WE NEED MORE BASE GAME CIV/DLC CIVS PLEASE DEVS
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We need: 1. AI improvements 2. More color options 3. Allow camera to zoom in closer
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Honestly adding another variant as the mamluk really feels like overkilling on one theme.
Not only the abbasid cover a broad timespan but the current variant, the Ayyubids are literally the previous political entity and masters of the mamluks (yeah thatâs why they got a âSultanâs mamluksâ tech).
It would after giving us the House of Lancaster we got the Plantagenet. On a side note I would have found the Plantagenet a more compeling choice since at their peak they got both england and ~half of France they could have done a weird hybrid with that. Meanwhile the Lancasters sound like english but you get a footknights as man at arm replacement and the manor thing probably to replace the farm related stuff of the english, but it essence itâs the english gameplay. Even if Iâm probably wrong (afterall I played and enjoyed ZHX quite a bit an I see the diff with Chinese) itâs still not as exiting.
Imo their best variant so far are the ayyubid which are the mirror reverse of abbasid in term of gameplay.
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My take on what AoE IV needs in orden of importance
- Bugfixes (say pathfinding, ai responsiveness, input lag)
- Balance updates (help the game to have new meta every time, fix broken things, exploits and so)
- Casual Content (Reason? more than 50 percent of RTS players are casuals, so nice single player like well designed campaigns/scenarios and co op content like repeteable variable missions would call out more players)
- DLCs and New Content (new model updates, new units, buildings, new abilities, reworks for existing civs) through patches
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sadly both weak input lag and pathing in aoe4 originate in relicâs complacency with both in essence engine itself, they didnât make any noteworthy measurable improvement in either since the first COH, anyone used to aoe2, SC2 or any other age game or blizzard RTS will pick up on that input lag straight away (pathing meanwhile is that final boss no game imo trully resolved, including SC2, which i do agree came closest)
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Whatâs wrong with the pathing?
the underlying system relic uses could match SC2, but it doesnât because it wasnât given enough care in the oven, basically they implemented the modern flow field pathing and never properly optimized all weird edge cases like vills going mile around smt instead of shortest path, unit collisions being janky at times making reaching melee range unreliable in large numbers and so on
Iâd disagree here, a lot of it seems intentional. If youâre coming from SC2 where unitâs collision is turned off for brief moments of control, then of course itâll feel weird.
AoE4 units do not clip through each other. I think it is wrong to assume that they should. SC2 in that way might feel âsmootherâ, but Iâd describe that as entirely janky and stupid in its own right. While AoE4 feels sluggish, that weight is at least properly represented by the units in the field.
You canât just command an army to go and hope for the best. The emergent gameplay here is that, you, yourself, have to command units to properly spread out for attacks to minimize the downtime of them trying to get close. Somewhat like Broodwar in that regard, just in 3D.
As far as PATHFINDING goes, AoE2 is a mess. AoE4âs Pathfinding can be janky, such as units taking the longer path around a building or ore deposit, but it is far from bad for most general use. SC2 gets around this by simply turning off collision to most interactions, and that can be perceived as âbetterâ pathing, but theyâre simply bypassing the engagement altogether and I wouldnât say that counts.
In my opinion, AoE4 has better pathing and army control than either of those games, as it tries to maintain collision integrity which is key for a deeper sense of micro, such as blocking units or formations. The entire catch-up mechanic works wonderfully and formations are great too.
The two downsides to AoE4âs unit control is simply that there is a delay between commands, and that there is no option to âunleashâ units from walking in the lowest speed of your formation. Otherwise, itâs great.
Does it really? I remember in SC2 you can move units between other units, or push them aside if they werenât in stand ground mode, or actively attacking. As far as I can tell, itâs the same here. The only moment when you can move units through other units in SC2 is when you ask workers to mine.
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pathing wise, bringing aoe2 as comparison here is kinda pointless as its capped by its underlying logic, translation, doing better than aoe2 is the bare minimum expectation for a 2021 RTS pathing wise, i just find it amusing pathing just ceased to improve post SC2 and in more than a few ways even regressed (like above listed examples) as for input delay aoe4 seems to run at offensively low tick rate (game simulation timer basically, iâm only assuming how the backend works here iâm not a relic dev) which causes everything to feel delayed to an unnatural degree, i donât even mind this on siege for example, i expect siege to be slower in general, but when every soldier that should be capable of instant execution of commands fails to do so it gets annoying to deal with
Fair enough, pathing in AoE 2 used to be a lot better in the early DE days as well as HD and CD era. I am curious whether Niliâs efforts into pathfinding investigation will pay off.
As for the command delay mentioned earlier, Iâd like to attach this clip from Drongo when the game came out:
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Id like them to change how they develop civilizations. Id like them to release a really well developed civ with 4 variations of that civ of a culture or person that was apart of the culture. Change a few units and add a hero or eco and boom 4 new variants of a civ that keeps people guessing.
Top 6 Civs I want.
- Scottish with their calvary Reivers that deal extra damage to buildings and can be built in the 1st age are medium calvary and are good until the 4th age. Highlanders.
- Isle of Mann. The vikings of all vikings pirates these dudes were bosses and nobody wanted to mess with these viking Pirateâs.
- Curonians (Baltic Vikings) people mistake that all vikings were just one civ and allied as one nation but thats not true. The baltic vikings were potentially vikings too and given that viking was an activity or job title not everyone should be lumped onto one viking group these guys were near latvia and Lithuania and would also fit into a Northern Crusade campaign with the Teutonic knights as well.
- House of Yorkshire would have wolds and a combo of English, Scottish units that have Feench Mercs so we could have a war of the roses campaign with 10 missions. They would be more aggressive than the regular English.
- Normans. We kinda get to play them in the English and the upcoming crusaders and yet they also conquered sicily and Jerusalem and England their whole family were competent commanders and warriors.
- Polish Lithuanians simole bring winged hussars back into the game and winged knights to que up some good rock music.
Oh also add a truce mode so for the first 6 minutes everybody is on peace
So upon selecting a faction as Knights Templar, the unit you unlock appears in your TC.
These are animated. So we do have the technology. Can we animate the chickens in the very same TC, in houses and horses in stables?
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Itâs not a question of technology, but assets, they do have an asset for the idle soldiers in the TC, since itâs the model, rig and animation of the actual unit.
Your chikens and horses need rigging and animation. Which require a guy or two, so some money. As you can guess animating chickens is not very high on the priority list for a team that isnât already pumping new animations left and right.
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Iâm aware of how it works. The hyperbole wasnât some profound realization that we could pull this off; Iâm just asking for them to animate the animals featured in houses, TCs, markets, stables and so on.
Horses already have idle animations with models that could be implemented in stables instead of the frozen one we get. And as for chickens, itâs nothing major to add a few frames of life to them.
The issue was never the lack of technology, but of will. And that is why I am making a comment to bring attention to it.
I agree, thank you.
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Why do you justify this? If they donât have the resources to make the game look better, why are they selling it as a AAA game?
We already had things like this in 1997. Said by one of the original developers of AOE-1.
https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/1907933607101915211
These are details that people like. And it seems that those in charge of AOE-4 couldnât grasp this, which is why I think AOE-4 is mediocre compared to what it could have been.
You can see AOM and AOE-3 forums showing off screenshots. Why isnât the same happening here? The answer is simple. There are very few things to brag about.
Even in AOE-2, they introduced things like this, and people loved it:
In SC-2, every building has some kind of animation, and many of them change animation depending on the activity taking place inside. Making a pair of chickens move in a TC isnât going to bankrupt Microsoft.
I agree. We can only hope that future AOE installments (if there are any) have a different artistic direction, learning from all the games made so far.
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Itâs an uphill battle because those who do very much like these things have not been satisfied and likely left a long, long time ago. So the ones that remained have to constantly explain to those that donât care why it matters.
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I disagree with these specific examples. I thought the pandas looked off in the context of AoE2, and while SC2 has a lot of attention to detail, it has a much more limited scope compared to any of the AoE games.
AoE4 has biomes, mountains / high elevation, walkable stone walls, buildings that collapse in stages and leave ruins, beautiful landmarks, and small touches that automatically appear between buildings. All of these are unique to AoE4 and great for casual play. They are now also adding points of interest. Hopefully in the future we will see more animal types, which has been long overdue.