A new game is better. It’s understandable that AOE-II absorbed AOE-1, but for AOE-4 it’s better to just stay in the era it was meant to represent.
This is more or less what I once questioned in a thread, but people were quite reluctant, although an AOE that collects all the eras, but each of them as an independent game is actually not a bad idea.
People still believe that AOE-4 can only reach its potential if it doesn’t ignore the virtues of other games in the series. It’s not yet the game they consider ideal, but they hope that one day it will be.
Others simply express their disappointment by comparing it to the game that many consider (or we consider) the best. They waited 15 years or more for a game that would captivate them and it simply didn’t happen. Something similar happened with AOE-2 players regarding AOE-3, however the expectation was much higher with AOE-4.
However, the criticisms of AOE-4 are most of the time justified and argued. I almost never see things like “AOE-4 is a bad game because less people play it than X game”, and instead they say “This is great in this game, why isn’t it in AOE-4?”
That happens when you’re part of a franchise, you want the sequel to something to simply be a better version of what came before, so when it comes along and doesn’t fulfill that purpose (depending on each person’s expectations) it’s natural that it goes to those spaces meant to talk about it, in this case these forums.
There’s also something to understand here, and that is that although many consider X game of the franchise to be the best, it’s not close to being the game they consider ideal and there’s room for improvement. In other words, there’s still no AOE that they can call perfect, so in a way they’re self-critical of their own favorite game, so they expected AOE-4 to be that perfect game.
I see and read a lot of suggestions here that simply don’t adhere to dogma like many people who believe that a game from 1999 was already the pinnacle and the apogee of the saga. Thinking like that is much worse than criticizing AOE-4, as it would simply result in stagnation and little to no innovation.