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Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys
...I really like the sound design for this game.

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Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
4 or 2? Do you mean like effects or just overall? I can't get the music out of my head. Only sc comes close to being as iconic for rts music

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC

Milo and POTUS posted:

Sure but I'd like to wrap it up legitimately now that I've come so far. It'd be my second one total and the first I got by actually attempting it

There's a bunch of actually challenging ones on there. The guy who was talking about the difficulty of the incan second mission defending the wonder without walls is one of them. This one's pretty much impossible unless you're playing sub 500 elos (which are probably rare as hell anymore) or you're viper himself. Hell, just getting people in a lobby is pretty much a crapshoot. It's just an incredibly outsized difficulty compared to the rest and is contingent on way too many factors you can't control. But I'll stop asking here at least

Just hop into discord man, I am sure someone will help.

Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys

Milo and POTUS posted:

4 or 2? Do you mean like effects or just overall? I can't get the music out of my head. Only sc comes close to being as iconic for rts music

Yeah, the 2 music is just classic.
But I'm really enjoying the sound effects for 4. Siege weapons aren't anything special visually, but they sound devastating. And my dudes charging into battle sound like they're actually charging into battle.

Magni
Apr 29, 2009
Having a big gunpowder artillery battery let loose is absolutely spectacular.

Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys

Magni posted:

Having a big gunpowder artillery battery let loose is absolutely spectacular.

For sure. Sound effects, and those rad visible broadside targeting arcs, have been enough to make naval combat go from being a bit of a chore in 2 to a highlight of the game in 4.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



I love the music in 1 and 2. Childhood memories along with Warcraft 2.

Epic Prison Guy
Aug 1, 2020

the only thing that was decent in any way about this game was the sound when you make infantry units attack and it's something I wouldn't mind seeing improved up on every other rts game. Other than that it was a turd for me at best.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Minenfeld! posted:

I love the music in 1 and 2. Childhood memories along with Warcraft 2.

drat yeah I forgot about warcraft 2. That also had great music

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.

Angry Lobster posted:

I'm playing through all campaigns and while there are certain bangers, the Inca campaign is a terrible, boring, stupid slog, especially the third mission. Are all forgotten empires campaigns that bad?

I would say that the Forgotten Campaigns vary wildly in quality but the Incan one is a bit notorious, a lot of the problem is the fact that every civ is the Incas who are always so defensively orientated.

I found the Alaric campaign the best of the Forgotten and the Sforza and Bari ones have their moments.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.
A lot of it’s probably just since a lot of appeal for any of the campaigns to me is 20 year old nostalgia but basically none of the post-ES campaigns I’ve tried have the right feel to me; they all feel like fan scenarios. Often ones that’d have been fantastic in that context, but in an actual released game they end up feeling… cheap, if anything. For example how much they abuse editor tricks; over-embellishment with decorative assets looks great in an eye candy screenshot competition on Age of Kings Heaven, but for an actual campaign to play it ends up looking muddy and cluttered. Combining buildings into each other into creative new forms is great in a fan scenario and can create amazing looking things in that context (anyone ever play AoM’s adventurers fan levels?) but when you’re a game company with actual artists it just leaves me wondering why you couldn’t have just made an actual asset. The new Age of Mythology expansion is absolutely horrendous for that kind of thing all the campaigns I’ve played (not all of them to be fair) have had varying degrees of it and it just does not feel right.

Not to say all the ES levels were masterpieces—take a look at Venice in the Barbarossa campaign sometime—but I feel like they had their priorities better lined up.



Also jumping back to music chat, AoEII’s is nice but doesn’t hold a candle to 1 for me. The tracks all had so much character to them, e.g.:
https://youtu.be/28YvBbLQWtI

Just to continue being grumpy I feel like the AoE definitive edition’s composer was completely out of touch with the beats of what made it so good, half of them emphasize completely wrong parts

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.

khwarezm posted:

I would say that the Forgotten Campaigns vary wildly in quality but the Incan one is a bit notorious, a lot of the problem is the fact that every civ is the Incas who are always so defensively orientated.

I found the Alaric campaign the best of the Forgotten and the Sforza and Bari ones have their moments.

Alaric was fun and had a really good time with it, goths incentivise a very different playstyle.

I've just finished the Incan campaign and yeah, it's my least favorite one so far. Map design aside, what I find the most aggravating is that the entire campaign is basically Inca vs Inca, with very similar unit compositions, which gets tiresome fast, at least the narrator cutscenes are ok.

So, the next campaign I have picked up is Tariq, and oh boy the first scenario is hilariously lopsided. The start and the mid game are hilariously easy but assaulting Cordoba's castle is a painful slog. The mix of castle age and low cap restrictions, plus infinite enemy units, a fortified castle in a lake with two narrow bridges and four fire towers (those things melt rams) is a curious recipe for the first scenario. If this one sets the tone for the rest of the campaign, this one is also going to be a slog.

I'm going completely blind into all the post The Conquerors campaigns and it's been qutie a ride so far, with a few duds here and there.

achillesforever6
Apr 23, 2012

psst you wanna do a communism?

Koramei posted:

Also jumping back to music chat, AoEII’s is nice but doesn’t hold a candle to 1 for me. The tracks all had so much character to them, e.g.:
https://youtu.be/28YvBbLQWtI
I still think AOM has it beat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGXwvLupP5A

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



I played through the original and Conquerors campaigns out of nostalgia and then started the Last Khan campaigns. I thought Ivaylo was pretty good.

Negostrike
Aug 15, 2015


I had fun with the new expansions' campaigns, though it does annoy me when I see an enemy building fused with a tower. It's very much a bitch to neutralize that crap.

The new soundtrack arrangements are garbage indeed, both AOE 1 and 2. I always make sure I have the old arrangement mod turned on because it's so much better. That mix of modern-ish beats and medieval music works very well for me. Also I really wish they didn't change the AOE 1 graphics so much in the DE, they completely killed the original game's vibes, unlike AOE 2 DE. Oh well.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



AOE 1 looks far too HD to maintain its vibe. AOE 2 looks excellent. I also like the AOE 2 DE music. I'm ambivalent to AOE 1's DE music depending on the track. Some is good, others have lost their charm. It's what I imagine would happen to a Sim City 2000 remaster's music.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Negostrike posted:

I had fun with the new expansions' campaigns, though it does annoy me when I see an enemy building fused with a tower. It's very much a bitch to neutralize that crap.

The new soundtrack arrangements are garbage indeed, both AOE 1 and 2. I always make sure I have the old arrangement mod turned on because it's so much better. That mix of modern-ish beats and medieval music works very well for me. Also I really wish they didn't change the AOE 1 graphics so much in the DE, they completely killed the original game's vibes, unlike AOE 2 DE. Oh well.

I remember the fused towers but I have no idea where. Then again I finished every campaign but longshanks in less than a month and a lot of it has blurred together

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.
I'm going to give a bit of a breakdown of the Forgotten empires (the company I mean) campaigns overall, its interesting because you can clearly see the mod team behind them slowly morph into actual professional game designers:

-HD Forgotten Empires, overall very dodgy, very much feels like they are a bunch of amateur modders who were hired out by Microsoft on the cheap to add more content but it sometimes lead to more creative attempts to stretch the AOE2 format into something more resembling modern RTS games and generally experiment with the format, especially the Sforza campaign, but generally speaking they don't have the degree of professionalism and can't get past the limitations of AOE2 to pull it off. A lot of the campaigns feel very weird and unfocused as a result and some them go all the way down this bizarre RTS/RPG path that doesn't really work. Most notably the Francisco de Orellana campaign which has the unique distinction of being the only campaign in the game not to find its way into the Definitive edition in some way, shape or form. Things are also made worse by the fact that the Campaigns are too story orientated without fantastic storytelling ability and especially without any actual voice acting. Also some of them are very truncated, like the Bari campaign only has three missions. Still, I will give it credit for the ambition, especially in the gigantic, unusual campaigns of York and Honfoglalás.

-The African Kingdoms, a big step up compared to the Forgotten but not really up to the level of the old Ensemble campaigns, the overall storytelling is forgettable and some of the campaigns are a bit dodgy, I think the Tariq ibn Ziyad one in particular ends up being way, way too grindy, but the Sundjata campaign and Francisco De Almeida campaigns are pretty good. In the De Almeida one the third mission is particularly memorable where you have two completely different potential paths that you can pursue based on your decision at the start, this is a bit of a trademark of later Forgotten empires campaigns.

-Rise of the Rajas, I actually think that the campaigns for this expansion are a bit of a step down overall compared to the African Kingdoms, still not quite up to the level of old Ensemble ones and the Vietnamese one in particular is a notorious grindfest, I think its widely considered by far the most difficult campaign in the whole game, and its got very underwhelming storytelling that kind of feels like somebody read the wikipedia page of the Lam Sơn uprising once and that was the extent of the research they did. Still, the other campaigns are alright, not amazing, but there are some good missions, I like the Gajah Mada one where you are defending colonies across the entire Indonesian archipelago, and the Khmer one where you have to build towers in various towns to 'Claim' them. Just by and large the campaigns in this expansion don't feel like they have a huge amount of spark to them, the voice acting is also pretty bad and they don't tell very interesting stories to frame them, also, at least in the Definitive Edition, there are some truly bizarre civ choices in some campaigns, I know they probably wanted to avoid you fighting the same civs over and over like with the Incan one but in one of the Gajah Mada missions you are meant to be far to the east in Indonesia, almost right next to New Guinea, and your enemies are the likes of the Vietnamese and Chinese, used for real life people who obviously weren't either? Its very weird.

-Definitive Edition Forgotten Empires, a lot of people didn't really notice this but almost all of the missions of the original Forgotten Empire campaigns were completely redone for definitive edition, fleshing them out to bring them more in line with the regular AOE2 campaigns, getting rid of a lot of the unwieldy elements and weird mechanics they were experimenting with in the originals, extending them so they are all at least 5 scenarios long, and adding proper voice acting at last. I think you can notice an obvious uptick in professionalism and craft when you go from the old HD versions of these campaigns to the Definitive Edition remakes, still, in some ways you kind of miss the strange stuff they were doing in the old ones that only a mostly amateur group of modders might go for, like the huge scope of the Honfoglalás campaign. Generally speaking they are much more solid, stuff like Bari and Alaric feels more in line with what I would expect for an AoE2 campaign while still having a bit of unique flavor, I don't have many complaints about a lot of these missions, I very much like the Alaric campaign where you assault Rome because its one of the largest city maps ever done for an AOE2 mission and gives a sense of scale you never really saw in the Ensemble campaigns. There are some pitfalls though, most notably the campaign they replaced the Francisco de Orellana, an Incan campaign based around Pachacuti, just doesn't really work and I think that's due to the intrinsic problems with attempting to make an Incan orientated Campaign within AOE2 where they are a slow, defensive civ and there really isn't any way to involve any of the other civs in the game realistically. For the other campaigns, overall it feels a bit like they were probably hobbled by wanting to not stray too far away from the original Forgotten campaigns in HD which prevents them from really becoming amazing.

-The Last Khans, I think this is really when Forgotten Empires really started to come into their own with their campaigns, they really felt like they had enough understanding and experience of AOE2 in particular they could properly start to experiment with the format and do some of the stuff they had previously done to a much more professional standard, I think all of these campaigns are easily on the level of the Ensemble ones. The Tamerlane campaign is very straightforward, you run out, kick rear end all over Eurasia and conquer the hell out of everything. They're just solid build and destroy scenarios and I think its a good campaign for people who haven't played much AOE and want a very straightforward campaign that makes full use of modern tech that can handle much more on screen than was possible when AOE2 was first released. But my favorite campaign, perhaps in the entire game so far, is the Kotyan Khan one, I think its just fantastic how it manages to use the RTS format but instead of building up and conquering everything as is the norm you are essentially desperately running away from an impossibly powerful enemy for most missions. Especially in mission 2 where you have to rapidly smash through a Tatar fort to get away from the Mongols there's this great tension as you are trying to build up quickly enough to move out before dealing with wave after wave of Elite Mangudai in the Castle Age. Its effective storytelling where you can feel how desperate the Cuman's must have felt having to abandon there home against the Mongol Horde and getting constantly hosed over as they had to deal with the predatory politics of Eastern Europe. The final mission in particular has another thing like in that one De Almeida mission where you have two completely different potential paths to pursue depending on your decisions at the start. Finally the Ivalyo campaign has lots to recommend, I find the narrative fascinating with this commoner rising to become a king, for a time, and there are some cool missions, especially the King of the Hill one and the way that the first mission has you really scrounging for resources to build up your forces.

-Lords of the West, my god, they really stepped up their game here, I'd be very comfortable in saying that both the Lords of West but especially the Dawn of the Dukes campaigns are easily the best that AOE2 ever had and completely leave all of the old Ensemble campaigns in the dust. I'll start by saying that the Edward I campaign is a bit weaker than the others, it might be a bit difficult to make one around a fairly slow and one dimensional civ like the Britons, but its more that its completely fine rather than bad in any real way, standard build and destroy stuff. Its the Hauteville campaign in particular that really seals the deal, every single scenario seems to have such a wide variety of options, new mechanics that actually work comfortably and lots of complex scripting compared to other AOE2 stuff. The very first scenario sets the scene perfectly with you as essentially a Norman adventurer trying to leverage the complex politics of South Italy to move up in the world, taking on various different sub-missions and deciding between supporting different parties like the Lombards and Byzantines. I know a little bit about this period in Italian history so it was awesome seeing them simulate some of the complexities of the time, especially the way in which the Normans increasingly went from mercenaries to outright rulers I think is shockingly well done considering the limitations of a game like AOE2. Even the RPG-lite mechanics work well, you want to micro your powerful hero units so they get lots of combat experience and upgrade but not do so much fighting that they just die and you lose a powerful unit, I think this was a much better system than the Ensemble one where you had to babysit heroes like Joan of Arc because them dying would lead to instant defeat. The final mission is a great send off where, again, you have a zillion different possible ways to proceed and a hugely complex varied map to go along with it. The Burgundian campaign is also rock solid, if not quite as intricate as the Hauteville one. I especially like the way they flip perspective on the Joan of Arc campaign, its almost like you are playing the whole thing inverted with stuff like the Cleansing of Paris and the final capture of Joan herself, and again every map has a complex combination of objectives and side opportunities, like in map 2 where you can hire out the English to be allies so long as you can keep the money flowing, which feels very Burgundian.

-Dawn of the Dukes, look, I know at this point I'm just gushing and not doing much else but goddamn this is even better than the Lords of West expansion. Every campaign is a winner and they all expand on the stuff that AOE2 campaigns have been working on for years at an even higher quality than previously. What I really love about this expansion's campaigns even compared to the Lords of West is the way that narratively each campaign is closely interlinked, you have major figures like Vytautas, Jogaila and Jan Žižka show up in the other campaigns in a way that contextually makes sense, it kind of feels like you are playing through one long, epic journey through the history of early 15th century Eastern Europe. It starts off with a Lithuanian campaign where they have some straightforward and solid missions to deal with the likes of the Tatars, Teutonic order and Russians, lots of variation in approach and enemy type while maintaining the array of options that were a trademark of the best missions in the Lords of West. I particularly like the first mission where you can pursue either the old Pagan traditions or the new Christian ones for different benefits. This follows on directly into the Jadwiga campaign which I think is the single best campaign in the history of AOE2, I always find Jadwiga's story interesting and the campaign has a bittersweet outcome with Jogaila fighting the battle of Grunwald years after she has died. What I really like in this campaign is the way that every mission feels like they come up something new, it starts off with a highly restricted mission where your goal is to get Jadwiga to the right place and afterwards reduce of your enemies, I like the touch of the first enemy defeated joining you, since it encourages you to be surgical and not cause them too much destruction so they can still fight effectively afterwards. In mission 2 I love the way in which you can decide to go down a full conversion path with the effect that converting too many people will cause a backlash and turn some allies into enemies. Mission 3 has this great concept that's perfectly pulled off where you and your opponents both have to decide which fortress will go to who before fighting even starts with different strengths and weaknesses for both, it leads to a really unique dynamic where you are simultaneously attacking and being attacked in completely different places in different playthroughs while also having to deal with outside interference from both the Russians and Teutonic order as you get closer to winning. Mission 4 is this huge scale city siege map where you have to fend off huge waves of Teutonic attacks and prevent your key fortifications from going down, and exploit the down time between the waves to damage the enemy's supply lines. The nightime raid concept might be a little bit beyond AOE2's scope but I loved this map as a pure fight of attrition. Mission 5 is completely different with you using a different hero and going back to the Lithuanian civ but with extensive support from the Poles and having to fight a really powerful force of Tatars, you have to juggle a lot of things to maintain map control well enough to bring down your enemies. Finally mission 6 is a huge final confrontation with the Teutons where you have a plethora of options to try and beef up your forces that ends with a straightforward slugfest based on your ability to micro a set number of troops rather than being able to stream in fresh reinforcement from your production buildings. I can't sing the praises of this campaign enough, I particularly like the way you have both Jadwiga and Jogaila for most missions with different abilities and upgrade paths, Jogaila is a regular fighting unit while Jadwiga can heal and convert units like a monk, they can both be really useful in tight situation and the way they complement each other's abilities is a neat touch considering how important the story makes their relationship.

Jan Žižka again ties into the other campaign since Jan fights for Jogaila in mission 2, which is a different perspective on Grunwald where you play as the Bohemians instead of the Poles. This is one of the largest scale missions I can think of in AOE2, by the end of it can very well be the case that thousands of units might have died, and I love the way you are trying to focus down the commanders in different parts of map while preventing your allies from similarly getting killed. I won't go so in depth about the Žižka campaign as I have the Jadwiga campaign, I'd be repeating a lot of the stuff I have been talking about for both the recent expansions, but suffice to say its still top shelf and I especially like the way they more successfully build a campaign based a slow moving civ like the Bohemians, usually the strongest AOE2 campaigns are using fast cavalry civs like the Mongols, Cumans and Poles. Its a big improvement over that Incan campaign.

So that's my review of the Forgotten Empires campaigns since launch, I think at this point they've really nailed down RTS campaign design and I would be comfortable saying that its gotten to a point that it far exceeds the old Ensemble campaigns, just generally its awesome to see the campaigns reach a level of scale, especially in terms of troop numbers, that wasn't really possible back in 1999 when everything still had to be restricted to a 75 population cap.

Edit; also you guys are wrong about the music, the extended Civ themes in particular are fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK6duZz4WjY

khwarezm fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jan 11, 2022

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014


I don't have a ton to add to your effortpost but I think it's mostly on the spot. I do agree about the trajectory of mod team to professional studio though; a lot of game mod scenes follow the same path. With the base game to build on and no release dates to hit, mod maps tend to become more and more ornate/elaborate over time, both visually and in terms of scope. It makes sense, you want to outdo what came before you, your audience is people who have already seen what the main game has to offer.

There's a series of very interesting videos about the making of some of the newer campaigns which covers both the storytelling/slideshow aspect as well as timelapses of the maps, with commentary by a creator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlZjGwEVsKs Well worth a watch, if you're into this kinda thing.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
I was going to comment on the difficulty of the rise of the rajas campaign but it turns out the indian campaign wasn't even in it! It was apparently the forgotten. God that fourth indian campaign is absolutely insane difficulty level. I very much enjoyed the khmer and burmese missions for the most part, though that last burmese mission was a huge PITA

ThatBasqueGuy
Feb 14, 2013

someone introduce jojo to lazyb


lmao t90 caught covid again

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
He's still in florida right? Think I found his problem

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.
T90 is the best Florida man.

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
how the hell do you play random maps with sub-typical food situations? Socotra has shockingly few resources I just found out and it throws off my entire already middling early game and I really have no idea how you'd advance quickly without the standard free food sources. Putting more on wood to afford farms leaves you with less on well farms and in feudal you're really gonna feel the pinch if you start producing military

Mikojan
May 12, 2010

New patch looking good. I'd say game is mostly well balanced now apart from some demo ship debugging. Once they get that one done I'd say official ranked play should be good to go. Oh and that thing people to do drop out of games to avoid losses.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



A relic game in TYOOL 2022 still has drop-hacking?

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC
Seige meta in Imp still will be present. Team games will still be bad though I think. A

Mikojan
May 12, 2010

MikeC posted:

Seige meta in Imp still will be present. Team games will still be bad though I think. A

Well, its a hard balance to obtain. They talked about slowing down seige in the upcoming february patch. But I don't think it's healthy for the game to nerf everything so much that you just end up with knights vs archers every game like we do in aoe2. Also why I'm suprised they nerfed horse cav by as much as they did. I'd have rather have had another unit buffed to counter or something.

Mikojan fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jan 19, 2022

Dominoes
Sep 20, 2007

Mikojan posted:

But I don't think it's healthy for the game to nerf everything so much that you just end up with knights vs archers every game like we do in aoe2.
The key to avoiding this is ending the game in the scouts vs houses phase.

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014


I don't really want to see knights/archers every game either (though infantry are actually viable in aoe4! what a concept!!!) but I would take it over seeing nothing but siege v siege, which is even less interesting. Armies composed of nothing but siege are totally viable and depending on the civ, potentially optimal.

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC

aniviron posted:

I don't really want to see knights/archers every game either (though infantry are actually viable in aoe4! what a concept!!!) but I would take it over seeing nothing but siege v siege, which is even less interesting. Armies composed of nothing but siege are totally viable and depending on the civ, potentially optimal.

Chinese bombards with full upgrades are basically Tiger tanks and an autowin.

Mikojan posted:

Well, its a hard balance to obtain. They talked about slowing down seige in the upcoming february patch. But I don't think it's healthy for the game to nerf everything so much that you just end up with knights vs archers every game like we do in aoe2. Also why I'm suprised they nerfed horse cav by as much as they did. I'd have rather have had another unit buffed to counter or something.

I would like to see seige like bombards as specialty anti building weapons to allow you to end the game once you have eaked out your lead. You can have specialty anti army seige as well but they shouldn't be nearly as resilient as they are now. They should take meaningful damage from ranged fire and melt the moment melee touches them. Right now they are just too much like tanks. Arrow fire does nothing and they move well enough in most cases to make trying to focus them down with melee infantry or cav cost-ineffective by kiting and having your opponent's guys get eaten alive. Hence the scout suicide metagame.

Mikojan
May 12, 2010

My main gripe with siege would be the mobility. Being able to position them, unleash a volley and then just pack up and move to the backlines again before the opposing force can intervene is dumb and basically resembles tank gameplay like you said.

Maybe leave springalds with slightly higher movement speed to further dissuade big siege balls.

ANYWAY, 100k tournament announced in march! First real big money tournament sponsored by microsoft for AOE4. Exciting times ahead?

Gmaz
Apr 3, 2011

New DLC for Aoe2 is out: Dynasties of India
Kinda sad that it's an AoE2 tournament series that was changed to AoE4 instead of a completely new series. But oh well

Mikojan
May 12, 2010

Gmaz posted:

Kinda sad that it's an AoE2 tournament series that was changed to AoE4 instead of a completely new series. But oh well

Guess they couldn't resist the opportunity of the fourth NAC being about aoe4. DOes this mean microsoft is allocating prize pools to 4 instead of 2? Remains to be seen..

Fano
Oct 20, 2010
Nili mentioned on stream a few months ago that there were sponsors basically lining up to throw money at AoE4 events, but none for AoE2 in comparison.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
hmu if yall want a more up to date thread title

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Mikojan posted:

Guess they couldn't resist the opportunity of the fourth NAC being about aoe4. DOes this mean microsoft is allocating prize pools to 4 instead of 2? Remains to be seen..

I thought the tourneys had been slowing down on 2. Last I can remember was kotd which is a snorefest IMO

Double Bill
Jan 29, 2006

Mikojan posted:

Guess they couldn't resist the opportunity of the fourth NAC being about aoe4. DOes this mean microsoft is allocating prize pools to 4 instead of 2? Remains to be seen..

AoE4 is a new product they want to sell, of course they'll put the money behind it. I don't think MS would mind if 4 killed off 2 completely.

Gmaz
Apr 3, 2011

New DLC for Aoe2 is out: Dynasties of India
Judging by the player numbers on steam, that ain't gonna happen

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Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.
I dunno if I’ve just gotten less patient as I’ve aged or what because there was a time we all had to wait a year between release and the expansion, but I’m just waiting for more content for AoE4 at this point before I go back to playing it. Siege aside I love the gameplay but as it stands AoE2 still just has so much more stuff in it; when they release Turks or Japanese or whatever I’ll go back in a heartbeat though.

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