Basically the title. I wish that the campaigns were ported to the current dataset instead of the ones they were created with. The campaigns play out really different than standard games, with many techs and concepts being scrapped. The argument I have heard to maintain the ancient dataset is to preserve the difficulty of the campaign.
However, I will be drawing a comparison to Age of Empires II here. Campaigns there run on the current dataset. Not only does it alter difficulty with every balance patch, but it also brings in replayability. Moreover, the devs there take special care to maintain campaign difficulty level by modifying the campaigns themselves.
I think this would take alot of time from the dev team, and not many AoE players sit around replaying the campaign.
(Some never play it actually)
Most of us are focused on playing each other on QM, ranked or in customs. The devs should focus their efforts there.
On the other hand it does let us see cool stuff they cut out like being able to upgrade stone wall towers to bombard cannons that they just decided to remove
Well, the real problem with doing that is that some mechanics of the campaign itself could be affected by the current balance of the game, especially considering that there have been too many changes from the original version:
1.- The Arsenal no longer exists, its technologies have been repositioned to the Keep, University, Blacksmith and the Siege Machine Workshop. So they would have to remove several buildings from the map.
2.- Mongols no longer have double upgraded base blacksmithing technologies, which made them very broken.
3. - The mangudai has lost quite a bit of attack in exchange for attack speed
4. - The Streltsy has been downgraded.
5. - The horsemen were so strong before that they could even kill spearmans and men.at.arm.
6. - Stone extraction technologies no longer exist, their operation is added to those of gold.
7. - Several special Blacksmithing technologies for base units, such as spear archer, horsemen and knight no longer exist, but were very important to have available at some campaign levels, such as increased range of archers, attack bonus to spearman, extra armor to horsemen, etc.
8. - Some Landmarcks in the campaign have very different abilities than in the base game, the French Guild Workshop for example, which produces faster and cheaper arbalesters instead of their current use.
9. - In Aoe2:DE, due to the new balances of the current patches, some custom campaigns are no longer playable, and some Mods stopped working. In Aoe4, if the same upgradable data from the base game was used with the one from the campaigns, I can’t imagine the amount of errors that could happen if they do the same.
This is both a positive and a negative, and you have to bear in mind saved games also.
But other than that, everything GoldenArmorX said.
That said, I definitely think this is worth the devs thinking about though - the existing campaigns could do with some love and attention in some respect given how much the MP side of the game has evolved since launch.
They can have Arsenal on the map. Nothing harm having a useless building. On the other hand, it is a positive in Feudal Age scenarios since the Arsenal has Feudal Age ranged armor and is available in the Castle Age.
So Rus campaign will be easier and Mongol campaign will be more difficult!?
Those horsemen didn’t have much ranged armor, so they were good only in melee, which is not how light cavalry is supposed to work.
Isn’t this a positive?
Since the same rule applies to all players, this shouldn’t be a problem?
Not true. This does not happen because of balance, but because of game engine changes. Other than this, only replays break over balance changes, which is by design.
The Age of Empires series (other than AoE4) actually supports a lot of official single player content.
I haven’ played AoE 4 from release. For building like the arsenal, have these ever ben in multiplayer?
The Royal Artillery in the French Campaign in radically different too, I am not sure if solo and multiplayer have ever been one-to-one.
Maybe somebody else could provide info, but are we asking the Devs to fix something that never was?
This is what i mean, not everything in the campaign in orginal for multiplayer, they have different a focus.
Sorry, writing error, I forgot to add that, when I was referring to Aoe2:DE changes in patches, I was referring to the new DLCs and their update patches that added new Civs, not the base Aoe2:DE:
The last one that came out for example: Return of Roma, added a new Civ, “Romans”.
I don’t know how the Civilization records work in the game code, however I do know that many mods that refer to altering the data of all Civs tend to crash after the new DLC and patch add a new Civ. I have a theory that as these mods or custom campaigns use unique units, technologies, or models that the Civ no longer has available, bugs will arise.
This happens either with another DLC, for example “The Indian Dynasties”, and mods that modifies Indians as base Civ. and alter their data.
In fact, it just happened to me with one called Historical Civilizations, and the following appears (Screenshot):
Me quede con las ganas de probar la federaciĂłn Iroqui.
This is just a clarification, it’s not that I’m against adding new civilizations to the game, it’s just that this error exists and I’m presenting it. Usually the MOD community must constantly update their cosmetic mods if they want to keep them working.
On the other hand, I’m not against NEW CAMPAIGNS including the new base game mechanics in the Season in which they come out. It would make a good record of how the game is changing for years to come.
Who knows, maybe people will miss the melee attack from archers as a penalty if they try to fight infantry at zero range, or add the snare mechanic from Aoe3 to infantry and cavalry. They might also consider putting the cannon upgrade back on the stone towers.
Yes, please. It’s one of the reasons I never replayed any of the campaigns. The old balance sucks and you know there will be nothing new. Also to people saying stuff would have to be remade - yes, but compared to AoE 2 where they did it, this game has like 10% of missions in comparison to AoE 2.
One “funny” thing I remember is in some missions, techs from prebuilt buildings have different cost than techs from buildings that you yourself build (like mining camps). The balance is literally bugged.
But I doubt that will happen, it’s clear that the devs only focus on multiplayer/balance, there is no support for PvE content.
Had that thought also many times. I think it´s high on time to maintain the existing campaigne with all the cool new stuff what they added.
Also some new content in campaign/scenario form would be so much appreciated. I mean how AOE4 is made it´s just perfect to make some epic sieges, battle etc.
