We already know that the game is not in the best state but it can be better if some valuable and much needed improvements are added. There some bugs, glitches that need to be fixed. There is room for single player, CO OP and Multiplayer content thank to mods.
So what you would like to have in the game?
Bug and Balance fixes
Quality of Life changes
New Single Player/CO OP Content like campaigns or Historical Battles
New Multiplayer content/modes like official Risk Mode. More Historical Maps. Survival. Castle Blood Automatic (As seen in AoE II and IV). True Nomad.
Revamped Graphics. Engine Updates (as seen on AoM Retold)
New Maps/ Dynamic maps with size based on number of players
Updated UX/UI. New Social Spot/Friends List, Lobby Browser. Map Pool. Match Preview and so!
New Content. DLCs with new civilizations. Revolutions. New Cards and Mechanics
New Content. Customizations for Explorers, Heroes, Home Cities and AI Personalities
strongly advocating to back porting the engine work from retold, both in feature set (a bunch of still absent QoL retold does include) and especially in performance, team games and large armies in retold run far better compared to AOE3 DE, aka the game remains playable (they optimized cpu usage far better with retold)
example retold with 12 players on giant map all max pop remains around 40ish fps on my cpu, a i7 12650H, while aoe3 DE collapses to 12 fps with just 8 players
to backup my performance claim with all metrics on screen, i couldn’t take retold data due to MSI afterburner crashing the game there for some reason, but i did use steam FPS counter to verify at least that
and you can see in GPU usage % that its the cpu that suffers, in fact aoe3 DE is never GPU bound on my end, with 3070 ti laptop
it was a must years ago, still is
example, aoe4 was similar mess on launch with cpu performance, now tho, its second to 2 DE only in average FPS, it had proper work done to it, to use my cpu to its proper max capability
as for QoL, did you know retold features AOE2 DE’s global queue logic and the drag select logic, like default selecting only military while holding alt only selecting vills, they also added the blizzard style ctrl click to retold amongs few other highlights, all of these would be great inclusions in 3 DE as well
to be very short in summary, every single tweak i wanted to see in 3 DE that wasn’t there already was left out and only included with retold
One thing on the “New content” that I’d actually rather not have is more Revolutions. We have too many already (to the point of heavy bloat).
Imo (not that anything will change), each civ should have 2-3 Revolts (excluding Mexico). One should be military focused and the other eco focused. If a civ has a third, that could go either way.
Improvements to game performance and fixing bugs are most importantly needed. Wish we would get a Napoleon campaign that would be the next thing I would most want. I can’t wait for our upcoming DLC I love new civilizations.
atm holding alt in 3 DE just temp disables easy drag military completely (lets you select everything, no filters), instead of eco only filter like retold has
I would strongly favour greater and more regular balancing of current content if development of new content is notably pulling resources away from this. Some civs really need some love, even some of the newer civs. I enjoy playing the African civs, for example, but where with some other civs it is a challenge to decide what to put into a deck because they just have so many good options, I often find myself struggling to fill a deck with good cards for longer games when playing Ethiopia or Hausa. These could do with a some fleshing out of their available cards, or adjustments to their existing cards, in my opinion.
To me, if new civs will be introduced after the Danish/PLC DLC, it would be great to see the gameplay mechanics introduced in TAD and TAR explored further. The civs in these DLCs are so interestingly different from the rest in how they play that I think it’s a shame there aren’t more of them. We already have a fourth TWC civ in the form of the Inca.
