Going back to the task in hand
A thing that should be improved a lot is Pathfinding!
Can we get military ship hotkeys? I love the select all āmelee/ranged/cavalry/siegeā on screen hotkeys, if we had something like this for ships I feel like it would make water much easier to play. Something like select all: springald/archer/demo/bombard ships etc. I would change my modifier but use the same hotkeys as my land units and have a much easier time with micro on water.
Please adjust the terrain texture of buildings. Currently, buildings have a bunch of little pots, bushes and tracks on the ground alongside the building itself, which is a type of smart environmental grouping. The issue in particular with the ground texture is that it utilizes its own set of textures with their own colour, which has, throughout the entirety of AoE4 looked wrong. Malians, Abbasid for instance, will look particularly weird in snowy biomes because of the saturated red earth surrounding their buildings. The image above is demonstrating the new biome with blackened sand contrasted by the dirt that surrounding the Tughlaqabad Fort. This is a perfect example of why this doesnāt work.
So my suggestion is simple. Obviously keep the pots, decals, bushes and track textures with the buildings, but if you want the building to also feature its own set of earth, then use an existing texture from the biome rather than a set that is only colour-coded for the buildings themselves. This way it will match whatever biome they are on and will look infinitely better. That or straight up cut the ground textures that buildings come with (donāt cut the flagstones, bricks or roads, bit I think you get what I mean). Though perhaps there is a solution that is better than this as well.
Actually, this extends to some Siege as well. Cannons, Ribauldequins will drop a decal of dirt around them, which mysteriously vanishes when they are packed back up. Thisā¦ is just bizarre.
Iām happy to see new weapon models, however, it seems as though the Imperial Spear model being shared by Ottoman, Abbasid and Delhi is swapped with the Castle age one. Though I havenāt researched the weapons themselves, Iām making the assumption here that the more ornate, complex spearhead is a later development compared to the one being wielded by the Imperial spear men. Maybe Iām wrong, please correct me if I am.
On another note, please do something about the default Spear model being used by English, HRE, Byzantines which has a plastic-white texture unlike actual steel, as shown in the image below.
Hello,
Could you flatten the color of the minimap on the black sand biome and the snowy one ? I really like the biome and I it would be nice for it to be readable.
The game not crashing on a regular basis , my buddy crashed on Xbox 20-40% of the time last season , would be really interesting to see actual stats on that , and this season since new update Iāve played 4 placement games crashes right out of 2ā¦ please fix
ETA also in team games if a teammate does quit or drop out why donāt we get their housing cap space ? In 2s get extra available pop if teammate quits early , 3s remaining players each get 100 to account for the 3rd dropping out 4s would lose 1 pop 66 each player 1 gets 67
Co-op game modes alongside 2-3 new civs. And variant civs need to be free at this point. Relic is just taking us on a joy ride until we all decide we arent interested with their āexperimentingā anymore.
I think to reflect the current state of things, I think if you put ādevelopmemt teamā as a choice up there, youd find that might take the lead real quick too.
Absolutely.
Variants are certainly not ālazyā as there are some new assets and lots of planning are required obviously, however in the grand scheme of things they seem like filler/DLC-lite of fan expectations.
I think most would rather wait longer and get some well-crafted unique civs instead in more solid DLC expansions.
Thing is, the vast majority of assets arenāt made in-house. They contract 3D studios for it. So in a way, you could see this as them strictly cutting costs for the same product. Itās a double edged sword, for while variants are almost indistinguishable from regular civilizations mechanically, it means the developers are expecting us to pay moreā¦ for less.
And while this may not matter for a lot of players, it sure matters for me. A big appeal for these games is seeing a new take on cultures, and while a sort of goldilock zone has been reached with a good blend of thematics, mechanics and relevance (Golden Horde with settled tents, new units, thematically fits and name is relevant), I would still vastly prefer to see Tibetans, or Portugal, or Khmer.
Macedonian and Tughlaq Dynasties seem to differ in this equation. Tughlaq seems to be very Khmer coded, having Ballista Elephants that seem frankly like placeholder assets (floating Springald model with no animation pasted onto a War Elephant). Macedonian, as Iām sure youāve noticed, seems much more like a Norse based civilization and making it a variant is really stretching it, especially when you consider that the Macedonian Dynasty was the pinnacle of the Eastern portion of Rome. Sure, they hired Varangian mercenaries, but they had so much more going on than that.
And so, it definitely seems to me that these two civilizations were planned to have assets created for them via a third party company, with Macedonian featuring a lot of new character models, it seems they were half way there. Take into account what has happened to Microsoft in recent times, and it wouldnāt surprise me if they have been cutting funding for a lot of projects lately, AoE included. This is all to say, I donāt think the developers necessarily expected this, and it almost seems as though something major changed during development.
I donāt think we need to be against each other as players. I want a civilization with more fully fledged models. Not getting that disappoints me. This shouldnāt make you defensive about the notion of a variant. It is simply cheaper content, but I donāt want that and you should be okay with players expecting more. Weāre not pointing fingers at developers, instead, it clearly is a case of executives investing less in the project and that is ultimately bad for all of us.
Assuming this is the case for IV and Relic still isnāt involved with asset creation, it still falls under WEās resource umbrella. āin-houseā for WE is kind of a loose term given the studios that operate āunderā it (Iām not sure of the exact relationship).
This doesnāt really matter when it comes to players seeing value for money in any DLC offered, of course.
Iām 100% sure itās a bug, the weapon model should change as soon as the technology is researched without considering the age (just like Yari spear for Japan, for example).
Please fix the Crucible bug: When you exit the game, the medals youāve earned disappear, so the points youāve gained are practically worthless.
Until itās fixed, Iām even considering not playing Crucible at all.
Yes, weāll probably have to wait and see what happens next yearā¦ if they donāt release completely new civilizations, Iāll just give up on the gameā¦
I just want the AI to stop making military boats on maps with small lakes or water that has no enemy on it.
They max out their pop with boats and get wiped out on the map.
ALSO IM SICK OF AI BUILDING VILLS AND THEY JUST STAND IDLE
The āBallista Elephantā needs a real and actual new model. This level of placeholder assets making it into a fully fledged product should be be strongly condemned.
THE IMPORTAND THINK WE NEED IN AOE 4:
-SYNC ERRORS/ DROPS MUST BE COMPLETE REPAIRED
-MAYBE A REJOIN TIMER (BRAKE) FOR 3 MINUTES ā DROPPED PLAYERS CAN REJOIN A RANKED GAME
-THE RANKING SYSTEM NEED TO BE FIXED ā VS GAMING MAX 2 LVL DIFFERENCE ā
GOLD 1, GOLD 1, GOLD 2 VS SILVER 3, GOLD 1, GOLD 3 = GOOD
GOLD 1, GOLD 3, GOLD 3 VS GOLD 1, PLATIN 1, PLATIN 3 = NOT OK!!
YOU NEED TO BE FIX THIS BROKEN SYSTEM, BETTER IS TO WAIT 5 MINUTES FOR A GAME AND YOU HAVE FUN. NOW YOU HAVE TO WAIT 1 MINUTE AND YOU HAVE UNFAIR TEAMS AND NO FUN IF YOU DIDDNT PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS. I PLAY VERY OFTEN RANDOM AND THE MOST TIME YOU HAVE UNFAIR TEAMS!
-WE NEED BALANCED RACES AND NO GOLDEN RACE WHO CAN PLAY 1 VS 4 AND KILL ALL!!!
-WE NEED BETTER MAP DESIGN 60 % OF MULTIPLAYER MAPS ARE TRASH
-WHEN YOU VOTE A MAP OUT OF THE POOL, THAN YOU DONT WANNA PLAY THE MAP!! OFTEN YOU VOTE MAPS OUT, SOME MIN LATER YOU GET YOUR VOTED MAP! NOT OK!!!
-YOU NEED TO HANDLE QUICK BEC AOE 4 WIL MORE AND MORE DIE!!
THANK YOU
This is a must!
YES!!
Siege needs to be nerfed. Just encourages blobbing. Makes an absolute mockery of infantry. Itās disgusting.