If we start the game with 10 villager and not 6 ?
First 5 min are boring. I play aoe4 every day. I look aoe4 video on youtube…and first 3-5 min of each game just accelerated x4 by authors.
The problem you wait your first 400 food and 200 gold… and you scoot…
Starting the game with 10 villager will save 2 min.
For example starcraft2. They have increase the number of workers from 6 to 10 in “Legacy of the void”.
5 Likes
Totally agreed.
Better rebalance now, than “balance” civs again after some time.
and why we should wait. (I believe in 1-3 years they will be force to do it… like aoe2 were “forced” to create EW mode)
3 Likes
Some Civ can still do some dark age aggression now, 10 vils would pretty much end that possibility.
the avg game length is already significantly longer than a few weeks before, I don’t know drag it even longer is a good idea or not.
That would prevent the prominence of the dark ages, where some civilizations are strong.
what about starting in the imperial age kek
It’s intended to give you time to scout and plan. Unlike SC2, the maps are randomly generated. You don’t know where things are when you start the game. You just have a vague idea of what the map generally contains. The game is supposed to be slow for the first few minutes while you scout the map and decide how you’re going to try to play the game.
4 Likes
When they made the change in SC2 it didn’t cut down much on the early game durations, there’s still a period of time before anything of substance happens. One base play was cut down dramatically so instead of the action starting at 3 mins with ~15 workers it’s now at 3 mins with ~20 workers.
In my opinion the game in the dark ages only lasts for roughly 5 minutes and isn’t considered as slow to me, on the contrary I think it’s a bit too fast and doesn’t give enough time to play around in the dark ages.
Dark ages to me right now feels like another mandatory thing you have to do before the “fun” begins in the feudal age so unless they make it more interesting they might as well remove it and let us start in the feudal age, that’s now irrelevant I think the dark ages is currently.
The majority rushes through to feudal age anyway, so rarely seeing any real play time in the dark ages.
Why not add a slider for custom games, like from 4 till 12 workers?
This was changed once already, the game used to start with 4 villagers, and only Chinese has 6, now everyone has 6 (Which nullified Chinese civ bonus, and caused Chinese to be so weak in first two ages, this artificially created imbalance still haven’t got solved yet).
That was one of the dumbest moves ever made by blizzard in sc2. That and flying siege tanks.
Dark Age is interesting on hybrid maps as there are differing strategies around when players take their dock, I wouldn’t want to lose that. I’ve not seen any Dark Age cheese attempts yet, if those can be semi-viable not as standard play but as a sometimes seen strategy (similar to sc2 proxy rax) that’d add another element.
Dark age is already shorter than aoe2. I feel like it’s the perfect length to be able to scout properly for sheep and your opponent, different civs can do different builds and some of them are already fairly high apm potential like China or Rus or HRE.
1 Like
Do not lie, same 5 min of real time. (aoe2 has 1.7x speed)
in aoe2 u click at 21 pop, here u can click at 14 pop. **
the only difference start with 6 vils against 3 vil.
You mix up games, devs fixing all apm potentials.
if u start with 12 vils, no big difference → send vil to build dock + lumberjack or baraks.
U saved some time production + food for vil production, but at the same population u will have less collected resources in total (compared with vanila start), so u can not go into age2 immediately.
So u wont miss and “dark age on hybrid maps” just buildorder will be slightly different.
Even more: may be u can chose what to do: rush into age2 or build dock.
now u forced to build dock, may be u will have an option to play super all in on land.
** if u start with 12 villagers u will be able to click at 20 pop, because of time to collect resources.
And feudal opening will be with more resources, so u can either attack earlier or build eco + some military. a lot of possibilities.
And again, u can scout the whole map in 3 min (u click into T2 on min 5)
no big difference.
but now you will have an options
- for early attack (in dark age) - scout the only opponent + attack immediately
- or scout the whole map, u will finish before feudal.
Standard feudal build hit fuedal in aoe2 just after 10 minutes in game time which is around 6 minutes real time. AOE4 feudal you should be hitting before 5 minutes, unless you are doing an unusual build.
In the end it’s pretty irrelevant as Relic has spoken on the finetuning the did in regards to scouting and dark age times so I can’t see them making any changes. Maybe in the future as some kind of unique custom game.
As it is it is already pretty tight on time to scout the map sufficiently and bring enough sheep back to your TC. If you increase starting vills, your scout would have to return before you scouted as much map so you had sheep under TC.
Checked: Pro players (at least top50). Feudal hit at 5 min. as chinese.
Grubby for example
5*1.7=8.5 → 8.5min/30sec = 17 vils (+ 3 vils at start + 1 scout) = 21 pop - typical time, than u click in aoe2.
Ok. u click on 5min into feudal, not already in feudal. But the difference is 3 extra vils at start in aoe4.
I’m pretty sure that they will do the change on some DLC. as major update.
Especially if they will sponsor tournaments.
as SC2 changed it after a few years.
Again, just checked the same game - 3 min fully no dark spot on the map.
because extra vils, can make one extra scout easier to scout.
Again - it’s an option.
Watching daut live right now and he hit Feudal at 5 minutes and was commenting how his dark age was a disaster and how bad his feudal time is (he was more than 30 seconds behind his opponent)
Also you didn’t factor in loom for aoe2 builds which is always built (except like arena). With the age up time you are starting the age up after 8 min 55 seconds with 0 idle time or lag. which is 5 minutes 20 5 min and 18 seconds to click up. Usually you are starting the age up a bit after 4 minutes in aoe4. Which is around 20% faster.
SC changed it after a few years because dark age is much less important as the map is always the same so you don’t have to scout it, you just memorize it.
Also you shouldn’t really compare that for scouting as even if it was fully scouted, China gets a massive scout vision range bonus plus having more vills mean you will have to send scout back to TC earlier. (cause you will run out of sheep faster)
Just watched daut play mongols and click up before 330, making it 10 vills would be like a sub 3 minute feudal time, basically making dark age just not exist.
Thats actually pretty slow as the Chinese.
Dark age will always be more important than the early game in SC2, because the map and it’s layout can heavily affect strategies, as can where you put your starting vills and new vills. There is 2 resources is SC2 which are always right in front of your base, and you almost always send all workers to minerals at the beginning. There is much more variation in the starts in AoE, with 4 resources, all of which can be important in the early game.
1 Like
it’s build order.
technically u can rush up earlier, but why would u do it? to be in feudal without resources?
anyway, it’s faster than aoe2, but no much difference if we look at real time.
5min or 4:30 no big deal.
playable army, not 1 knight u would recieve at min 7 or 8 etc.
anyway, if game last for 20 min, 5 min means 25% of time for “scouting” and planning.