I let you my complete essay here about proportions in AoE4. It’s one of the most visually negative aspects of the game, and based on all the discussions in these forums, I’ll discuss how it could be resolved
[Proportions_topic.pdf - Google Drive]
Quick issue
This house seems as proportionate like AoE2 or AoE3 standards.
Far from it:
This was discussed since release and was very critized, but it seem they didn’t change anything.
In my PDF I explain all the problem and how it could be fixed.
Just like AOE2 Small Tree MOD, it is the result of overemphasizing esports and symbolizing things.
In order to avoid falling into misunderstandings, it is emphasized once again that:
We are not pursuing realistic proportions, but a relatively reasonable proportion. For example, AOE3 is also a 3D game, but it combines comfortable proportions and visual convenience.
So what is “relatively reasonable”? How much wriggle room is required? Every single suggestion I’ve seen involves making doors possible to walk through, etc. That’s “realistic”.
AoE has never had realistic proportions. If folks want more consistency across buildings in a faction, etc, I understand that. But it’s not the same as “making doors big enough to walk through”, and some people want that.
So who wins? What do the developers implement?
I’d check the PDF but I need to request access, and I’d really rather not share my email address unless I have to 
why not explain it all here, are you just scamming us?
I can vouch for the user, they’ve posted a lot about building proportions before. It is a lot of text (and pictures) from what I remember.
But yeah, I don’t want to share a personal email account ^^
This could have been a safe post with good discussions…until “some other game” is mentioned and compared. And now you have to be educated that “relative better proportion” is not an absolute concept, it depends on personal preference, this is a design choice with its own reasons, there are also many flaws in that game and you cannot ask for 100% hyperrealism.
The combination of characters and buildings should not be too strange, At least houses should not be lower than cavalry or even infantry,otherwise they should not be called houses but bunkers.
The architectural proportion of AOE4 is not suitable for creating landscapes, which has been exaggerated to an absurd extent. For example, AOE4’s historical campaign does not have a city that can be called a “city”. The houses are scattered and low, with only a few small houses in a city. Large areas of land are idle, paired with rigid historical book style onlookers, which lacks the historical immersion that should be present compared to the previous work, Because all elements pursue symbolism too much.
I think the ratio of AOE3 is the most suitable, but of course, I no longer expect the game to be changed by the open users, as players have already formed a habit after the game has been released for so long.
It took the overwhelming majority of the community to complain about something that was objectively terrible for them make some change on their future PAID content, unfortunately its unrealistic they will make a change bigger than changing names that is partially requested for FREE.
Making units smaller reduces the possibility for denser structures, though. Your AoE III screenshot shows that. Look how few houses there are. Most of the open space is taken up by the roads.
Let’s go with your suggestion. Let’s horses smaller, or houses larger, or both. If you make horses smaller, you have to adjust the rest of the army units to suit. Now you have smaller units on the screen, which means you can fit and manage more of them on the screen (which is also important for performance)
If you make houses larger, all buildings need scaling up as well. Or at least, rescaling to suit. Now you see less buildings on a single screen (at maximum density).
What I’m trying to say is “it’s not a simple issue”. It’s certainly not just “esports esports” like some people want to think. It’s a compromise between performance benchmarks (especially on the lower end; not on a machine like mine, which is fine with the game on all graphics settings), gameplay (units visible in a single frame / buildings visible in a single frame - increases or decreases required panning to manage), and so on.
I hope the developers revisit it. There are some easy wins that can be made within the buildings themselves (which is I think what Tapiseiro highlighted - the internal scaling of individual buildings). But in terms of overall scaling, it’s not “esports” vs. “immersion”. There are more things to consider than that.
One possible solution. Very hyperrealistic. Very complicated. Very impractical. Filled with personal preferences. Yet still slightly possible:
Make buildings taller and some specific proportions larger without changing their grid occupation.
If you really look at it, AOE3 buildings occupy almost the same grid (compared to units in the same game) as AOE4, both are far smaller than AOE2. But AOE3 buildings are taller and some trimmed so that the remaining parts have a more reasonable proportion.
I’m not talking about aesthetic buildings in campaigns like the tents. They can be safely scaled up without any problem.
Yes, the internal proportions of buildings is exactly what I talked about later down the post. I believe it’s what Tapiseiro did the work to highlight, the last time this topic came around.
We could only all hope that someone will make a mod for proper proportion of building and units without bugs. As of now all have been buggy.
So the key to the problem is not the floor area of the house, but the height of the house is too low.
Regarding building density, you can pay attention to the cities in the AOE3 Indian story.
The thing is, higher houses in AoE III work because the time period is later. The houses in IV are pretty internally consistent (especially compared to other buildings). They suit the time period well as well.
That’s right, the sense of discord between units and buildings decreased after entering era4, as there were a large number of multi-story buildings at that time, as evidenced by the recently released Byzantine images.
21 sheets of text. The pdf has links and is much more comfortable
