What one might find gimmicky somebody else finds an interesting addition. I’m happy with both types of civ designs.
The first option seems fine to me for such a radical technology. It’s not supposed to be researched in every game anyway. We already have those types of UTs in the form of the new Atheism UT or the Persian Imp UT which are situationally useful.
I totally agree, but for exactly that reason I wont go to an AoM, AoE1 or AoE3 forum and complain about the mechanics in the game. Compared to previous AoE2 mechanics it IS gimmicky, there is no arguing about it. And my perception is that it pushes the game into the direction of AoM, or what they might want to make out of AoE4. So my view on this is: Please let AoE2 stay what it always was, and dont turn it into a different game.
The first option seems fine to me for such a radical technology
It doenst to me though. The reasoning behind that is the following:
In a normal game, lets say you play heavy into cavalry. You know your opponents civ and their options. They start out with cavalry as well, but you notice they are producing less, or adding less units, so you might suspect they switch into pikes. You can prepare for this switch for example by adding archery ranges and upgrades and start producing once you see their pikes. No need to add to much archers before you actually have to encounter the pikes.
However, with the flemish revolution, you always have to expect the enemy to suddenly have a full force of pikes (that double as champions), if you havent prepared a large army of archers by the time they research just one technology, without having to add barracks you will die.
It just creates this extremely awkward counterplay where you have to be aware that your enemy can at any moment have a full fletched army of a certain type. And either this army will wreck you, if your army conists of the countered unit, or it will be a completely pointless technology.
I disagree - you DO have everything back at home, except villagers, which you can retrain.
With 3 TCs, it’ll take 7 minutes to get back 50 Vills (and plenty of extra food, which you must buy using gold from the market).
But during that period, you’re pounding your enemy base with 100 2HS/Halbs while your opponent has NOTHING to raid at your base. What can he do, raze your farms?
I’m not against the mechanic by itself, but just the instantaneous nature of the conversion is ridiculous. Atleast add some delays/warnings for the enemy to react.
And 800F+450G, it’s pretty cost effective to get 100 2HS/Halbs
.
.
Paper money does not change the amount depending on the military that you field - only depends on the number of teammates. So opponents can prepare for it. In case of Scutage, opponent cannot prepare / prevent you.
You can create the cheapest trash units, research Scutage, get gold and let the trash die, use the gold to train better units.
Enemy has no way to block it compared to gold mines / relics or be prepared for Paper Money research.
(I don’t know the research cost or time - that might be a factor, but once again the mechanic itself is wrong).
I don’t play AOM. And that’s exactly the point - AOE2 has certain mechanics. If you break them, then you’re making it in a new game. Not AOE2 anymore. There are still lots of innovations WITHIN the same framework.
Chess has been around for centuries and still continues to find new innovations in gameplay.
not to mention that the same civ has a technology giving you instantly up to 50 units.
Exactly my point - instant training of 100 Halbs is ridiculous. Enemy cannot prepare for it.
There should be some warning to enemy / mechanism to add delay so that one can react.
Well, if it needs a warning to be balanced, there could be a warning like “Eudes’ the Reds villager are revolting against their King” similar to the warning you get when Huns research atheism. Again, it’s a question of UT prize, UU stats and research time. Nothing which can’t be balanced. Supremacy is a technology in a similar vein, though Villagers can’t admittedly be microed the same vein as Flemish Milita can.
That’s the point of this UT, to give you some extra gold in Trash fights. If it should give too much gold, you can easily increase the gold price of this UT which is hefty already (400g) as well as reducing the gold it gives for each unit. In it’s current state, in a 1vs1 situation, you need 27 military units to get your gold back. In a Post Imp situation with 80 military units, you get 795 netto back. It’s more than Paper Money but not that much.If you increase the price tag to 600 g, which would make it barely affordable in 1v 1 trash fights, you’d get 595 gold back which is barely more than Paper Money. Alternativelly, if you reduce it to 10 gold per military unit, you’d get 530 gold netto. It might be slightly too strong in TG though. Although considering that there shouldn’t be a lack of gold in team games due to trade, it might also be fine.
Agree to disagree. I think the latest additions are still within the spirit/essence of the game. If you’d add Huns nowadays, people would complain a lot too I guess.
The warning should be issued when the UT begins researching. Only then can the enemy react.
.
.
I already mentioned that I don’t know the research cost / time so can’t speak about how it can be balanced. But opponent has no way to prevent it or prepare for it.
If let’s say only certain units will count towards this gold levy (only Knight line) - then opponents can target Stable buildings and actively kill off Knights (early in the game) to prevent usage of this Tech to generate late game gold. Opponents can prepare - thinking, "OK enemy has 4 stables, increasing Knight numbers - Scutage will be a problem later. So let me attack now itself and kill off the Knights)
But ANY unit will count for Scutage simply gives opponent no breathing room.
.
.
I disagree. Getting Housed isn’t a problem for a decently ranked player. Sure it’s a gift for the low ELO folks. It doesn’t change the gameplay much at all.
But a strong military unit that can also build breaks the game.
Forward Vills have a danger of being killed and the idle time can also damage your economy.
But Forward Military + Builder is a massive change.
Donjons/Serjeants are not so expensive as you think, especially in late Feudal after you have resources to click up to Castle. Sure you can’t immediately place two TCs and boom, but your economy can still grow without needing to allocate Vills for rush.
Anyway, I’ll agree to disagree and leave the matter at that.
True.
I think that Flemish Revolution has other uses besides just resisting cavalry raids.
Similar to the Spanish Supremacy “army” strategy, you can train a whole bunch of vills for 50 food each…then research Flemish Revolution, and you essentially get all those Flemish Militia for cheap cost in food, and no gold, THEN you can go on the offensive with them.
While there is a risk to setting back your economy, like you mention…you can always opt to NOT research Flemish Revolution (saving resources and time to research), or to delay it until later in the game, when you are pretty confident in your position, and want to further boost your offensive push against opponents that are on their last legs.
I saw a meme on Reddit where someone posted “People are complaining about DE…while HD still exists”. So if the game is really getting as bad as you are implying, there is always Age of Empires 2: HD to return to. Or even further back: with old CD-ROMS of Age of Kings and Age of Conquerors.
I also heard that the DE devs have updated the “old AoE2” on Voobly, so that is an option as well, if DE no longer satisfies you.
I’m glad many people realise how unfitting these new mechanics are. Up to this point everything belonged to AoE2 imo, even the cuman 2nd tc and the konnik (this one was close the limit line). When I complain about flemish rev, first crusade UTs, or the coustilleur I’m not talking about balance. I’m talking about game design.
One time unit spawning has no counterplay, you can’t prepare in advance, and you won’t do “just in case” cause investing in something just in case leaves you behind. Felmish rev has a huge cost, so you either win or make a huge sacrifice with almost no comeback.
Instant gold generations as UTs are horrible and boring. Even paper money. Not saying it’s strong or weak. Just boring.
But the worst of all is the coustilleur. That unit is a mini-game in itself. Feels like a AoM unique unit. So gimmicky and little serious. The charge attack just don’t work with this game engine.
I hope devs learn from all the critiques.
I like both new UU, the Coustillier and the Serjeant; not really sure about the Flemish Militia
I think that the Coustillier need a balance because right now is too OP between the cost, HP and the charge attack
The Serjeant it’s all that the Sicilians have but we need to pay attention on the auto improve of his stats when you advance to the next age
About the Flemish Militia it doesn’t feel right the instant vills-conversion. It never like to me the sheep spawn for the Tatars, now less about the Flemish Militia and the Serjeants in the TC
I really think that devs need to re-balance this out
I actually play much more AOM and AOE3 than AOE2 but I don’t really think some mechanics from the former would work out in AOE2.
AOM has civ varieties crazier than these newly introduced civs and even AOE3 tbh. The economic systems of Egyptians and Norse are very different from the Greeks (which plays more like a traditional AOE civ). However, the core game mechanics and balancing are designed around these drastically different civs. Similar for AOE3. The game begins with one-time techs and shipments, and all civs from even the earliest stage of the game have the ability to spawn several units instantly. It is very different from AOE2, but it has always been balanced around these designs.
However AOE2 begins with clear separation between workers and military units and slower-pace unit production, and the majority of the existing civs are designed based on these ideas. For mechanics like military units that construct buildings, or ragnarok/revolution-like technologies, or one-time tech that grants you units or resources, or special unit abilities with a cooldown, they were inherent parts of AOM/AOE3 and fit in these games well because the games are designed around them, but fitting them into AOE2 is very challenging. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s extremely difficult.
I think change and progression for the game is needed otherwise AoE2 ends up like AoE1 where nothing happens and if you are lucky you will get 1 patch per year for some bug fix. So be careful what you ask for.
The thing is AoE1 pretty much died as soon as AoE2 came out. That means that 2 was just a better game than 1. Many years passed but no RTS game other than warcraft or starcraft could dethrone AoE2 even when new games with new ways of playing and new mechanics came AoE2 was on of the most played RTS.
Addition to the game is fine, while it remains loyal to its essence.
Aoe 1 players were less than 50 per day 10 years ago, that game had no future, anyway they killed the DE because they only changed the visual, if you play 200 pop you would clean all the map in like 20 minutes, the resource generation was still being spawn for 50 pop games, they did not change balance, despite they knew how quick the games can end there cause no loom or way to hide your vills and how impossible is to defend vs archer micro, those mistakes killed the game.
Aoe2 has always had healthy active numbers of players, so you can’t really compare aoe2 players are 3 or 4 times all the player from aoe1,aom and aoe3 together maybe even more.
Aoe 2 HD was a faulty product and despite that it had 6 long years of support, so DE is not getting abandoned with such active number of users, so you don’t really need to give thanks to anyone.
This is an overreaction. You realize there already is a unique tech that generates units instantly? And for the whole team? And it’s terrible. We need to let the meta develop and let the civs and techs play out because we declare that the devs have ruined the game. Just be patient, and if these civs dominate even after nerfs then yes, it was probably a mistake.
Please refresh my memory which technology is this supposed to be. Im not aware of its existance.
And the point is not if any of it is broken, or op, the point is that I believe it is changing the game to much into a direction that does not feel like AoE2 anymore. Maybe we will get used to these changes, yes. But together with the last khans it is showing the trend of increasingly gimmicky featurea getting introduced and my fear is that we will need voobly again in two or three years because DE wont be AoE2 anymore if the trend continues.
Cuman Mercenaries.
Also, the game recently hit all time highs in popularity. There’s just no basis for your position that the newer content is bad for the game, or your concern that it’s going to be bad in the long term.
Cuman mercenaries is not giving instant units to the whole team. It allows you and everyone on your team to train 10 Kipchaks for free. Still needs the normal training time for every single one of them.
Also, yeah, of course the game has higher player numbers within the first week of a DLC adding new campaigns, civs and Multiplayer maps.
Of course you wont see this in the data. Most of the week you could delete your enemies walls and gain infinite attack with lithuanians, and it still had an increase in player numbers because a new DLC dropped. So referring to those player numbers is absolutely meaningless in this context.
The game hit highs BEFORE the DLC, over the holidays. Your mind is made up, for some odd reason, so I’ll leave you to practice your English. At the end of the day no one has any idea how the new civs will affect the game until we see how they play out for awhile.
Of course! ANY moderately popular game would have more numbers during the holidays. What’s your point?
.
.
.
Please speak for yourself. Some of us understand the implications of the new techs which are clearly disruptors (Disruptive innovation - Wikipedia) and can destroy the game as we know it. I, like Viper/Hera/T90/Spirit-of-the-Law/other casters and fans, am now playing the new DLC - not speaking from imagination.