Game needs more PvE attention for sure. The Arts of War are fun (especially the Malian and Ottoman challenges), but we need more and different kinds of content.
2 Likes
The English campaign cough cough coughā¦
Historical battles with the civs that donāt participate in the campaigns would be nice tooā¦
4 Likes
This may line up with some of the other current active threads, but the problem in the campaign directions of AOE4 seemingly are related to their decision in trying to present scenarios as strictly historical.
The problem with that, is that these scenarios end up feeling impersonal, surgical and soulless. In focusing on developing fun and interesting maps that use a historical scenario however, much more could have been achievedāand that could have leaked into the fun of playing the actual competitive game as well.
There may even have been some inverse logic in development as well. Restricting the campaign maps to the available assets for competitiveāthis is why the Campaign mode does not look like any different zone than any random map the game can generate. Say you play Starcraftās campaign mode, their maps are handcrafted with plenty of unique assets created for those very scenariosāof course this ends up leaking into the making of actual competitive maps after. In AOE4 however, it seems the reverse has happened and this has left campaign feeling uninteresting in many ways.
There are unique assets in the campaign. Some of them have been brought over to competitive just recently. However, there are very few of them. I fear the decision of going in this direction with their campaigns was simply a mistake, and Iām hoping that they shift gears with future PvE content.
4 Likes
Yes, everything does wrongā¦ Wanting to focus the game on the competitive one, they ended up doing the multiplayer maps first and then the campaign and it always has to be the other way aroundā¦of all the AoE, the coldest one that leaves me playing it is AoE 4ā¦
3 Likes
Not enough thought went into level design either. Most of the levels are just defend missions where enemy waves attack your walls or attack missions where you start out with a large army and conquer things.
There are very few truly innovative levels where you do anything more than that. And the protagonists not being ācharactersā makes you sort of not care about them. The spirit of AoE campaigns is to make historical figures into characters you can root for and hence enjoy the story of. These campaigns feel lifeless with no āprotagonistā to care for.
Challenge-wise, the difference in the difficulty levels I feel is more enemy troops, not smarter enemies. So it seems they didnāt spend much thought on campaigns at all. Just like they didnāt spend thought on the āImprovedā Hardest AI.
4 Likes
I think that the AoE 4 campaigns are based more on those of AoE 1 where you did not have a protagonist per se, but something more focused on the historical development of a civ over timeā¦the only campaign with protagonist that has AoE 1 is that of Julius Caesar, which is similar to those of AoE 2ā¦
1 Like
Moreover, if you play against Hard or Very Hard, enemy AI will produce villagers non-stop and will end up without any soldiersā¦ The AI simply produces villagers as soon as it has more population. The devs didnāt fix it for about 1.5 years xD
This game offers almost nothing to Casuals.
And it is hard to say it is an AOE game
5 Likes
Storytelling style only.
AOE1 campaigns have some huge (relatively) maps with several factions and a lot of freedom.
AOE4 campaigns on the other hand almost have linear playthroughs with one or two opponents.
1 Like
Of course, in that sense they are campaigns more similar to those of AoM and later games ā¦
the last patch repaired nothing. Hope in the next big update this problem will be solved.
On an adjacent note, the single player campaigns have not been kept up-to-date with the multiplayer balance changes. Itās like two separate versions of AoE4 at this point. Units and techs are in outdated positions, units have different stats, etc. It must be more confusing than ever to play the campaign and then try your first multiplayer or vs AI games.
Also, I feel like the campaigns didnāt really teach the player good skills. One of the missions that really felt like a joke was one of the mongol ones where it asks you to destroy a keep with mangudai. You would never do that in a real game and it doesnāt teach the player how to properly use mangudai or how cool they can be.
And yea, the AI is poor in campaign too. On harder difficulties they just get more units, they donāt use them better or play differently.
1 Like
I tried it in the easy ai, france against holy roman empire. The AI produce lots of troops. It is ok.
The problem is, all of them is Archers!
So, just pick some cavalry, attack and the game is over.
Harder difficulty settings the AI will mass spearmen as well especially if you build a ton of cavalry
thx, i should give a try.