Very unlikely. There are already heavy cavalry with no lance or barding. There are heavy infantry with no shield. There are various weapon models for MAA and knights. Most heavy/light cavalry have shields regardless of the type. Neither of these caused any problem.
But some people who want to either defend every decision or advocate esports everytime everywhere would immediately come up with “nah if you make a heavy cavalry without a shield or spearmen with different polearms, it will affect unit recognition.”
1 Like
In fact, from my personal observation, the visual effects of weapons in Age of Empires 2 are much more realistic than those in Age of Empires 4. Like Age of Empires 3, the weapons in Age of Empires 2 also have a distinct metallic luster (although they are pre-rendered), and the overall performance is much better than in Age of Empires 4.
1 Like
You are talking about games that are up to two decades old. One of them sprite-based.
Anyone remember AoE II back in the old days? Ridiculously easy to get performance drops. Single cores and all that.
(the DE performance, well, I don’t own II, but III: DE has noticeable hitches for me that apparently require specific tweaks to settings to minimise / resolve)
Once again people are indicating one of the (maybe only) major RTS developers with 2020s technologies cannot do better in achieving BOTH high visual quality and good performance than a 20 year old engine (by the standard of its time).
2 Likes
In case you were confused, I wasn’t talking about the appearance of metal in weapons at all. I appreciate the improvements we got to armour, though there is notable (and documented) inconsistency across a range of weapons in the game.
But performance. I mean, performance is a complex topic that often gets deprioritised by management in favour of getting a product out of the door.
And yet, I simply disagree that it’s better in III: DE (and I can’t speak for II: DE, but I can speak for II, and I did play it on single-core and later dual-core and better systems). The argument wasn’t “IV can’t do better”, it’s improved repeatedly since release. The argument was “it’s worse than these other games”. It isn’t. In my opinion, the Season 5 improvements to rendering show that there’s still room for it to improve further.
1 Like
These are sheer facts not opinions:
(1) AOE3DE has a greater variety of weapon models. You can list it out. They also have more details and more metallic textures. In AOE4 some (emphasis) weapons still lack reflections and dents to look metallic (I know you’ll twist this into an opinion but it’s not).
(2) AOE3DE has somewhat worse optimization and performance because it’s a 20 year old engine.
I would say the same for AOE2. With its even older sprite-based engine and 200MB storage space they make specific design decisions in their models and renders to make the metallic parts feel metal.
So, it is pretty natural that AOE4 with its more modern engine can achieve at least equal variety and detail of weapons with better performance than AOE3DE. But it has not achieved the former part yet.
And after all I don’t think it’s a specific art style or design decision to have diverse and metallic swords/lances but the same plastic spearman weapons for different civs.
2 Likes
All this talk about weapons but what about artillery animations and physics? what about going poff upon death? what about units having the same death animation from a cannonball (really just a puff of smoke) as it does an archer? AoEIV broke my heart in this regard.
I’d really like artillery to be improved across the board here. Heck, an onager shot in AoE2 has more impact than in AoEIV. Artillery in general is not satisfying or immersive at all.
3 Likes
There is another thread for that.
Warning: this is a pErSonAl OpiNioN 
Whoops. Carry on. Disregard my post.
Nevertheless please improve artillery. 
1 Like
Literally in my post that you replied to:
You continue to bang on something about I both literally highlighted, and didn’t argue against. I mean, why?
Warning: I literally agreed with the last person to mention siege destruction to me. Pretty sure it was this thread, even 
C’mon. Give discussion a chance, please.
1 Like
Yeah, that’s ridiculous.
Infantry with polearms, I believe there will enough to be recognizable.
Maybe I should ask them, can’t you distinguish between spearmen and palace guards, even if they both carry some kind of polearms?
1 Like
A large number of amateur players have put forward suggestions for balancing unit values.
Developer Team: The vast majority of amateur players don’t understand, but a very small number of professional players do, so we don’t adopt it.
A large number of amateur players have suggested having the spearmen use the correct national version of their spears.
Developer Group: The vast majority of amateur players understand it, but a very small number of professional players do not understand it, so we do not adopt it.
1 Like
Hovewer i sussegest to all of you to complete the lastest Survey. There are many questions about graphic, artstyle, realistic or stylized, not only for the current titles but also for the future.
I selected realistic because i really would like to see a new game set in the ancient times with a great graphic. But i suppose it could be difficult with Essence Engine.
Despite what some people Say, this Survey clealry show that the graphic criticisms have had a certsin impact on the Aoe4 and i’m not referring to community ones but also to criticism from many professional reviewers.
This Is the First Time that i see all of this focus about graphic on a Survey.
1 Like
So when someone says other games did better than AOE4 in these particular aspects, it’s not wrong…
We’re not talking about whether you don’t care about such details or you prefer not having them, or how they fit into the overall graphic style.
It’s just lacking, and I don’t think it’s an intentional decision. Older AOEs despite their technical limitations made several attempts to improve the textures as much as possible and AOE4 definitely could and should. Hope we agree on that.
1 Like
I’m going to go on topic again, which were the discussion about spearmen. I do hope that this is a placeholder.
2 Likes
Which is why I only disagreed when it came to performance, in my experience.
I agree. I think it’s a resource / priority thing, and I hope whoever makes the decisions sees that as more civs are added, the more this is apparent to the players.
I agree!
1 Like
It’s really stupid that they’ve been using this placeholder for two years, perhaps some unreasonable person is insisting on using it.
3 Likes
Maybe you would like this.
Or they layed off the guy in charge of spearmen art.
They could make some new weapons if they are making some new civs,lol.
That’s also why I’ve been looking forward to them solving this spear’s mistake. Honestly, those guisarmes do ugly in game.
1 Like
