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The ultimate technique... https://clips.twitch.tv/RudeCourteousRutabagaSMOrc-e5Sr53jb0xY0SR9Y
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Apr 18, 2023 04:46
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he did the forbidden technique....
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Apr 18, 2023 04:54
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Technowolf posted:The ultimate technique... That's some next level strat, feel like it would only work in high elo though.
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Apr 18, 2023 14:48
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You know what's really funny is that's not the first time I've seen that work
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Apr 18, 2023 19:35
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tithin posted:How does the last "challenge" work for the purposes of obtaining it? Not sure how 3 unique units with different fabric icons even works, is it just, train 50 units of each unique unit in a game? I did it with tarkans with huns in dm since you don't have to worry about houses or castles and you can knock it out in a couple minutes flat e: poo poo, had two tabs open
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Apr 18, 2023 19:35
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Rise of Rome teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz03BHv6w
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Apr 26, 2023 00:55
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That's a very cool-looking DLC, goddamn. Three new campaigns, new civ for regular AoE 2, new civ for old AoE 1, you can even play the game mode they use in Vietnam!
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Apr 26, 2023 05:05
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I was kinda expecting you could have the ancient civs and the AOE 2 civs in the same match (besides Rome) but it's already looking promising anyway. I get it though, it would be weird to have Yamato and the medieval Japanese together.
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Apr 26, 2023 05:13
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Apparently Romans can only be used in SP and unranked MP in AoE2. Maybe they'll eventually add them to ranked after they've been out in the wild for a bit
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Apr 26, 2023 09:32
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Negostrike posted:I was kinda expecting you could have the ancient civs and the AOE 2 civs in the same match (besides Rome) but it's already looking promising anyway. I get it though, it would be weird to have Yamato and the medieval Japanese together. Because having the Huns fighting the Japanese and the Aztecs is quite normal.
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Apr 27, 2023 05:01
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I posted it in Jossar's ongoing AoE2 LP, but he said I should also try here: If any German-speaking goon is entertained by my droning about architecture, source research and behind the scenes stories in the LP thread, I may use some help translating a podcast interview with AoE2DE's Art Director. Contact me by DM if necessary.
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May 4, 2023 20:44
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cuc posted:I posted it in Jossar's ongoing AoE2 LP, but he said I should also try here: I'd be happy to help ! I'll get to it this weekend. In other news, AoE 4 has a new PUP (open beta). It features rendering improvements as well as a whole host of balance changes.
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May 5, 2023 08:34
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXj5IQzwbjE
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May 6, 2023 01:41
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Lol this seems busted
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May 6, 2023 12:41
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They're adding them to ranked in a future update so they're definitely gonna get nerfed before that lol
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May 6, 2023 13:00
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Lol this seems busted People say this everytime but it always turns out that the busted seeming civs are fine and the innocuous seeming ones turn out to be loving insane (particularly thinking of how people initially reacted to Dravidians vs Gurjaras).
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May 6, 2023 13:03
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Lol this seems busted Looks like they get busted up pretty good by mangonels
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May 6, 2023 19:24
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Technowolf posted:Looks like they get busted up pretty good by mangonels That does seem to be the natural counter. Though they also have the cav to manage that, as long as they have gold. It may be I'm under-accounting for the fact that a lot of these bonuses are infantry bonuses. Like, if that double armour bonus applied to cav then they'd be a nightmare in castle with knight raids. But since it's only longswords...
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May 6, 2023 19:56
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Yeah the Roman tech tree looks... awful. I suspect you can't take away or reduce the bonuses too much, or they'd be just unplayable. Hoping the infantry bonuses are good enough to make them worth using with this civ, instead of just going mediocre cavalier with the charge bonus. You can at least sorta see where the designers are coming from though, the big scorp bonuses to counter archers when you have lovely cav to back up your infantry and pretty bad archers of your own.
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May 6, 2023 23:29
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Oh, they don't get demo ships at all, that's a huge hole for water.
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May 7, 2023 00:51
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cuc posted:I posted it in Jossar's ongoing AoE2 LP, but he said I should also try here: The first 15 minutes consist mostly of the host and the interviewee remembering their time in highschool. They studied in highschool a year apart. Paraphrasing (00:15:00 – 00:17:20): I wanted to study something related to history, but since history by itself has no career path attached, I decided to aim for becoming a schoolteacher. Since one has to look at what subjects may be combined, and since math teachers are always in high demand, I decided to do a combined Bachelor of Mathematics, History of Science, and Educational Science. I had great success in all branches of study. Direct translation (00:17:22 – 00:18:45): And then what? Something quite interesting happened : I studied Ancient History under Doctor Stefan Pfeiffer, and he really left and lasting impression on me. Ancient History therefore became my favorite subject. I was a research assistant for him for a while. I tutored other students and did a lot of extracurricular work in Ancient History. Basically, you can say I just wandered about during my studies, as one did in the old days. That is not to say that I didn’t work, but I simply went to seminars and courses that weren’t part of my curriculum, which I really learned a lot from. So I must say that though I didn’t actually complete my degree, I learned a lot, and I feel like university really brought a lot to my overall education, even if at the end of the day I didn’t receive a degree. Paraphrasing back-and-forth with the interviewer and directly translating long statements (00:18:45 – 00:21:59) I was 13 when I got my first job as a level designer for a small studio : Team Mythological World Designers, and worked there for 4 years. Involvement in computer games began for me when I discovered in 1998 that our Windows 98 installation CD came with a demo for Age of Empires 1. That marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for computer games in general, and Age of Empires in particular. At some point afterwards, I received the full game for my birthday, which had a scenario editor, so then I simply started making my own maps and mods. This went on and developed until I joined Team Mythological, which was a group that produced maps for the various Age of Empires games. I continued with Age of Empires 3 in 2005, even making a mod on my own, which was a bit controversial. I maintained the mod until 2012, at which point I gave the lead to a friend. Our friendship is also very professional since we are also colleagues at work. During this time, I established many contacts, I leaned a lot thanks to the community and I also taught myself a lot. This went on until 2010, until I graduated high school. After which I did a leap year because my girlfriend was one year below me in high school and we wanted to study together at the university. So I worked for 3 months at MacDonald’s and earned a bit of money, then I had an internship at Related Designs in Mainz. They were the developers of the Anno series, so I worked as a game design intern for Anno 2070. I developed some quests and basically peeked into professional game design. I therefore decided to first try something a little different. So then I went to university. They then go back and forth in more detail about how exactly the game modding scene worked. Discussions of forum posts and the precocious leadership of a young teenager helming a modding project. He also mentions that he has a lot of never published experimental mods still saved, such as an attempt to port AoE 2 on the AoE 3 engine. (00:22:00 – 00:29:40). Paraphrasing (00:29:40 – 00:33:29) So as we discussed, I was an intern at Related Designs, who since then have been sold to Ubisoft and are now one of the three studios that belong to Blue Byte. It’s clear that my experience helped me get this internship, because I had no formal training which would have allowed me to be considered for it. I worked well for them and created 200 quests for the game. But it bothered me to be considered wet behind the ears and given basic intern work even though I had led complex modding projects for years. And I really didn’t appreciate that as an intern all I could do was do exactly as I was told. And naturally, when my colleagues would discuss problems they had with game design, I of course would give my opinion. It was made clear to me that as an intern, I should know my place, and that I should do as an intern does in the company. This caused some friction, which was also a new experience for me, and I am glad I had this experience. My managers actually did a good job that way. I don’t want to criticise them. Because game development isn’t just about finding the best solution, but doing what works as a team. Everyone must have full confidence in his colleagues. I was reliable, but I had to have clear responsibilities so everyone would know what my tasks were. And in order to function as a team, it’s important that one’s own work not be constantly called into question, or that someone else butts in with better ideas. It was very good for me to gain this experience and to understand that in this particular project, I was just an intern. It was a good lesson in being part of a team and not just by myself. This internship taught me a lot about professional work environments. I was able to bring this experience to my work with Forgotten Empires. Bunch of game dev back-and-forth. Talking about crunch time at Related Designs, work culture there, etc (00:33:30 – 00:42:00) Paraphrasing (00:42:00 – 00:57:00) During my studies, I was active in the Age of Empires community, and I closely followed the Forgotten Empires mod for Age of Empires 2. The mod and mod team were bought by Microsoft and then published as an official expansion for AoE 2 HD on Steam. Microsoft then announced Age of Mythology : EE As soon as I heard of that project, I dropped out of university and applied to Forgotten Empires and presented myself “Hello, I am a modder from the community, I know my way very well around the engine and have created many mods. How about we make a mod for Age of Mythology and sell it to Microsoft”. I was hired and started working on my mod. But at the same time, I peeked into the AoE 2 development team, and I spent a lot of time giving feedback to the artists and therefore became Lead Artist. Also for AoE 2, even though I had no experience modding that game. For Age of Mythology, we published the Tales of the Dragon expansion, which wasn’t great, but it was so to speak my first big project. After that I worked on the many expansions for AoE 2, which were much better. And then what? The really big project was AoE 1 : DE in 2016. We flew to Seattle and pitched the idea to Microsoft and worked all though 2016 on the project. I was in charge of all the graphics. In 2017, I had to deal with being freshly married, while juggling my work for Forgotten Empires and some remaining history classes. I had to stop my studies completely and focus on my work. Forgotten Empires in a digital studio : everything is done over the internet, Skype, Slack. It’s very different from the office bound work environment of Related Designs. Forgotten Empires is paid mostly by Microsoft. Project milestones are agreed upon and paid for when reached. We try to set monthly milestones in order to get paid monthly. This is a fairly classical way for a game studio to finance itself. Now, concerning Age of Mythology : Tales of the Dragon. It was very poorly received for two reasons: 1. We bit off more than we could chew : we created a new civ from scratch and a campaign. The civ went decently well, but for the campaign, we didn’t find the right people, so we had to do it ourselves. I worked on the campaign despite not having the time for it. The crunch was awful. I was utterly exhausted at the end. And the campaign is simply bad and boring. 2. We had neither the time nor the budget for the project. We simply didn’t have the professional experience and Microsoft changed the producer several times. By contrast, our Age of Empires team was highly experienced. And on Microsoft’s side of things, they assigned some very good producers to AoE 1: DE. But the crown jewel of the series is AoE 2: DE. It was the biggest project of them all, and is the one with the most players to this day. We are still developping new expansions for it. Crunch time for Tales of the Dragon was a formative experience for me. I cost me a lot of nerves. We had to ship despite being unhappy with the state of the product because the deadline was there. Fortunately I didn’t have an office to go to, but for the last two weeks before the deadline, I would wake up, start working until late and night and do the same the next day. In comparison to the rest of the industry, it isn’t much, since that rhythm can go on for months, where for half a year on can be sleeping under the desk. So it really wasn’t so bad. But still several extremely stressful weeks. But it was an important experience. We learned a lot about what we were actually capable of doing. We brough this experience to our subsequent projects, making sure to only take tasks that we were actually capable of finishing. Otherwise, you have the crunch problem where you try to do too much and aren’t able to achieve anything. Since then I have avoided crunching that badly. I still do plenty of overtime, maybe stay longer in the evening, or do some work on Saturday if I want to finish something. But after it’s done I take some time off. This way of doing things has proven itself in subsequent projects. Paraphrasing (00:58:57 – 01:03:45) Historical research is essential for us. We are always working on new content. I can’t say much about it. But for Age of Empires, historical research is used to determine was civs and campaigns we can create. We also have a narrative team, which includes historians, that helps create the individual campaign missions. They write stories and ask the questions: “Ok, what would be interesting, historically and geographically? What would be interesting to implement and was don’t we already have in game? What do the sources offer, do we have some that would allow us to tell interesting stories?” Those questions come first, and they allow us to decide what we will develop. Of course, our decisions aren’t only based on history, but also game design considerations. Once the decisions have been made, the design phase begins for the civs and the campaigns. Historical research then is at the forefront, and it is very important for Forgotten Empires for the player to feel the passion adn the research that went into the design of the civ that they are playing. It’s not just the big stuff. It can also be small details, like a technology that references a historical event, or a recognisable uniform as we did with the Americans in AoE 3: DE. We try to make these easter eggs recognizable to those who are familiar with history. For campaign design, historical research is of enormous importance. We don’t want to base our research on 19th century historiography, instead we really pay attention to multiple perspectives. History is subjective, not objective. We must be aware that we look at things from a particular angle, and this angle is sometimes chosen deliberately for our campaigns, as we did for the Lords of the West. The interplay of perspectives allows the Burgundian campaign, for example, to tell the story of Joan of Arc from their perspective : for a mission, the player is tasked with capturing her. In any case, it is important for us to demonstrate that history isn’t just a collection of facts. They talk about a game that he is developing independantly. Elevator pitch : Civilization meets Anno (01:03:50 – end).
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May 7, 2023 12:16
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Noosphere posted:Podcast summary
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May 7, 2023 13:11
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cuc posted:Thank you, this is great work! May I post it elsewhere? I'm glad you like it. Please feel free to 
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May 7, 2023 13:47
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In return, here are some comments. For casual readers, I'm sorry for this dry inside baseball dump. On a general level, despite his title as Art Director, the discipline of visual art plays no role in the interview. He had no training in art, and his intern job was in design; sounds like he also said nothing on his personal understanding of and approach to art. This suggests that outside works of necessity as a modder (and on the mod-quality Tale of the Dragon), he is not a practicing artist, and mostly oversaw work by other artists, including ex-modders, freelancers and contract studios like Atomhawk (which produced AoE2DE's story cutscene art). For my money, the visual design of AoE2DE has turned out decent, but there are avoidable mistakes (e.g. while AoE1DE was too muted and dreary, AoE2DE has no concept that colors like pure RGB blue should not be oversaturated) and decisions I strongly disagree with (foremostly, they decided to render everything with the same consistent lighting, and made the "shaded side" on the left too dark, which had major repercussions on the whole game's UX). quote:AoE3 mod The NE mod was succeeded by Tilanus. He would become one of two Lead Designers on AoE3DE, alongside the community caster Interjection. Incidentally, Tilanus also made all the civilization icons in AoE2DE. quote:The internship lesson quote:The really big project was AoE 1 : DE in 2016. We flew to Seattle and pitched the idea to Microsoft and worked all though 2016 on the project. quote:And on Microsoft’s side of things, they assigned some very good producers to AoE 1: DE. I think both speakers could be telling the truth from their perspectives, and the difference adds nuance to the situation. quote:Historical research is essential for us. The fact is, ever since AoE2HD, there are two places in official products where you can find decent research: - One is AoE3DE's DLCs. They contain a good deal more historical references than Ensemble's original, probably due to the work of Tilanus. - One is AoE2 campaigns by the designer Filthydelphia (Portuguese, Burmese, Bulgarian, Italian, Indian, Sicilian). These campaigns actually contain details you must obtain by reading books and not skimming Wikipedia. Outside these two places, nearly everything in AoE2DE can be traced to Wikipedia and first-page Google results. This is what led to them naming the Dravidian unique ship based on a Wikipedia hoax page on the Chola navy. Another hoax page on the Chola army, likely from the same forger, "inspired" the Dravidian tech Medical Corps. The details that aren't, are often drawn from community members' research. Or take this other example of quality from an architecture post of mine: Serial Architectural Compromiser Episode 7 posted:Two decades later, AoE2DE would advertise itself on better historical accuracy using a new British Wonder as poster boy (another long story, another time). No thought was spared on the Korean Wonder, which received more fantasy flourishes, including vertical banners with Sejong written in Hangul (Korean alphabet) at the 4-way Japanese-style portals. cuc fucked around with this message at 22:01 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 21:36
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About the producers. Sorry, that was a mistranslation. I listened to his statement again. Basically he says that "Microsoft assigned a couple of new producers to AoE 1 : DE". He doesn't go into any more detail. It's a contrast to his statement about the absolute chaos on the producer side for the Tales of the Dragon development. So maybe I editorialized a bit much. Anyway, thank your for all the background information. It's really quite fascinating, and honestly makes me realize that this era of AoE is great despite the managers. We're quite lucky in a way. But things could have been far better. At least the gameplay designers seem to know what they are doing.
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May 7, 2023 22:28
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Noosphere posted:Anyway, thank your for all the background information. It's really quite fascinating, and honestly makes me realize that this era of AoE is great despite the managers. We're quite lucky in a way. But things could have been far better. At least the gameplay designers seem to know what they are doing. There's always plenty to say about the series's at best lax approach towards historical accuracy but that's kind of baked into the DNA ever since somebody thought that Mamelukes should hurl scimitars at enemies from the back of a Bactrian camel. Whenever I read old interviews with people like Sandy Petersen he always seemed more motivated by old movies he saw and a pop culture history enthusiast perspective rather than anything particularly rigorous anyway. And honestly? I think that's fine, AOE was always kind of a history flavoured game that was a 90s era RTS first and foremost moreso than a particularly serious attempt to simulate actual history in a way that you could argue something like a paradox game was trying to be. Unrelatedly, I doubt that its based on what limited information we can reconstruct of Ancient Mesopotamian Music but the Babylonian's theme for Return of Rome slaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNDDUMucjY0 khwarezm fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 22:37
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Oh definitely. I don't think that a game that trades accuracy for verisimilitude is inherently bad. In fact, it allowed the game designers to make these amazing games. My post was a more general reaction to cuc's posts here and in the LP threads about the general state of the series.
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May 7, 2023 22:51
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Noosphere posted:Oh definitely. I don't think that a game that trades accuracy for verisimilitude is inherently bad. In fact, it allowed the game designers to make these amazing games. My post was a more general reaction to cuc's posts here and in the LP threads about the general state of the series. What state is that?
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May 7, 2023 22:57
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Huh, no actual qualified art director explains a lot. I think 2’s DE looks pretty good, but it’s the one of the three they can just upscale from ES’ talented art team without it looking awkward. The visual direction they chose for 1’s DE was just kind of baffling to me.
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May 8, 2023 03:57
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khwarezm posted:What state is that? This post by cuc is what I'm referring to : https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=3976637&pagenumber=4&perpage=40#post530954193
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May 8, 2023 19:49
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So, since we're about to have AoE1 in 2, I want to complain about something. It's the thing that, every time I go back and give 1 a whirl, gets me to put it down again. It's not the janky pathfinding, or the way that villagers will go idle if they bump, or the fact that fishing ships don't have a fishing animation, or the braindead ai, or the way that the game somehow conspires to look ugly despite every asset in it being objectively okay. Not any of the things a reasonable person would complain about. Not a thing that might actually get fixed by transplanting it into 2. No, it's this loving tech tree:  I don't even mean the content of it. Like, sure, it's kind of small and lacking options and, y'know, camelry wasn't actually a thing until the iron age and Jesus Christ I am so loving tired of historical strategy games' vision of stone age warfare being Fred Flintstone, but!! What actually bothers me is the structure of it. It is, if you'll permit me to sound like a lunatic, unergonomic as gently caress. Some of my complaints might be a case of "it's different from 2, so it sucks", but some of this is I think genuinely just bad. Like, okay. Let's start with the barracks. It's the first military building you're allowed to build, a prerequisite of all the others. It lets you, in the Stone Age, build clubmen, which are basic melee infantry that walk up to people and hit them with a stick. In the Tool Age, you get to upgrade it to an axeman, which hits people with an axe. In the Bronze Age, you will notice, the barracks can produce swordsmen. Is this the next step in the chain? Do axemen upgrade into swordsmen?? No. gently caress you. That's an entirely new unit line, that performs the exact same job. The clubman line just gets to languish in the Tool Age, sucking forever. Ditto the slinger. The archery range lets you build bowmen. In the bronze age, it lets you build improved bowmen. Surely, surely this is an upgrade to the bowman. Surely the bowman and the improved bowman are part of the same- No! gently caress you! Different lines again. To add insult to injury, there is an "improved bowman" technology that you have to research before you can build them. It's just. Not a unit upgrade. It just unlocks them. Chariot archers and horse archers too- different lines. The stable is more of the same. Is there a point to these distinctions? Do they add anything Well, kinda- the clubman/axeman, the (basic) bowman and the scout are trash units- no gold cost. So are the chariots, oddly enough. So they're a fallback, right? For when you run out of gold? Well. They are trash, but they're not counter units. They're just worse than their gold counterparts. With the exception of the chariots, none of them advance past the Tool Age, either- and unit upgrades in 1 tend to be more impactful than those in 2, too. How big is the difference? Well, the axeman has 50 hp, 5 base attack and no armour. The legion, the final member of the swordsman line, has 140 hp, 13 base attack, and 2/0 armour. The difference is substantial. Though, most civs don't get the legion. What about the long swordsman, which a majority of civs do get? 100 hp, 11 base attack and the same 2/0 armour. Yeah. So basically here what we've got here is a situation where any military you build (on land, at least) in the first two ages has to be abandoned when you hit the third, because it no longer upgrades. You know how knights are a little trickier than crossbows because you can't build them in feudal, so you have to open scouts and then transition? Well, that's every unit type in 1. Is that a gameplay problem? I don't know, but it does feel awkward. Anyway. After the stable, we have a surprise- the academy. It sounds like it should be something like the university in 2, a home for a bunch of miscellaneous endgame tech, but it's not. It's a military building that exists for only one unit type, the hoplite line. Why are these not in the barracks? I have no idea. It has the stable as a prerequisite, which is annoying, but not really annoying enough to be more than a speedbump? That's not a huge investment by that point in the game and if you need it you can build it on the way up. It does have the effect of excluding the hoplite line from the effect of the logistics technology, which cuts the pop cap cost of barracks units in half. Which is a pretty good move from a gameplay standpoint, because hoplites and their upgrades are outrageously strong. But I don't know why they couldn't just have explicitly excluded them from the tech...? On to the eco buildings. The storage pit is your general purpose drop point for (almost) all resources. It is, perhaps, the natural place to go looking for eco upgrades. Does it contain eco upgrades? No, it's got the attack and armour upgrades. And you know what? That's fine. I'll allow it. It's a little weird to go looking for that in an eco building, but you're always going to have (a lot of) storage pit(s). But where are the eco upgrades? Are they in the granary? No. They are not in the granary. The granary has wall and tower upgrades. If you squint at this long enough, you can kind of see a logic to it- static agriculture begetting static defences. But this feels an awful lot like they had some techs that needed to go somewhere, and a building that wasn't doing anything, and they just sorta... smushed them together. But hang on a second. Why does the game have a granary? The storage pit accepts all four resource types, right? Why does it need another one for just food? Aha, well, you see, the game has decided to be incredibly obnoxious about something! Else! It has decided to care about where food comes from! It's all the same resource once it hits the treasury, but while it's in a villager's hands it's meat, or berries, or grain. Food from hunt and fish can only go in the storage pit. Food from farms and berry bushes has to go in the granary. Does this add anything to the game? Not really! It's just awkward. Back to those pesky eco upgrades. Where are they hiding? Well, they're in the market. And again, I'm not particularly fussed about that. Economy, market- sure. Some of the techs here feel a little messy- you've got archer range bonuses on the wood gathering upgrades, slinger range on stone, etc. But there's a logic to all of it and maybe they were feeling like they didn't want to clutter up the game with too many techs. AoE2 has kind of an absurd number of techs, if we're honest. No, what confounds me here is that the market is a prerequisite for the farm. So, the farm, your main food source, something you really want to transition into as soon as possible (because the hunt is even less cooperative here than in 2), is gated behind not one but two other buildings, and the second age. One of those buildings, I note, is the granary. The granary, the building that was invented to store grain. From farms. And it's not even the proximate prerequisite? It's not even in the same age as the farm?? Alright, well. There's one last thing I want to talk about. That image of the tech tree up there? There's actually a significant amount of complexity it does not show. See all those techs with green borders? Most of those indicate a prerequisite tech from some other part of the tree. There are a bunch of units with dependencies in the government centre, or the market, or the temple. Chariots want the wheel, which is fair enough, but legions want fanaticism, from the temple. You can't research helepolis without craftsmanship, the final wood upgrade. Centurions require aristocracy and scythe chariots nobility (these two techs have nothing to do with each other). Altogether, the tech tree seems designed to make things as awkward and complicated as possible. And the punchline is, if you haven't unlocked a unit or building? It doesn't appear in the UI. It's not present, greyed out, with a tooltip to tell you what you're missing. No. It's just gone. Can still find it in the tech tree, thank Christ, but as far as the ingame UI is concerned, it's a secret. I guess Ensemble noted all of this in their post-mortem and also thought it was bad, because 2's tree is not like this. It flows a lot better. Thanks for coming to my talk.
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May 8, 2023 22:22
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Thanks for a thoughtful post! A lot of the stuff you mentioned is completely inexcusable, but I can sort of see what they were going for with the languishing Tool Age units at least. Someone read a whole lot of pop history stuff and wanted to really emphasise the break between each age, rather than implying a kind of smooth progression. They wanted to put the "collapse" in Bronze Age Collapse and your military becoming worthless overnight kind of fits with that.
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May 8, 2023 23:35
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:No, it's this loving tech tree: The main issues to me are: 1) The really weird tech tree, as you pointed out. 2) Weak defensive options. Few real counter units, Town Centers don't defend the base, no castles, siege is too good. This makes it a lot harder to hold out against an early rush and make a comeback. AOE1 in my experience tends to be a lot of build up, and then one good rush effectively ends the game. AOE2 tends to have a lot more back-and-forth, more flexibility in play styles, raiding, unit switching, counter play. I think that makes for a more fun experience in my opinion. 3) No unique units or unique techs. These just add a lot more flavor and distinctiveness to each civ.
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May 9, 2023 00:13
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Tree Bucket posted:Thanks for a thoughtful post! I always assumed it was a way to dissuade early game aggression from being all-in, since people can tech up and beat your unupgradable units with better ones. But that might've been giving the devs too much credit and they just went with a choice that reinforced the theme, as you said. AoE1 is such a weird mess, I love it.
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May 9, 2023 00:30
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I tend to lean towards the thematic thing. It's the reason that units require weird-rear end upgrades from other buildings - of course you need nobility to make scythed chariots, see, because only rich people ever got to use stuff like that.
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May 9, 2023 01:51
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One thing is for sure -- the soundtrack slapped even back in 1997. The sounds in general trigger a lot of nostalgia.
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May 9, 2023 01:55
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END CHEMTRAILS NOW posted:I completely agree. I love a lot of the units and civs in AOE1, but the gameplay is just not up to par compared to AOE2. I keep hoping they'll do a ground-up redesign of AOE1 using the lessons learned from AOE2, but so far it seems like they aren't interested in doing that. There's a surprisingly active AOE1 community (especially in Vietnam, hence Lạc Việt being the sole new civ added), so its really not going to be something the devs will change too much considering it will just antagonize people and remove the game's own identity to make it more like AOE2. I haven't checked but I wouldn't be surprised if the addition of team bonuses is already a source of much controversy, and maybe also the addition of the other sex to villagers.
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May 9, 2023 02:15
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khwarezm posted:There's a surprisingly active AOE1 community (especially in Vietnam, hence Lạc Việt being the sole new civ added), so its really not going to be something the devs will change too much considering it will just antagonize people and remove the game's own identity to make it more like AOE2. I haven't checked but I wouldn't be surprised if the addition of team bonuses is already a source of much controversy, and maybe also the addition of the other sex to villagers.
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May 9, 2023 02:24
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END CHEMTRAILS NOW posted:I almost mentioned that the AOE1 fans would almost certainly hate the changes I'd want to see, but I didn't want to go on a tangent. Ideally, I'd want to have an AOE2 expansion that adds the ancient civs and units (with maybe a toggle between eras or to use both together), and fans of AOE1 would still be able to play the AOE:DE (or whatever version they prefer). At this rate I'd almost want a full fledged spin off game that's basically the Ancient and Classical era but not beholden to the other AOE games, certainly not 1. Funnily enough, Age of Mythology kind of fits the bill since the least ancient civ represented in that is the pre-christian Norse, and otherwise it launched with the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians. If they ever added more (not terrible) content to it I think Ancient Mesopotamia and Vedic era India would be a shoe-in.
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May 9, 2023 02:29
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Don Pigeon posted:One thing is for sure -- the soundtrack slapped even back in 1997. The sounds in general trigger a lot of nostalgia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmq-ZWGlvko
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May 9, 2023 03:53
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