I’ve listened to a lot of people complaining about AoE IV. I think the main problem is research.
To put it this way, the variety of research that age of empires 2 had, maybe more than 10 researches in the priest house, 3-4 researches just for a horseman… What does the name of the University mean? Isn’t it the center of research and breakthroughs? But the research we do in IV increases by 20% at the click of a button and then we don’t feel sorry even if we delete that building.
It makes us lose the desire to preserve buildings or the sense of knowing that we will need them for a long time. There’s no need for any other building except for recruiting troops and keeping the population limit high.
But in AoE 2 we used to protect the buildings until the imperial age in case at least 3-4 more researches would come in each one.
While I was expecting things like militia fence upgrades when I clicked on houses in IV and each house to get support for reinforcement, the number of researches across the entire game has been reduced.
The world wonders system just imposes a mandatory king of the hill minigame in every game. In real life we humans don’t always fight world wonders battles.
While IV is normally trying to add things that other games don’t cover, it seems to have done so by leaving behind what it has.
Admittedly or not, the point of RTS games is that they are played to fully feel the satisfaction of turning economic values into power. Without research, the fruit, meat, rock and gold gathered are meaningless.
I’m kind of dumb at this forums.