Why is aoe4 units feels more sluggish and not as responsive to control as aoe2 and aoe3?

Idk if anyone feels the same. Aoe4 units no matter what has a little delay between input and the unit reaction. It is not internet lag because aoe2/3 units are perfectly responsive and feels very snappy when i ask them to move, shoot, and change directions. While in aoe4 something about the animation give me that feeling

For example when i ask my archer to shoot in aoe4, they first move a little bit, and has a shooting delay, and when units are colliding they also feel shaky. In aoe2 and aoe3 when i ask archer to shoot they just shoot.

For melee units like cav i often cant tell if the units are bumping with each other or actually attacking. The animation feels sluggish.

All units or vills or siege give me a very “heavy” feeling, as if they are super heavy weight and have a lot of inertia. Does anyone feel the same

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Although my PC put High Graphics on Recommended
 when I lowered Graphics to Medium it definitely is more fluent and snappy. Try it.

Also I guess units physique is more realistic. There is a motion as they swing the sword or shoot the bow, especially if they are low in attack speed.

There is a constant delay in response of units in aoe4 by default.
Annoying as heck.
Also, if you happen to land on the Indian server, you got huge random ping/lag spikes on top.

Im not even talking about server delays im talking about the feel of units, the movement, the clicking, etc. For example when i click vills to cut tree, im not even confident that i clicked on a tree or clicked on a space between trees. And when i want a unit to quickly shuffle or dance a bit the unit movement doesn’t follow my mouse movement. They are always behind by like 1/5 of a second

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It’s not graphics or realism. Even on low settings it is the same. Also the most realistic game jn the series, the one with the best graphics is actually aoe3 DE, but even on max settings aoe3 de units feel very responsive. It is something about the animation of aoe4

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Yeah well, aoe4 basically is a indie game in beta state.
What can you say

Aoe3 de just feels superior in any way, because the base of the game was made by legendary ensemble studios in 2005, whereas aoe4 was made by Relic, who managed to kill the coh series with coh3.

It is because the tick rate is 8 ticks per second, basically it processes the commands you give in 125ms intervals. The main reason for this is to give players across great distances an even playing field.


Just realized that the OP is describing an issue unrelated to server connection, but tick rate still explains the difference. Rather than bungle an explanation myself, I recommend watching this video which describes the impact that the tick rate has on gameplay (credit to kusch_AOE): https://youtu.be/4uhrmlatuSs?si=YebTDmfYPaLebUuE

Wait, really???
This can’t be true
 Would be extremely idiotic to punish people with good connection and being close to the server in order to make it sh*t for everyone.
I mean, having a ping of 100ms is already a huge nono for me personally in online games, but 125ms tick and your ping on top?
No wonder the units feel INSANELY unresponsive.

This has to be fixed asap.

It’s not really something that can be “fixed”, it’s the basis of all functions on the engine itself. This is the same tick rate across most relic rtses.

It also means that if you have a 100ms ping you are only going to experience a 25ms delay, all clients submit their simulation to the server simultaneously and receive instructions from the server at the same time
 so your ping being less than 125ms means nothing. It’s when you go above 125 that it would change.

(this part seems confusing, I mean all clients experience at a minimum 125ms delay)

In other words, it makes it so that players living adjacent to the servers do not have an unfair advantage. This is a common practice in rts engines, only recently with games like stormgate (tick rate of 60/s) do we see this changing (from the same devs as sc2 which had 22/s tick rate). That being said, the tick rate is ‘slower’ than all previous age titles creating the difference OP is describing.


For more information on the subject, kusch_AOE made a detailed video on this that explains it fairly well: https://youtu.be/4uhrmlatuSs?si=YebTDmfYPaLebUuE

To be clear, this is a game engine circumstance more than a server or connection related event. It’s hard coded into how the Essence Engine interpolates information to create a ‘real time’ simulation. A lower tick rate is typically to reduce CPU load, previous titles were able to have a higher tick rate as the simulations were less demanding. My expertise is more on the hardware side of computing, apologies if I explained this poorly.

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Friend, there’s nothing wrong with the way it is. It’s the game’s way of balancing things regardless of the distance.

You’re not disadvantaged by this, and both you and your opponent follow the same mechanics. It’s not for one or the other.

Now, you want to have an advantage of having better ping than the other player, making the other have an unpleasant experience just because they’re not as lucky to be close to the server?

This isn’t giving an advantage or disadvantage to anyone, and it’s just as MedicMaaan said.

And if a game wants to have a place in the competitive scene, it has to ensure that external factors don’t influence gameplay.

I can’t say what the most acceptable ticket rate would be, but it’s necessary to provide a fair game.

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Then how come people in league of legends or dota 2 have less than 10ms ping if they have good internet and others play with 100+?
Is that game not competitive?
I have 8ms ping in lol and whenever I started aoe4 and moved my units I almost got eyecancer from the delay.

Just because someone is living on a remote island and plays on satelite network and and has a pc from 1985, other players shouldn’t be made to suffer because of “fairness”.
A competitive game should provide the LOWEST ping and LOWEST delay possible.
If people have a bad setup, than that is not someone’s problem who has good setup and good connection.
That’s all I have to say about this.

It’s not about living isolated. If you pick someone from another country to play with, who will have the privilege of having the closest server? Just as it can happen to the other person, it can happen to you, and in that case, you’d find it very annoying to play with high ping because you’re on a distant server.

It’s not about having a bad PC or bad internet; it’s about living in a relatively large world and not yet having better and faster means of communication to deliver instant connection to everyone regardless of their region. But one day, we’ll get to where the ping will be less than 1 even if you’re on the opposite side of the globe.

Each game handles it differently. In the case of League of Legends, for example, it’s divided by region. You don’t play against people from outside your region unless they choose to play in a different region knowing they’ll have high ping.

There are many more details I won’t mention here to avoid going on too long, but that’s basically it. Almost all online games use some strategy or something to solve a problem due to some limitation, and the best strategy is chosen depending on the game.

Games like FPS tend to aim for the lowest possible ping because they rely more on reflexes, and even a small delay can really interfere. In the case of RTS like Age of Empires, it’s not as crucial as an FPS, but it becomes acceptable for balance and to cater to other more distant regions, especially because the player base isn’t as large as we’d like, and if we limit it by region, the matchmaking time would increase to a much higher point than what we have today.

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Of course, for us players, the better the experience, the better it will be for us. I would be happy if it were faster, but there’s a more technical aspect that many inexperienced users won’t understand. But not everything is perfect, and I won’t blame anyone because I understand that for some things, we must make certain decisions and give up others.

I like the game, maybe they could increase the number of tickets, but all of this involves something more technical, and it’s up to them to discuss and reach some consensus on what the best solution is, one that pleases as many players as possible.

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I feel @_e_o_ka is always mad in these forums. His messages are oftentimes using strong declarative writing. I appreciate your feedback and opinions, I just want to say, you oftentimes sound angry and because of this less people probably read your posts. I’m sorry you feel that way, but there’s other games (Like AoE3) which you seem to prefer :wink:

The others in this thread are driving great points. I’m in Australia and came over from SC2. I would get frustrated with my ping disadvantage on the SC2 servers (even in the arcade mod games). However I don’t mind playing someone in EU from AU because of this tick rate. I think this is great for the game to make it even for all players.

I do agree though, that a simple “if” loop in the programming could make the tick rate faster for two players who are on the same server. If both are in the US, and playing on a US server, I see no reason to keep them with a tick rate this high.

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