My issues with the game and why I left

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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I read everything bellow with the comparison of aoe2,aoe3,aoe 4 etc.
A lot of interesting stuff but I decide to refresh it as a new topic to summarize the stuff.

So first I bought aoe 4 on release .
The game looked promising but after one month playin I deleted it and never come back.
So I speak as someone who quit the game as the graph of people who left and never come back was 4 times as the current population.

My issues were:
Outside the economic part of each civ ,everything is almost the same. I tried to create my own gameplay
with the Delhi speed infantry upgrade and create some hit and run but not worth at all.
When I first learn that Knight and Lancer are basically the same unit only visually different I was really upset.
The game is so in favor of the defensive player.
What do I mean.
When you get to age 2 and you want to raid, lets say you open double stable you can barely take any villagers and you hope the other player is drinking coffee at that time. Even if you hit in 2 places like forest line and lets say gold mine villagers are too beefy, gold base have towers most of the time and forest is near the main base so if you aren’t careful you will most likely lose horses than take vills.
Keep in mind that you invest to make this raiding viable but the other player maybe even skip barracks.
Not to say that in low lvls villagers sometimes can kill the raider if you aren’t careful.
In sc 2 lets say terran open reaper expand.
Now you dont know what is he building if you don’t send worker to scout, if its reaper you will lose worker probably. Then he will use the reaper to scout since you would prepare for it and if its possible to make some dmg. If you don’t scout tho, he may skip reaper and hit you with banshee, for someone who dont know this is flying unit who is good at killing workers.
Now what do I mean with this.
First as I said game is in favor of the defending player but while you get free scout in the beginning this even kill the element of surprise because you can sit in his base and see the double stables, archery range etc.
You cant even proxy to punish his greed because of the scout.
First, you can lost your villager to wild animal.
Second, after the sheeps you run around with your scout because there isnt much to do so this negates proxy also.
Third, if he finds you he will kill your worker with the scout.

Now if you don’t start with scout so you can choose between fast age up or safety this will make more sense.
Second make raiding viable.
Maybe different kind of horse upgrades, some axe horseman who slaughter villagers and have bonus against them or something.
Basically you either go ram full aggressive, fingers crossed pressure or you both just stay in your bases and
watching the cold war happen.
I saw a lot of posts for aoe 3 and the competitiveness.
Aoe 3 is great game, with so much uniqueness and I can’t tell you how fun is to play natives.
Many people said the non asymmetric kill the balance and that’s why people don’t play it but they are totally wrong.
The problems in aoe 3 are two.

  1. Not many people like the card system which I understand.
  2. The main reason people don’t play aoe3 , at least in my opinion is the pathing of the units. Fix this
    and I believe everyone from aoe 4 will go there. Just the pathing is huge downfall . Beside that
    the strategy and versatility in the game are enormous.

Yes, in aoe 3 you have scouts too but you don’t know what shipment he will go for so he can go for fast age up or full all in. He can get map control or try to raid, something that isn’t viable here.

So overall.
The dynamic of the game is missing. This little dance between aggressor and defender is missing.
You start fighting with few of the same units ??? at the 10+ minutes.
Also I don’t know how people thing in war strategy game that 120+ workers supply and 80 army supply is fun but holy. Make the opposite , 80 workers to be enough so you can have 120 army supply.

I tried to watch last tournament but man, there were a lot of games 1hour + , now imagine you play best of 7. This can be 7+ hours for one match.

And last, when I tried AOEO, which btw is really versatile civ wise, there is one unit from babylons which was sappers I think.
Put something similar behind upgrade or as a core unit so if you want to go aggressive you would be able to kill turrets, walls, buildings faster. Even if he saves his workers this will be some kind of dmg atleast.

Thanks to everyone who read this post.
I am waiting until raiding became viable or something unique comes up, gonna try malians for sure.
Wish everyone have a good day/night.

Twinsen.

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Sad, but true, maybe in the future it will be fixed.

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That’s spot on. There’s usually not many effective options when dealing with defenses, hence we see long static games. There should be alot of strategical decisions to be made ingame but currently that is not the case.

An alternative solution to dealing with defensive structures could be some sort of upgrade called fanatism that increases the damage of units against buildings (not against units) for a short time but also decreases their health bar. Same could be done in a similar way to villagers when raiding, as you mentioned. There need to be more options on the table when making decisions to force interactions between the players and make them viable.

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I don’t understand why people delete games. Just hold onto it, you’ve already purchased it, you have nothing to lose. Just wait and see if iti improves.

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they just uninstall the game and install something else
at least those with decent internet, personally i don’t cuz it takes overnight plus 1 workshift to download aoe3 de, but on fiber thats feasible

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I proposed this idea to favor the aggressor

I have also given ideas to see larger sizes of armies on the battlefield

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You should try play the game again

You haven’t played since s1 or something? Scouts definitely won’t kill a vil now. Even more so because you can use your own to kill theirs

These kind of things are just personal bias. It’s not a bad game just because it doesn’t limit you. If anything the artificial limits in aoe3 are detracting

Forcing him to garrison is still damaging his eco. Even more so considering harvest rates

Aoe3 is still farily imbalanced with a smaller player size, despite being a cheaper game. I find it funny you think it’s a good benchmark. Even more so for aoeO

Yes aoe4 has issues that need resolving but I think you guys are complaining about personal preference, not actually bad game design.

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The post is about me and why I left. If you like the game as it is I don’t see any reason why you even bother posting here.
Ofc there are personal wishes as everyone have their one but there are some facts.

1 . - units of the civ are the same
2 - defender have game advantage
3 - most of the games in pro scene take more than 1 hour
4 - population drastically dropped
5 - nothing happens first 10-20 minutes so this means lack of dynamics.

This isn’t my bias towards anything, this is just straight up facts. If you don’t see it it’s your bias defending it.
Me like any other people who post here want the game to improve, I am not here to sh*tpost just because I am bored.

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Not everyone who disagrees with you is going to have zero complaints about the game as it is. I personally am okay with the game, but I also value your opinion. So let’s extend that to folks who are going to disagree with your opinion on game balance.

You don’t have to agree with someone to think they provide discussion value, imo.

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Very well said. Let’s see what other people think about it, It will be interesting. Sadly we won’t hear the opinions of people who left

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Age of 4 has a bad interface. In Age of 2, military structures separated by military structures and economic structures and this gives players to play easy the game but in Age of 4, military structures and economic structures are all in one, these buildings are seperated by ages. I have difficulties to build buildings by using this UI. Units don’t have their own unit cards like in Age of 2 and Age of 3, which makes players skeptical that they are playing a medieval game. Players quit the game thinking they were playing a beta version of the game. Also balance issues whic are dissuessed in the forum are in the game.

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Bronze league isn’t representative of the overall game.
“nothing happens” in 20 minutes as ‘facts’ - LOL

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The game has changed a lot since then.

For example you say a single scout is killing a villager, scouts do literally 1 damage at this point so that’s just not going to happen. Scouts can kill other scouts though since they do bonus damage to each other. So if you’re complaining about the enemy sitting a scout on your base maybe just kill it with two of yours.

Some of the other things weren’t ever really true, maybe at very low levels, but I take it you haven’t actually really watched higher level play. There’s pretty much always action going on before ten minutes.

If you’re losing a villager to a wolf you just aren’t paying attention at all. Unlike AoE2 a villager can easily take on wolves from the start of the game.

I’m curious how much you played because a lot of these just sound like a lack of understanding the game.

Of course you may just not like it anyway which is fine. AoE3 does have more asymmetry at this point. Although it does not seem to be very well balanced like AoE4 is currently (hard to get data on AoE3 though).

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As someone before me said , everyone has his wishes. I would love ekko - league of legends player show me some action at top play which isn’t all in. If you wanna tell me that first 10-20 mins its action based then this is probably your first time playin rts or you are coming from northgard and your apm is like 30. Ofc I don’t wanna offend slow player who wanna have fun, but if hittin 60 apm in some situations is heavy for you than you dont have any background before. If you want to prove me wrong in any of this stuff please tell me, i would like to watch your games .

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I think most have similar opinion as op (you) said if you see the number of player that already left the game.

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On SC2 there’s tanks which when in siege mode on the right spots can be extremely powerful. However, there’s many strategies to actually beat that siege tank if the attacker is doing well. He can go for stim marines and split them, aircrafts, go for siege tanks too and scan the area and many more. Also he can go for an economic expansion and try to gain an advantage over his turtling opponent. What can I do against TC’s or castles and to a limited extent also towers in AoE4? Rams in feudal, trebs in castle and bombards in imperial age. And that’s pretty much it. If I want to cope with them using actual units it easily becomes ineffective.

Again: I do know that AoE4 is not supposed to be like SC2 and I do not even want that but what im trying to say is that RTS games need as many options as possible for any given strategic situation. And with AoE4 you feel that there’s usually only very few things to consider if the economic decision making is excluded.

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AoE is definitely slower than Starcraft. It always has been in every iteration and probably always will be. It’s definitely not for everyone which is totally understandable.

But if you’re saying there isn’t action and back and forth between 10-20 minutes then you haven’t watched much. There a mini tournament with four pros going on at this moment. Every game has back and forth between aggressor and defender.

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casual side is just as important, if not more, as competitive part, smt you don’t seem to notice

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How long have you not played AoE4? I’m curious.

In reference that there are “few unique units”, it is true in some specific civilization, but I also do not want a chaos of unique units with all civilizations (knowing that, from time to time, more civs will be released), because I know what that it implies.

Regarding that the defensive game is favored, it is true in this season, but it is no less true that the second TC is nerfed in the PuP, we will see how the meta evolves in the tournament with that patch for professionals.

Who likes AoE3, can go play it.

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I dunno man.
Sounds to me that Age of Empires isn’t your style of RTS man.
I’m extremely happy with AoE4. It has gone above most of my expectation, coming from a long time AoE2 player.

Never really enjoyed AoE3, I find that variant of AOE not good with far to many issues i have with it.

Regardless, AOE4 has had updates, changes and adaptation far faster than any other RTS game I’ve seen.
S1 is a whole different thing than the current Season and going to completely change again with the 2 new civilizations.
For me, all I see is impatience, overplay and overexpectation.

While I don’t disagree with some of your points, such as Defenders advantage against most Civ.
It’s because of French Royal Knights rushing so hard and so early, that they buffed Defenses so high as they did.
Instead of just nerfing the knights.

And my biggest issue with defenders advantage is the Towncenter range, being able to cover almost all, if not all the resources in the early game.

Other than that, I find being able to find alternative to the META not to difficult to do.
Heck, everyone going multiple TC build for Abbasid, and here I am just rolling with my own personal built 1 TC-Tradewing build and hitting Imperial age 5 minutes before the regular abbasid economic wing build.

But like anything, you gotta learn and understand the Meta before you can start doing things against the Meta. Or else things are just going to fail horribly.

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