New biomes look great. They are varied, they feel different and are a little more than just a grassy plain. I have some complaints which I will get to, but first, I’d like to applaud the developer with the constraint in their soul to utilize a singular tree species for the Alpine biome. Look how good that is!
This looks infinitely more like a forest than the unhinged usage of 50 different tree species in one biome of all colours and shapes just to pad for space. The two new jungle/swamp/mangrove biomes are also showing a much more nuanced usage of trees species that add to the feel rather than detract from it.
There are a few issues however. The Greek Island maps features Prickly Pear bushes. Mind you, I want new skins for bushes and assets and I want to praise this otherwise, but Prickly Pears in Greece? Cacti are exclusive to the new world. So it sounds like this biome was originally meant to be somewhere in the new world, and was then renamed, opting to match Macedonians for the DLC after whatever changes happened to the DLC. I don’t want to concede to the possibility that an environmental dev genuinely thought, “Hey, Greece is deserty, let’s add Cacti”. That is of course, unless the developers just saw pictures of Greece or went there once and saw them. Like tomatoes, they do grow in Greece… TODAY. But, even if we extend AoE4’s timeperiod to post-discovery era, they were not wildly growing in Greece for centuries to come.
Again. I do want unique bushes. In fact, I want more unique bushes so we can also retrofit them into the older biomes where they belong. These are very cheap assets that add so much. Just make sure they actually belong.
As far as complaints go, I’d like them to adjust the textures that are placed down alongside with buildings. Buildings come with prepackaged assets like pots, bushes, fences and also texture decals on the floor like flagstones or tracks. This is great and its the type of smart environmental design that makes AoE4 stand out. However, the dirt textures seem to be pre-baked as opposed to utilizing existing ground texture from the biome it is placed upon. The result is jarring, as civilizations feature different types of textures beneath their buildings. Malians, Abbasid are jarring in snow biomes for instance, and here is an example of Tughlaq’s buildings heavily contrasting with the black sand in one of the new biomes. This should be addressed because it heavily muddles the aesthetic of this game. I’ve also noticed that chopped trees also leave a ground texture which does not utilize the existing ground texture, so in this same black-sand biome, forests will look weird when chopped down. The same goes for Siege units that will unpack, drop a bunch of miscoloured sand, then pack up along with the sand like ???
I have enjoyed the new unique weapon additions to many civilizations, and the attempt to address the metallic shine, but there are still plenty of weapons that look plastic white (like western Guisarme from English, HRE Spearmen) that need to be changed. I have also noticed a problem with the new weapon additions.
Delhi, Abbasid and Tughlaq now use a new spear model for their spearmen, but the Imperial and Castle age models are swapped.
I’m still hoping we get new rivers to match the new water we got, unique animals/bushes in different biomes, a better Anti-aliasing solution for the foliage, cleaned up older biomes (like Gobi desert ground texture) and revisit the tree assets used in older biomes to make them more specific to said biome rather than a mishmash of whatever.
Happy to see more steps address the visual fidelity of AoE4 but I strongly urge more aggressive additions. We can afford animal models, seriously talk to your managers or whatever, it’s been 4 years since launch without taking into consideration the development time itself.
