotlight on many aspects of the game that are just poor. There is one big topic of camera settings, building scale and size, map size and I won’t repeat what was said 1000 times. Also building process alone is as shallow as it was in AoE1 and no additional depth was given to it, or the building themselves, that would TRULY force people to put a lot of thought and caution into settlement design. It stands opposite to the inclusion of walls that can be manned with archers, which at least partially were meant to enhance the weight of the game and give depth to player expansion and defensiveness.
Now it’s just spamming mil prod buildings as fast as you can, wherever you can since the building area is often not as generous as in AoE2/3. It doesn’t look too bad in 1v1-2v2, but on big maps with a lot of people later stages of the game look completely ridiculous and just lame. It’s crazy!
You have entire screen filled with training buildings. Where’s the depth in that?
I’d rather focus on proper city design and defence against siege, on the strategy behind commanding armies or expansion, than making sure I flood the land with as many buildings as fast I can. In the end you’re selecting all and spamming unit icons - it’s just a janky way to do that.
Then you add total laziness when it comes to the visual quality of what’s available- how the better game would look if there was at least a small number of building variants, with small visual changes that add uniqueness and more natural look to our settlement? Just like you have many variants of houses.
Nothing big- maybe in one version you have few more shields laying around, in other- couple extra torches, in next a guard walking inside the building or some variation of wood and wall textures.
Would that ruin the game if any depth was added? Yes some civ can have special batch technology, somewhere you can research tech along with training, but in general, it’s like going back to 1993.
Would that be above the abilities and skills of people in Relic to include some cool, new features?
Like a system where building the same type of building next to each other enhances them and creates ‘upgraded’ version- bigger (but smaller than 200% of the basic one), with a different model, more hp and merged capabilities? Building second archery range next to each other would create advanced archery range where two units can be trained at the same time. Like with additional production cranes in Command and Conquer. There are small hints of that- with autogenerated map props like moats, fences, fields around houses etc. But it’s all cosmetics now.
Or giving a tiny cool feature to map generation, like abandoned ruins and defensive buildings, that can be garissoned. It’s a very important feature in ther DoW and CoH series.
Ensemble tried that in III and they added super cool treasures, that make exploration interesting and exciting. Even on water you have treasures like shipwrecks of floating wood or turtles as a source of food. Still it’s balanced well and treasures alone are just a small boost during the first age, maybe partially second when powerful ones (like +xx% hp for explorer) are generated.
But there’s just nothing 
Without even a basic model rotation map looks super boring later on. Not even the quality of the models and textures makes up for it. Clarity was never a big issue and the current design is unnecessarily fixated on making sure, that even the least capable, young players won’t have a single issue with analyzing the map…
I guess that’s just the part of a bigger complaint- IV is not really trying to push anything forward, to innovate, expand what’s already there and really impress people with utilization of modern technology and capabilities offered by current tech, including fast storage, RAM, multicore processors.
I’m slowly coming to the conclusion it shouldn’t be named ‘4’. Feels like a sidegrade filler that should’ve come in maybe 2015 
Seeing every sequel made made me say ‘wow’ - Age of Kings, III. Even partially Online, as much as I don’t need that type of online-heavy design.
Here? IV is fun, sometimes super fun. And good in general. But I’m not really close to being amazed by it.
BTW I don’t like using just pop cap to talk about that separate subject. It’s a very old school, simplistic approach - pop cap alone, in a more intricate system, means nothing without knowing how does economy work (and as a result how a big portion of that is reserved for eco units- including vills, carts, eco naval, misc support units) what is the differentiation in pop ‘weight’
I love AoE III’s approach of adding more depth and making it more interesting. I think it’s fun and reasonable to have a heavy mortar that takes up 4pop. You can clearly see 4 people carrying it, and it’s justified by it’s power in the general balance of the game.
At the same time the general pop cap should be highly customizable within the range of 50 to even 1000 if the engine can support it (maybe limited as needed in games with 4-6+ players etc)
Ahh, yes. Good point. With current zoom level and so much unavoidable urban sprawl in AoE4, that does make me reconsider the AoE2 building spam technique for AoE4, unfortunately. If those issues aren’t fixed or changed, I’m more apt to want little squads built from single buildings, too.
That’s all I have time to reply to at the moment. I didnt get a chance to read your whole message yet. Later, though, I will
