Additionally, you have OST specifically composed for the campaign cutscenes (e.g. Act 1):
Or individual victory tracks for each win condition (Regular, Trade Monopoly and Revolution):
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But then you want to compare a two and a half minute soundtrack to a two and a half hour soundtrack. The instruments in the Age III soundtracks are classical, but the civilization soundtracks in Age IV are medieval. Not to mention the beautiful documentary work they did on medieval weapons that you can watch during the campaigns.
Russian Streltsy
Mongol Multibow Crossbow
Early cannons and Ribauldequin
Does Age of Empires III have such sophisticated mini documentaries?
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It has a compendium.
Setting personal bias aside, I do not believe that any game in the series is superior to another. While certain aspects of each game may be objectively better than the others, they are all excellent games that can and have stood on their own merits.
For me, AoEIV is fine. None of the issues I encountered during the initial release have been addressed, but after returning to it following a two-year break, I had some fun before leaving again. It’s fine. Masteries are to be praised and the Landmarks are an improvement on TADs. PC performance is stellar. It is accessible enough for new players to the RTS genre as it needed to be.
Some things got lost along the way and took a step back from its predecessors after a 16-year mainline dormancy and a new dev studio, so that is to be expected. I also won’t hold IV’s lack of innovation against it, as it makes sense to play it safe for the reasons stated above. I do expect it for AoEV though.
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I really don’t think Age of Empires IV is inferior to its predecessors.
But there have been some problems unique to IV:
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the localization is worse than with any other part of the series. Not sure why, maybe developers oursource these kind of things, when before they had some specific partners to do that? I play the german version and I am pretty sure the predecessors were almost flawless in this regard. Now there are still words or sentences that are not properly translated. From what I’ve read in the forums, there are other languages with this issue too and more severe ones
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the expectation (mine and I bet others’ too) to solve bugs and stuff like that is way higher than in the time of AOE2 or AOE3. I still have purple cannonball and handcannoneer fire trails
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it really feels to me like the developer needed quite some time to figure our what they wanted in the game. It feels like the vision of the other AOE titles was more clear earlier, even though these games also changed over time, like AOE3
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as someone who plays almost exclusively against AI I can say that it was and is an up-and-down ride. They still have to figure out the AI to prevent problems like ridiculous villager travels. I felt the predecessors were more consistent in this regard
Still, for me this game (AOE4) has “it”. Hard to describe, but I like the gameplay quite a bit. This doesn’t mean that the gameplay of the other parts was neccessarily worse or something, just different. I really like the look of a big base and the fact that it looks so much different, depending on the civilisation.
AOE4 is a legitimate part of the AOE family for me and I like it just as much as AOE2 AOE3 and AOM
See AOE4 villagers travelling from far away to get that sweet sweet shore fish:
I suppose that AOE-4 is far superior in many aspects to other AOE games, but it cannot be denied that many were annoyed that more aspects were not included in the game after AOE-2.
For example, I would have liked the creation of units in batches (5 at a time). Except for villagers, ships and artillery.
I think that the vizier points should have been a global mechanic (obviously it would be called differently if it applied to all). The fact that it is not customizable, and that there are also few options, makes it easy to balance.
Minor factions, which do not necessarily have to be tribes if they do not make sense within Europe. They could be enclaves or another type of entity that is not considered a nation as such.
Just to mention a few things. And this without talking about some visual aspects that have already been discussed so much.
AOE4 is pretty fun honestly
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does aoe 4 has a variety of mission like defense of vip villager/settler or survive the harzadous map meanwhile you micro with few uniots or at least an narrative in all the events which it seem aoe4 tries to fix it with the documentary which doesnt work well imo or some sea maps in the campaign?
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That’s exactly why it won me over. In my opinion, the others seem very oldfashioned.
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No, aoe 4 is way better than all the other ones
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not true. old games has its own thing but at leats they focus on their gimmick. aoe 4 tries tor ecollect but ends in a product with no substance
aoe4 is improved and better designed that its predescesor it beats them in most of the aspects
people who think and say otherwise are just blind by nostalgia and cope
Music and sound design in aoe4 is the best its not even negotiable
Graphic are preference aoe2 can look better when you look at it from 1 angle but because its 2d it looks clucky and stiff in many situationss
advantage of 3d is that animations and everything moving looks much more fluid and you can rotate map and stuff in aoe2 cant even do that
Aoe2 has advantage of being better optimized and running even on old pcs and laptops with those graphics
this is the one of the reason it has more players aoe4 is optimized like shit
Gameplay is also better more dynamic and not stiff like in older games units got unique abilities which are more than just like +damage in aoe2 much more animations like charging bracing and other fun stuff.
Systems are better more balanced and well thought in aoe4
in aoe2 you always got most of the population in vills like 140 and armies are rly small all the time in aoe4 you can see actuall big battles as armies often are bigger pop than vills tech switching in aoe2 is also problem cuz blacksmith techs and armor upgrades all affect different type of units alot of times you see like only knights 60 knights and nothing else
aoe4 armies are more diverse cuz you need diverse realistic army composition
Civilizations are more diverse and all have cool unique things
and have unique regional models for units ( this should have beeen also added in aoe2 long ago)
aoe2 finally is getting some new models for elite units but it still has long wayy to go its boring to see same units over and over again with every civ
Aoe4 has a bit slow start early thats why some people may see it as boring compared to aoe2 where you just micro like a nerd from the start on arabia and there are more vill fights cuz vills are kinda busted in aoe2
but i dont see it as a problem i rather have aoe4 be that slower more strategic type of game than some micro nerd fest like starcraft 2 ,
So overall aoe4 is a great game it had poor start but nowadays people who say otherwise are just bitter and cant deal with the truth that aoe4 just surpassed aoe2 in pretty much everything aoe2 is still great game and have alot of hours in it but if youre not blinded by nostalgia you can see the huge improvment from aoe2 to aoe4 now
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Let’s see, the fact is that AoE2 surpasses AoE4 in popularity, content, mods, accessibility, some mechanics that may draw more attention from a micromanagement point of view or tactics such as increased damage on hills. All this at the moment. Perhaps it will change over time.
Art style is more subjective, but they seem to like the art style of 2 better and also how detailed and rich 3 is (as long as it doesn’t affect readability). The music also seems to please more in AoE2 (AoE4 has an better immersive sound in the Gameplay).
AoE4, although it is much better than at launch, can give quite a bit more than it is giving.
I’ve known AoE2 since 2004, for as long as I can remember, and I can say for sure that, as an AoE2 fan, most of the AoE2 community thinks this game is amazing not because it’s better, it’s simply because they’re used to the old style of playing RTS, the great example of this is that many don’t even play other strategy games, as if they were slaves to AoE2, they’re blind and stuck in the old way, this seems kind of nostalgic, many like me remember the good fun with relatives and friends, but it’s true that AoE 4 is certainly a better game, there’s no doubt about it!! The other big problem actually lies with the influencers themselves, those who stream tournaments and some professional AoE2 players, who are often toxic and try to manipulate their community base to keep playing AoE2. To get an idea of this, just watch when some professional AoE2 player tries to stream playing AoE4, they are massacred by the community itself and it seems like they are prevented from playing any other game, they are literally slaves to AoE2!! I’m a fan, I like AoE2 precisely because of its old RTS style, but I don’t like the AoE2 community, because they are toxic, and it seems like they want to force us to play only AoE2, I’M NOT GOING TO BE THAT STUPID. I’M GOING TO PLAY WHAT I THINK IS FUN, IN THIS CASE AOE 4 IS BETTER AND MUCH MORE FUN, AND HAS MUCH MORE WAYS TO DO STRATEGY. But that doesn’t mean I won’t play AoE2. AoE2 is a classic and I like its old style!!
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I think main issue is a lot of the experimental RTS like DoW3 and Age of Empires Online were big disappointments, that’s why people simply demanded something that actually works, grounded and back to the roots like AoE4. Sure such game is not unique, but at least playable.
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I saw the AoE developer in general go bankrupt due to the failure of AoE 3, precisely because of this toxic community. I remember saying at the time: I don’t like AoE3 and I’m not going to play it because AoE 2 is better, and much more. In fact, it was me, along with this community, that they destroyed everything they touched. I won’t be like that anymore. I’ll play whatever is fun. The big anger of the toxic AoE2 community is that they couldn’t do the same thing with AoE4. AoE4 sells a lot and already has a large player base that is only growing. This makes them uncomfortable and they get desperate. I say this, I know I can’t say that the entire AoE2 community is like this.
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In Asymmetrical RTS game you can only use 1 faction, from that faction 1 unit and do all time same build order.
All RTS developers went bankrupt with this odd Starcraft BW asymmetry concept.
AoE4 is a very clear solution to this issue. A game that makes sense. A game that is symmetrical so you can use all the factions and units , with variety of strategies without a disadvantage.
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Let’s say for example we make dogs as units for spain “So they act as Zerg rush” as new faction.
This will end up with all people either play only Spain or not play vs Spain.
You see the only feasible solution is to make a new mechanic, but apply it to all factions.
So either all factions should get Dogs or no dogs for all factions. And that is really hard to design and please everybody.
Well, the reality is that wasn’t the case. The studio never went bankrupt; it was only dissolved after completing development of Halo Wars.
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Re: the death of ensemble studios
This reddit post from 8 years ago summarizes it well: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/5lr4md/comment/dbxu0tu/
AoE 3 was a commercially successful title for its time. There was definitely a divide in the community, but Ensemble getting shut down has more to do with corporate decision making on what they should be developing after AoE 3 (around halo wars, as previously stated).
The devs from Ensemble pivoted into AoE: Online, something that showed some promise but ultimately failed as a result of its F2P/microtransaction nature + dependency on Games for Windows Live. (For what it’s worth, Project Celeste is a fan-made project that exists because some people actually enjoyed the game. So at least someone cares enough to keep the fire burning!)
All of that being said, the way the community receives the games they don’t prefer absolutely has an impact. We don’t improve the games we love by insulting or harshly critiquing the games we don’t. I appreciate that some people who were here 10+ years ago understand that and have learned from it.
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I personally enjoy all the games in the franchise to varying degrees. Each has its own thing it brings to the table. We’re all guilty of tribalism; some enjoy one game over the others, and that’s fine, too. In the end, I’m a fan of the franchise, as I’ve been playing these games for 26 years. One might not like X game for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. None of the Age games are objectively bad, nowhere near it.
If one can overlook certain flaws in each game, then it is possible to enjoy them for their strengths. I wouldn’t want to play just one game in the franchise. Taking a diplomatic stance might be boring to some, but that’s just how I feel.
On a related note, performance wise, AoEIV runs like butter. I’m always impressed when I’m playing it. The DEs can be hot and cold.
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