You know what’s funny? People complain about Khmer’s portal guns, but no one seems to mind that apparently khmer is the only civilization in human history that realized you can go inside your house.
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Silly serf, Medieval Houses are for the nobles and the bourgeois!
Peasants live in Hovels, you just do not get the ability to build them. Might aswell, since the gentry should not really finance the construction of the villager dwelling, with teh very lumber the villages gathered for the lordship!
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Imagine after 20 years I need to have circles around all my ranged units not to fall in a disadvantage. I’ll assume they’re not that degenerate to introduce such nonsense as an official feature.
Even though they put things like AI auto scout in ranked play. It would not surprise me honestly.
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It is an option, you can use it or not.
I for one, want the option in the game. It would be good to know, in Real Time, what is the actual Range of my units.
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if they could add small trees as an option so that it doesn’t get disabled with all my mods after each update
Anyway I wonder if the range indicator is controversial enough among AoE2 players that they won’t dare repeat what they did to AoE3.
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I think people overvalue how useful these mods are outside of learning the game, tbh, bring on more accessibility and learning tools imo.
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Thanks for everyone’s replies! Sorry it took me a while to come back and read through everyone’s thoughtful posts; I had a very busy week. I wanted to reply to some here. I know it’s tricky… a conundrum! I just think for now, the safest bet, imo, is to just keep the range mod(s) out of the AoE2:DE vanilla game. Let it peacefully exist as a mod.
You say it’s a minor advantage, then shouldn’t that in and of itself mean that it should not be in ranked games? Shouldn’t the goal of ranked games be to put players on a level playing field and see who wins? The game itself is providing immediate imbalance if one player uses attack range indicators and the other doesn’t.
That’s one part of the issue. The other part, for me, is that it actually looks ‘modern.’ Some have likened it to mobile game UIs. In my opinion, it should look more medieval and embrace the era the game takes place in, aesthetically, rather than give it a Windows 8/10/Mobile device UI which hurts immersion a bit. That’s what I meant by modern-day UI. The slick, contemporary menu UI and fonts of AoE go hand-in-hand with slick, contemporary, sci-fi tower attack range circles. Are we playing AoE, or Defense Grid 1/2? (DG games are quite enjoyable, by the way 
)
I think this is the better solution. But I recognize that since mods have been allowed in ranked play probably since Day 1, that taking it away would be challenging, to say the least. So, now, are there enough AoE2:DE players that would agree as a whole with mods being banned in ranked play? Or what % of players might actually stop playing AoE2:DE online if mods were banned? A ton? I don’t know. But I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t want players jumping ship in these fairly early days, relatively speaking (i.e,. it hasn’t been out for 20 years), of AoE2:DE; thus, the conundrum.
Yep, I am 
My 1st paragraph says, “I know there’s already an AoE2:DE mod that effectively does what this AoE3:DE update does.”
Banning every range mod probably won’t happen because mods have been allowed to exist in ranked play so long. Many players have ingrained them into their AoE2:DE experience. The vanilla experience (taller trees, no range overlays, etc.) probably seems a bit foreign and archaic to many of them by now and can’t live without, which is kind of sad, imo. In non-ranked games, I’m totally cool with all these mods. But it’s for ranked games I wonder why they were allowed since the beginning and were allowed so long.
You don’t have to hide the mods in some secret store, or put limitations on what mods can be created/released. I’m not sure how you arrive at that conclusion? They could still be used, especially or particularly in non-ranked matches. I’m mainly just trying to suggest that this range mod should not be included by devs in the vanilla AoE2:DE game.
The periphery discussion on if mods should be allowed in ranked play only came up in my post because if devs add the range mod to AoE2:DE, then I have a feeling it’d be allowed in ranked games – which seems counter-intuitive to me. I don’t fully understand why devs would want to officially put range indicators into the game. My bombard towers aren’t sci-fi laser turret cannons 
The main reason I can think of to put ranges in is that it’s the year 2021 and putting UI overlays in games is just what a lot of games tend to want to do the past while.
It’s not technically ‘cheating’ to use range mods in ranked play, since the game currently allows mods in ranked play. It is, however, obviously giving one player an advantage over another; which is odd to me to have in ranked play. Is it the gaming industry norm to allow players to enable mods in ranked matches? If it is, then I guess all is well for me. I’m just not personally aware of many (any?) games (or even non-video game sports, or competitions) that let players get an artificial/modded leg-up on their competition in ranked or official matches
Yes, for sure. I really like how AoE2 does it. When I think of game franchises and sequels within a franchise, I really like when they evolve things for the better. AoE2 evolved AoE1 to make AoE better. Having villagers be locusts that magically teleport their harvests to your econ seems weird and not a good evolution. Was a devolution, imo.
Obviously, that’s a biased view based on my preferences. But I do wonder, in the years leading up to AoE3’s release (before anything was known about AoE3), were AoE1/2 players really upset and vocal about how burdensome it is to have to construct storage buildings and watch their villagers walk to drop off points? Was it really seen as a bad thing? I don’t know. Personally speaking, I’ve always liked that villagers have to go to drop-off points, and I’m thinking nobody every complained about it. The only reason I think AoE3 has villager-to-econ wormholes is to speed up the gameplay; and so if that’s what the devs wanted to do, then they’re in their right to. I just don’t think it was something most players were asking for or desiring, and I can’t imagine a ton of players at launch were exhilarated by it.
You or I can pick apart AoE2 in many ways, and you can throw at me example after example of, “Well, AoE2 does this, so you should be okay with that.” Feel free, but it doesn’t do much to convince me AoE3 wasn’t underwhelming or didn’t devolve a number of things. I’m not looking for AoE to be a real-life simulator. The AoE2 devs struck a good balance between many moving parts to make a good game. AoE3’s villagers teleporting resources from where they’re standing, train/trade post webcams, and buildings that all make the exact same (annoying) sound when clicked are not evolutions, imo 
Again, personal opinions/preferences, I know. So it’s okay if we happen to disagree on what we want in an ideal AoE game, but these things bother me about AoE3, and AoE2’s storage building teleportation doesn’t.
In fact, I like watching my AoE2 villagers walk to storage points, and like that as an RTS game, I have to keep an eye on and manage my storage building locations better than my competition. AoE3 eliminated both things here that I enjoyed.
Since an alternative for AoE2 would be to have to build a conveyor belt spiderweb across the map to transport resources to my TCs, I’m perfectly fine with storage buildings. As I said, AoE2 struck a good gameplay balance… I don’t need or want a reality sim.
And AoE3 webcams don’t do anything for me gameplay-wise. In fact, they detract from it.
That’s true, the future is now But does 2021 mean that new players don’t want to be bothered with playing a bunch of times to get a feel for what the tower ranges are? Instead, they need to have the exact information clearly labeled for them, so the least amount of effort is required? Why would that be true? And do they also wish to see sci-fi overlays on all their games in 2021, including ones set in medieval times? Why is that expected? And is it okay to challenge their expectations sometimes – like in the case of AoE2:DE to not put tower range overlays?
Probably because we’re busy playing a video game that has stellar gameplay, not a reality simulator We’re not playing the “Sims” game. It’s not good gameplay, imo, to illuminate parts of the map you haven’t explored or aren’t actively exploring. I don’t know what the Khmer thing you’re talking about is, but it’s probably purely visual, like the donkey going around in the mill? If so, that analogy doesn’t really work if you’re trying to explain why I should like AoE3 villagers teleporting resources or trade posts/trains revealing what should otherwise be hidden.
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Meh, it’s no more cheating than being told the unit’s range in stats and having the tile grid option. If you can’t visually count or memorize the visual appearance of range without the aid, you’re probably not going to from 1400 to 1600 with the aid, lol. I agree with the post higher up that a unified UI option is better than inconsistent / low-visibility mods.
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I don’t know if I ever won because of the mod but I have definitely lost less range units and made much better placement choices for towers and castles because of it. So even if it did not strictly win me a game it definitely saved units and kept my workers building counter castles and towers out of range of the enemy.
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So I know this is not the main focus of your post but since banning range mods has been brought up a few times in this thread wanted to mention a existing limitation or a development change that would need to be made.
Right now while developing a mod I can queue up with it. So if they were to start banning mods their would be people who install those mods not using the mod view but instead install them like they are developing them. So they would need a means to block you from queueing with mods that are not installed through the mods view.
If they wanted to selectively detect these mods or mods that mimic their behavior they would need to check mods that modify any building models with range and prevent queueing with those mods. That is probably the easiest way to handle this is to make the building have their models modified if you are queueing for a ranked game and either disable them when they queue or ask the user to disable them.
I would have a horrible time playing AoE2 if it were not for one mod that makes the minimap larger and to move it to the middle of the screen. This mod is probably the only mod that would make me consider no longer playing the game because the normal size of the minimap is basically illegible for me. This could be solved pretty easy if they built in the ability to reposition the minimap and change size of it and even repositioning it is not strictly required for me but it certainly makes it nice to have it at the center of my attention.
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TBH, I like watching villagers carry resources to where they are really used, so the whole AOE franchise is underwhelming compared to Stronghold.
BTW if you are enjoying the STELLAR!!! gameplay you’ll notice Khmer is the only civilization where villagers can garrison in their houses.
BUT that does not matter because the game is not a reality simulator.
BUT it should not have “sci-fi attack range indicators”.
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Hmm, seems quite a bit different to me 
Being able to line up buildings in rows better, or being able to have the most organized looking town/empire on the map, doesn’t really equate to seeing the attack radius of your tower so you can optimally place them – saving stone, going undetected, etc.
Hehe, yep. I am enjoying the gameplay. But there are so many civs to keep track of in AoE2 now, I don’t really pay attention little things like that so much anymore. Over time, if I pick up such civ nuances, great; but if not, I’m not losing sleep over it I almost always play as Spanish, and set the enemy AIs to random civs to see variety in the units and structures. If the civs were markedly different like it sounds like they will be in AoE4, then I will definitely be paying more attention to that stuff.
But with AoE2, honestly, there are a ton of civs… and every civ I’ve tried feels pretty much the same to me with a couple minor nuances here and there. Once you know how to play the game with one civ really well, you know what paces you have to go through to win – and you know some civs will have bombard towers, others won’t, etc. I played with Sicilians the other day, not knowing anything about them except what their unique unit was, donjons, and they’re an infantry civ, and then I was off to the races. Trounced the AI. I’m sure there are pro strats for them, but for me, I just crank up thru the ages like I always do and play how I like to play. And when I see unique techs, buildings, or units here and there, I research them and check them out. Works for me! If I played as Khmers, I wouldn’t know they can garrison in houses offhand, but I’d check their tech tree at that time. However, I maybe played them once long ago and saw that unique trait, but it’s long forgotten. I’m not big into garrisoning, but it’s good that I can use that escape plan if I need to the next time I play them! And when the AI is playing them, I’ll probably now notice and target houses with more vigor.
I’ve gotten all the expansions with CE, FE, HD, and now what DE has to offer + its expansion, so it’s a bit “info overload” at this point; I reached my saturation point on trying to keep track of all the civ nuances. I look at the tech tree on occasion, of course, but not a lot.
Because the one has some level of realism and the other introduced a completely new mechanic that makes the civ 10x easier to play and allows them to do stupid easy macro. They’re two completely different things.
But yeah “it’s so weird people don’t complain about the houses, i wonder why” 
not
Definitely agree. But i wonder how many games on the ladder are settled by such differences. Like maybe at the highest levels games could be won or lost on such differences but i still doubt they make such a big impact on the out come of most matches. And ironically its the higher levels that will be less likely to use the range mods since they can judge the range well enough?
I was thinking about it more, and i truly the range indicators have such an insignificant role on the outcome of a match… for example map generation in itself has a MUCH larger role… like the following (i was on the side with all the gold, double back gold, double back stone)
opponent only had 1 back gold, 2 back stone, everything else was forward(including berries and BOTH boar), and he had 1 neutral stone, i literally have every single other resource…
range indicator would make such a tiny difference in a map where the opponent is on the back foot from the get go…
A) joke
B) I’m saying why don’t people complain that other civs can’t garrison in houses, if realism is what they’re so concerned about?
I absolutely agree with you. It’s kinda what happened to iTunes, for example: it hardly has anything to do with the old player it was before, now full of promotions, publicity, menus that do anything but- all for comercialization’s sake. I know it doesn’t have to do with gaming, but you get my point.
Just one more issue: the problem are not the developers, but the marketing guys. The same ones that prefer more expansions, DLC’s and stuff instead of fixing bugs. But you knew that too.
Anyway, agree with you 100%.
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age of mandala best range mod ever. this added range indicator is really bad
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You know you can make it look like your grid. Don’t you? Just go to the game settings
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When you turn on player color it doesn’t match your grid color. (Player color is more desirable especially in tower rush imo) Even if you turn off player color the curve is too bold.
I just would add an opacity slider for it. IN player color mode looks really ugly, but in grey looks really good and not invasive
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