Wonders = Age 5?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I think AoE2 is sort of getting stale; I think it’s a certainty that splitting the Chinese civilization will happen, simply because the Romans don’t really have a place in AOE2, yet they got added anyways as we’ve covered virtually every part of the world.

Central Asians? All sorts of obscure Central Asian empires got added. South Asians? Dynasties of India gave us a look at various interesting Indian kingdoms. Southeast Asians? Rise of the Rajas. Even the ###### ended up being featured via The Forgotten, and various African civilizations were added.

About the only place Forgotten Empires hasn’t touched yet would be the various cultures in the Sinosphere, and breaking up the Chinese is probably the only option remaining, which should get us 4 civs (Tang Song Ming Qing, the latter via the Jurchens), then add their sparring partners (Goturks to avoid saying Uighur, Khampas, to avoid saying Tibetan, Khitan are yet another steppe civilization that might have interesting gameplay.), This’ll cover two expansions.

However, how about revamping some core game mechanics? AOE ends roughly in 1600; the most interesting battles of the Jurchens occurred roughly around 1640. One opportunity to get new ideas might be to expand the scope of AOE2’s time period; we start as early as 450 with the Attila the Hun campaign, and end as late as around 1590, with the Battle of Noryang Point.

If we end currently around Noryang Point, we’re actually getting pretty advanced in time. If the Imperial Age represents the High Middle Ages, we’re already past the Italian Renaissance with Noryang Point and getting a 5th age might keep things fresh.

To get a 5th age, we could do it conventionally, i.e, make it possible to trivially upgrade from Imperial to Renaissance or Enlightenment, but the problem is that it highly disrupts the current meta, where Imperial Age warfare eventually leads to trash wars.

A more moderate solution is simply to have the Wonder of each civilization represent that it’s reached a Renaissance or Enlightenment for the respective civilization.

That is to say, we add in a 5th age, but have the 5th age be bound to the Wonder.

I.e, the wonder can research 5th age technologies, build unique 5th age units (arquebusiers, for instance, or rodeleros, light cannon, etc), or provide other bonuses.

In Standard Victory, this helps make Wonder victories easier to achieve, since the Wonder holder now has the ability to build units superior to those of their attackers, and helps make fights more decisive (since now the best counter to a Wonder is another Wonder, and it’s not simply a matter of destroynig the opponent’s wonder, but destroying the opponent’s wonder and keeping one’s own wonder alive).

In Conquest Victory, wonders are essentially useless decorations, and making Wonders grant Age 5 technologies and units helps make wonders a viable strategic choice; they are now sort of an Imperial Age Castle, without the natural attack capability.

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Would be interesting for a mod at best.Games like rise of nations empire earth are a good example why too many ages is not popular.

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Agree. TIme to settle the 4 hour game in amazon tunnel

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Age of Empires 3 has the Imperial Age as the fifth age, and civilizations that advance to the Imperial Age get absurd bonuses with Imperial Age technologies; it’s intended as a tie-breaker age so that games don’t drag on too long.

Wonders as AOE2’s fifth age would work similarly, but it would be less disruptive to the current meta because it’s intended that once the gold runs out, back to trash wars we go.

That isn’t such a big problem, and is historically accurate because the European Renaissance and Enlightenment are unique not for their content, but because their Islamic and Chinese equivalents were snuffed out by foreign invaders.

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Decreasing cost of wonders but giving them addition effect might be good future but 5th age is too much.

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It sounds like a good idea on paper, but no. Wonders are a gimmick. Four ages is enough. The age system is not broken so doesn’t need fixing. Ultimately if you can’t finish the game before the gold runs out, you’re being too passive. Adding a 5th age will not solve that, it will just drag games out even longer.

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I’m not encouraging a full 5th age, but a quasi 5th age.

AOE2 is about the era between the fall of Rome (and analogous empires like the Mauryas in India and the Han in China) and the Renaissance / Enlightenment.

The idea is that you can build a FEW Arquebusiers, a FEW light cannons, but you can’t build a ton of them, and the majority of the fighting will still involve arbalests, champions, and so on, because the arquebusiers, light cannons, etc, build very slowly and the wonder is extremely expensive.

Same with Wonder technologies; most of them will be very expensive and have relatively marginal effect compared to their cost.

It’s really more a question of flavor and diversity; each civilization, for instance, could have unique bonuses unlocked by their Age 5 Wonder, which are also disabled when the Age 5 Wonder goes down.

The point is more, it’s a valid option once you hit Imperial to build a wonder to get access to what are essentially AOE3 units, and try to exploit the advantage from the AOE3 units as support for Imperial Age units.

Also, the ability to derive Wonder bonuses helps support more Imperial Age gameplay, when many civilizations have a preference for late Castle Age as late Castle Age is where you finish your boom strat for 100 villagers.

Put another way, in AOE3, you have Revolution (think Flemish Revolution in AOE2 for the Burgundians), which is an alternative to Imperial Age whose essence is an all-in.

Since AOE2 is a more passive and defensive game, instead of Revolution, you have Enlightenment based on building your wonder, allowing you to get slow and gradual bonuses in Imperial .

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Spending 3,000 resources of wood, gold & stone at a late stage in the game where those resources are scarce, all just to unlock a limited small number of more advanced range units just doesn’t seem worth it. You’d always rather have 2x castles and a ton of siege for basically the same price as a Wonder.

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It depends on how good the units are, and you’re also likely going to have technologies on the wonder too.

It’s sort of an inverse “Flemish Revolution”; instead of nuking your economy for getting a massive military boost in the short-term, you can nuke your military in the short-term to win in the long-term if the opponent doesn’t wonder up themselves or manage to take you out because of the massive wonder costs.

Maybe calling it Age 5 isn’t the best term; in AOE3, there are civs that support fast industrial (Age 4) strats, but there are no civs that support fast Imperial (Age 5) strats.

Age implies that you usually want to reach that age unless you can end the game earlier, whereas Wonders as Age 5 is intended to be highly situational and often risky in the same way Flemish Revolution is risky; if Flemish Revolution fails, you’re probably dead, if you don’t have enough strength to stay alive / keep your wonder alive before it starts ###### itself off, you’re also probably dead.

Another example might be, well, Relic superunits in Relic Entertainment’s Dawn of War series. The Relic superunits are the highest technology level in Relic’s older games, but aren’t actually that strong; no one will ever tech to the relic super unit. Instead, when you’re max supply and have the biggest army you can have, you build the relic superunit as a support for your biggest army.

In the same way, if you’re somehow doing 200 vs 200 pop fights in AOE2, Age 5 wonders start making sense, or alternatively, you boomed heavily and stayed in castle for a while, and managed to stay competitive despite the opponent having imperial age units. There, it’s viable to spend 1800 resources on Imperial, then another 3000 resources on a wonder right off the bat for your superunits.

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there is a mod with 7 ages and its worth checking it out to see how it’s done. called the GOLDEN_DE mod @LiningGull724

another one is with wonder unlocks other post imp techs/units, not really 5th age though. called MBA look it up

edit: maybe R@W might be able to do a 5th age as well. people have asked about it but no reply from the dev team yet. @TheConqueror753

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No, we’re not doing a fifth age.

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welp, thats ashame. it’ll be nice for another advancement to “dark age”.

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There’s no Civilization north of Mesoamerica, a single civilization in South America, absolutely nothing in the lower two thirds of Africa and Oceania hasn’t been touched at all.

Lol what do you mean pretty much the entire world has been covered.

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Oceania got covered via Rise of the Rajas. We are really stuck skimming the bottom of the barrel; Haudenosee were a response to European colonization, and there’s an extinct mound builder civilization in North America that got wiped out by smallpox, but of whom we know very little about.

As for 5th age, I think the best way to do Wonders to represent a fifth age would be to add some powerful, but extremely expensive technologies, like:

-Columbian Exchange: Adds 200 food to farms.
-Scientific Method: Cuts the cost of all researches by 25%, and improves their research speed by 33%.
-Military Discipline (Drill, but the name is taken): Military units attack 20% faster.
-Bureaucratic Administration: Buildings produce units 33% faster.
-Commercial Revolution: Trade Cogs and Trade Carts generate 50% more gold.
-Enlightenment: Villagers work 33% faster, Wonder victory takes 25% less time, Enlightenment-era shipments enabled.

Enlightenment is intended to be a “you win” button, so it’ll be extremely expensive even for Wonder technologies, and take a long time to research.

Instead of building units, which could destabliize the meta, how about import AOE3’s shipment system? Instead of building Age 5 units without limit, Wonders can buy single-use shipments that can radically change the course of the game with imbalanced units, but you can only buy the shipments once.

-Pike-and-Shot: Delivers Renaissance Pikemen, who are pikemen with more HP, better armor, and better attack against non-cavalry, as well as Arquebusiers, who are accurate, long-range hand cannoneers with a bonus against cavalry.

-Legionaries: Delivers a squad of Rodeleros, who are fast champion-like infantry with high armor.

-Jingals: Delivers some Jingals, sort of a cross between a bombard cannon, a hand cannoneer, and a conquistador. Excellent anti-infantry siege damage, and moderate anti-building capability, although still outranged by towers.

-Siege of Constantinople: Delivers some Great Bombards, which are unique, large, and massive bombard cannons that outrange trebuchets and are lethal against turtles.

For enlightenment shipments:

-Musketry: Delivers a squad of musketeers, which are accurate long-ranged gunpowder units that have a melee attack with an attack bonus against cavalry.

-Partisans: Delivers two squads of partisans, which are accurate long-ranged gunpowder units that have an attack bonus against infantry.

-Horse artillery: Delivers horse artillery, which need to pack and unpack to fire, but are lethal against infantry.

-Field Cannon: Delivers field cannons, which are long-ranged multi-purpose siege weapons.

The idea is, by limiting Age 5 units to shipments, you don’t distort the meta and present a better representation of late-Middle Ages / early modern warfare, with halberdiers and so on still being used, but an increasing, if still slight, use of gunpowder weapons.

Moreover, you give early-age civilizations better performance in the late Imperial Age, which gives them something else to do other than try to finish the game early.

None of the Renaissance / Enlightenment shipment units are affected by upgrades, so in theory, quite a few highly-upgraded Imperial units could be superior to Renaissance / Enlightenment units for cost; think about it this way, Mesoamerican Atlatls gave the Spanish, who were in breastplate and wielding gunpowder weapons a massive headache.

The Manchu horsebow was militarily effective as late as 1800 against gunpowder foes.

But otherwise, everyone starts on the same footing in Age 5, so even civilizations that are late-game terrible have something to look forward to in Imperial Age.

Lastly, it makes certain scenarios more challenging and fun.

Noryang Point is an example. Historically, the Japanese were using lots and lots of musketeers, but you see more samurai than hand cannoneers and hand cannoneers suck in general.

We could tweak it so that the Japanese can now build arquebusiers or musketeers from their barracks or archery range, making it so that it’d be a more realistic engagement, with the Koreans having used a combination of hwacha, archers, and swordsmen against Japanese arquebusiers.

The Chinese expeditionary force, likewise, was using lots of cannons, so instead of discovering Chinese bombard cannons, you’d pick up Chinese Field Cannons instead.

If the Chinese get split up and there are multiple Chinese civilizations, one opportunity would be to have the campaign of Koxinga, the Ming loyalist who displaced the Dutch from Formosa.

That would be Ming vs Burgundians, but to make it more historically accurate and interesting, you could have the Burgundians be able to produce musketeers from their barracks, so the entire time you’d be relying on sheer numbers to beat “boss mode” musketeers who are broken units in a standard AOE2 meta.

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What about this:

Instead of Wonder / Relic victories on Conquest Wonders and Relics give increasing Ressource Returns.
Whilst the Wonder basically acts like a Feitoria with no Pop space consumption (Initial base ressource produciton probably to adjust).

Relics could start with 20 f / min instead the current 30.

And each minute their is a multiplicative factor of 5 % which is pitched on the base value. So after 40 minutes you get 300 % of the base value.
In respect to relics this would mean 60 g / min per relic

So there wouldn’t be a direct game win, but when you fight against higher relic numbers or wonders you’re still effectively on a time limit. But you have to call it yourself.

This would also possibly solve the Feitoria issue as then there would be ways to counteract that play with getting most of the relics or building a wonder way before the portuguese player can afford it.

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No we are not.plenty more advanced civilizations which can be added to the game.

Even if you dont add anything from North america oceania south africa siberia you still have many more missing civis.

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Like, if you want all those features, why don’t you just play Age of Empires 3. You’re practically asking for a conversion to Age of Empires 3 anyways.

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I would not like a fifth age, but you could make wonders cheaper (maybe 500W 500G), build faster and give a special unique bonus to each civ…

Some possible examples:

Burgundians: cavalry get +5 charge dmg every 30 secs
Mayans: archers get +10% speed
Portuguese: Feitorias give 25% more resources

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Australian Aborigines were hunter gatherers. Polynesians didn’t have cities (the definition of civilization requires cities, and modern Tonga, once the cradle of the Tongan Empire, has only 25,000 people). The Maori didn’t even have literacy, when the ###### had Quipu knots.

But you know, the Aztecs didn’t have iron-working technology, and the ###### were playing with bronze, but we gave them blast furnace.

If you actually want to introduce further civilizations, it’s easier to work through Sub-Saharan Africa (break up the Malians) than to go through Oceania.

Javans, though, could potentially be added, but that’s more Southeast Asia than “Oceania”.

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You look at Nan Madol and then tell me people in Oceania didn’t have “cities”.
Like sure, Tonga didn’t have that many people (is 25 thousand less than what Sicily had in the middle ages in the first place? Or just about any european civ honestly.)

But Polynesians DID cross all that extension of Ocean through their own means. Like you complaint about the Maori. But the freaking island was settled in the 1200s, what did you even expect out of them.

Filipinos straddle the line between Oceania and Southeast Asia better, since they were Austranesian and all, but honestly saying there’s nothing relevant in Oceania is laughable.

Also funny that you got stuck in the Oceania part and not any of the other continents I mentioned, South America alone could easily have 10 more civilizations if one really wanted to.