It’s just odd that they’ve neglected to add more animals for so long. It really is not a big undertaking, and I am still hoping that event they had a few months ago (almost a year now) celebrating the animals in the game, was a hint towards something more–because if not, then it is so tone deaf it just makes me question the people behind the project.
I think AoE4 plays the best out of any Age games available, despite featuring bit boring design for unique units and mechanics. What holds it back, and what has always held it back, was a underwhelming campaign and visuals.
The people that made the developers turn the game into a desaturated mess because of the initial “mobile game” criticism before launch have legitimately hurt the game in more ways than one. I suspect they’re behind many odd decisions, such as the size of production buildings and stubbornness around the usage of weapons for Spearmen. They’re likely the reason behind not adding more diversity to the environment and animals too.
For reference, here is how it looked before people demanded they change the colours;
And here is after.
The game was clearly not built with this palette or building production size in mind, yet no one seemingly wants to walk back this obviously awful decision because it went through some council, because they suppousedly know better than the artists behind it.
My most hated element of environment in AoE4 is specifically those trees you see on the bottom left of the last picture. You see, they look incredibly artificial after they changed the colours. Too blue to look like any real tree. But, I imagine that they likely would’ve appeared much better in the original lighting of this game. Oh, and it is also featured way too much, in almost every environment, making them feel that much less like different environments.
EDIT: Also frozen horses in stables and chickens in houses/TCs. Like, cmon you can do better.