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

Games
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It’s clear there are many, many “strategic nodes” or points of very specific economic and political strategy involved in skilled Age of Empires 2 play. Getting 3 town centers instead of 2. Rushing to knights, rushing with militia, when to get loom, how to maximize your early economy, getting the first couple of knights out, how to attack and pressure your opponent without being able to actually defeat them, building on success with economic or military followup, ect.

With Age 3? Oh, here’s literally a pile of herdable animals. Did you get the first cavalry out? Congratulations on a skilled game, good job, gg.

Age 3 has little in the way of defenses, even much less in the development of your bases, formations are almost nonexistent, micro is much harder, economics is just spam, ect.

To be fair, you can sort of “ruin” Age 2, and much of the “high level” of Age 2 play depends on lot of very well balanced maps and starting position. If you dropped 40 deer on your starting town center in Age 2, you’d have much of the same problem as Age 3. And when you let players just sit back and build for 30 minutes or an hour you can have games where the entire map is covered in military buildings, dozens and dozens, constantly spamming out units in a kind of endless flood.

But generally speaking, a random game of Age 2 is going to be much more satisfying to me in its game scope and strategic space than Age 3. Age 3 isn’t without merit, it’s not a complete disaster or whatever, but it just feels significantly pared backward.

And just to be clear, this seems to be the overall consensus of history, not just my own personal foibles. Virtually all high level and mid level players consider Age 3 inferior to Age 2 as a competitive RTS multiplayer game. This doesn’t mean you can’t play it and have a good time, but a mediocre player at Age 3 is likely going to have a very hard time in Age 2; meanwhile, a mediocre Age 2 player is likely going to be pretty good at Age 3.

182

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it!

183

Interesting to see an experienced player perspective.

But I wonder why isn’t Age3 more popular with more casual audience. After all I think Age games are notorious for being playable as chill citybuilders. Most people probably heard about boar luring in DE Art of War tutorials and don’t know about all of those high level play problems.

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AoE3 is up on Steam now. Typical Steam reviews are rolling in.

aoe3

185

Okay, that’s funny.

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I never played much of AoE before, though last year I almost bought AoE2 like a dozen times. I watched some AoE3 videos this morning and it looked really cool, so I’m keeping my eyes peeled. I like the idea of the slower paced, more medieval setting of AoE2 more, but some of the stuff in 3 looks really interesting, like the home card system (especially now it’s fully unlocked from the start, which reads like a pretty big improvement by the veterans).

187

Awesome, will download this on Game Pass today, then likely purchase on Steam at some point. Looking forward to diving in.

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To be honest Age 1 DE is quite a “visual” joy to watch. If sending stone age villagers out to hunt a deer as sort of the “centerpiece” of the experience, Age 1 is very slow paced and almost stately. OTOH, the unit controls suck and the game feels badly out of place, like a game from another time (units don’t auto group, so a pile of units move like… a pile of units, making combat very weird by modern standards).

Age 3 is oddly the fastest of the Age games, which may or may not work for you. Age 3 is almost inscrutably dense for new players with lots and lots of possible options and not really any clear way to judging the value of those options. So it kind of works best when all those options are fungible and none are particularly relevant… but then it feels like you’re just kind of puttering around. Which is kind of how I feel when i play Age 3.

Age 3 gets fun again if you can manage to get up a “18th C” line army of infantry, cannon and cav. But, at least in skirmish/multiplayer, you’re as like to just send 10 random guys out to skirmish / kill your opponent as something that grand (the Cossacks series otoh wanted you to build an army as numerous as a Total War army but one man at a time out of barracks).

189

Oh no, this is terrible.

RE: AoE3:DE
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I don’t even want to know what the goober is referring to.

Steam reviews, individually, are hilarious and dumb. I still find the aggregate review scores to be pretty useful, though, as well as many of the top-ranked reviews. I definitely feel the lack of them when I’m on EGS.

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I’m sure this is what’s triggering the idiots:

image

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We have to compare female peasants bra sizes to know how much damage SJWs have inflicted.

The problem I see on videos is that terrain looks too detailed and distracting. On the other hand it might be video compression not handling texture well. How does it look to you all rich day 1 buyers?

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That’s actually really cool that they reached out to First Nations for input and correction. I wasn’t aware of that effort.

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I think this is actually another reason the original game didn’t do well with the hardcore crowd. It looks gorgeous but it’s busy as heck, and if you’re coming from the clean lines of AOE2, the clutter is really distracting.

Personally I love it, but I get why AOE3 just didn’t hit the notes the competitive RTS folks wanted.

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Actually the graphics look like a huge upgrade in terms of legibility, despite not being that different. I kind of strongly disliked the very zoomed in feel of the original game with that giant UI. IMO until now Age 2 (and now DE) was actually a more beautiful game and not just for gameplay reasons. It was right on that line when 2D games had a more beautiful visual set than 3D. Like Dark Reign 1 to Dark Reign 2.

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Oh, the DE version stuff looks great. I was commenting on the way the original’s textures were super cluttered looking back in the day. I think the DE version of this is still more cluttered than the DE version of 2, but that just comes with the territory.

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image1200×675 190 KB

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Ah, so that’s why it’s a 35GB download. Extra graphics.

-Tom

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Wow, that’s a huge difference. I’ll have to download it to check it out. I didn’t think AoE3 looked as good as the first 2 games, but that might have changed now.

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A few more factors: it was hardware-demanding for the time. The “ant farm” citybuilding aspect is downplayed as the economy is simplified. The most citybuilding you can do (with Deathmatch or the no-rush Treaty modes) is to fill the map with a few layers of walls and dozens of unit-producers.

Another obstacle may be the homecity deck-building RPG, which means you can’t simply jump in and play.

The official “comparison” renders do not authentically represent the original models - showing them without bump maps, and give the DE models… let’s just say vastly exaggerated texture & lighting resolutions. This is what the actual model looks like in game:

In practice, this DE looks unattractive for both art design & tech reasons (the temporal AA makes everything muddy), in addition to currently performing poorly on many computers.

Also featuring: wagons that turn like a tank.
https://imgur.com/oUTfeLr

The “First Nations accuracy” is also more PR gesture than anything meaningful. Consultants noted that the Lakota and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) do not practice mining, so they replaced their ability to mine with the least elegant & respectful solution you can imagine - they can now build 25-wood “Tribal Markets” (not to be confused with the real Market, or the Trading Post) which inexplicably require a mine deposit nearby, and this somehow represents fur trade. Every change is like that.

However, Tom might be interested in the new civs - the Swedes grow blueberries around houses, the Inca is designed to play more like an AoE2 civ, and the redesigned revolution system, which are essentially 16 mini civ choices. As with every new game design feature in DE, it’s done more like a mod with near-zero budget, throws balance out of window, and repurposes single-player models like crazy, but it’s cute, and some options are interesting.

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At least with DE you now have access to all the cards from the start, and they supply some basic decks to begin with.