For me, the biggest problem in RoR DLC is that the civilizations differ only in Architecture Sets - I know that each has its own unique bonus, but it doesn’t make me want to play different civs because it is practically irrelevant if someone plays mainly SP.
Adding at least one UU for each civ would be a gigantic change that would make the RoR DLC interesting. What’s also irritating is that Buildings are unlocked using Technology - an archaic holdover from AoE 1.
UT would also be nice, as they would diversify the entertainment of each civ even more.
RoR DLC is simply weak because it does not add the features that excite the most about AoE 2 civs - Unique Units and Unique Technologies.
Finally, I will just add that Age 5 (which was to be called the Republic Age), which was abandoned during the production of classic AoE 1, is greatly missed. It would also be nice to add Germanic, Celtic, Nomadic and maybe even American and African civilizations + Maurya ofc.
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I think the most thing that’s likely going to happen is the transfer of the rest of AoE’s campaigns. And the least they can do is price reduction for those who bought AoE DE. But I won’t put hope too much on any of those. Kindly remind that RoR is merely a dlc, that means they won’t create anything brand news on it unless RoR is a standalone game, or without making an even new dlc for it which is super stupid.
By the way, enjoy your time here.
if ther realy want they could turn RoR into a stand alone DLC wiche funktion withtout AOE2 DE and make DLC for this. But the Real Question are there enough players willing to pay for an expansion of RoR? Without the chance that it will be refinanced, it’s unlikely that anything will happen
i would be happy about an expansion of RoR i think there is potential in it.
I guess the important question is how much would it cost to make and how many resources would it pull from AoE2 development.
I think money isn’t really the issue here it’s that developers that can work with the engine are super rare so you can’t just throw money at the problem.
An AoE1 DLC would probably be cheaper to make than an AoE2 one.
AoE3DE has a much smaller player base but yet it gets DLC that have a lot more stuff in them compared to AoE2DE ones.
Some free patches for AoE3DE included more new unique units and technologies/home city cards then whole AoE2DE DLC.
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we just need 70+ civs then its finally semi complete
COMEON 25 MORE TO GO
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Mileage will vary. One of the problems is that there was never really a consensus for what an updated AoE1 inside AoE2 should be. A lot of people just wanted the QoL stuff and bugfixes. Others also wanted Unique Units and Techs. Others wanted one or both of these as well as crossplay - the introduction of which would eventually have people begging for it to become balanced.
I’ll admit I’ve been warming up to RoR, and reminded of how much I used to like the original Age of Empires as a kid. But that doesn’t fix all the damage done by the sloppy release of RoR, the failures of AoE:DE, or the 2+ decade gap between Rise of Rome and Return of Rome. Return of Rome was a cool idea, and I hope it gets more updates and support, but it definitely wasn’t packed with 20+ years of coolness that it would have needed to to make it worth waiting this long. The fact that the Rome at War team had already created a much better project themselves means they waited too long and added too little. It’s like how a Lego set you thought was awesome when you were 8 isn’t going to hit the same if you get it when you’re 28, and that’s kind of how I feel about RoR overall - a nice idea, but one that mostly missed its moment.
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I don’t know how much my personal opinion on RoR reflects the average opinion but I know why I barely play RoR anymore.
RoR made me realise the many game design flaws that AoE1 has compared to AoE2 (even old AoE2 and not the 20 years improved AoE2DE). AoE2 didn’t just add a new setting, it rebalanced a lot of core economy and units.
AoE1DE was so buggy with awful patch finding and missing features (like command queue) that those bugs overshadowed the bad game design aspects for me.
The major issues aren’t superficial things (no Scout, missing unit upgrades, missing UUs and UTs, etc.) but the core economy and the way the unit stats are balanced, especially in regards of technologies.
AoE1 has a lot stronger economy then AoE2. Resources are collected at a slightly higher base rate and technologies improve it even more while units and villagers cost about the same. The growth of those higher collection rates really adds up over time. The fact that Town Centres only cost 200 Wood makes it even worse.
I think AoE1 should be slower then AoE2 if anything, considering the setting.
The other issue is the extreme scale of unit upgrades.
Tool Age units have very similar stats compared to Feudal Age units but Iron Age units are twice as good as Imperial Age ones and also the Storage Pit upgrades are twice as strong (+2 instead of +1).
I really love the setting, the aesthetics, the units and so on.
Yes I think some of the smaller things I mentioned earlier should be added too (UUs, UTs, new units, etc.) but only the ones that fit into the setting (no Stone Age cavalry scout, no Castle like building and obviously no gunpowder units).
I talked in length about how to make a crossplay mode in another thread.
I want to make them as close to AoE2 balance as possible while keeping as much of the AoE1 feel as possible.
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I’m not so sure about that.
Theoretically, a campaign for RoR (currently the best AOE 1 version) should have the same effort / cost as one for AOE 2 DE. The tools are the Same only the Units Chance between the RoR and AOE2DE. for everything else like texts, languages etc. it makes no difference if RoR or AOE2
Only when creating new civs AOE 2de should be more complex than for ROR because of the graphics, desigen for the UU and UT.
and should RoR change and add UU, UT. then the effort for a RoR DLC will be the same as for an AOE 2DE DLC. Provided it doesn’t come with a new arichtecture style
it not about the money they put in its about the money they get back. and Right know i belive that a DLC for RoR is unliky to get paid off.
personally, i’m not a big fan of the crossplay idea. in my eyes this would only remove the uniqueness of RoR as you would have to adapt it to AOE2 to make it playable. And I don’t think the result would justify the loss of possibilities that crossplay would eliminate.
What I mean by that is that when designing units, traits, techs you would always have to take AOE2 into account. so it’s not just looking at what’s best / most interesting for RoR, but how that compares to AOE 2. so customization compromises had to be made that could have a negative impact on both RoR and AOE 2. Also the question arises how many would use such a mode?
and I would rather see customizations in RoR that improve the gameplay for RoR Civ vs RoR civ.
One thing I would agree with is that you could mix the units in the editor for more interesting scenarios. Unit attributes could be customized via triggers.
How much does making the campaigns, assets and doing the balance of the new civs cost compared to each other?
How much of the cost is actually not in making the DLC but just keeping the game running.
We don’t pay for balance patches and bug fixes, so the DLC we buy indirectly finance that.
So in some way if they want to keep updating and patching RoR they should make a DLC to make the effort worth it.
The Crossplay mode would be adding civs the the AoE2 part without touching the AoE1 part itself.
The AoE1 civilisations would obviously not be available in ranked.
The idea is that neither AoE1 nor AoE2 itself would change at all.
The crossplay mode would be an addition that unlocks the AoE1 civs in AoE2 (all AoE2 civs are unchanged in the mode).
I would love to make it as a mod but that’s unfortunately impossible because we can’t mod in more civilisations.
It could only be played by the casual, PvE and single player players since it’s inherently not balanced.
It would enable a lot of cool possibilities in the Scenario Editor though.
Absolutely agree with this.
They should add all the AoE1 units to AoE2. There is no reason not to.
It would be better if they would adjust the stats a little though because currently Iron Age units are very very strong.
They have to adjust the armour classes (AoE1 doesn’t have a Camel or Elephant Armour class for example) anyway.
That would be like 1 day of work of copying over the stats from RoR, assigning them to a new ID and then fixing up the numbers and armour classes.
AoE1 doesn’t have that many units.
Most AoE2 technologies will work automatically because they are applying to unit types.
RoR already has a lot of AoE2 units in it because they just copied over the AoE2 dataset and then replaced some of it with AoE1 stuff.
But many of the units are broken and none of them have the correct icons.
And some really cool ones that would perfectly into AoE2 are not available like the Woad Raider (that fits more into AoE1 then AoE2 honestly).