I loved the card system
I liked some of the aspects of the Card System, but I felt it was just too much of a learning curve on a game that was already pretty complicated for an RTS
Age of Empires 4 seems to take a page out of Age of Mythology, by giving you two options at each age, which I appreciate.
Shipments helped 3 a lot, as the strategies could be a bit greedier at a high level. I do agree that it was a system that took some learning to do but I thought it added more than it hurt. The worst part of them when the game released was tying them to a progression system and i think progression systems absolutely ruin games.
Being able to step your toes in some aspects of the game- augmenting a fortress age timing push with a shipment of falconets, for example, without having to build an artillery foundry added something to the game.
I get where they were coming from on the progression system. There are a lot of cards in the game, some with seemingly small bonuses. Some with really large bonuses. It was hard to tell what was a good or middling card at times.
Also… I fear that a lot of cards have just become business as usual. Instead of opening new tactics, they are almost required. That seems to be the case for the 700 wood shipment for many players.
Does it open more strategies or just funnel you into strategies because your deck forces you to make certain decisions?
See, I love the progression system! It gave me some purpose to skirmishes when I don’t play MP.
I played AoE4 and didn’t feel any desire to play again after a few matches.
I recognize that the progression system was a real problem for the multiplayer community, but it was one of my favorite things in AoE3.
I’m really underwhelmed by Age IV, mainly because it’s a sequel to Age II more than a sequel to Age III, and Age II is such a dated design. But I’m also underwhelmed because Age IV has a lot of Relic’s bad habits. For instance, the way it shoves everything onto the F1-F4 keys, according to the Company of Heroes template. I imagine for some people, that’s a helpful interface adjustment, but I find it intrusive. It fit Company of Heroes’ infantry/tank split, which also worked with the Dawn of War games, but I find it more hassle than helpful with Age’s infantry/cavalry/archers/siege structure.
And it drives me batty how inconsistent Relic is in terms of giving information, which has been a problem as long as I’ve been playing their games. For instance, when you put units into a tower, you can no longer get any tooltip info about the tower or the units. Which won’t matter to people who already know the game. But the rest of us might still want that information.
I’m also a bit disappointed at some basic interface oversights. Again, let’s say I put five dudes into a tower. And I just want to eject one. As near as I can tell, that’s impossible. All five leave, or no one leaves. Which might not be a big deal if I’m just parking some dudes in a tower. But this is more problematic for some factions. Let’s say I’m playing the Muslims – I guess calling them “Abbasids” was somehow more correct? – and I put three imams into one of their research buildings. What if I want to move one of those imams to a barracks or stable? I can’t just kick one out of the research buidling. Instead, I have to kick out all three, send one to the new building, and then send the other two back into their research building. There is no reason the interface should work this way other than it’s how Relic has always done it.
Which then leads me to the hassle with priests running around gathering relics, healing, and converting. So much micro, done so much better in other games. Rise of Nations, anyone? But, hope, we’re going back to the way it worked in Age II.
Age IV is fine if you’re pining for Age II. Otherwise, it’s a throwback to an old design, and not a very good throwback at that. :(
High five! Me too!
Traditional RTSs had to be three separate games in every box, each with unique design challenges. Furthermore, the people who played RTSs tended to focus on one of the three games, which meant having to make one product appeal to three different player bases.
The three games were the campaign, the skirmish, and the multiplayer. Every RTS had to have all three, and I think a lot of us who loved the cards in Age III liked how they filled in for traditional campaigns, which were always heavy on scripting and light on progression. But if you played Age III like I did, as a game about “leveling up” your favorite home cities, you discovered the exactly opposite of most RTS campaigns: lots of progression (the cards!), and almost no scripting because you were playing skirmishes or multiplayer however you saw fit.
-Tom
I agree with everything you’ve said. As to Age of Empires 3 it’s weird. On paper I should have loved the game and put a million hours into it. But I disliked most of it instead.
This is really cool - the voice over for Chinese units have actually attempted to recreate historical pronunciations rather than just using the modern standard pronunciation. They also use pronunciations from different time periods as you progress through the ages - Early Middle Chinese, then Late Middle Chinese, and then Early Modern Mandarin.
Give me an AoE with a similar metagame mechanic as Planetfall! A reason to want too boot up the next skirmish.
Yeah, definitely worth the 60 bucks ;-)
It totally is! The pronunciation of medieval or classical chinese is a very interesting topic - since it’s not an alphabetical language you can’t “guess” what the pronunciation of a character is by just sounding out the letters.
It is more like detective work trying to track down how a character might sound by reference to its use in a poem where it is meant to rhyme with another word, or looking at what that word sounds like in another dialect or language where the sound may not have changed as much over the centuries, or just digging through archives to see where an ancient scholar may have written about how the character sounds.
There are quite a few medieval chinese linguists on twitter who are very interesting to follow on this subject.
I am enjoying it, as I wasn’t a huge fan of AoE3.
Was shocked I lost my first game 3 nights ago, my RTS skillz are rusty, then came back to win my 2nd game the following day. I turtle a lot and wipe the map of resources ,so both games have lasted over an hour.
Sorry to nitpick, but (knowing nothing about the game) do they have a corresponding faction called “Christians”? Because, you know, the Abbasids were a political entity (an Empire, even), whereas “Muslim” is, uh, a religion.
Indeed, Delhi Sultanate is also an Islamic polity.
Age of Empires II: African Kingdoms expansion also had the Berbers, who were also Muslims. And Age of Empires III had the Ottomans, who were also Muslims. And Age of Empires II also had the Saracens, who were also Muslim.
Not in Age IV they’re not. This Delhi Sultanate eats pork.
All of whom were allowed to hunt boars, right? Good thing Age IV finally came along!
-Tom
Actually AoE4’s Delhi Sultanate also can’t hunt boars (and has the same bonus foraging from bushes). For AoE3, they dodged the issue by not having any porcines.
Speaking of that, have you tried the new AoE3 DLCs? From the DE release to present they’ve added 5 civs (Swedish, Inca, US, Ethiopians, Hausa), and have at least a couple more in the pipeline (probably Brazilians and Moroccans). The new team is getting bolder and bolder at designing new civs.
Well, they do have that one really extreme mod to compete with for AoE 3. The name escapes me, but it basically threw everything in it, but the kitchen sink.
Ah, I stand corrected. I actually haven’t played them, but that’s cool that Relic was consistent.
Wait, is that true? Were there really no pigs or boars in Age III? Now that you mention it, that does sound right.
I have not, but that’s partly on purpose. I’ve sort of mentally classified them as mods, even though I know that’s not fair. You’ve tried them? Do any of them stand out?
And more on topic, which of the Age IV factions stand out for you guys? Do any of them feel connected to the previous games? For instance, how can you play as France without your couer-de-bois? Where are my free villagers for every English house? Why are Russia’s strelets suddenly so bad-ass when they used to be the equivalent of zerglings? As an Age III player, these factions just seem…so arbitrary.
There’s still a lot I want to sample in Age IV, even though my enthusiasm is cooled. I haven’t tried any of the naval stuff yet (naval presence was a huge element of Age III for how well it interacted with the land stuff). It’s nice to see walls given a prominent place again. I guess I like the idea of collecting artifacts as a more consistent excuse for exploring the map than hunting down pools of resources and free units arranged in cute vignettes.
-Tom