What will happen with AOE1 after we get the DLC?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I think you are looking for ways to discredit what I’m saying rather than looking into it. Don’t see how those two statements are mutually exclusive. Fixing the problems with the game, just a few of them:

Tilesets for the civilizations are very confusing. Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian all have egyptian tileset and egyptian wonder pyramid, makes 0 sense. Same with Greek, minoan, Phoenician tileset, all get the weird greek wonder statue.
Wonders have to be remade and each civ given an unique wonder.
Still no UUs.

And there’s a bunch of other problems that I really suspect won’t be fixed. I have wrote extensively about them on the AOE1 forum, I don’t really have the time to write as it would require a whole essay on what is wrong with the game.

I wrote 5-6 months ago on some topics, but nobody really payed attention to it, from the dev side at least.

Anyone who has extensively played AoE1 wilo understand what I’m talking about. If you are a casual AoE1 player probably you haven’t noticed a lot of these small, but important details.

What I said is that instead of looking for creative solutions they just copy-pasted some AOE 2 features and didn’t implement anything really new to warrant a new great remake. It’s just half-done job, I’m sorry to say it, I don’t wan’t to say it or for it to be that way, but it’s just the way it is.

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I’m sorry that you think that, but no, I’m genuinely not sure what you want from RoR.

You’re suggesting adding AoE2 features (castles, unique units, unique techs) to RoR, while simultaneously complaining that RoR is too much like AoE2. That seems contradictory to me, since adding AoE2 features to RoR will make it more like AoE2.

I’ve looked back through your posts, but almost all I can find is suggestions for more AoE2 features in RoR: unique wonders for each civ, demo ships, land trade, AoE2 water trade mechanics, spies technology, garrisoning, gates. There are a couple of non-AoE2-style suggestions as well: keep storage pits and granaries the way they are, add ram ships and buildable sea walls and towers. But generally, to me it seems you really do want AoE1 to be more like AoE2, so – as I said before – I don’t understand why you’re saying that RoR will be “too much like AoE2”.

I’ve played AoE1 plenty, but I don’t even know what kind of thing you’re talking about. Are you talking about bugs? (Like the one where units get stuck inside each other and can’t move?) QoL features? Gameplay features? It’s not clear.

I agree with this, but we don’t know yet whether it’s been addressed in RoR.

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Not mentioning the castle is probably one of the AoE2 features with the highest number of players not wanting to see it ported into AoE1. @Skadidesu has done a poll in the past on this matter and the results are quite clear: https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/poll-what-aoe2de-features-would-you-like-to-see-in-return-of-rome/217909
So yeah, I’m also surprised to see somene say AoE1 shouldn’t be too much like AoE2 and keep its identity while in the same breath asking for castles…

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Do you think AOE 1 is better without having a Castle-like structure? Makes no sense, I’m pretty sure they have had fortresses in the ancient world.

Also if they include castles in AOE 1 they can functione different to AOE 2 castles, right? They can shoot balistas instead of arrows, they can have less or more HP, the technologies can be different and so on. Or you might make them without any functions, like a very powerful tower.

We need some thinking outside of the box, not just will we copy features from AOE 2 or not do anything at all.

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But this is not a new game. This isn’t even a separate game. It’s not really viable and on some levels possible to think outside of the box in terms of grand design and mechanics- backbone of this game is relying ON 2DE tech, or rather- adapting, modernizing and bringing AoE1 civ experience closer to 2DE gameplay formula.

I mean sure, they could add more, introduce new things… but that would require reworking the engine to accommodate that, and then what- 2DE would be left aside and deprive of these changes? I mean it could, but that’s additional work.
2DE is fairly old now, and AoE2 in general- super old. Primary concern for the developers is balance. And even a small new mechanics can bring the entire house (40+ civs!) down and put in the position of dire need of a lot of balancing work. And the community, dedicated multiplayer players, might not even want these changes.

Castles? Of course they had ‘castles’ in ancient times. But we should be careful between using reality of the world as excuses for game design.
It’s not as simple as just making a castle-stronghold building.

AoE1 is built around not having castle-like structure. These are powerful, big structures and they heavily impact everything- map design&building footprint of the existing structures that exist on said map and terrain types, civ strengths, tempo and flow of the game, available technologies and units that have to be present with these castles in mind…
I’d love to see just new art for ancient castles, but before this announcement I only suspected something like that to appear in a complete remake of AoE1- a new, ancient Age Of Empires game.

I’m sure Devs would love to make ancient AoE V-AoE1v2 and not have to deal with finding their way inside of AoE2DE. But clearly they can’t, and even now there’s an active dev support for 2DE, 3DE and IV, with arguably even 1DE in form of critical hotfixing.
I’m sorry- if we want new ancient Age of Empires game, we have to
a) show enough support for the concept
b) somehow kill (end support) for most of mentioned AoE games

And even then- it’s not just one dev studio, and at the same time I don’t want to see anyone get fired because all these game are supported well and Devs are solid.
It would be a much better world if instead of Warzone or Fortnite people would play RTS games and even 5 AoE titles could exist with another 5 in the production.

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I’m not talking about what’s “better”. Adding castles would make AoE1 more like AoE2, even if those castles fire different projectiles, or have slightly different stats, or whatever. You said

and I was trying to find out what you meant by that. But given your responses, I can only conclude that you didn’t mean anything by it, that you were just ranting, and that you do actually want AoE1 to be more like AoE2.

Sure, they could, but having any kind of castles would be more like AoE2 than not having them. Once you have castles, you have to give every civ a suitably long-ranged siege weapon to destroy them with. This is why every AoE2 civ gets trebuchets. In AoE1, some civs have very limited siege weapon options, and would need a trebuchet-equivalent added. So not only would adding castles make AoE1 more like AoE2, but it would force the addition of another AoE2-like feature.

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Dude, you pick out certain phrases and draw conclusions from them, rather than looking at the bigger picture described by the entire post.

What do I mean by AOE becomes too much like AOE2?
I mean that all the new features in ROR are exactly copy-pasted from AOE2. For example garrisoning, formations (which are not bad by themselves) will be EXACTLY the same from AOE2.
Do you think ancient combat technology was the same as medieval one? Does the game need no Roman /Greek/Macedonian/Assyrian combat formations instead of the generic AOE2 geometric shape formations?

Obviously you will import features from AOE 2 as it’s the better game and AOE 1 missies a lot of thngs, land trade, gates are great additions by themselves.

However, they take no creative liberty. If you know the Academy in AOE 1, only a handful of civilisations will build it. And you can create only ONE type of unit in it. It is very redundant. Now adding the castle building on the place of the academy will improve the game a lot. There’s a huge void in the defensive structures in AOE 1, if you have ever played in defensive scenarios you would know that the minute you stop pouring units into the defense you are gone. Buildings get destroyed way faster than in AOE 2, your base is totally destroyed like 3-4 times faster. Buildings have less HP and units have way more attack in relation, especially Elephants, Academy units and Siege.

Adding a Castle/Fortress/ w/e building by itself will not “make the game too much like AOE2” if the different balance in AOE 1 and different combat style are taken into account. You can have the fortress firing Catapult stone boulders, ballistas, Fire, all things that have been historically done.

If you copy-paste the AOE 2 castle LIKE all other features that have been added thus far into AOE 1, THEN it will make the game “too much like aoe2”.

Now please try to understand and visualize my concept and the reasons for it, the bigger picture of the game and it’s deficiencies, instead of picking out certain phrases and trying to make what I say appear contradictory. Because what you imply is that the new expansion is incomplete, that’s the way it’s supposed to be and it will be too hard for the devs to actually figure out how to fix the game.
Not release new versions of the game every 2-3 years, pay for another broken version of the game and perpetuate it’s problems.

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I picked out that phrase because it seemed to go against the rest of what you were saying. I read everything you wrote in this thread, but a lot of it is quite vague. You seem to assume that anyone who has played AoE1 will both know and share your opinions, and as a result (I think), you don’t clearly explain what those opinions are.

I don’t think there’s much point us carrying on with this, since it seems neither of us is able to take what the other says in good faith. But since you asked me some direct questions, I’ll answer them.

Thanks for finally explaining what you meant! However, as far as I know, we don’t have any information about that. The Steam page simply mentions formations, with no further information (and thus no confirmation that they’re exactly the same as AoE2), and doesn’t even mention garrisoning. Presumably you know more than I do.

No, but I don’t understand why this is relevant to RoR, since I’m not aware of any changes that add medieval technologies to it.

It definitely doesn’t need them. It sounds like you want them, but I’m not sure what it would mean for RoR to have them. Formations in the AoE2 engine are just geometric arrangements of units – there’s no interaction between units, which I’m guessing is what you want. (But I really am guessing here.) I don’t think there’s anything inherently medieval about the formations in AoE2.

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It takes a lot of time to write down all the ideas I used to have, as I haven’t played AOE1 fro like 6 months so I forgot a bit my ideas since ROR was announced and I wrote down some posts. And it takes a while to write down all my suggestions and the reasoning for it.

I mean it’s not a simple issue to create a balanced, creative, engaging and at the same time historically relevant game. I think the right direction is to take Sandy Peterson’s (aoe 1 and 2 original dev from ensemble studios) ideas and way of thinking and build up from that. I mean most of AOE2 DLCS were ideas from Sandy Peterson - Hungarians, Bulgar, Khmer, Aztec etc.

I have posts in the AOE 1 de forum with more detailed suggestions if you can check these out. When I get the game I will try to post as much constructive feedback with ideas that hopefully can be looked into.

I’m not hating on the game, in fact I’m willing to help with everything I can to improve the game, as long as my ideas are taken into account by the devs.
Like I said, I’m a veteran from AOE heaven, I have designed campaigns, played most of the best custom AOE1 campaigns (from Andrea ROsa, Ingo van Thiel etc). These guys had extremely great campaigns that pushed the boundaries of the game. And the modder community there as well that unlocked the hidden units to be used in the scenario editor.
I mean probably some of my ideas are not great, but I think I have the right idea as far as more creative content, created campaign editors, AI and PER file editors and much more stuff that I don’t remember. If you are interested check AOE Heaven.
One thing I’m hoping is that there are triggers in the scenario editor, and some new unique units and buildings (like Heroes, unique wonders like Ziqqurat or Lighthouse of Alexandria etc.)

I’ll say something positive, the graphics from the trailer look great.

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Yes, after Return of Rome comes out, I don’t play AoE 1 DE anymore and AoE 4 still feels green, with many years of improvement ahead… I’ll only play 4 games: AoE 2 (+RoR and future dlcs there ), AoE 3, AoEO and AoM Retold when it comes out…

Or he can also play AoEO…

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im curious to know what happens when MS drop support for AOE1DE altogehter. would people still be able to play online or requires internet to play single player game.

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So far, Microsoft didn’t unlist old games like Epic or Rockstar did with Unreal or the original versions of GTA, so you’ll still be able to play AoE 1 DE.