Sure. Make it more competitive so that the civs are essentially all the same. Remove the names of the civs. Call them civA, civB, civC…
Who cares about how fun it is. Just make it competitive…
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In AoE3DE the African and Asian civs have access to European artillery but the way they are implemented makes sense.
For Asian civs you need to build a consulate and ally with 1 out of four civs each. Export is collected naturally while playing the game and is used to train units. Asian civs also have their own artillery units too.
African civs gather influence from herdables, buildings, and trading posts which then can be used to train European artillery and mercenaries from their palaces. It’s pretty robust. One can also gain access to European units by forming alliances via age ups.
Mechanics like that could have been added if they didn’t want to design separate artillery.
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They have mostly the same buildings, but a unique roster of units. No crossbowmen, or knight, or man at arms. Unique anti-cavalry with ranged ability.
Pit mines that generate gold infinitely, cattle that can be eaten immediately for bursts of food, or left in a pen to generate food over time.
They have poison damage, batch training from a landmark like AoE3… and also ceremonies like native american civs in AoE3. Basically, nothing ever done before in AoE4. And this was what i hoped every civ in AoE4 would be like.
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I really really hope you’re joking or you have never heard of StarCraft, SupCom, C&C…
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Malians are very interesting. Their unit roster really mixes things up.
I think the Ottomans have some interesting things too though, like the Vizier bonuses, the military academy and their unique units. The Vizier bonuses especially open up some interesting timing attack options.
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This would’ve been great and is in line with the historical aspect. Mercenary siege, hijacking enemy siege and buildings, weakening the enemy through resource starvation. If the fire lancers have proven something is that a civ doesn’t necessarily need siege engines to destroy landmarks or a whole town. Straying a bit from historical accuracy is fine if it benefits gameplay (e.g. fire lancers), but completely making up stuff like trebs in Africa is nonsense.
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People like different things. Learning a new RTS in general is fun. What people find fun about it and what they’re learning varies. Most of the fun for me comes from playing MP because that is where you will find the most unknown or unexpected factors and different ways of playing the game. Honing this is what is enjoyable. So variety for variety’s sake is not needed. Chess has 2 identical sides and yet near infinite complexity - this is where the enjoyment lies for some people.
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I respect that, but we already have the perfect AoE for those who like the chess simmetry/analogy: AoE2. Besides AoM, AoE has never attempted serious asymmetry. Malians surprised me in a good way. If we keep getting English clones then honestly AoE 2 is a better game.
Even the Mongols, once you get past their “buildings can move”, “quirky stone mechanics”, you realize it’s more of the same.
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Check out AoE3 if you think these are interesting.
The vizier system is just the card system in AoE3, something for which apparently AoE3 never took off. But now its in AoE4, and i hope people like it.
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rip, potential wasted. another copy pasted civ. next civ…
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Not really though since that also didn’t happen.
From what I’ve read the only form of “siege” that would have been historically accurate would be fire arrows and some ladders.
The thing is every civ has to have some form of siege to be viable and at the very least some kind of long range siege or equivalent. And they aren’t going to do something silly like a guy throwing big rocks or logs like AoEO since that doesn’t really fit the tone of this game.
Closest I think they could have come is some kind of infantry with tons of bonus torch damage as a sort of ram replacement, some special fire arrow unit with crazy range as their ranged siege and ladders to replace siege towers. That leaves them without any aoe siege, but their anti ranged could be tuned to be good enough to counter massed range units.
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mmm in aoe 3 everyone has a regular cannon except some civs which 1 have 1 cannon that is all around vs another siege and vs units. the concept of heavy catapult with the previous one could go ingame instead.
Dude, all siege units share the same destruction animation and you expect devs to create beautiful landmarks ? Good luck
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It sort of did. That’s why I said some liberties are fine as long as stuff is not totally made up:
“Fortifications were important in the region and numerous military campaigns fought by Benin’s soldiers revolved around sieges. As noted above, Benin’s military earthworks are the largest of such structures in the world, and Benin’s rivals also built extensively. Barring a successful assault, most sieges were resolved by a strategy of attrition, slowly cutting off and starving out the enemy fortification until it capitulated. On occasion however, European mercenaries were called on to aid with these sieges. In 1603–04 for example, European cannon helped batter and destroy the gates of a town near present-day Lagos, allowing 10,000 warriors of Benin to enter and conquer it. In payment the Europeans received one woman captive each and bundles of pepper. The example of Benin shows the genius of indigenous military systems, but also the role outside influences and new technologies brought to bear. This is a normal pattern among many nations and was to be reflected across Africa as the 19th century dawned.”
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Springalds are the cancer or this game, you can’t simple have siege because springalds ruin everything I think they never were used to counter siege, for that we have cav…
And mongols build towers everywhere, they entire design force you to have millions of towers lol.
I guess that could fit the very end of the time period to explain cannons.
But they can train cannons/culverins and we could just abstract that’s how they’re getting them. I don’t know that there would any real benefit to adding something in game to make that more explicit.
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This
Was what Shneider177 was referring to.
They’re not ideal, but what else would you have as the Malian siege units?
For Native Americans I was thinking they could expand on the battlefield constructions and let infantry create things like mantlets and smokescreens to level the playing field. I suppose you could take a similar approach to Mali.
And how many factions do these games have? Pretty sure SC famously has a grand total of three. CnC (per game) doesn’t have much more. It’s been a long time since I played SupCom, however Google tells me four (with FA).
I’m very sympathetic to players who are purely “casual” (like myself) and want more and more unique opportunities. But the game isn’t exclusively for us, and to ignore the competitive side of things isn’t sensible. The problem will be finding the line in the sand that gives the most to both / any types of player.
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SC2 and successful games with totally asymmetrical factions do not exceed 4. An SC2 with 7-8 factions would be inaccessible for competitiveness.
If AoE4 wants to have 15 factions or more in the future it must have semi-asymmetric civis (some more similar to another and some more different) or it would be a real mess when it comes to balancing them.
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