Age of Empires, 2, and 3 coming in new Definitive Editions

Games
#233

More for fun talk: what are your favorite Civ and unit combinations?

Japanese Horse Archers with Halbs. Basically when I play Japanese I seem to “carry” my team and if we don’t win we hold out 3v4 for a long time before the inevitable end. Halbs are even decent against lower tier barracks units and not fully upgraded melee infantry. And I can always add Samurai if the situation deems it necessary. Japan does lack the late game Cav options and are only just ok with their Light Cav in big fights, and I’ll still build them to have a place to dump food, but they are suboptimal.

Aztecs w/Vietnamese ally. Kind of super skirms, good enough to shoot down all but the heaviest units. (I hate meso civs in general though).

#234

Elite Janisarries got a 15% buff to accuracy? Perhaps it is time to change my favourite Gunpowder civilization. Throw a +1 bonus to pierce armour on top for the Scout->Light Cavalry->Hussar cavalry line and the Turks looks rather tasty to try out.

#235

Been enjoying the Portuguese with their new additional “All technologies are researched 30% faster” bonus. Doesn’t effect the time it takes to Age Up at all, but it does mean power spikes from upgrades kick in that bit sooner during matches to provide an elongated window of opportunity. Plus less TC downtime when you research Loom and such too. Viper approves too…

#236

25k in game today, plus another 10k in HD, however many over at voobly, plus probably 10k or so watching the World Cup 2v2 games. AoE2 is doing well.

#237

Time zones, with the recent changes in Daylight Savings around the globe, can make the 2v2 World Cup a bit annoying to try and catch for me sometimes. So I’ll be glad when the finals roll around and T90 starts uploading everything to Youtube. Understand breaking the VoDs up into Highlights on Twitch takes some time but if I’m not watching live I can down without the hassle of forwarding through the breaks and stuff.

Been some good games on show though.

#238

I think i may have my fill of random pick up multiplayer Age 2 games. Age is fun enough that even imbalanced games that you’ve long since lost at the 10 minute mark are fun to play out anyway if you can make it a fighting slog for the opponent… but, in the end, pre-losing because you have 1 or 2 weak players gets pretty old, as is the problem with competitive RTS games. I might just stick to AI skirmish for the near future. I mean, the AI is pretty tough, and if i don’t cheese it, Hardest or Impossible AI will pretty easily beat me if i let it get too big too fast, so i have something like a lifetime’s worth of AI skirmish left still.

#239

So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999

#240

Next update for AoE3:DE finally out. Home City customisation options added for Sweden, numerous fixes and improvements, some balance updates, the game’s first in-game event (similar style to those in AoE2:DE), etc.

Been enjoying bouncing between AoE2 and AoE3 for my RTS fix lately. So eager to what kind of new build options some of the changes might open up, like the buff to the Portuguese’s ability to generate XP for Home City shipments.

#241

Hmm, pretty sure they said no more civs being added but:

I guess AoE2DE is doing so well they felt like they should put something out.

Only $10 though, so probably worth picking up

#242

Interesting reverse campaigns (Longshanks, Burgundians)

#243
#244

I wish someone had told me there had been a tournament. And its Empire Start. I love Empire Start.

I really should get around to purchasing AoE 2 DE sometime. I played it when I still had the Game Pass. Maybe next sale.

#245

More games today. Nice that Red Bull continues to run these.

#246

I like the Empire Start System, but it seems that a few nations with early eco bonuses would be hurt by it. I’m wondering if Malay benefit or not from the Feudal start.

#247

@legowarrior more Red Bull games today and tomorrow.

#248

I’m watching Friday’s matches today. I don’t think I will get through all of them though.

#249

Launched!

#250

This is quite a different launch splash screen now.

Just as an aside, does anyone have problems with keyboard and mouse responsiveness in Age 2? I feel like the game is just filled with misclicks or unresponsive keystrokes. For example, selecting my starting villagers and A-Qing my starting houses takes me two or three attempts to get the commands recognized. Expand this through the whole game basically.

#251

For the most part I don’t think I’ve had that problem. Are you playing multiplayer when it happens?

They have started a comp stomp event this week. Beat the different AI levels to get the various things.

Edit: Hidden Cup 4 qualifiers start this week. I think first games are today. Should be a lot of good games.

#252

Haven’t had any issues with mouse or keyboard responsiveness here recently. My hotkeys are all working as they should be on the first button press, rather than having to mash them due to a delayed or dropped input. So, not sure what is up with that, unless you are participating in some large team games where lag\latency might be a complicating factor but it seems fine in 1v1s and offline for me.