Is there an interview available where the devs speak about the new civs? By what criteria did they choose these 2? And how their design differs from the others? -if it does-
Is this a step towards more asymmetric civs? I’d like to hear their philosophy on civ approach from this point on.
Malians look refreshing but if 2 moderately different civs is all the new content AoEIV is going to get a year after release it’s a bit disappointing. AoEIII at this point already had a full expansion with 3 new civs, all vastly different from the base ones, a 15 mission campaign with three different acts, new maps, new minor native tribes, new gameplay mechanics (the Revolution), new victory conditions, even new buildings and units for the base civs (Saloon and Embassy), artillery and mercenaries.
I think you are not right, in age 4 civilizations are much more detailed in detail and they really have a lot of unique constructions and units, on age 4 the balance works differently from, however I think the interview he developers will be there in 2 or 1 day from what I understand, I don’t know where to link it, but I can tell you that beastyqt will watch it live
then I think that before the release of the new civilizations some civilizations in play will have some changes like new ships in play etc, but I understand if you like more age3 , for my personal opinion, I prefer what they are doing in 4
They will talk about it more on thursday.
I also find it quite hard to compare AoEIII with IV.
Age 3 launched with 8 civs that were almost identical to each other, the biggest outlier was the Dutch with banks and villagers costing coin, that’s kind of it. The structures all looked similar and they didn’t have Landmarks that bring longer lasting impact on the match.
Age 4 civs are much more uniqe than the base civs from 3. A lot more fleshed out and interesting, as this is a free expansion, I find it even harder to compare. It’s not like you had to be sold on the DLC.
yes thank you, I replaced the link of the old video with the new one they posted, I can’t put my heart into you because I have already put too many and finished them, too excited for this new update
I agree 100%
20 characters
I think they are already very big, just a matter of perspective, they will certainly be very powerful and very expansive, we should protect them to raze everything
I really like Malaysians, their wall looks beautiful, who knows if you will have to use stone to build it even if I think so, and who knows if it will have the same life as the normal wall
On top of new civs we have the Malian gold UwU
I’m not sure that I understand your point. You’re saying that since in your opinion AoEIV’s civs are better than AoEIII’s base civs, there can’t be a comparison between the amount and kind of content that each game receives a year after its release? So, it follows that AoEIII received a full expansion with all these new things -unlike to AoEIV- because its base game was rather already poor compared to AoEIV’s. Do you really believe something like that?
I often find this comparison hard as well considering how dry AoEIV looks next to AoEIII but in any case I was not comparing AoEIII to IV. Perhaps you misunderstood but I compared the amount of content that AoEIII received a year after its release to the content that AoEIV currently gets, a year after its release.
The civs are free, but why is this pointed out as a relevant argument? You either get a certain amount of content or you don’t. If it gets down to preference, perhaps one prefers freebies to fully fledged and priced expansions that upgrade the game’s experience overall - like it happened with AoEIII. I don’t, but you or anyone can, that’s fine. The free civs alongside the free play week tell more imo about the desperate need of the game to replenish its playerbase than anything else.
I feel like if I start comparing the depth of the new civs to the ones that AoEIII received in its first expansion, the discrepancy would be larger but that can be reserved until we know enough about the new civs.
definitely not x2
Granted that the AoEIII architectures were not unique to each civ but to groups of civs (something that quickly changed in the expansions) but their overall experience was richer and felt more asymmetric than the AoEIV’s base civs. As of the age up landmarks, you know that was an idea adopted from AoEIII’s expansions right?
AoEIII started out with more unique units. That is not counting priest units, unique villagers and other miscellaneous units which AoEIII has a ton and surpasses AoEIV by far. But more importantly, not all civs shared the same common units as in AoEIV. Mechanically, the Dutch is probably the outlier that you remember but not only one. The Ottomans differed the most, followed by the Dutch. So there were 2 significantly different civs from the rest ones, compared to 1 -The Mongols- of AoEIV’s.
Now, I won’t go to great lengths detailing every unique civ feature of AoEIII that make the civ feel more or just as much asymmetric as any AoEIV civ since that would stray way off topic but I will leave these posters here for anyone who doesn’t know a lot about AoEIII and is unfairly judging it. And we haven’t even touched AoEIII’s expansions yet in the discussion. Despite that the the fair comparison here would be to the complete edition of AoEIII
Explain why. The base civs were extremely similar, unique structures? Where?
Each Age4 civ comes with 8 Landmarks, impacting the game without the need of picking one very situational deck in the beginning of the game. You can freely adjust which way to play a civ on the fly.
What’s more, the “unique” units of Age3 are merely reskins with slightly different stats and a different name.
Nothing truly unique except maybe the Doppelsoldner or Cuirassier, since it actually adds some variety in gameplay.
Further, the unique techs in Age 4 are streamlined so that you don’t have to ship 4 cards for a certain unit to shine in it’s designated role.
Just my personal opinion here, but a DLC that doesn’t have to be sold, doesn’t really require as many arguments as to why you should spend your money. Since the addition is for free, we can’t really debate it’s extensiveness, we will all get it.
Apart from that naval combat gets a major overhaul. So far we know too little to determine if it will be good or bad BUT it finally breaks away from the senseless mass=win naval battles that were more or less present since AgeIII.
And without checking any charts, but I believe that Age3 performs significantly worse than Age4 in terms of active players. Despite receiving additional content and just recently getting the DE treatment.
Again, I loved playing Age3 but after playing Age4, coming back to Age3 felt like some fan mods slapped together without one solid foundation at work.
EDIT:
The unique units, in most cases were reskins with different stats.
Ruyter = weaker Dragoon 1pop instead of 2
Strelet = weaker and cheaper skirmisher
Jannissary = basically just a musketeer
Spahi = basically a cuirassier that you can’t even train but it has passive heal
Uhlan = Hussar with more dmg and less HP
Cossack = Cheaper and weaker Hussar
The list expands over to the DLC civs as well, for example:
Ashigaru = Musketeer
Samurai = Doppelsoldner
Yumi = Bowman
etc…
They get special bonuses with cards, but quite honestly, Age4 handles it better by having unique research available, without the need to set a card of decks in stone before the match.
Of course we have elephants with India and again weaker and cheaper takes on units with the Chinese.
But truly unique units? Just a hand full.
I would like to have the full trailer soundtrack (I like this arrangement) 
Do you think they will be “” “” only “” “” Ottomans or even a little “Seljuk” and “rum” in the early ages?
I’d say AOE4 has the most unique base game civs from the main series. Age of Mythology only released with three civs and Online only had two and they still had to cut corners like architecture not evolving through the ages which I think is an iconic part of AOE (The Town Centre just got… taller)
Looking at Relics previous work the expansion factions are usually more experimental. In Company of Heroes the base game US and Wehrmacht are pretty standard but the expansion factions were a lot more asymettric. British bases could move but they could also build massive defences.
Well that is not true, but carry on.
I’ve always said the same thing: If there were a lot of asymmetric civs, there would be more major balance problems, and if they’re less asymmetric, a lot of civs could be sold (like AoE2), but they’re not that interesting.
The ideal is the middle ground, mix asymmetry and some symmetry in the 4 to fit up to 16-20 civs without making the balance so complex to cover.
The just reskins argument over AoEIII’s units never made sense to me. These are all truly unique units that you mentioned. They don’t have to have unique clickable abilities to be unique, never did in this franchise. Looks, animations, weapons, names, stats, costs, techs are what make a unit unique. And the building/age from which they are trained. The impact of the stats is always understated in this discussion.
A unit with lower movement speed or lower HP points but higher fire rate for instance plays and feels very differently from another ‘reskin’ that has different stats but serves the same purpose. Aztecs don’t even have artillery but they do have coyote runners and arrow knights which fill the gap and serve that role. If AoEIII’s units are not unique then I don’t know what is. Certainly not AoEIV’s horrible designs of the Arbaletrier, The Cannon, The Royal Knight", the Man At Arms, and all these true reskins that were hyped as unique. On top of these units, AoEIII vanilla came with 5 different kinds of scouts, 4 healers, 3 unique villagers, 3 trainable animals, tons of different mercenary units and native settlement units. There’s really no comparison between the richness of AoEIII’s units and what was delivered with AoEIV. If the expansions are to be added, the difference just grows exponentially. No matter how much we spin and stretch the definition of a unique unit, AoEIII would still end up with more of them.
The DLC argument was never meant to debate the extensiveness of a free dlc but the amount of content the game receives within a year’s period compared to the other Age games. If scant freebies is what they opt for instead of fully fledged expansions, it’s not my fault for indulging in such comparisons. But I could put this case to rest for now while waiting to see what this overhaul is all about.
Now that’s interesting. That’s exactly how I felt after playing AoEIV, just random pieces of a puzzle, taken from different games and sellotaped together to stay still. A game without cohesion and clear direction. All Age games after AoEII introduced a fresh Age experience with significant advancements from the previous ones and a unique direction. IV on the other hand just goes backwards and acts as if minor enhancements of an AoEII game would suffice.
Coyote runner being the Hussar here. They really tried to have a replacement “unique” unit for the bread and butter units all the other pre existing civs had.
And I disagree, only if a unit serves a new or different role it can be considered truly unique.
Afterall, every Age4 unit looks entirely unique and has slightly different stats respective to their civ, now would I call them unique? Not really, because they still play their designated role. I mean, do you think the mongol priest is unique? Because it has potentially better health and heal than the others, but still fits the same role.
So if the metric for “unique” is having different stats and different looks, then most of AgeIV’s units are unique.
Not all of course.
We can conclude it with this thought. I respect your perspective on the matter.
I just want to point out that on the other side of the spectrum, there are people like me, who are very satisfied with the direction AoEIV is taking.
I do not know why you can take away cards from AOE3 and say the units are not unique. Cards are basically the core of AOE3 and more like a “tech tree” than the very simplistic and uniform actual tech tree. Unique cards are basically unique techs and one would typically put 10 or more of them into the deck besides unit/resource shipments.
By the same logic I can take away all landmarks and say AOE4 units are not so unique either.
Edit: by the “fulfill the same role so not unique” logic there aren’t much unique units in AOE4 either.
Elephants are unique.
Rus transformable ship is “unique” but it still transforms into the common ship types.
Camels are unique.
Horse archer and mangudai are unique but that is because other civs no longer have generic ranged cavalry like in AOE2/3.
That is pretty much it.
I can take that away because cards to exactly what I mentioned above. It alters the stats, but don’t change the role of a unit.
Furthermore, you would have to build your deck in a way that you fit all the cards you want into the limit of 25.
With economic cards and military cards and shipment cards, chances are, you will not be able to deliver all the cards needed to make a unit truly shine.
And these cards, you would have to choose at the very beginning of the game. Not chance on making up your mind or changing directions.
Don’t get me wrong, I personally liked the cards and I tinkered with them for an obscene amount of time, but it became an annoyance when you had to decide wether to buff samurai or bowmen through cards or skipping these nice eco cards. What do?
Through Landmarks I feel like I can better adjust to the flow of the game, and instead of cards, I can get unique upgrades to my units, which is way nicer than not having access to these at all.