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New event everybody. All my boars are minecrafty now
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Jun 29, 2023 02:16
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Another new event, cool new profile icon. I might actually change
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Jul 28, 2023 13:21
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Hate to triple post but aoe3 de is free. Not sure if a recent development or not but I at least want to give it a shot and maybe you do too
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Aug 4, 2023 06:14
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Milo and POTUS posted:Hate to triple post but aoe3 de is free. Not sure if a recent development or not but I at least want to give it a shot and maybe you do too It appears to be a free trial and not the whole game. You get access to the following: quote:Starting today, AoE III: DE will be offering new players the opportunity to play a free trial that gives access to the following:
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Aug 4, 2023 10:12
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 Certainly had an impact, prior to this it was usually floating around 2K to 3K players. I wonder what prompted this exactly, AOE3 isn't anywhere near as popular as AOE2 but they have put a lot of effort into it with Definitive edition considering all the new civs and such they have added.
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Aug 4, 2023 17:00
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At the same time, files for "XP", "Levels", "Age Points" and a purchasable, Seasonal "Age Pass" have appeared in the recent AoE2 patch. In the new version of AoE3, there's no direct mention of the Age Pass, though some text strings are about earning a "Seasonal XP". Battle pass monetization really only makes sense for F2P, so at least they've been tinkering with the idea of transitioning the whole series to F2P, with AoE3DE as pilot. I also think the Age Pass seasons may work like Halo MCC's (free) seasons: play any game to earn rewards across the whole series. This would explain why they so urgently want to revive Age of Mythology and AoE1 right now, inside their existing tech foundations of AoE2DE and AoE3DE, in the face of all potential pitfalls: it gives their cross-game reward system a wider portfolio. The biggest hole in my theory is how such a cross-game battle pass would work for console players, who will only have access to 3 out of 5 titles - Return of Rome, AoE2DE and AoE4, since they have yet to announce any console port of AoE3DE / AoM Retold, and these probably wouldn't run on Xbox One S without major graphical concessions. If those ports are in the cards, then we already have their schemes for the next half-decade of Age series laid out before our eyes. (There's also Tencent's Age of Empires Mobile, but that game already launched in China and is decidedly not a winner.) cuc fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 17:40
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OhFunny posted:It appears to be a free trial and not the whole game. You get access to the following: Oh. Bummer. cuc posted:At the same time, files for "XP", "Levels", "Age Points" and a purchasable, Seasonal "Age Pass" have appeared in the recent AoE2 patch. Oh. loving bummer. What is age of empires mobile was it anything like AoEO, a game that seemed pretty alright from what little I gleaned from it years after it was murderized
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Aug 5, 2023 09:03
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To be fair, if the XP are anything like AoE 4, then it's just a totally meaningless number that puts pips and chevrons around your portrait. It's useless, other than being a way to guesstimate an opponents experience with the game.
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Aug 5, 2023 09:19
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Under a battle pass model (invented by Valve for Dota 2), your earned seasonal levels will unlock cosmetic rewards, but only half of them. The game will keep reminding you of the other half which you've become entitled to if you fork out a little cash. The important part is you can't just buy the rewards - both pay and play are required, which keeps the community in the game. And when I said the model only works with F2P, I forgot Blizzard has battle passes in Diablo IV. Milo and POTUS posted:What is age of empires mobile was it anything like AoEO, a game that seemed pretty alright from what little I gleaned from it years after it was murderized Lootboxes, a dozen currencies, hundreds of meters to fill: yes. Real-time tactical combat: a little. Actual RTS: no. cuc fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 5, 2023 10:32
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Ranked AoEII is perhaps one of the most unfun experiences I've ever had in an RTS. I've always enjoyed competitive play in any sort of title (played a shitton of SC2, CoH1 and 2, AoE3, Dota, fighting games, etc.) but after doing my placement matches the game decided I'm Elo 1000 and it's been stomp after stomp. And this is even after watching build orders and practising good, efficient play like sheep scouting, TC boar softening, no idling time, etc. I guess this is what happens in any old rear end game where people have been playing for 20+ years, you need to practice a whole ton to close the gap even at the casual level.
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Aug 24, 2023 22:58
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Azran posted:Ranked AoEII is perhaps one of the most unfun experiences I've ever had in an RTS. I've always enjoyed competitive play in any sort of title (played a shitton of SC2, CoH1 and 2, AoE3, Dota, fighting games, etc.) but after doing my placement matches the game decided I'm Elo 1000 and it's been stomp after stomp. And this is even after watching build orders and practising good, efficient play like sheep scouting, TC boar softening, no idling time, etc. I guess this is what happens in any old rear end game where people have been playing for 20+ years, you need to practice a whole ton to close the gap even at the casual level. It definitely is not fun at the beginning, and it takes a lot more losses to get to a truer ELO. There is also the random people throwing matches to purposefully tank Elo and you still get smoked at 700 Elo, but that’s how it is sometimes.
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Aug 24, 2023 23:27
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Possibly a new DLC on the way? https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/15z27ns/looks_like_another_dlc_is_on_the_way_this_unknown/
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Aug 25, 2023 02:15
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People have been murmuring about updates to the Persians for a while. There was a Persian unique cavalry unit added to the editor a while back that people have been speculating might eventually replace (or be added alongside?) the War Elephant as a UU. Also, they announced new AoE4 DLC. New Japanese civ seems basically certain, maybe some other Middle Eastern civ or something too. I honestly really enjoyed AoE4 and have been kinda waiting for them to add new civs to it as an excuse to go back, so I'm pretty interested. The level of detail they put into them with the unique architecture and age-progressing voice lines and so on makes them feel pretty richly done compared to most strategy games. I always played AoE games in a bit of a SimCity style when I do it singleplayer, and it's nice to have more fleshed out representations of these historical cultures.
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Aug 25, 2023 02:21
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Yeah people are speculating that the AoE4 dlc is Byzantines + Japanese at the very least. Also on the AoE2 roadmap they implied the new dlc would be akin to the Indian one so it's going to be interesting who they split this time around. Honestly it's weird as hell to be going for specific terms like "Burgundians", "Dravidians" and "Polish" when the game still uses names like Slavs, Franks and Teutons
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Aug 25, 2023 03:20
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In the grand scheme of things it is super minor, but I was never really on board with them pivoting away from the intentionally generalizing terms for the civilizations. In the original campaigns you had civilizations used with only loose connection to their actual chronological/geographic reality (e.,g. Goths standing in for absolutely everything) ... but it worked because it was consistent in that. It let them play a bit loose with what certain civs actually represented. The fact most of the European civs were named for tribes from late antiquity in a game mostly focused 500+ years later probably helped even more. Whereas now, yeah, we're in a weird spot where there are enough civs with insane specificity that absences are a lot more obvious now. Mongols were good enough for an umbrella term to cover all the way to Manchuria really, and some combination of Turks/Saracens/Persians could fill in the Caucasus, just like the Goths were perfect to fill in empty spots in Europe. But now where you're comparing them against Portuguese and Bohemians and Sicilians it stops working, like you say, and also kinda makes the game suddenly feel way more Eurocentric in a way it wasn't (as much). I guess it's an excuse to keep selling more civs endlessly, which to be honest I'm not against, but I think in a way the setting of the game is poorer for it.
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Aug 25, 2023 04:10
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Azran posted:Yeah people are speculating that the AoE4 dlc is Byzantines + Japanese at the very least. My bet is chinese. It's high time they got a real loving campaign for one Koramei posted:In the grand scheme of things it is super minor, but I was never really on board with them pivoting away from the intentionally generalizing terms for the civilizations. In the original campaigns you had civilizations used with only loose connection to their actual chronological/geographic reality (e.,g. Goths standing in for absolutely everything) ... but it worked because it was consistent in that. It let them play a bit loose with what certain civs actually represented. The fact most of the European civs were named for tribes from late antiquity in a game mostly focused 500+ years later probably helped even more. I like that they change up old campaigns with the updated civs 
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Aug 25, 2023 04:30
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Koramei posted:In the grand scheme of things it is super minor, but I was never really on board with them pivoting away from the intentionally generalizing terms for the civilizations. In the original campaigns you had civilizations used with only loose connection to their actual chronological/geographic reality (e.,g. Goths standing in for absolutely everything) ... but it worked because it was consistent in that. It let them play a bit loose with what certain civs actually represented. The fact most of the European civs were named for tribes from late antiquity in a game mostly focused 500+ years later probably helped even more. I don't think this is a bad thing, like the way it worked in the original AOE2 release was very odd with Medieval European civs being named after their forebears from the late Roman era or even earlier (Franks, Britons, Teutons), despite having little resemblance to these kinds of ancient tribes. 'Goths' has never really been that general, they were a distinct people who controlled well attested states for a well defined time period, even if they were large enough to warrant two sub-groups, using them to fill in for basically all of Eastern Europe before any Slavic civ was added was, er, a clunky compromise to say the least. I think the issue is that since Europe has been filled out with ever more depth, mostly at the behest of a primarily European playerbase, it makes other parts of the world noticeably less well represented. The inclusion of the Sicilians and Burgundians, who are way more specific than any prior civ, makes this imbalance feel a lot more glaring. To be fair they have taken significant steps to try and remedy this, especially with them splitting up the Indian civs which places AOE2 quite a bit above some similar games that have saddled themselves with an insistence on representing India as some kind of monoculture, looking at the Civ series in particular. Hopefully if the new DLC is something to do with China and its surrounding states they take this even further.
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Aug 25, 2023 04:51
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So how would the Chinese be broken up? Dynasty? Time period? Geography?
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Aug 25, 2023 04:59
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I guess it’s fair to say it was a weird way of doing things before. Maybe my nostalgia is coloring my judgment a bit. For China people always talk about splitting away the Jurchens/Tanguts/Tibetans/Khitans etc — the non-Han groups. But personally I think if we’re at the point of representing 4 different flavors of Frank, it’s plenty reason to break up the Han part of China too; it was not a monolith in this period (not that it really is today either). At least a distinction between north and south would be warranted imo. Dynasties feels like the smoothest way to do that (say, Tang and Southern Song) but would carry some baggage.
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Aug 25, 2023 05:22
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Koramei posted:I guess it’s fair to say it was a weird way of doing things before. Maybe my nostalgia is coloring my judgment a bit. What four flavors? Franks, Burgundians, presumably sicilians? There are so many civs now and I've definitely forgotten a bunch lol
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Aug 25, 2023 05:33
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The indian civs are all from a cardinal direction of the indian subcontinent.
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Aug 25, 2023 07:14
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They could add Armenians Georgians Zimbabwe Kanembu Somalians Kongolese
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Aug 25, 2023 15:13
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Technowolf posted:So how would the Chinese be broken up? Dynasty? Time period? Geography? Well, personally I'd prioritise the Tibetans and Jurchen, both controlled powerful empires in the middle ages and represent distinct ethnic groups that have a long history up to now. The Jurchen are a Manchurian Tungusic speaking people who morphed into the Manchu over several centuries, they controlled North China under the Jin dynasty after having displaced the Khitan Liao, who fled west and created the Kara-Khitai empire you see in the first few Genghis Khan missions. They ruled northern China for the better part of a century and put significant pressure on the southern Song, until they were conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century. That was far from the end of them though, after the collapse of the Mongol empire Manchuria was an area of contested influence between the Ming dynasty, the Mongol Northern Yuan and Koreans under the Joseon dynasty, but outside authority was very precarious and the Jurchen were basically independent most of the time. Its a complicated story but suffice to say, by the end of the 16 century a new, very powerful Jurchen state was emerging in southern Manchuria that renamed the people to the more familiar Manchu (I think about 10 million people identify as Manchu today), this was the Qing dynasty that not only threw off the vestiges of Chinese influence, it actually went onto conquer China and the Ming dynasty entirely over the 17th century. The Jurchen had a very distinct linguistic and ethnic background (Tungusic is a totally different language group from Mongolic and Sino-Tibetan), though understandably there was a ton of interplay with them and nearby people like the Chinese and Mongols, their way of life was also kind of straddling the line between settled Chinese society and the nomadic civilizations of the high steppe, though it also varied wildly depending on the particular Jurchen tribes we are talking about. I don't think this would have the same issues as partitioning out the Burgundians from the Franks or anything like that, they are far more distinct historically and ethnically.
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Aug 25, 2023 16:28
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I think with splitting up the Chinese it's tricky because I don't think it would be appreciated by Chinese players in the same way as e.g. splitting up India was. Similarly Slavs are a bit of a hot potato right now, what with Ukraine and Russia, you could replace them with Russians but I doubt that would go over very well. Maybe Teutons could be split up, as that's a particularly glaring weirdness after all the various flavours of slavs went in. You could add in the Bavarians, Saxons and the Swiss or something similar. The Jurchen are a good shout though. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Aug 25, 2023 |
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Aug 25, 2023 19:16
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I think you'd have a hard time removing a civ like Teutons or Chinese; maybe it makes sense to be partitioned up, but the civs that have been in since AoK have a very devoted group of players.
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Aug 25, 2023 20:51
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I don't think the current Chinese should even be touched, beyond balance tweaks, Jurchen and Tibetans would have a completely different focus on things like Cavalry or Infantry respectively. Its not even really 'splitting up' the Chinese that I envision, its more adding in some of the surrounding states and peoples that have been on and off under Chinese domination or conversely have come to dominate parts of China proper over the centuries. I'm not tremendously fond of any more European civs and as things stand I don't think we need any more Slavic ones when we have the Slavs, Bulgarians, Poles and Bohemians in the game. At this rate the only additional Slavic civilization that I could see being added is probably the Serbians (or something more broadly south Slav to also encompass the Croats and others) and something like Galicia–Volhynia or Great Moravia essentially have the same problem as the Burgundians or Sicilians in being way too specific for a game like this.
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Aug 25, 2023 21:02
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khwarezm posted:I don't think the current Chinese should even be touched, beyond balance tweaks, Jurchen and Tibetans would have a completely different focus on things like Cavalry or Infantry respectively. Fun fact: Tibet actually fielded a lot of heavy cavalry, so we're missing a Franks-level Paladin civ in east asia.
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Aug 25, 2023 21:48
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Gimme Inuit, Tupi, Maori and Nganasan civs please
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Aug 25, 2023 22:27
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khwarezm posted:I'm not tremendously fond of any more European civs and as things stand I don't think we need any more Slavic ones when we have the Slavs, Bulgarians, Poles and Bohemians in the game. At this rate the only additional Slavic civilization that I could see being added is probably the Serbians (or something more broadly south Slav to also encompass the Croats and others) and something like Galicia–Volhynia or Great Moravia essentially have the same problem as the Burgundians or Sicilians in being way too specific for a game like this. Oh yeah no, there's no need to put in any more Slav civs, but the name is a bit generic when it's essentially just Russians now (whether Kievan Rus or later Russia) so renaming it might be okay. With the Teutons I meant more adding other Germanic civs aside from the Franks, no need to remove the civ itself. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Aug 25, 2023 |
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Aug 25, 2023 22:29
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yeah personally I'd rather have at least one Oceanic or North American Native civs but both of those are pretty unlikely.
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Aug 25, 2023 22:36
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Azran posted:yeah personally I'd rather have at least one Oceanic or North American Native civs but both of those are pretty unlikely. I think a Polynesian civ like the Maori or Hawaiians would be really cool for AOE3 moreso than 2, personally.
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Aug 25, 2023 22:44
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khwarezm posted:I think a Polynesian civ like the Maori or Hawaiians would be really cool for AOE3 moreso than 2, personally. Yeah you can have a taste of that with that Wars of Liberty mod for non-remastered AOE 3. It works well enough imo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ_eKHzRYAs
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Aug 25, 2023 23:23
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Azran posted:yeah personally I'd rather have at least one Oceanic or North American Native civs but both of those are pretty unlikely. This would be nice; and frankly I think the meso civs could use a lot of work, both from a historical & game balance standpoint. Unfortunately I feel like the best we might get for a north american civ would be another disservice like the Inca got.
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Aug 26, 2023 00:00
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khwarezm posted:Well, personally I'd prioritise the Tibetans and Jurchen, both controlled powerful empires in the middle ages and represent distinct ethnic groups that have a long history up to now. The Jurchen are a Manchurian Tungusic speaking people who morphed into the Manchu over several centuries, they controlled North China under the Jin dynasty after having displaced the Khitan Liao, who fled west and created the Kara-Khitai empire you see in the first few Genghis Khan missions. They ruled northern China for the better part of a century and put significant pressure on the southern Song, until they were conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century. That was far from the end of them though, after the collapse of the Mongol empire Manchuria was an area of contested influence between the Ming dynasty, the Mongol Northern Yuan and Koreans under the Joseon dynasty, but outside authority was very precarious and the Jurchen were basically independent most of the time. Its a complicated story but suffice to say, by the end of the 16 century a new, very powerful Jurchen state was emerging in southern Manchuria that renamed the people to the more familiar Manchu (I think about 10 million people identify as Manchu today), this was the Qing dynasty that not only threw off the vestiges of Chinese influence, it actually went onto conquer China and the Ming dynasty entirely over the 17th century. They have some interesting relationships with the surrounding states at the start of the period too. Depending on who you ask, Balhae -- the major kingdom in Manchuria during Tang that preceded the Khitan Liao -- was ruled by early Jurchens or by Koreans, but in any case they were an integral component of it. And the kingdom that preceded it, Goguryeo for that matter. Honestly Jurchens are just a complete no-brainer to add, imo they're perhaps the most gaping omission on the entire map at the moment and had such an impact throughout the entire game's period. Also, if you want a heavy cavalry East Asian civ, they are the obvious pick: 
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Aug 26, 2023 03:24
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1959430/The_Sultans_Ascend/ From the screenshots it looks like Japan, Tuetons and maybe the Ayyubid Dynasty. The one rider looks like Saladin, so that's my assumption on the last one. No concrete details or even an eta. edit: Way past late!
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Aug 27, 2023 14:22
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Elo really needs to drop way quicker in ranked, I'm playing matches against people who have 3k score over me 25 minutes into the game and I only lose 15 Elo after the match lol
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Aug 28, 2023 15:45
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Azran posted:Elo really needs to drop way quicker in ranked, I'm playing matches against people who have 3k score over me 25 minutes into the game and I only lose 15 Elo after the match lol why not just keep doing cheesy all in dark/feudal rushes until you tank somewhere more comfortable? I guess you might end up climbing with that lol
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Aug 28, 2023 18:51
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Azran posted:Elo really needs to drop way quicker in ranked, I'm playing matches against people who have 3k score over me 25 minutes into the game and I only lose 15 Elo after the match lol What's your elo? Last I played you could easily break 1000 just by fast castling into knights. I wouldn't be surprised if you could go over for another 1, maybe 2 hundred points. Of course the lower level players were improving, so maybe not
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Aug 29, 2023 08:32
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Started at 1050 or so, down to 830 now. My last match I was doing great, I castle-dropped my opponent as the Incas in Arena and they were like wtf I'm new I just want to learn. Turns out I had like double their vill count and it took them like 10 more minutes to hit Castle Age. I dropped two more castles on their base and they kept asking me to stop, I felt so bad lol I got like +16 Elo from the match  Most of my matches are lost because I get beaten to Castle Age and castle-dropped so my main source of losses is either loving up my FC timing or seeing the castle drop coming but not having produced enough military to stop it. My Castle Age timing seems to be 17-18 usually and I can deal with the pressure of getting castle dropped but eventually the score gap becomes too wide and I resign. Here's the match I felt terrible about winning: https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/256170381/ Here's a match I lost where I got castle-dropped and hosed up my defense so I started lagging tremendously behind despite almost denying/destroying the castle twice. https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/256084105/ Here's a match I lost on Megarandom where I learned that you need to deny stone to the mongols because Mangudais are crazy strong lol I think my main failure here was not being more aggresive early on and not having a big enough army to win the first engagement https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/256080235/ Lastly, here's a match I did decently on and I felt like we were more evenly matched, though the fact they didn't attempt to contest relics despite me being Lithuanians was weird https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/256084825/ Azran fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 11:47
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Azran posted:Most of my matches are lost because I get beaten to Castle Age and castle-dropped so my main source of losses is either loving up my FC timing or seeing the castle drop coming but not having produced enough military to stop it. My Castle Age timing seems to be 17-18 usually and I can deal with the pressure of getting castle dropped but eventually the score gap becomes too wide and I resign. Have you tried all-in feudal? Flood scouts as Magyars or something and punish their FC attempt?
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Aug 29, 2023 21:35
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