Some ideas to improve AOE 4

I am talking about information that is functionally relevant.

Exactly.

Yes.

Then you must understand that my points above are not a rejection of modern design.

It is strictly expressing that you can have both.

In fact, I went ahead and made a little mock up just about your examples. Here you have mechanical information, cultural information and character. This is not hard.

Spearman_128x128

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They specifically stated that AOE4 is made for Esports. People who enjoy single-player, skirmish, campaign ignored, and too much simplicity was introduced. And now we have this soulless AOE4.

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Completely false!
I just remember them through their UI position, not what it illustrates.

AOE1,2,3 all have clear icons, real armor pictures, arrow heads, improved metal swords, etc.
AOE4 has nothing like that and it takes away all the historical weaponry and armor.

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while i do see the point you’re trying to make, there is one issue here, we’re comparing individual icons, while what should be compared is how distinct they are ingame with actual size in UI panel, yes we could add dots for upgrade tier on icons even in the og games, but being able to tell icons apart quickly at their typical small size is also highly important, and i think thats where aoe4 system tends to have issues
or you can do the aoe3 style for upgrade icons, bronze silver and gold upgrade tier, era appropriate medal with unique shape and metal for each tier, and in center a symbol for unit its affecting

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Would like to see a batch unit production at once according to timing like AOE3

The maps look empty with almost the same stuff and with not enough flora and fauna like AOE2 or AOE3.
Would like to see some goats, bears, pigs, chickens, giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, and so on

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I think 2 civs per year is pretty good for now. The devs need player feedback and meta development of new civs over time to balance out the game properly.

Scale of units and buildings, as well as higher pop cap is too late at this point, since that would upend balancing the devs have already committed to.

AOE4 DEFINITELY needs an improved and easier editor, on par with Starcraft 2 and Warcraft III. Having a proper and popular realism mod with proper scales and such would be great.

They must realize the extra mileage Blizzard strategy games get with a proper editor (which, I hope there’s some integration between the developers through Microsoft acquisition of Activision-Blizzard).

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one issue with editor input from blizzard, people that made that are long gone, to frost giant, dreamhaven etc.

I’ve been playing these games since 1998. That the community had never voiced any issues ever with the icon design until AoE4 speaks for itself.

Good design is design that goes invisible. These icons are bad design.

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AOE3DE you mean, those were their glory days… this game was so close to being perfect and they just… made it different to aoe3de, big mistake

Wanna see more SP content like campaigns about Abbasid Dynasty, Delhi Sultanate, Malians, Ottomans, and Holy Roman Empire!

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The fact that we were all 24 - 25 years younger might have something to do with it :slightly_smiling_face:

17 - 18 years older than when AoE III was released, just to be thorough.

For most folks, that’s a long time.


Icons have been done to death in many threads. For my part, I like the change on the whole, and though I can think of improvements to them, I think people are trying too hard to think of reasons beyond personal preference for liking icons that came out an average of two decades ago or so.

That’s the risk of change. People aren’t always going to like it. But we should be careful to weight such feedback appropriately. If we even can.

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As you can tell that Aoe 4 did not do it Ensemble Studios…

Yes, you miss all that…

Yes, in fact it shows how well it was made aoe 3 in its day and for wanting to put reverse, they passed by…

Yes, or minimum campaign with Ottomans and Malians of 9 missions each…

Would like to see clans, maybe done like the home city in aoe3 where you can build up your clan page. Would be a good way of selling cheap dlc to support the game

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maybe you have low standard and its okay but this playerbase and fanbase have a bit more higher