I’ve been thinking about the pacing of the AoE games a bit recently and wondered what you guys thought. When I play online, I always feel like I’m in a rush. It makes sense, the goal of the game is to kill the other player, but that means you have to be really quick to build up you army.
I’ve been thinking about how to make a game that would encourage you to build up your “empire” first before going balls-to-the-wall with military conquests. Maybe just small skirmishes here and there are borders, but not all out war until there are truly large empires to battle each other.
What do you guys think? What do you think the pacing in AoE IV will be like based on the released footage?
3 Likes
From what we’ve seen so far i think the gameplay will be a bit similiar to aoe2(they are in the same time period after all ) but wayyy more complex with unit abilities and the civilitations being so different to eachother.I think to have an “empire first attack later” gameplay we need some kind of game mode since i think the normal pvp gameplay will have the same pacing with the previous aoe games (especialy aoe2)
1 Like
Yeah it, seems like a pretty fast paced game, where you constantly do both builöding up your empire and fighting. It would be a lot of stress.
I’m not sure which would be more fun …
On the one hand, there might be more room for different strategies if the game is slower in it’s pacing, more variety in army composition and such. which would make it very interesting.
But on the other hand, if we look at a map like Arena in Aoe2, it often ends up after ONE big fight at the beginning of imperial age(at least that’s what I’ve experienced as a more casual player) which always feels really anti-climatic.
Maybe the key is in the time it takes to age up? if you get sooner to the late game, maybe it would open up more strategies and you would more often feel like you have built an empire?
I prefer a bit faster game pace myself, though not super fast… I like where AOE2 is at this point.
I do wonder though if with different civs different playstyles are encouraged. Like perhaps Britons having more emphasis on defensive play with castle/city building etc vs. Mongals who are incentivized to push and be aggressive. If that’s the case a british mirror match for example would potentially have that slower pace.
I am hoping that the asymmetry leads to much more variety game to game.
One of the nice things about AOE 3 is it is faster, yet you have good defensive options like minute men to efficiently call upon a group to defend a rush if you were going for more greedy builds… I think this with buildings being harder for units to destroy would be a good way to promote rushing to slow an opponent down before the siege can start… one of the things I detest is that so many games can end in age 2 just by spamming 1-2 unit types and take out the buildings this way. Needs to be a little easier to repel raids, while also being able to quickly execute them.
You essentially want a treaty mode?
A mode were attacking is impossible for a defined number of minutes (often 20 or 40 minutes in AoE3).
But AoE3 can balance civilisations in treaty and supremacy essentially differently because they can add Home City cards that are only useful in either of the modes. For example Age 2 unit shipments are completely useless in treaty and therefor don’t impact treaty balance when changed. This wont work as well for AoE4 unless they make treaty and supremacy landmarks but than you’d remove strategic choices from the game.
Other alternative would be a map like Arena where you start with walls or palisades but I assume Mongols don’t have walls and need to move around anyway so this wouldn’t work with them.
people are attacking relentlessly in 7-8 minutes of AOE3 most games are over by 13-20 mins (1v1)
You must be watching some really low level games.
I do not think the card system should be in AOE4. It makes things a lot harder to balance because of how the decks are a huge part of the economy and can be curtailed VS different civs and strats. Its also what helps the game progress a lot faster as one can send in units, or upgrades, or even send in batches of units to defend from rushes. The nice part about that is some people can fast fortress, and get trapped in their TC a minute, but then send in a powerful age 3 shipment and minute men and fend off a rush to stabilize… gives lots more options and bigger armies to fight with from what I have seen watching AOE 2 rushes with just a couple units to harrass vills.