DE incase they do to AoM2 what they did to AOE IV, so I have something to fall back on 
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Of course,it is most likely that Tantalus will also participate in the DE version of AoMā¦
If I had it my way Tantalus would be glued to AoEIIIDE for the next five years lol
Think we derailed this thread.
Of course,but hey at least they knew how to spit out the community and go correcting the game and the truth that today the game is very goodā¦and it only remains to shine in case aoe 4 does not do so well in salesā¦
There is always a possibilityā¦
If in case a DE version of the aom does wellā¦then it is possible that Relic is thinking of making an aom 2,after the launch of coh 3 and then setting aoe 5 in the twentieth centuryā¦
I witnessed the DE release. Man you could find games in 1 second, there were thousands people playing it. After the wave of bugs and problems it dropped from thousand to hundreds within a weekā¦
Guess how it is nowdays? it does not matter what else they add or update, it keeps being played by hundreds not thousands. They killed the hype by releasing an unfinished game. Its a shame to be honest. And the less we all want is that to happen in AoE 4. But we cant do anything, they will release in oct 28th no matter whatā¦
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Oh, wow, I totally didnāt think of that. Good point!
Completely unmodified Essence engine, though? Were there any modifications or attempts at improving, evolving, or tweaking it for an AoE game? If so, that could introduce any number of issues. If they left it completely alone and tried to retrofit an AoE game into it, then I suppose less issues, but still possible issues, no?
UPDATE: MatM1996 says above, āThe engine version of aoe 4 and coh 3 is the Essence Engine 5.0 (that of the coh 2 is Essence Engine 3.0 and dow 3 is the Essence Engine 4.0.ā So, yes, Iām pretty sure updating an engine means new bugs and issues will arise, and tweaking it for a game like AoE instead of CoH certainly produced some unique challenges
I was being somewhat facetious, and only asked for it because you did on something else. I totally wouldnāt have asked for it otherwise. Because you asked, though, Iām 0.25% (less than 1%) wishing for a source to be cited 
I cared about the entire post. Sorry, I was rushed for time at the moment and had to quickly bail for a long day away from the forum. No tail between legs, just busy. People have lives to live outside of the forum. It doesnāt help to be presumptuous.
Iāll try to address a few more things now:
They are really fast, yes. Maybe too fast or flickery. If we could adjust the color to match our civ more and lower the opacity of them, I would find them less distracting. If we could remove them entirely for siege units, I would be cool with that. But I think theyāre more for players who want actual siege operators than for players like me who was never concerned with that aspect. They donāt bother me too much because they donāt impact siege like actual operators do in AoE3; and devs probably hoped it would be an okay solution for those who wanted siege unit operators. They donāt break immersion for me, personally; so, not a wasted effort, imo. Regardless, now that theyāre there, I really hope for color/opacity (and maybe flicker speed?) customizations.
CPU/GPU-wise, I highly doubt they take up as much processing power/memory compared to actual 3-D, fully textured, colored, and animated units. Far less work involved with creating the ghosts, too.
For keeping performance manageable, youāre comparing to CoH. I can say I only played a bit of CoH2, and from what I saw, it was a way linear game. Move forward, engage AI at predetermined spots and moments, get through pre-programmed chokepoints, etc. If thatās what weāre comparing to, then Iād have to think a lot more is going on under the hood of AoE4 than CoH. I could be wrong, though. Iāll leave it to the AoE mod experts and devs familar w/ CoH to compare/contrast the two in terms of CPU/GPU burden with AoE being a non-linear econ and military RTS game and having an expansive map to keep track of.
It could, but at the same time, is there anything they say that would be the ārightā answer that would be gleefully received by all? In gaming, it seems there are no right answers, and anything they say for their rationale or justification will be met with some who counter it and say how bad or lame that decision was, and they should have done something differentā¦ similar to how thereās no solid consensus on pretty much anything in AoE.
Iām okay with ghosts for siege, but you know if they say, āWe didnāt put siege operators because we didnāt want to affect siege speed/packing/firing due to constraints to operator animsāā¦ that wonāt go over well with some in the community or the internet. If they say, āWe didnāt put operators because we did an internal poll including with Community Council early on and the vast majority didnāt want themāā¦ that wonāt go over well. If they say, āNo operators due to performance issuesāā¦ that wonāt go well. If they say, āNo operators because itās an RTS game not Total Warāā¦ that wonāt go well. āNo operators because we prefer the ghost aestheticāā¦ no good. āNo operators because of readabilityāā¦ not good. āNo operators because we have deadlines and couldnāt fit it ināā¦ no good. Etc. I canāt really think of any reason that would be met with universal love. Yes, sometimes itās great to just hear/know the truth no matter how hard it is to hear, but what if they just would prefer to be quiet about it for now, not engage in the drama or accidentally create more drama by saying two words wrong, and see how the launch goes?
I know you disagree, but I donāt know that devs spending time to debunk internet theories is time well-spent. Iād rather they focus their time on launching a game as best they can at this point. It would have been nice to get teasers and updates over the last four years, yes, but it just didnāt happen for this game. Now Iām at the point where weāve all said what we wanted to for the most part, and we cross our fingers and hope for the best
Which is why I offered my two cents about why I feel ghosts were implementedā¦ based on historical forum discussionsā¦ which you rejected, essentially likening it to an AoE4 fanboy fairy tale It maybe was a fairy tale, considering some here say it was meme-related, but Iām pretty sure some were serious. Yeah, even with the āelephants on transport shipā thing, thatās serious thing for some, Iām pretty sure. It breaks immersion for some to see a bunch of elephants board a little transport ship. Iām cool with it, but memes are often based on an underlying desire for that thing to be fixed/addressed
Exact,if AoE 4 succeeds,relic possibly makes AoM 2ā¦
Yes,Tantalus will remain in the saga at least for a few years, in what they are getting content for AoE 2 DE,AoE 3 DE and also AoM DEā¦
Of course,I for example bought AoE 3 DE last December for Christmasā¦and Iāve followed its evolution to be the game it is nowā¦and I hope AoE 4 follows the same pathā¦so that a few years from now,we look back and say āwhat a good game is what AoE 4 becameāā¦
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I am slowly losing hope. I think we will get what we are seeing. whatever the response will be, they expect it and they are ok with it. and then there is no guarantee when these issues will be solved, it can take a year or more.
You know, reading all this love for less details makes me want to produce my own game. 
How do u like my new buildings?. Easy to recognize right? no clutter, no crew, no people holding swords or trees. RTS doesnāt need them. I made them simple for Readability. Thank god, gameplay is king so I will not have to work hard and I can enjoy my ice cold pitcher of mojitos and weeks of nothing but fishing. 
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There I corrected a little mistakeā¦AoE 4 and CoH 3 are created in the version 5.0,not 4.0 of the Essence Engineā¦
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Actually there is a group of Finnish AOE 2 DE pros who use a mod which actually does this. It makes things into cubes for readbility! I think there are some casts showing the finnish players perspective and it shows actual cubes. However 99.9% of players hate this mod and would never use it. But it is still cool that they have the OPTION to play like that, IF THEY WANT. So many issues with AOE4, could be fixed by adding more options for players.
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DoW 3 was a total failure ā¦ but AOE 4 will become big definitely
Seeing Vipers stream so far, Iām pretty disappointed. Looks exactly like the technical stress test, though he is playing on medium resolution.
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Thanks to your recommendation I checked out Vipers stream (happening right now). Supposedly the game will launch WITHOUT ranked!!! Viper says he doesnāt understand how a game the size of AOE IV can launch without ranked because he says the most hype is the first few weeks, and if it doesnāt have it then it could be a huge loss for the game in terms of players. Honestly I donāt understand AOE4 at all.
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Have said this over and over again ā what we played in the beta and the stress test was the final product. No way changes were going to be implemented 2 months before release.
If true, that would probably crush any hope of this becoming a e-sports success.
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My apologies. Sometimes this forum culture brings out the worst in me. I try to get the bigger picture and all I see is the industry making us eat their leftovers off the floor and pay double for it. Itās really no fun to constantly hear (what on the first glance looks like) coping trashtalk from the very fellow gamers you are concerned for.
I get that. I donāt have to love any of the answers, thats fine with me. I just cannot stand this culture of fake engagement with the community, followed by silence and letting them battle each other over theories til launch. The modern internet world is a toxic wasteland, and they placed AOE4 right into it on purpose. It shows a lack of respect for the brand, the players and the craft of game making in general.
And some people around here support that culture with their ignorance. It makes them part of the problem.
CoH also has the typical basebuilding skirmish mode. But the scale is much smaller. Less troops, less buildings, generally smaller maps. But the interactivity with the environment is much more in depth and the number of system acting simultaniously is much higher. AOE4 is really a shallow puddle in that regard.
As someone who has a basic understanding of how these things interact and cost in performance (no clue about the engine since its not public), itās baffling that only a few people around here lean into that and call bs. Same with gamedesign and UX/UI.
But again it is hard to try and convey that in a civil way to people who go into the discussionā¦
- Without any technical knowledge or the humble understanding that they donāt know jack s**t
- Without the will to do even the simplest google search about anything
- Spurting wrong facts just so they typed something and had the last word
- Avoiding arguments and instead concentrate on how their feelings were hurt by a post
- Using what-ifs about future game versions as their only counter points (buyers remorse, fanboy-culture, pure and overwhelming optimism, who knows?)
That enough people wanted the game to realistically portray build times so the ghosts were created? Yeah, that sounds like bollocks. The idea that the devs would pick up such a questionable request and make it one of their leading artistic elements without checking the public opinionā¦ I really donāt buy that. The game also does not support that theory when it comes to the actual build times of thingsā¦ It was never easier to quickly drop a castle.
But then again: Nothing should really suprise me anymore with this project. So If you stumble over it, feel free to link that.
Your explanation concerning the general function of the ghosts was completely sound and Itās backed by what they said in interviews early on about the golden theme. It was a dividing point of discussion from the very first video onwards.
While I personally hate it, it is their artistic choice and I respect that, as long as it does not negatively effect more essential (gameplay) aspects, or is used as a cheap way around animating stuff. As you said, we will never know the truth about that, because it makes no sense for them to tell usā¦they can only lose doing that. All we can do is look at other, older games, scratch our heads and theorycraft with varying degrees of cynicism mixed it.
It is meme worthy and breaks immersion when you think about it. But it is the cargo value of a ship and not visibleā¦ a integer value that has to be balanced to fit the gameplay around it. Trying to āsolveā a non-issue like that for basically no gameplay gain seems very odd and like a forced strawman argument.
You could certainly build a real feature around it (imagine elephants being balanced around having to be transported seperately on their a raftā¦ damn). But the game we got so far never does things like that. It only cuts content and reduces depth without supplementing it with new stuff. On top of that, AOE4 does a lot of other things that annoy and break immersion, but those are happily ignored by the same people placing their strawmen everywhere.
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No, we donāt. Iām tired of this āthrough the magical made-up numbers of looking at some websites, I know my opinion is shared by everybody elseā.
No. Thatās why itās called an opinion.
I like the UI, and I can make good arguments as to why it is good. Iām not opposed to improving it, and Iām never going to say something is āperfectā, but please do not play down the people who disagree with your opinion just because you think you have a majority.
Thereās only one area where the community seems completely united, and thatās the zoom level (even though it has been drawn back a bit, people still want more). Everything else is far more subjective.
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