Unreal Engine 5 has certainly proven to be a lot worse then expected. Most UE5 games perform horribly while looking worse then many 10 years old games. They only work when you use AI upscaling and AI generated frames, which both are significantly worse then real resolution and real frames. I hope the AoE teams know what they are doing.
For the setting I would bet on early modern or even 20th century:
AoMR and Chronicles cover the Antiquity and are still supported.
AoE2 and AoE4 cover the Middle Ages and are also still supported.
Only AoE3 covers the Modern Age and it got discontinued around the same time the development of AoE5 seems to have started.
It’s entirely possible to do UE5 well, but you need to spend time (with the appropriate expertise) refining and tuning it to suit the use case.
RTS games tend to need more tuning than most other genres. The volume of data required for realistic simulation often necessitates a lot of network optimisation (and sometimes hard choices). Relic did a good post on replay tech in CoH 3 and why certain things other games do is less possible in Essence (the short version is Essence very deeply models a lot of the sim layer).
Developing RTS games is a meditation on optimization, the nature of featuring countless of units on screen is inherently a mathematical problem that needs keen awareness. That problem has been exacerbated by graphics tech reaching new heights more so than many other types of games due to the multiplicative nature of RTS.
There are developers who attempt to undertake RTS without giving that problem the respect it deserves, instead, blindly relying on improvements to engines. I wouldn’t put that blame on UE5.
Because the UI icons and zoom level have no user options for the large quantity of players who want that and asked for it before, during, amd after launch. It’s probably too late to attract too many more players now if they fixed those, so it’s best to just move on to AoE5. Since those things haven’t been done in 4 years, they must be monumental changes to make in the engine (even though I know the zoom isn’t), or devs are steadfast against them. Time to focus on AoE5. AoE4 had its half-decade of attention; nearly a decade if you factor in the 4+ years of pre-release development
Age 5 will be welcome. It has great potential to unify the Age 2, 3, and 4 player base. The game adapted in the ancient era will be great for this and with the experience and lessons learned, they can make a great game.
The only thing I like to ask for is that the game’s age rating be kept low. We don’t need excessive violence and gore. The gaming industry is focusing on increasingly violent and realistic games, but less fun.
“Overview At Xbox Game Studios, we are hard at work continuing the great legacy of Age of Empires, our beloved RTS (Real Time Strategy) franchise. We are a passionate group responsible for this amazing franchise and are expanding our team looking for a wonderful colleague that will be responsible for planning and building our future tech stack”
I don’t disagree with you on the direction of the industry (which is a bit annoying to me on how over-the-top they go because it’s trendy and kewl), but they should at least aim for Teens/Adults like the older games did… and add Parental Controls for you to turn blood and decay off, and chat filter on. It should be your choice and responsibility as a parent (or if that’s just your preference for the game) to turn blood and decay off, and enable the chat filter… but to force it on everyone like AoE2:DE did? No thanks. I don’t think that should be the case.
Many people have played AoE for years, and many are adults. We don’t need the game to pretend we are 6 year olds. Just do what AoE2 originally did and we’re fine
Hope to be set after the AGE 3 time period , the napoleonic wars and maybe ww1 because they still have empires … I dont like the idea to return to the ancient times of rome … but we have to wait
Actually, if the game has DLSS support and manages to do a pretty decent optimization, making the game look a bit “uglier” to make it lighter, I believe it will run without major problems
But I understand the concern.
What I recommend is saving up some money and buying a new PC when the new Age of Empires comes out.
Honestly, that’s what I’m going to do.
In a few years, when the game comes out, I’ll buy a PC to handle this hot potato… Rsrsrsrs.
In my case, my PC is already old. I’ve had it for a few years, since 2018, and I only upgraded my video card a few years ago as well.
Currently I’m using an RTX 3080, an old i7 7700K processor, and the only modern thing, I’d say, is my NVMe SSD.
Honestly, I was going to buy a new PC, probably around 2027. The main reason is the game W40k: Dawn of War IV, which I’ve been waiting so long for, and I’d like to play it at maximum quality and in 4K or something around 3K resolution. (I’m also following the development of other games, which I won’t mention here).
But now with the possible leak of a new Age of Empires V… honestly, I’ll save money for longer and see what happens.
Also, I might not buy AoEV, it all depends on the theme.
I also haven’t bought all the Age of Empires games released in recent years… so for me, not buying AoEV is easy. It all depends on how it’s made.
If it’s with the themes: Ancient Age or Modern age + Victorian age. I’ll probably buy it.
The contemporary era complicates things; it would have to include World War II and the Cold War for me to feel like buying it.