The legions of scale plated heavy infantry era was over, it was gradually phased out, by the 11th century, Roman Infantry with the exception of units such as Varangians wore leather, quilted and padded armour. Heavy infantry was only used to defend locations that been made unsuitable for Cavalry charges (like forts). The Varangians themselves operated as a dragoon regiment and not as a foot regiment.
they usually were not fought between infantry and cavalry either. Infantry mainly was used in the role of supporting cavalry in fights between two regiments of cavalry during the medieval era and in most cases, they weren’t valuable enough to armour.
I assume you mean a shieldwall, maybe that got lost in translation, this tactic disapeared during the medieval era because it was only useful on rough terrain, it had 2 main weaknesses. You needed an area where you couldn’t be outflanked to even use the tactic and the people involved in a shield wall had to be very well trained to hold their nerve and keep formation under fire, since if it had any weak spots Cavalry decimated it.
Regardless, most troops in shieldwalls did not have metal armour, lightly armoured infantry was very effective during the time period and I don’t dispute that.
Which is ultimately the point I was making, as time went on, people used different tactics because previous tactics were less effective. People romanticise the early Roman legions and tactics as a superior way to conduct war because it was effective for so long, but it was a product of its time and would not have been effective in medieval warfare. In late medieval warfare heavy infantry saw extensive use, but that was because of a number of factors that had made it more viable.
Well some things may actually remain like they are because its still AoE1, however diagonal walls could connect better to some wall pieces, but then again even AoE2 diagonal walls look sometimes not best.
See this is the reason why they don’t make open betas and why there is an NDA it even was a leaked screenshot and not someone who simply modded AoE1 assets into AoE2 and pretended it was RoR.
The first known closed beta was apparently in November, half a year ago.
So many things could have changed since.
I’m pretty sure we will get AoE2 like diagonal walls, but it could be that they wanted to test balance and performance before they had the model done.
Or this is also a strong indication that that might have been a mod someone made to fake RoR screenshots. There have been people trying to mod AoE1 into AoE2 already.
We he talks about houses he means that houses in there doesn’t face different way. For example one house has entrance to north side and other house has entrance to east side. (houses don’t rotate like in aoe2)
AoE2 houses don’t really rotate, they just have like 4 different models, some having the door in the same direction.
AoE1(DE) houses only have 1 model.
That is less diverse for sure, but might be somewhat intended because it makes groups of houses look more “organised” and less “chaotic”.
If there will be visual improvements in RoR this could be a very good candidate for one.
Also giving every unit a unique skin (There are multiple pairs of Iron Age units sharing their sprites) seems a like a likely visual improvement.
I am not sure but I have a feeling that we might get little bit difference between some iron age units.
I have seen some screenshots and I know they are all made in post Iron Age and also knowing tech trees and compering with some other pictures I can tell it’s possible that some units such as Horse Archer and Heavy Horse Archer look bit different (biggest difference is their saddle blanket).
Another unit which seems to look different is Heavy Cavalry and Catapharct. Heavy cavalry armor and horse armor seems to be gray like iron and Catapharct seems to have original bronze color - there was one picture were original model was also present despite it being dead, but since both models exist it’s possible they decided to make some units looking different, which is I suppose good thing.
The leaked screenshots are definitely not from my mod, but as you already pointed out, those screenshots were probably from the closed beta in November and a lot changed since then for sure.
I personally would not mind some models to be the exact same, but I do expect something different and not a 100% exact port. (If it is, that would not attract many new players). I would like to see AoEDE in the scale of AoE2DE for example. A bunch of new building models. A greater emphasis on the Stone Age, in some form or another.
Basically, as an AoE1 player, I want to be surprised.
I think the devs know this, at least I hope so. Maybe thats why they have not shared anything other than a release date basically.
That’s something I’m pretty confident they’ll add.
I hope they generally fix some wrong architectures too like Sumerians and Assyrians not having Mesopotamian architecture.
It’s a lot more important that civilisations have the best fitting architecture then how many civilisations are in each architecture set.
Does it hurt anyone if the Egyptian set is exclusive to Egypt while 5 civilisations have the Mesopotamian set?
(AoE2 has some of those issues too but not as much.)
They could probably add Nubians and Numidians if they want Egyptians to not be the only ones in the Egyptian set, maybe even Ethiopians/Aksumites (though I don’t know what their architecture looked like back then).
Hopefully eventually. RoR will release with the original 16 civilisations.
I hope they port the cheat units too. Important aspect of AoE1 for many people.
Let’s hope that all cheat units will be available in both AoE1 and AoE2 mode.
I have a feeling that initial release might not bring much new content compare to regular aoe1 (I hope I am wrong), but if this DLC/game mode becomes popular it’s very likely more new civs and units will be added.
Edit: However there are some things which are new to compare to regular AoE1 such as formation, techs, gates, land trade and female villager etc…
That’s probably how they would do it cause that’s how Rise of Rome handled new content. I could see them adding crossbowmen for the chinese dynasties, or normal spearman as a trash heavy infantry unit.
