Please keep making each civ unique. give them more unique units and more unique research relevant to their history. its a fact that some civs had significant advantages over others in different types of environments and warfares. It should be just like that in the game. you shouldn’t be able to use one civilization in every single situation. that would totally ruin the game. don’t let the esports rts players ruin what makes AoE so much more fun and exciting than all the others. Having every civilization being unique will make every single match a new experience and it will always feel different every time you play. Don’t let AoE4 become an RTS that has players using the exact same faction, exact same build order, exact same units, for every single match. Make players switch up their play style, pick their civ and deck based on the specific match up and map environment. that’s the best part of AoE
Thanks for posting this Wiki infrmation.
Hey, I am looking at the sales figures for Age of Empires. Hmm… I can tell you they are not correct. Thats really all I can say, since I don’t know where the figures come from 
Play on!
Rick Goodman
Lead Designer
Age of Empires 1
Yes Black Forest and the Islands map should never be in a ranked map rotation. Its nice to have maps like these but obviously they should never be used for ranked play. Its not just mongols, the fact that you have a pond with fish right next to your TC which your opponent cannot contest is a huge balance issue. Because this favours civs which have economic Naval bonuses, like faster ship fishing ship production.
Ranked should work exactly like Starcraft 2. Select your civ first without seeing the map, but each ranked season has a map pool of 6-8 maps. And you should be able to veto maps which you do not like. Grandmaster players (top 200 of each Region) should not be able to veto maps.
Why would you say something like this? Look at Starcraft 2. No one is asking for Terran to be able to warp in siege tanks anywhere and build Marines in pairs of 2.
Age of Empires 2 has too many civilisations, so they are bound to be very similar to each other. The correct decision is to have fewer but more distinct civs.
Since Age of Empires 4 is following Age of Empires 3 and Starcraft 2 design by adding more asymmetrical civilisations, the civilisations should feel somewhat different from each other.
Starcraft 2 has shown us that its possible to have a very well balanced game with a much higher degree of asymmetry. Its certainly not easy and it will take a long time. Its an ongoing process after all. But unlike Starcraft 2 had on release, Age of Empires 4 has thousands of experienced RTS players with knowledge to rely upon and give feedback.
All we need is developers who are open to discussion with the community. We also need a public test realm to allow players to test balance changes and give feedback before they get released into the game. Or simply add maps with different balance changes into the game so players can play on maps with new balance changes and give feedback.
Age4 is way closer to Age2 than anything else.
The factions pretend to be asymetrical, but are really not.
Asymetricality in this game and its’ balance looks like this:
-civ eco bonus
-landmark number tweaking
That’s it.
There’s some single unit dynamic here and there that is a tiny bit different, but overall everything mirrors everything in this game in general.
Especially in 1v1 in which there is basically no chance for imperial age except for black forest and islands, which are really unpopular for any sorts of ranked.
I think the main issue on this maps are that they naturally limit or sometimes even completely prevent player interaction, therefore stalling a game completely automatically, forcing both players to techskip.
This is exactly why maps with bridges are bad game designs as well.
It takes away the majority of the tools/actions a player has/can make, therefore motivating both to just sit it out until there’s nothing left to do/get benefit from in teching.
This, by nature, is the oposite of beeing competitive.
Meaning:
-Playing tight for best timing/effect
-constantly scout → act/react
-forcing the player into certain situations/reactions
-splitpushing for economy harassment
-microing units properly
All the points above are getting limited to a minimum, just by the nature of the map.
Yes, a more competitive player still wins, but it needs way longer to play it out due to the limitations that the map enforces on the playstyles.
I don’t understand this. Starcraft 2 had far more than thousands of experienced RTS players to “rely on”, considering the unmatched success of Starcraft 1. Unfortunately, these experienced players are still bickering and fighting about balance issues 23 years later after an unmatched level of dedication by Blizzard to try and achieve balance.
AoE4 is never going to reach that kind of balance, and the more asymmetric the game gets the less balanced it’s going to be. It’s better to have numerous similar civilizations than fewer asymmetrical ones. The more the game tries to beat Starcraft 2 in it’s own game, the less chances for success it will have.
They absolutely should, how can you call yourself an AOE Pro if you can only compete on open land maps?
That maybe was the case with AOE2 Black Forest, but not in AOE4 since you can build rams and have access to the treb in castle age.
You can’t kill trees with explosions/catapults anymore.
You can’t shoot through stonewalls with archers anymore.
The game has big defender bonuses in general as well.
If anything, that gives the defending player way more time to react than in Age2, even tho a smaller weaker blacksmith ram is accessible sooner and single treb all ins are a really strong castle age push now.
Generally it is waaay more common to make imperial age plays in those than the other ones.
Reasons explained, naturally stalling, bad map design especially for competitive games.
If you personally like it, all power to you, but it’s nit enjoyable as a competitive ranked experience.
Early aggression makes walling in general difficult, also having walls but nothing to properly defend them won’t help you at all, since as I said you have a siege option for every age (compared to AOE2). Also Rams currently get auto-targeted by keeps, TCs etc. so you don’t have to worry about your units when rams are around.
See this game, where the match was over before walls could be built.
The black forest has a different approach compared to AOE2:
vs
what that example is for?
They did not try to wall with palisade . Always should do palisade first even if u rushing.
In aoe2 the fourth vil already is going to wall.
If u do nothing → be prepared to be ded.
These players from sc2, have no idea how to use walls. that’s all.
But yes, game new, maps new, and will be played in a new way.
I can only assume you didn’t play the game much when it was available.
Here’s the actual list:
- civ eco bonuses (multiple)
- civ influence system
- various research techs that make select units perform differently
- defensive bonuses (eg. emergency repair, network of castles, etc.)
- unique units
- landmarks
- other unique civ specific buildings
Plus more from the factions we haven’t played yet and from the NDA’ed closed beta factions like the Mongols.
I like these maps but have to agree they aren’t balanced for competitive play at this point. I don’t think naval bonuses matter much for the fishing aspect as we’re just talking about building several early game fishing boats but more importantly, gold mine position and entrance to bases is random and should not be - it’s not fair if one player has only 1 entrance to guard and other has 3 for example.
That’s true, but in AOE4 the map is so open that you will be walling quite a lot. And since you can’t use resources and other buildings it probably isn’t worth the effort.
Thanks for not focussing of what I said at all and quoting me on the most diengenuise way possible.
Literalle the next thing I said:
“There’s some single unit dynamic here and there that is a tiny bit different, but overall everything mirrors everything in this game in general.”
The context was an answer to a comment that said AoE4 falls more in line with SC2 and AoE3 asymetry which is just wrong.
It draws clear lines to AoE2 when it comes to unit advantages.
Turks have shitty spears, franks good knights etc.
Same like english better bowmen, HRE better MAA.
The main part of the balance tho, since archers still just fill the roles of archers and HRE MAA, even tho slightly more dmg and faster, are still MAA, is done by the big economy bonuses and timings/boosts by the landmark e.g. english hall longbow push.
That comment of yours was just straight up insulting and you neither tried to understand what I’ve written, nor talk to with me but about me.
I am sure the devs are eager to balance all maps to fit into competitive play.
As for naval maps, unlike AOE2 you have the option to build a wonder, go for sacred sites or land on the enemy’s island. In AOE2 there was only conquest victory for ranked play.
Yes there can be BF games that are done without walls… Yes it looks/plays a bit different than AoE2…
lets go back a bit and focus on what I said.
Black Forest and Small Islands are unpopular in ranked since by design is limiting player interaction, which competitive game is about.
Where do you disagree?
I agree that “chokepoint” maps (like AOE2 BF with only 1 entrance) are limiting in that aspect, but currently (Closed and Open Beta) there are no maps like this in AOE4. AOE4 BF is way too open to count as “bridge map”.
Naval Maps do offer more options than in previous iterations, so they should stay in ranked for now.
Players should play the new maps with a fresh mind instead of depending on AOE2/SC2 experiences.
This is coming from someone who hated naval maps in AOE2.
Yeah sorry I just heavily disagree completely with general analysis.
Chokepoints are always a bad map design and result into stalling, it’s not game dependend compared to SC2 or AoE2 in that sense.
Critical points in the sphere of influence in those maps are always in a narrow chokepoint, thus leads to easy stalling.
You can start building stonewalls as early as 4 minutes in AoE4.
It’s natural that techskipping (skipping early to at least late midgame) is absolute inevitable compared to the other maps at hand.
Edit:
Coming also from an AoE4 experience.
In general games are really castle age heavy, but BF, more often than not, results into Imperial really really often cause of given reasons.
I did focus on what you said and now you’re just doubling-down on being wrong. “Overall everything mirrors everything in this game in general” is even more wrong than the part I quoted. AOE4 is much closer in asymmetry to AOE3 and AOM than AOE2. It’s not like SC2 though, which is completely asymmetrical.