Micro management is more important for competitive gameplay. But I totally agree with you, because in single player you can have an easy to go playthrough this does not mean that it is ok to have less visibility and make practically impossible to play good if you want.
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Only thing you know is that the people going towards the building are allies (American maybe? British?)
And the people defending are German. No way to know what kind of units are what except the tanks
Tags above units, without them it is just a giant blob of chaos
I actually can read BFME2 easily but this is a mod. It might be better if you share an actual screenshot
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My mistake I picked a mod image in BfME2, but even in the original the graphics are similar. In my opinion, BfME had great graphics for its epoch before 20 years, but it is the worst regarding to visibility problems. . Example:
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This Is the official pool sent to many insiders (including me) from MS.
Question 8: 85% of people asked for Brillant and realistic graphic: this option clearly included mention of AOE 1-3 and Total war.
So, a âTotal war graphicâ have been also asked from the most of fans but Developers didnât heard them.
Question 21: the most of people asked for a Graphic Updates.
For now AOE doesnât seem Realistic or a next generation game.
So we can Say that developers didnât made what people asked and all the negative reactions are very well judtified, imho.
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Itâs not a saturation matter but lack of details. A brillant or colourful game could be Great if units, models and textures are detailed: Company of Heroes 3 and Settlers are good examples.
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You speak practically for a different type of strategy game. And I donât think that I prefer it moreâŠ
Ok, it is a squad base game, you recognize the squads. But you canât detect different units mixed between with the opponent.
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This image for me Is very confused and totally mess. I canât clearly see what happened.
For me, Company of Heroes 3 Is perfect
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This image you posted from CoH3 has a lot of zoom, practically you see 2 buildings one near another and some units near them. It is 1/10 of the screen you will see in AoE4. And still you see flags above the units so that you recognize them.
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We could prefer or not prefer squads or flags but this graphic style was an option into the official pool and the most of people also Voted for It.
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Many of people Will not Always play with zoom out during the campaigns, iâm pretty sure about that. Single player modes have different rythm and the readability Is less important.
1400 out of the tens of thousands of people who already play Age games, not to mention players that would be drawn in by AoE4, now polls that ask whether people like the graphics show that people like them, not to mention reddit, steam, these forums, youtube comment sections all show the majority likes the graphics.
And they went that direction it seems as most people like it.
Ahem, you said AoE1-3 AND Total War. People couldâve been asking for graphics similar to AoE1-3 not Total War, donât twist the answer to your benefit
What is the one above it? Unit PaâŠ
I think they have been upgraded. They look better than AoE2 and better readability than AoE3
It looks realistic to me, I could care less about the next generation graphics, how many people are playing ancestors legacy? Manor Lords graphics just wouldnât work for an age game
More like the loud minority with their negative reactions
It is very readable imo
It is also zoomed in much farther than AoE4. If CoH3 was zoomed out as much as AoE4 (and had the same amount of units, AoE4 will have probably close to 10x as many units on the battlefield at one time than CoH3) it would be a complete mess.
According to the AoE2 SP playerbase, campaigns arenât really important to them. They play them once and then donât really touch them again. When youâre playing an RTS you donât have time to zoom in, even if you are a casual. Those 5 seconds of zoomed in let the enemy sneak troops around and flank you, because you couldnât see them.
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How the hell is this even a bad example in terms of visibility?!? I can literaly distinguish every single unit that is on screen! Is the average RTS player just as blind as a bat? Most of these arguments talking about these supposed visibility issues that might arise from more ârealisticâ (I prefer the term authentic, personally) have been somewhat flimsy, but this one managed to be the worst.
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[mod hat on] please kindly attack the arguments and not the people making them. Leave this forum better than you found it.
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And Jimmy thinks AoE4 isnât very readable, apparently people read different things better
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Every stats and the recent Relicâs interview show how the most of people play only campaigns, skirmish and scenarios. Multiplayer Is a Little percent of the player base.
I said that with zoom out every RTS Is pretty the same for me but AOE4 Is confused for me due the lack of unit details. In some part of that screenshots i canât understand Who are spearmens or heavy infantry because all weapons and colours are exagereted.
Iâve not the same problems with CoH3, Spellforce3, cossacks3 or Total war.
Every Person Will probably have a different reaction or point of view.
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And I am saying that you derive a âvery wrongâ concept from a sentence which doesnt at all mean that.
They are not trying to get DoTa Player for all in the world. if they WOULD the graphics would be different, the gameplay aswell. They dont because they are not stupid.
But they saw elements of Dota which make sense to use in RTS, to make players play MP too after SP.
Their base consept is the same as all age games, so they will sell it like that. Its age of empires.
The game is not designed exclusively to DoTA/Esports (which btw are also 2 very different design principles).
Its designed to also cater to Esports, and making it easy to watch, while also catering to the base age player, as we stil have base age gameplay.
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you are taking the wrong questions though. From MS point of view. Take question 4. Which feature did you male BUY an age game. Now search for the graphics 
its 0.1% that say pretty graphics made them BUY the game. And thats the most important factor for the company^^
also is this link common knowlege and my be shared?
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as someone mentioned CoH is palyed quite zoomed in.
Which is actually hy i didnt like it. I couldntzoom out far enough for me to enjoy it, the strategic grand view was missing to me.
But thats what CoH is and was.
Age however is about the grand view an needs some oveview even when zoomed out a LOT.
However this shot, while already showing a clwar distuingishment of enemy (red and friend (blue) units, indeed is not very readable. But that is mainly because of its resolution. its around 720. and therefore very blurry.
I would assume you play at least on 1080p monitors, and the blurryness will be gone, the screen bigger, the image clearer to see.
open the picture in full screen and you will be able to easily tell the units roughly apart regarding types -
at the right you can see some seemingly blue pikes fighting knights with lances, although I must admit that part is hard to read with this resoultion.
above that blue knights attacking red siege.
left of that right form the main building are red archers (they look like archers, also there is an arrow flying from them at their top.
above that in the woods seem to be blue infantry (may be archers, but seem more like infantry, aswell as blue cav fighting a red cav charge (red still has lances, blue seems not to)
left of that more blue knights followed by further left pikemen in front of siege units, with archers right behind siege, and extra pkikes behind them, at the left more knights.
below that in front of the siege units is mostly archers and a cavalry attacking ( not charging, no lance- charge probably done before) into enemy buildings and infantry
bottom of pic: cav fighting infantry ( spearmen, dont look like pikes)
now of course thats just from a shot, in low quality, but in a real battle you woul d have ordered your groups, so you know at leqast your own units. I think you can see well which battle you are winning in the shot - the ones on ethe left clearly, the would ambush may be lost, and the lower right attack by blue definitively is stopped.
So I would say its good to read especially for how much you see and how low res the shot it - but of course in an age battle, cluttering is a thing leading to less visibility.
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I can tell whatâs going on in every single screenshot. SpellForce 3? Thereâs clearly two colors, blue and yellow, fighting each other. Battle for Middle Earth? Blue and red. Ancestors Legacy? Blue and red. CoH3? Alright this one Iâm cheating I have extensive knowledge of ww2 equipment so I know what is what. AoE4? Blue on red, seems like blue is winning though.
As to what are the units fighting in all of these screenshots, I canât really tell beside the odd archer or tank. Does it matter? No, because I will learn how to recognize each unit by playing the game, not by guessing what is what on random screenshots. Readability is a joke argument.
Also to whoever lowered the brightness of that AoE4 screenshot to make it look like CoH3, thatâs not how you darken a game lol.
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