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I actually really like the design philosophy of having units locked behind technologies with broader/different effects as well as having technological dead ends. Is it great for intuitive gameplay? No. Would you have cavalry in the “Tool” Age and camels in the Bronze Age? No. But I love little things like improved wood gathering also improving archery because the reality is that technologies and sociological developments had economic and military effects and some lines of development through the Bronze Age kind of reached a dead end there. I’d honestly have taken it even further: you get chariots only after wheel and domestication, which would improve farms, and then you have an additional breeding technology in the Iron Age to access cavalry, with chariots being left behind. You could lock legion behind a land grant technology or something (fanaticism is weird to be sure). King Hong Kong fucked around with this message at 04:05 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 04:00
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I think most of the decisions in AoE1 are both clearly made with some logic to them but also definitely worse than what they came up with in AoE2. The game ranks up as one of my favorites ever basically out of pure nostalgia, but I don’t disagree at all with the consensus that it hasn’t aged well at (audio and visuals aside, those still own.) When I want to play the proper version I’ll get my discs out, but I would have preferred for sure they went wilder than they’ve gone with Return. Koramei fucked around with this message at 05:30 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 05:26
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King Hong Kong posted:I actually really like the design philosophy of having units locked behind technologies with broader/different effects as well as having technological dead ends. Is it great for intuitive gameplay? No. Would you have cavalry in the “Tool” Age and camels in the Bronze Age? No. But I love little things like improved wood gathering also improving archery because the reality is that technologies and sociological developments had economic and military effects and some lines of development through the Bronze Age kind of reached a dead end there. I find myself really liking the weird thematic tech tree. I like to place my farms near rivers because it feels and looks right, even though there's no bonus there beyond the aesthetic one in my own head. A strange convoluted tech tree makes the game feel more like a story and less like a rock-paper-scissors spreadsheet. That said, there's no excuse for leaving out UUs and blanking units you don't have prereqs for. That's just stupid.
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May 9, 2023 05:28
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Tree Bucket posted:I find myself really liking the weird thematic tech tree. I like to place my farms near rivers because it feels and looks right, even though there's no bonus there beyond the aesthetic one in my own head. A strange convoluted tech tree makes the game feel more like a story and less like a rock-paper-scissors spreadsheet. Yeah, it’s weirdly one of the things that takes me out of AoE2 the most because the tech structure doesn’t even have any resemblance to reality even if it is more sensible for a game. As for Return of Rome, I also don’t like the lack of UUs, UTs, and improved defensive structures or not adding a Celtic civilization or re-naming Palmyrans; it seems like it might be a decision to appeal to the Vietnamese community by keeping it as close as possible to the original, which didn’t work out the first time they did that either. That being said, the gameplay I’ve seen looked really smooth and a huge improvement over DE so I’m in.
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May 9, 2023 06:21
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From what I've heard the reason AoE1 DE wasn't well-received was that it still had all the issues from the original game, like poor pathfinding, while also having terrible performance
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May 9, 2023 06:35
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Wow, there's a winning combination.
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May 9, 2023 12:16
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Early unit obsoletion forcing switch is absolutely deliberate game design. That's why they reused the concept in AoE3, where Crossbowman and Pikeman are "archaic units" that by default do not upgrade past Age 2. That AoE1 has become a game either decided in Age 2 or played by "no fighting until Age 3" rules is a different problem. One of AoE2's often cited design mistakes is that it doesn't have unit switch in Barracks, instead having a long Militia - Champion line, making the line hard to balance and unwieldy - if they are too good, early Militia becomes a snowballing advantage; if they are weak, the laborious upgrades make them even less attractive. KOGAHAZAN!! posted:improved bowman The three units are based on a three-stage classification of bow architecture that was prevalent in entry-level pop history in the 1990s. A simple bow consists of a single piece of material. The European longbow is a simple bow. An "improved bow" is laminated, built from layered pieces of plant materials, typically wood and/or bamboo. A composite bow is what you are familiar with, adding animal horn and sinew to massively improve the strength without increasing bow size. The "Improved Bowman" isn't a nebulously better archer, he's an archer using a laminated bow. khwarezm posted: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. In addition to the AoM civs, it now has Celts, Babylonians, Persians and Romans. A practically 100% original Indian civ is in long gestation. cuc fucked around with this message at 21:03 on May 10, 2023 |
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May 10, 2023 20:47
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cuc posted:Upgrade stuff AoE1 may use a justification of changing technology for the unit upgrades, but so does AOE2, the most obvious example is the Archer unit upgrading from what looks like a regular shortbow to a crossbow, which is a massive change from what they were using previously, IMO a larger change than the bow progression in AOE1 when you consider how these weapons fundamentally differ in their construction and method. And the Militia units also transition from a mace to a massive two handed sword of some kind, probably a Zweihänder. I don't think it was a consideration for historical accuracy that caused them to reconfigure the upgrade paths in the sequels, I think they probably did come to the conclusion that it was strange and jarring to have these sharp delineations between units that ultimately occupy the same function in-game and that historical justifications (questionable enough either way) weren't enough to warrant it. quote:If you haven't tried the now fan-maintained, completely free Age of Empires Online, you are in for a treat! It's Ensemble's last Age game, a bit of a direct sequel to AoM (in the sense of sharing main creatives: lead designer, programmer and aritst), playing like a fast and asymmetrical version of the classical AoE2 gameplay with some AoM mechanics. I've heard it called "the C&C of Age of Empires". I bounced off AOE online back in the day for all kinds of reasons but maybe if this independent project is seriously off the ground I might have another look at it.
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May 10, 2023 21:23
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AoEO launched with a double-whammy of obnoxious F2P mechanics and GFWL requirement. Both had been removed during its Microsoft career. The game now has heaps of single-player content and classical skirmish/PvP. The MMO stuff - crafting, home base deco, unit dress-up, advisor cards - is optional.
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May 10, 2023 21:44
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I heard AoEO ended up being pretty good in the end and the aesthetic never bothered me. I always figured I'd like playing it but it was kaput before I even knew it existed
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May 11, 2023 04:01
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AoEO has the best aesthetic out of all of them and it's a real shame that it was DOA due to the lovely monetization and platform restrictions it launched with. I gave celeste (the fan run version of the game) a try and it plays great but there is basically no PVP scene and single player can get a bit boring.
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May 11, 2023 05:33
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Patch notes
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May 16, 2023 12:09
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These modding changes sound interesting. Makes TC mods a lot easier now? No more "these civs are in the list but shouldn't be played" jank like Rome at War had.
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May 16, 2023 12:26
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Flipping back and forth between Return of Rome and AoE2 I think I've realized one of the big reasons I bounced off of AoE1:DE. Small buildings are totally workable with AoE1's vivid color palette and stylized details. Trying to HD-ify them, they end up looking muddy and confused. First playing ReoR I was figuring it was just 'cause I'm on a laptop (which surely doesn't help), but then I went to try AoE2's Romans and was immediately like "oh, I can actually see everything fine."
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May 17, 2023 09:49
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Pretty much nothing you can do without the dlc right? I wonder if the next Challenge is going to require it
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May 17, 2023 10:26
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With how fast AoE1 1v1 games end up being, I believe the tool age obsolesce was a stroke of genius enabling a soft reset of sorts rather than letting the winner of the first skirmish snowball even harder.
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May 17, 2023 12:20
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Koramei posted:Flipping back and forth between Return of Rome and AoE2 I think I've realized one of the big reasons I bounced off of AoE1:DE. Small buildings are totally workable with AoE1's vivid color palette and stylized details. Trying to HD-ify them, they end up looking muddy and confused. First playing ReoR I was figuring it was just 'cause I'm on a laptop (which surely doesn't help), but then I went to try AoE2's Romans and was immediately like "oh, I can actually see everything fine." For Return of Rome in particular though, I have an additional technical explanation: It seems to suffer from aggressive DXT1 compression, turning details into jagged "dirty" pixels. Some sprites also have weirdly localized dark outlines. You can compare with AoE1DE, which is muddy and muted by art direction, but also has all its sprites looking clean, because they are in a loseless format. ...Or the Romae ad Bellum mod, which uses AoE2DE's previous sprite format SMX (before they switched to lossy DXT1). SMX is loseless but restricts each sprite to its own 256-color palette. cuc fucked around with this message at 20:57 on May 17, 2023 |
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May 17, 2023 17:56
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So does everyone agree now that AoE4 is not a very good game that survived only on release hype and somewhat nice graphics? I feel like even AoE3 is a better game if you want a modern take on the series gameplay. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 20:02 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 19:03
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What's wrong with 4? I thought the game was pretty active and improving with every patch. The biggest complain I constantly see is that team matchmaking is kinda hosed and always making unbalanced matches, but I don't know if that's actually prevalent or if that's the reddit hive-mind overexaggerating everything like they tend to. I put the game down and got sucked back into dota, but I do want to re-visit the game eventually.
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May 18, 2023 20:16
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It's a very different game from AoE 2. I personally enjoy 4 more, but I know it's a minority opinion. I'd still encourage those who gave up on the game because of how broken and unfun siege was in the first several months after release to give it another shot. Balance is currently very good, and the fun level is very high. While the game was released in an awful state of balance, I believe that more dev time wouldn't necessarily have saved it : the main issue was balance direction, as the designers at Relic clearly thought they were making Company of Empires, what with the fast, deadly and high HP siege. The Forgotten Empires balance team took over in late spring of 2022, and since then have been rebuilding the game into a far healthier state.
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May 18, 2023 20:22
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The gameplay just seems slow but twitchy and uninspiring, with cartoonish animations and graphics. The singleplayer portion is also very bland, with skirmish AI that is not very good and boring campaign design. The mechanics might be relatively balanced now but there doesn't seem much depth to any of it. Playing rock-paper-scissors is also balanced, but hardly going to hold anyone's interest for very long. I'm sure there's people having fun here and there, but it just seems very boring to me. I suppose a lot of my issues with it are fundamental to what the game is, I don't think you could fix it without remaking large parts of it from scratch. e: Company of Empires sounds about right, I thought those games were dreadful. Last good relic game was WH40K:DoW. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 20:56 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 20:33
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Relic has always been awful at balance and supporting multiplayer strategy games, unfortunately.
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May 18, 2023 20:59
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I didn't know AoE4's balance team got entirely replaced, makes sense how they did a 180 into being much more competent and less buggy.
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May 19, 2023 09:15
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The summary I got from someone else was "If you're into the multiplayer, get it on sale. If you're into the singleplayer, skip it - it doesn't exist here." This is from a guy who played the campaigns.
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May 19, 2023 13:59
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:I didn't know AoE4's balance team got entirely replaced, makes sense how they did a 180 into being much more competent and less buggy. Even on AoE3DE, where the FE AoE3 team are given lots of freedom to play around, they didn't design the Tycoon economic competition mode.
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May 19, 2023 18:08
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cuc posted:Even on AoE3DE, where the FE AoE3 team are given lots of freedom to play around, they didn't design the Tycoon economic competition mode.  I've lately heard good things about AoE4 but haven't made time to try it again yet.
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May 19, 2023 20:56
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Some of the original AOE campaigns are coming back to ReoR. The ones definitely getting in are Ascent of Egypt and 1st Punic War. The other two will be voted on by the community.
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May 20, 2023 06:28
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I know that its understandable that people are disappointed that the old AOE1 campaigns didn't return but, I'm going to be completely frank, the new ones seem so much better than what was there before. AOE1 is an odd duck where so much stuff feels like a trail run for things that came into full fruition for later games.
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May 20, 2023 13:48
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The AoE1 campaigns are a completely different narrative style. The original AoE1 campaigns followed the civilization itself, and each mission was a huge timejump forward to the next major event. The actual Rise of Rome campaigns were more along the lines of following a particular character's journey, though that consisted of *three* separate Rome campaigns, and one Carthaginian campaign.
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May 20, 2023 14:12
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Hopefully* the reason they're only doing 4 is because they're gonna overhaul the ones they do. *Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
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May 20, 2023 14:59
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The horses still walk funny in Age of Empires 2: 1
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May 21, 2023 02:07
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hopefully they overhaul/make them better because those original aoe campaigns are garbage compared to the new ones
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May 22, 2023 17:25
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There is a history of major overhauls in the AoE2 campaign, Bari for example. I’m pretty sure that the devs would like to redo the campaigns from the ground up if they get the chance.
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May 22, 2023 17:53
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Technowolf posted:Hopefully* the reason they're only doing 4 is because they're gonna overhaul the ones they do. Even if they don't bring all og campaigns back, some random modder will do it. And yes, the old campaigns were pretty garbo. *Hope is the beginning of unhappiness.
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May 22, 2023 20:59
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I think the thought process worked like this, they had a bunch of fancy new campaigns lined up, with Voice Acting and everything! But they didn't have the time, money or interest in going back and bringing the old ones up that kind of standard (remember that each campaign had a shitload of levels, the tutorial has 12), especially since they were already there in the other definitive edition. So they just left them by the wayside for modders to put in later, or as a reason to still get a couple of sales towards AOE:DE. In retrospect it was sort of a dumb idea, I think they should have just had a subcategory called 'Classic campaigns' or something where they could have put them in with minimum effort and called it a day without people getting irritated that they weren't present. Because of this I wouldn't get your hopes up that they are going to do some kind of massive overhaul now that they say they are going to put some old campaigns in, it'll just be a pretty barebones job to get people to shut up. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 21:37 on May 22, 2023 |
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May 22, 2023 21:35
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Wasn't there an engine issue where they couldn't be just directly ported
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May 22, 2023 22:42
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As someone who can't afford RoR at present, has there been any event released since the game launched that I just can't see because it's for DLC buyers only
Milo and POTUS fucked around with this message at 10:09 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 10:06
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Nope
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May 27, 2023 13:51
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Oh hey cool. Not only have my achievement mods disappeared after updates, now my hotkeys are getting hosed with. Why. Do you know how long it takes to come up with a good and comfortable setup? I like this game but some of the decisions the designers make are loving wild
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Jun 13, 2023 03:00
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Bought the game for the R2R pack and I'm having this damned peculiar problem. After, say, 10 minutes in a game there will be these stuttering freezes. Game always resumes afterward just fine, but it continues through the entire match. I saw a reddit post saying the issue had long since been fixed, but it doesn't seem to be in mine. This ring any bells for other folk?
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Jun 20, 2023 17:37
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