Up-to-date RTS Economy and Base Build for AoE4, a possible task?

Up-to-date RTS Economy and Base Build for AoE4, a possible task ?

Well there is a rumour for a soon reveal and I kind of concerned,
shortly after showing first pics, it will be simply too fast released
and all RTS developers in last decade kind of did forget to make a functional up-to-date base build economy.

Let’s define first this mechanics, so “economy is about gain the resources to buy units and build buildings.”

Problem with RTS games today, at their very, very foundation its just not fun to play them, you are always reminded how older games had there a better design. Each time I try a new RTS, I just return most of the time to something made in 2D era, simply because those games have a better base build.

Literally, after RTS changed from 2D into 3D, they simply mess up Basebuild.

1- most games simply don’t provide you with necessary supplies
2- most games simply don’t provide you with space to build your base
3- most games simply don’t provide you with a building variety,
to make it an actual part of the gameplay

I don’t see how “unit combat mechanics” alone are supposed to drag people interest into a genre, that was founded around actually build a large functional infrastructure.

Problem is, we have simply on one hand people who are bad at play games and them have too much influence on it.

Sure we have also the pressure to cut cost and make games simple,
but fighting with controls to find space to place ten or twenty immobile objects and wait in-between several minutes, is for somebody used to play RTS simply embarrassing.

Each RTS that included base build, was just bad at this, here simply a list of my observation:

2017 Halo Wars 2 / 2015 Etherium
—no free base build
2019 Re-Legion
2017 Sudden Strike 4
2016 Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
—no base build.

2017 SpellForce 3 / 2017 Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 3 / 2018 Empires Apart/ 2016 Kingdom Wars 2: Battles/ 2015 Grey Goo
—does build up extremely slow

2019 BANNERMEN / 2019 War Party / 2018 Forged Battalion / 2015 Act of Aggression
you run fast out of resources.
How can’t developer notice that you deplete everything after 30 min ?

For some reason, they all kind of fail at this challenge.
It does run so wrong for so long, will AoE4 figure it out?

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i must agree with you. Even Company of Heroes, considered a great RTS by a lot of people, totally fails in the basebuilding mechanic - and (in my personal view) fails in the economic side too.
A game with the perfect mix of basebuilding, economy, military tatics, etc. could be considered perfect by many, but it could be “too much” and that would be a problem too.
I’ve met a lot of people who were like “AoE2 sucks, this game is soooo complicated for no reason! and AoM is even worse! the only playable game is AoE3, because it looks good and is easier!” and then went to Total War.
I fell sorry for AoE4 game designers. One mistake and the game is gone.

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I agree with you. But honestly speaking I think that is not a possible task.

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@ HerianB

em, Company of Heroes is about to keep a group of guys alive and give them power ups. Not, build buildings as an equal or mayor counterpart.

Actually non of Relic games was about base build.

-Homeworld was that slow motioned mother ship that spawned space ships
-Dawn of War 2 had no base build

-Impossible creatures was about combine animals
-Company of Heroes was send groups of units to front-line and let them run away back, till you had more win points. You could place some towers and build something for defence, but once you had tanks or rocket artillery, it simply was useless.

-Dawn of War 1 and 3 was extremely simplified. Rather about send unit blobs , than build an actual base.

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your definition of CoH gameplay was a bit oversimplified but i must agree lol
but even being a simple concept - blob, kill, retreat, repeat - relic was pretty successful selling games. this could mean that having the “best of every gameplay aspect” could not be as good for sales as having only “best combat” or “best basebuilding”.
let’ take CoH as an example. the game is simple at low levels (spam+combat micro), while AOE2, for instance, is not (eco+spam+buildings+combat micro). this make CoH less fun? not at all.

My point is, having an AOE4 focused in few gameplay aspects could be better selling and attracting new players - but could also displease veterans. Relic, as you said yourself, has some (correct me if i’m wrong) “simple mechanics”. Relic is working in AOE4. See what i mean?

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Big Problem is, people already did make their conclusion how AoE4 has to be.

After 2 decades fan base for sure did build up some kind of expectation.
While we have a completely new team working on it, who will do what they can.
So can “the peoples expectation” and “what developers can do” be same thing?

Microsoft basically did hire a micro management developer, to make a macro management game. I have high doubts if it will end well.

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one thing is for sure: even if AOE4 becomes a total disaster for us, i will gadly pay for it.
They can literally release The Sims RTS or Need For Speed RTS and i will pay for it like god itself made the game - and i will not be the only one.

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I always wonder why it has to be by RTS just another disaster. Its really odd, because by each RTS game you read pretty much same complaints, about a shallow gameplay.

Isn’t it clearly enough explained what people want to play?

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Ok so back to topic, em yes it’s hard to talk if you don’t have a direct subject as example. lets pick as example. Empires Apart, its for free on steam

Ok so game is advertised as following:

But honestly for me it was extremely boring.

I don’t have here a problem with the design, but with the pace
-slow gather resources / -slow build buildings/ - slow unit hiring / -fast run out of resources.

on the other hand “compared to Starcraft2” that is for free

-fast gather resources / -fast build buildings/ - fast unit hiring / -fast run out of resources.

Base build wise I personally do find Starcraft 2 better.
The only thing I dislike is “fast run out of resources.”

So I wonder how will AoE4 compete there with Starcraft2 .

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worst AoE clone I never saw. Is a Freemium.

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Remember this is Age of Empires, I am sure the developers will off their building mechanics, Which can be built upon from their work in AOE2 and 3.

I would love to see Age of Empires on a larger scale though, Massive islands/countries with unique resources and some kind of supply routes which connect back to your central town. I personally love the colony idea and also part of why I like age of empires 3 so much.

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Empires Apart marketing was some ads trown around saying “Better than Age Of Empires”. I guess the game went free to play because no one bought lol.
Why Empires Apart wasnt sued by microsoft yet is beyond my comprehension. I totally would sue then.

I don’t know guys, over the last decade a lot of them claimed to be experts, but we still did end up with trash fail boring games. Basically by every recent RTS we did see advertisement to be the best game ever and in the end customers/gamers to tell, it was lame.

So, I start to think something fundamental must be broken there.

Something, they “developers/publishers” don’t see and something game testers and reviewers do miss.

This video was really good.

RTS games are quite big,
so for example you have a game and its core is jumping. Problem is, you can add tons of feutures there. But if jumping doesn’t work, the game is considered to be bad, no matter what you did. I had dozens of games, where my character wasn’t able to jump high enough to pass an obstacle.

That’s where I think RTS do have a similar problem. There is a lot made around it, but at the core those games were not fun. Yes, you can place here and there a house and hire from time to time units, but a proper designed RTS does make it fun to do. A lot of RTS seem to simply made it, without to think what for they did add it.

I mean Empire Apart was also a team working on similar game, but despite all what was told to them, their game never got better, they did just add stuff and factions, but did not make it better to play. Why should it be here any different ? The ability to design fun to play base build seems lost.

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This is still deep in develoipment but the plan is to have a coherent base building system - like aoe2 but where players are incentivised to build bases looking like villages, real castles and cities
https://edgeofchaosrts.com/

also read the note on the page: Redirecting...

Players can build upon the land and transform it with real-world scale buildings with full physics-based destruction and physics-based combat, collision, and unit damage mechanics. Edge of Chaos supports large maps, typically 2x the size of the equivalent Age of Empires 2 map which is already large by RTS standards. Our maps feature varied terrain such as mountains, fields and meadows, traversable forests, brush, lakes, rivers, and swamps. You can march an army through the woods or hide in the brush for an ambush. You may need to construct bridges to create river crossings and then fortify it to defend yourself against marauders and enemy players.

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because they were so much pride. They aren’t nothing.

Thanks for sharing that, wasn’t aware of that RTS project.

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