I get it that we are not going to get new civs soon. Not a big problem for me. But I’d like to point out there are still a lot of rooms of new contents outside new civs.
As I have kept preaching, this game has the potential of being a great sp game. Competitive pvp RTS has a small, and also very saturated, group of audience and there is no need to get every game competing in this domain. It is a huge waste that this game still has far fewer sp contents than the other “more pvp friendly” ones in the series.
Campaigns and stand-alone scenarios
Civs are more diverse and each has more options than any other AOE game. That gives rise to huge potential in campaign designs. You can play totally different “civs” in one campaign even if it is always the same civ.
Campaigns also serve as tutorials. It is especially important for a game with very diverse civs. However there are still civs that have no playable campaign at all, and big important events missed. Could you imagine a classical antiquity game with no Rome, or a medieval game with no crusades?
Tutorials
AOE3 civs are more diverse, but the game has poorer tutorials. There should be also small missions like masteries in AOE4.
Other forms include either a short video or text introduction when selecting home cities. Better tutorial is all you need to "attract new players"
Map editor assets
AOE3 has quite a few great ones, but mostly for biomes and natural environments. There aren’t (relatively) many interesting things to play with in the map editor.
AOE2 had a lot of unused heroes (many with unique models) as well as buildings in the map editor. Those are good for making grand city maps and the like. AOE3 should have greater potentials to do even better.
I wonder if it is technically possible to start with porting some home city assets into the map editor. I know some mods did it.
Unknown maps
Why are updates to “Unknown” never specified? I get the surprise factor here, but that really hides a lot of hard work and many people might miss it. At least “we added new assets to unknown” should be highlighted instead of buried in a long note.
Is it also possible to make the unknown map its own mode with some random assets as toggleable options in the future?
I found there are also unique natives in this map. When one selects unknown there is no concern of balancing, so it is possible to throw all kinds of fun ideas not limited to starting and natives to it.
AI
This deserves a whole new post. I’ll leave it to experts. No need to elaborate on how important it is.
Maybe I’m a bummer but I’d rather have historical battles than campaigns. They are shorter, yes, but they allow you to cover more civs. Also, campaigns require more effort ; you can deploy a single historical Battle every once in a while
Yes some campaigns in other AOE games are rather forced. Not all events or figures have enough contents to fill 4-5 scenarios.
Single scenarios are more flexible.
El modo tutorial debería estar a la vista para los principiantes, seguido del arte de la guerra. También podríamos tener mini campañas de tres escenarios, sin necesidad de tremendas animaciones. En AoE2 las campañas son un fondo con texto, bosquejos y una voz en off. Ya con algo parecido uno se conforma
¿Qué le falta? Para mi, algunos triggers como 'cambiar lugar de entrenamiento ’ o ‘cambiar lugar de investigación’ o incluso un ciclo noche y día y ponerle slidebars a nativos y mercenarios, pero no sé qué mas
I have always been an advocate of a co-op mission based scenarios not the co-op historical battle campaigns. They can take some lessons how Starcraft 2 did the most played mode in the RTS genre. Co-op vs AI really works wonder in different mission scenarios. Each commander/leader of the available civs will have their unique tech trees and units different from the multiplayer mode.
Yes, but doing the campaigns takes time, and the devs don’t have such a big team to do it…In fact there are 2 Historical Battles (New Orleans and the USS Philadelphia playing with the United States; Queenston Heights is playing with Canada and Hauds in coop against the United States)…after the rest of the civs appear in historical battles, in campaigns or in the Art of War (Holland for example); the only civs that don’t appear anywhere are Incas, Sweden, Italy and Malta (all DE civs)… Then, important events are already in the game, such as the historical maps… all that remains is to include the Succession Wars of the first half of the 18th century and obviously the Seven Years’ War and the American Civil War…
AoE 3 DE Timeline:
XV century
1421-1422: Act II: China Campaign (Zheng He’s Travels and Hypothesis of Chinese in America)
1494-1559: Historical Map of the Italian Wars
1494: Portuguese Church card of Treaty of Tordesillas
XVI century
1516: Historical Battle of Algiers
1542: Historical Battle of the Cristopher Da Gama expedition
1565-1566: Act I: Blood Campaign (Siege of Malta and Spanish Colonization in the New World)
1568-1648: Historical Map of the Eighty Years’ War
1578: Historical Battle of the Three Kings (Battle of Alcácer Quibir)
1582: Historical Battle of Chuvash Cape (Russian conquest of Siberia)
1585: Founding of Roanoke (Tutorial)
1586: Historical Battle of the Raid on the Caribbean
1598: French Church card of Edict of Nantes
1598: Regicidal map of Honshu
XVII century
1600: Act I: Japan Campaign (Unification of Japan)
1607: Jamestown Foundation (Trial Match)
1618-1648: Historical Map of the Thirty Years’ War
1620: Thematic Map of Plymouth/United States card of Plymouth Settlers (Arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims)
1648: German Church card of Treaty of Westphalia
1655-1660: Historical map of the Deluge
1658: Swedes Church card of Treaty of Roskilde
1683-1699: Historical Map of the Great Turkish War (Siege of Vienna/Battle of Kalhenberg)
1688: British Church card of The Glorious Revolution
XVIII century
1700-1721: Historical Map of the Great Northern War
1754: Historical Battle of Fort Duquesne (French-Indian War)
1756-1757: Act II: Ice Campaign (Seven Years War)
1773: United States card of Boston Tea Party
1775-1781: Act I: Fire Campaign (American Revolution)
1780-1783: Inca card of the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II
1787: United States card of Virginia Plan (Constitutional Convention of 1787)
1789-1799: French Revolution
1791-1804: Haitian Revolution
XIX century
1803-1815: Historical Map of the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleonic France Revolutionary Deck)
1803: Historical Battle of the Burning of the USS Philadelphia (Barbary War)
1804-1810: Historical Battle of the Fall of the Hausa (Fulani War)
1810-1822: Latin American Revolutions
1810: Historical Battle of Grito de Dolores (Mexican War of Independence)
1812: Historical Battle of Queenston Heights (Start of the War of 1812)
1815: Historical Battle of New Orleans (End of the War of 1812)
1817: Act III: Steel Campaign (Latin American War of Independence)
1821-1830: Greek Revolution Phanariot ability
1823: Central American Revolution of Mexico
1825-1830: Indonesian Revolution
1830: Dutch card of Belgian Revolution
1835-1836: Mexican Revolution of Texas
1839-1876: Ottoman Church tecnology of Tanzimat
1840: Mexican Revolution of Río Grande
1846: Mexican Revolution of California
1847: Yucatan Revolution of Maya
1848-1849: Hungarian Revolution
1852: South African Revolution
1853-1856: Historical Map of the Russo-Turkish Wars (Crimean War)
1855: Historical Battle of the Era of the Princes
1857: Act III: India Campaign (Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 and end of the Mughal Empire)
1863: United States card of Pickett’s Charge (Battle of Gettysburg)
1866-1876: Act II: Shadow Campaign (Wars of Red Cloud and Black Hills)
1867: Canadian Revolution
1876-1911: Mexican card of “Porfiriato”
1878: Romanian Revolution
1882: Egyptian Revolution
1899-1901: Chinese card of the Boxer Rebellion
Twentieth century:
1917: Finnish Revolution
Yes, more tutorials would not be a bad thing…or lastly, add masteries like those of AoE 4 for AoE 3 civs…
That’s true, they could put tutorials and videos on how to use the map editor, or hold tournaments like the ones AoK had back in the day for people who make the best maps and whoever wins the tournament can officially put their map in the game…Troteck has very good scenarios made with the map editor…
True, more unknown maps wouldn’t hurt…night maps would be nice too…
Yeah, improving the AI would be nice too…
Yes, we want historical battles for the remaining civs… Incas, Sweden, Italy and Malta…
But they should be actual campaigns, not just some cards on the decks or revolutions.
Compare it to the aoe2 campaigns, where we can play in scenarios ranging from the Sack of Rome to the Battle of Grunwald, from Hastings to Lepanto, from the Mongol conquests to the Crusades.
It sad we don’t have something similar in aoe3
Yes, but it takes time to do the campaigns, plus you have the historical maps that have a higher replay value than campaigns that you play them only once at most…
Historical maps are a map type introduced in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Knights of the Mediterranean that features special objectives and mechanics. These are set up with special optional conditions (for example, limited maximum Age, which civilizations can be played, the starting resource amounts etc.) based on the most famous European conflicts of the Early Modern Era (16th-19th centuries).
They can be played in single-player or multiplayer casual mode (except The Thirty Years’ War, which can be played in mutiplayer only).
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648): Commanding smaller armies, players must capture 20 villages throughout the map. The player with the most captured villages wins the match.
The Italian Wars (1494-1559): A large river separates four influential Italian City-States which must be captured and held.
The Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648): One player must hold off all others on a fortified peninsula.
The Deluge (1655-1660): Steppes and temperate woodlands are separated by a single trade route. The southern team must defend against early cavalry aggression.
The Great Turkish War (1683-1699): One team must defend their great city, while the other attacks. The city is surrounded by woodland and natural resources.
The Great Northern War (1700-1721): A frozen coast with thick forests and two trade routes on the water. Abandoned resources crates can occasionally be discovered inland.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815): Teams must train their armies quickly during a short period and fight all over the map to seize every strategic point.
The Russo-Turkish Wars (1853-1856): Commanding smaller armies, players must capture trade sites, factories and fixed guns throughout the map.
I’m not saying we couldn’t have both.
For example, In Starcraft 2 many coop maps are based on campaign missions.
Working on campaigns could bring us a lot of multiplayer assets as well.
And there’s also the historical battles. There’s so much there that could be done.
Besides, regarding the campaigns, remember that a lot of people actually do like to play that more than multiplayer. There’s a reason aoe2 still gets new campaigns.
Yes, but it is what it is… obviously I would play if there were more campaigns, but I think about it and I prefer not to have campaigns, but to have more content…
I think some of it comes to mod-ability. I don’t mod aoe3 but I have heard from fellow modders who do both in aoe2 and 3, that 3 has much lesser tool and some are closed source.
Turns out, there is already a night-day lightning set trigger:
Set Lightning
First argument, Set Name, can be one of the following
Cycle_Night
Cycle_Morning
Cycle_Day_01
Cycle_Sunset
Second argument, Fade in, is the amount of time it needs to go from current light mood to the selected one.
It uses the function trSetLighting("%SetName%",%FadeTime%);
Combined with a reduced LOS for every protounit and maybe some increased LOS for units near fire, you can have a day/night cycle. These two things would need to be done with a custom trigger, though, because of the amount of protounits you’d need to modify it’s LOS
