Yes, adding extra men on the screen to crew siege weapons is certainly not going to improve readability, nor could it improve performance. I don’t care about it for “flavor” as people say, so I personally don’t see the point.
I think their little ghost men setting up and firing siege weapons is a fine compromise.
I do think having crew on the ships like some people have asked for is an actual terrible idea.
If crew on siege breaks the performance of this game… it has some real issues…
again how can you justify the many things… do you want them to remove the auto building roads?
Why have villagers use drop points, its all going to hurt performance…
Its a poor excuse and really there is no reason to not want them when so many do. The little flashing men is even worse then none… as it says yeah there should be crew, but now the game is just littered with golden orbs, flashing men, and all these elements that never was part of AOE and no one saying anything about that… it makes for a boring unfinished looking game.
Sea fare is under appreciated and some kind of boarding technique really is more appropriate than shooting large arrows at them. This game is not setting the bar very high and that is a shame it could be so much greater.
It seems like you haven’t played aoe3.
Siege weapons there are balanced and can be countered as well.
Big agree here.
For example the tiny siege weapon flaming arrows, you can locate them so well on the battlefield because of the crew.
In aoe3 they found the perfect mix between stunning visuals and readability.
I was hoping for aoe4 to go a similar way.
Couldn’t agree more with everything that’s been stated here. Particularly with the last sentence. The bar is definitely not set high. And the arguments that I have seen so far against manned siege are all untenable and fall apart as soon as anyone attempts to answer them. It’s not like we do not even have a counterexample within this franchise.
I’d be hesitant to assume just adding those features would make it better. Total war has all those features and more (ramming, siege ships, even fire mechanics) and people HATE the naval warfare in that game.
I have never really played that series, I saw it at a friends house on land I think once, its a completely different feel than AOE, Its not a great comparison, and to be fair, AOE 1 and 2 do not get much praise for their sea gameplay… AOE 3 made it interesting with limited numbers and very powerful ships. Just one step away from using that fishing line to grapple ships and use some kind of boarding rating as a melee type of weapon… I outlined this in a naval thread thoroughly.
but this looks really cool and is awesome they went into such detail I should give it a shot. Its quite beautiful and would make water game a really unique experience.
agreed I don’t think naval gameplay has ever been that fun in the series.
AOM I feel had fun naval gameplay but that was because you had literal krakens and hydras swimming around. Hard to get as epic as that.
No one likes water maps in aoe2 either. So what? Remove water or keep with no changes?
(ensemble studios at least have excuse for thier water…they even wanted to remove it completely).
I mean water always were bad in aoe2 etc. It recieve some fixes with FE update (demoships). But it was literally “hotfix”.
It would brake a balance. is it hard to understand the difference between 2 cases?
But removing “useless” crew would do nothing to gameplay. 99.9% who dont want crew - play in aoe2 multiplayer. So they get used to siege, and they dont want any “distractions on the screen”.
And probably they playing 4x4. I dont know that games u played. but extra 100-200 units on the screen, i assume will hurt readability and performance issues for some low spec PCs.
Probably it could be done “great”, but if it’s not - better to remove irritants.
this is a graphic detail that I am against over all, it may look cool but think of the lag that might make or the higher specs needed to play the game. quit being overly picky
A few more non interactive models would cause an isignificant change in hardware needs. Look how many units a Total War can show with much higher fidelity. It’s not 2003 anymore. Quit telling people what to like.
I use that example because it is about as silly as your abjection to manned siege units.
If performance were really an issue, then this could drastically help and there are always ways to change the balance. It works fine in AOE3.
So you do not want distractions but I have not seen you mention the golden ghost men… more distracting than ever… worse than none… not anything like aoe…
also I mentioned in AOE3 men on siege can be helpful.
Its all the same unit… 1 unit, just bigger animations… I think you greatly over exaggerate the demands and numbers and distractions.
One could do better than sea monsters if one really put in the effort. It does not need to be gimmicky, naval warfare is fascinating, Ships represent some of the highest pieces of tech these cultures made. and its degraded in to numbers of arrow or cannon firing ships, and we will likely see a flame barge, maybe a fireship. Which is getting pretty close to the melee aspect. But could really be expanded upon. I have not seen what they have in store but it looks like dummy ships in the most basic form maybe slightly larger than aoe2 style. There are plenty of land maps for those that do not want to play it, but for those that do why do you only have negative perspectives to bring? (demonstrated by saying because someone does not like naval in another game) well what would you do better then?
I don’t think AoM was gimmicky per se, more that the setting was interesting and the mythological creatures had fairly unique abilities. (they still completely paled in comparison to land combat)
I think Total Wars naval combat is probably one of the best stabs at attempting to make naval combat interesting. With its accurate historical setting, strong attempts at realism. Crew numbers, and general movement. However the player base still really disliked it.
One of the most important aspects that a proper naval game needs to implement is movement. As half the tactical nature of naval warfare was manoeuvering your ships. So ships have to generally move fairly slowly for the player’s decisions to matter in a naval engagement. They shouldn’t snap in rotation like units do in Aoe.
The only two games I’ve personally played that had good naval gameplay was: Battlefleet Gothic Armada and Total War Napoleon.
As you can see in both games the units move slowly and can’t turn at sharp angles. So there is heavy emphasis on properly manoeuvering your ships on the battlefield. Battlefleet also made heavy use of abilities to make the gameplay interesting. (such as boosting your ship’s speed or firing torpedoes)
So IMO even if they had a few melee ships and you could maybe board other ships, if you don’t focus on tactical movement the naval combat will fail.
Unfortunately I can’t really comment on how the gameplay worked in Aoe4 because of the NDA.
Also looking at the topic header I realize we are going off topic, sorry guys 
Sea monsters are not gimmicky in the world of AOM, but you said that would be the only thing to make it epic fun, and its a gimmick if in the world of AOE, But I say people are just not trying hard enough.
Why did they dislike it? how many? Its a really different game… I like it in concept and to watch, but I do not really like playing it.
I agree movement speeds and turning radius’s are important to make it all work correctly. It seems they were trying for this with cannon ships having a wide area of effect, but from the few clips I saw doesn’t seem to matter as it pivots on a dime. Where a ship connects should matter as much as the firing arc of a cannon. A trireme took about 1.5 lengths to turn around, the fastest ones got up to 10 knots. (pretty fast) They were pretty hard to sink really because were made of such light buoyant woods. So as they got bigger ramming lost its fashion for more boarding. Though ship design changed some, they pretty much used the same tactics until cannon arrive on scene.
we can keep this on topic because ships basically are pieces of mobile siege, and could have added crew animations. I think they need a whole reworking of the naval game for that though…
By that logic, why have foliage on the ground, it serves no game play purpose.
Which is exactly why foliage is usually very limited in RTS and why there are certain techniques (e.g. color grading) to help it blend in with the background when the player is focussing on gameplay.
Not really a good comparison, since you can’t do that to crews. You can’t really apply the same logic or the same techniques as players would expect any crewmember to look like regular units. If they do look like regular units, you run into a set of problems to solve - very different from foliage or other background stuff. For example, how do you ensure that players can always easily read them as one unit and identify that unit at a glance.
Not saying it can’t be done. It obviously has been done in a number of games, although most of the games that walk this path actually have some gameplay attached to crews (see CoH). Personally, I would not mind it if done well and Relic obviously has some experience with designing weapon crews. But pretending this is an obvious choice without any drawbacks is disingenuous. If you are making a game where players need to identify groups of units at a glance crews absolutely add some issues to solve.
No one Ever in AOE3 complained about confusing cannon crew with musketeers. If anything they helped, one quickly recognizes the profile when units are too close… So even at a glance its all relative to see it as one unit.
Siege engineers can have their own garb, and since the swords and spears are so big its really clear what the units are. Its a false argument
The ghost images are no better. Its fine for construction, but too much for units in the battle.
Look, if you ignore any potential issues crews can cause then it comes down purely to aesthetics and preferences. You prefer them, some people don’t. That doesn’t make your way right or better.