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

You just posted a picture of some launcher options. You never said how to get those options. You never said anything about using my steam library to launch the game that way opposed to clicking on an icon which is how every other game is run from steam.

I think it’s likely that the majority of people only ever launch their steam games through the steam library.

I think it’s surprising to learn that you don’t usually launch the games through steam and that you did everything else, except what was thought to be common practice first.

Really? Most people do it that way? I have always used desktop icons. I have a little section on my desktop reserved for games. I would have never thought the normal way to launch steam games is via the steam library launcher.

Huh.

First of all, that image clearly shows the Steam library background. But just in case that wasn’t clear, I told you explicitly how to get there:

So what’s that now?

The desktop icon hasn’t be in vogue since the Steam Library was around. Its page dedicated to the majority of your games, all in order, that you can sort or search. It tells you if the game is up to date, whether there were any patches and whether there are any announcements.

Its one of the reasons that having multiple ‘platforms’ is kind of a bear to handle. Very few people bother with the clutter of desktop app icons anymore.

In any case, I’m glad you were able to launch AoE 3.

I’ve always launched my games by right clicking on the steam icon in the system tray and selecting them there. Or right clicking on the Playnite Icon and selecting them there.

Grim Dawn is the only exception because there’s no way to get that steam menu that gives you launch choices without launching it from the steam library page. I certainly didn’t know launching games from the library was any different than launching them from the icon trays until someone told me. I think that’s a reasonable assumption to safely make, even if me and DeepT turned out to be wrong in making it.

I still primarily use desktop icons. It saves a few clicks and with Fences it’s faster/easier for me to organize than the Steam library is.

Developers have the option in steam to set different launch parameters which is what brings up the menu under discussion.

However, the shortcut created by Steam defaults to the first launch option. So you need to create your own shortcut manually (though this requires knowledge of what’s happening behind the scenes…) In this case, just edit your shortcut to point to age3x.exe or age3y.exe instead of age3.exe

Well this is a useful thread. I had no idea you might get different results on clicking the Play button in the Steam client than double clicking the desktop icon.

Also, the recent introduction of Collections has rendered desktop shortcuts obsolete for me. For example, I created a Collection called GAMES TO PLAY, and simply dragged and dropped Steam Library entries into it. Previously, I had a desktop folder of the same name that contained Steam shortcuts.

Given how many games I have in other libraries besides Steam I use https://playnite.link to manage my PC games. Adding a tag is fairly quick and easy.

Although no definitive edition, my favorite Age game is still getting patches!

Will be interesting to see if they follow through on doing something with the IP. Isgreen has hinted at it a few times now.

AoE seems to be having a decent week. Liquipedia has decided to start a wiki for Age of Empires, and new tournament site by folks along with capture age has been announced:

https://quiver.gg/

There also was yet another patch released, which they’ve been consistently doing every month since release. Battle of Africa team tournament is also going on right now.

Isn’t there already a really good wiki for AoE?

Liquipedia focuses on competitions I believe, which I think the AoE wikis that I know of are focused on the actual game. I think Liquipedia will track tournament results and players, maybe some stuff about strategies.

So in AoE2, Is there a way to play a non campaign match against the AI where we both start with a couple of workers, i.e. there isn’t a pre-built town?

Nomad map? Not sure how well the ai plays that.

Land Nomad map added!
Mongol civ event!
Balance changes!
Mongol Raid scenario added!

It’s amazing that in 2020 the best RTS is still Age of Empires 2.

I don’t know. Iron Harvest came out this year.