We all know how to play AoE by now. The 4-age advancement system is a little tired and trite by now (i.e., Dark → Feudal → Castle → Imperial). I would like a much heavier focus on single player skirmishes that take longer to win, perhaps multiple sessions. Civilization games suck the hours away while you play. Similarly, I think AoE shouldn’t be so afraid of matches that might take hours and multiple sessions to finish. Not to the extent of Civilization. I just think I’m a little tired of AoE feeling like a fairly superficial gameplay experience lacking depth
To achieve this, I want more ages to go through, going from Neanderthals where you have to invent fire and the wheel, and survive weather events (cave shelters) and more at the mercy of animal predators, and go up thru AoE2’s timeframe. This all means more technologies to research, more tech paths to take (some paths should be forks in the road so you can’t research the other fork), and so on. Maybe more econ focus in some parts of the game, too
Just an overall deeper gaming experience, with ‘very good’ graphics and animations (not mediocre ones), as well
If this needs to be called Age of Civilizations due to fear of change from diehard fans, then so be it