Since we’re not getting any new campaigns maybe a good idea would be to impletement a sort of world map mode? Something simple like they had in Dune games or Dawn of War Dark Crusade expansion. I think it could be fun especially if home city mechanics were catered directly to this mode.
Playing standard skirmish just isn’t fun.
3 new historical battles though, they’re always fun.
They’ll be over in 90 minutes. And then back to skirmish? I don’t enjoy multiplayer all that much.
Agreed! Though I hear the editor isn’t really good to craft a full campaign. If they could revamp the editor at the very least then it’ll allow scenario designers to create their own.
At least we are getting new maps as well. I have been asking for African civs and maps for ages. I too don’t care for MP so more campaign content would be enjoyed but I have to say , knowing the histories of the civs help to crate fun yet historical battles simply by means of Skirmish games.
I would love if the african maps get random predatores on the maps and not just treasure guardians. Predatores like the wolves, lions and bears in aoe2. As well as agressive huntables, like elephantsa and boar that attack your hunting vils.
Something they could add is a campaign mode like The Rise of Nations game has. Here they could use the old system of lvls for HC cards
How did those work, generally speaking?
For AoE1/2, I’ve long wished for having a SP mode where once your match concludes on your square map, you could click one of the four edges of the map to go to a new map and fight the current Lord, King, or whoever owns or won that area. (Maybe moving your mouse over the edge shows you who owns that area, what their power/difficulty is (in a creative, immersive way… i.e., not just say “Expert”), and maybe see their Win/Loss record that is randomly generated at first and updates as time goes on. The map you go onto would still start from scratch for both players. (In other words, the enemy wouldn’t already have an established base and economy that you have to take over. You’re both starting from square one.)
In the end, you’re trying to conquer all areas of a much larger global map; whether it be a random fictitious map, or one mimicking a region or area of the real world. Each match you go to could have different biomes, etc. kind of linked to the global map. (A deserty area would have a deserty biome, etc.)
I see this as a way to build an ‘empire,’ and is a SP competition/tournament of sorts where there is an end game: be the owner of all tiles/areas of the global map. (Visually, it is, obviously, tiles in AoE2 when playing matches… but the over-arching global map you can view is actually a nicer looking normal map (not a bunch of squares); I’m sure AoE3 could have something similar.) While you play matches, maybe the AIs are battling it out in those other regions, and scouts are reporting back to you on how the land ownerships are changing over time (e.g., who owns most/least land, who is most/least powerful or difficult, who got wiped out, etc.). Maybe some matches end up being randomly 1v1, 2v2, 1v3, etc., or maybe you should be able to just specify the # of players for each time.
Either way, it’s really hard to succinctly summarize all that’s in my mind and capture it all without writhing an entire design doc with visuals and examples, so I’ll just wrap it up. I don’t know if it communicates well over the Interwebz, but I think there’s something along these lines that would work well, make sense, and make SP more engaging.
‘Risk’ and ‘Defender of the Crown’ are inspirations, of course
Well I also played original aoe only offline with campaigns and skirmish, the addition of the historical battles was nice and they do have a lot of replayability.
The main player base here is generally online, and I started online only in DE and really enjoy it, I’d suggest you play with friends casually if you don’t like the ranked play, it’s always easy to find similar level players on reddit/discord that you could play with.
Can’t expect them to spend a lot of time and money making new detailed campaigns when they earn more just buy making a couple of civs and honestly most people prefer to have 2 new civs than a new campaign etc.
This is such a good idea to bring life to the ai skirmish. There could be a few versions where you try to conquer the Americas, Asia, or Africa.
Even something as simple as the galactic conquest from the original battlefront would be cool to have.
Win a game on great lakes? Good now you can choose to attack France in Saguanay or Lakota on Great plains. Lose to spain on texas? Spain owns it now.
Yeah, that’s sort of how I see it.
They could use Home City mechanics in different ways to make world map mode more fun. For example, each region would have unique cards. Conquering it would expand your stack. They could make some far out regions not belong to anyone, but present a challenging sp scenario that if completed would grant you a rare card.