I totally appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic. However, I believe the average player doesn’t really care. And given all the historical quirks, caricatures and implausible mechanics in the game, it personally evades me how historically correct pronunciation could be prioritized over these. It seems like a poor cover at best.
What do you mean by poor cover?
Ah, sorry, if this isn’t clear. What I meant is the inconsistency that arises from 100% correct nuances to ancient dialects and AT THEM SAME TIME grossly inaccurate and implausible mechanics (like e.g. elephants destroying a cathedral made of stone - well at least they can’t destroy a wall equally made of stone).
Russia feel similar to their Age 3 counterparts in subtle ways. Russia has “wood power!” and they used to have shooting barracks which were kind of the same idea. Germans have a bit more armor and two-handed infantry with more defensive buildings, so they’re kind of closer to Age 2 than the Bohemian themed Age 3.
I like that the HRE / Germans have early priests that buff the economy. The Germans “garrison the relic” second age building is a very dramatic income source, close to double the gold in a long game. Russia’s wooden walls are fun. I admit France and Britain are a bit boring but i haven’t stared at them long enough to grok them.
Age 4 is very much about streamlining, let’s call them, annoying bottlenecks for lesser skilled players, where Age 2 is effectively unplayable at even medium skill levels without a ton of micro overhead. The problem about streamlining is (imo) the maps are probably the worst of the series, they’re small and one-dimensional and not near as interesting as they might be, though i guess there is some variety there as well.
Compared to Age 3 i think Age 4 is a “better balanced” game. The problem Age 3 had was that many of its maps were not particularly rigorously balanced… otoh there’s something wacky going on in water maps, and i think water maps are a bit broken in Age 4 as far as food goes.
Maybe the English with their longbows, and the French being focused on cavalry? Those are both similar to their AoE2 counterparts. The Mongols have Mangudai in AoE4, but they are a pretty unique civ with how the civ works in AoE4.
The Mongols are basically Terrans in Starcraft with mobile buildings. But the maps are so small you’re unlikely to need to move significant buildings all that often since there’s nowhere to go. OTOH, moving lumber camps / gathering points is going to be one of their main faction features.
Re: the card system in AoE3. In hindsight I don’t think it was really warranted, but people seemed to think the card system being gated by progression put them at a disadvantage to someone who was further along. To the point that they even created a special map mod so people could max the progression by just joining a game with someone on that map.
It would’ve been interesting to see a card system by itself with perhaps progression like they are doing now in AoE4 with the masteries, and the daily goals.
I also like how they switch up the skirmish presets they offer people as different things to try out.
You could set any of them up yourself in custom game creation, but interesting to see the ideas they
come up with.
I haven’t played every civ yet, but I’ve enjoyed the differences in the ones I have played: English, French, Abbasid Dynasty, Rus, and Holy Roman Empire.
@tomchick , do you think there is any studio out there that would’ve done a better job with AoE4? The choices seemed like they were so limited with basically Blizzard, Petroglyph, and Relic being the only studios out there. While I agree it is a bit underwhelming since they seemed to play it very safe, I am glad they went with Relic over Petroglyph. It will be interesting to see if World’s Edge is actually able to produce a solid entry for the franchise with whatever they end up doing.
I figure this is about the best we could’ve realistically hoped for with a reboot of the franchise.
Petroglyph has such a different idea of what makes RTS games worth playing that they’d be terrible/horrible choice.
Universe at War is a fantastic example of everything wrong and right about that kind of style. I think as 80s kids they have a very “toy store” and “Saturday morning cartoon” approach to unit and game design.
If there’s anything amazing about Age 4 is how faithfully “franchise” it feels.
RTS games are perhaps unique in video games today as perhaps the most driven under the hood by the interactions of game design and rules, and when a game gets that subset of constraints right it’s almost timeless in an abstract sense, like the rules of chess or backgammon.
Have they done anything good since Star Wars: Empires at War? They keep finding work somehow, but everything they do seems unfinished or rather bland.
The other big ones I can think of besides Blizzard, Petroglyph and Relic are Creative Assembly, who have worked with Microsoft already on Halo Wars 2. It could be interesting to see an Age of Empires game from them. But my brief time with Halo Wars 2 is the only RTS I’ve played from Creative Assembly, so I don’t know much about them. (i.e. I’ve never tried the Total War games).
That’s true. I never played Halo Wars 2, but they would’ve been an option.
Robot Entertainment still has some ex-Ensemble people as far as I’m still aware. They could have been a choice.
The next great RTS will likely come from a startup of some kind IMO. Someone will re-invent this genre with just the right combination of the stuff people want from these games in a whole new wrapper of some kind someday.
I mean, there’s still a Homeworld sequel in development isn’t there?
Wow, you’re right. Blackbird Interactive in Q4 2022 apparently.
I’m curious to see what Frost Giant does. Will they make a Blizzard style game, or try something different.
Pedigree says something Blizzard-like, but I think that’s ok if you still try to innovate.
They need to do Star Wars: Empire at War 2
That’s an excellent question and I really like some of the responses you got. But I’m surprised no one mentioned Eugen! I mean, they’ve got their own thing going these days, and thematically, it couldn’t be further from the Age series. But they’re one of the few remaining RTS developers from the olden days. I love what they’ve been doing with their campaign modes and it would have been awesome to see something like their Steel Division dynamic campaign in a historical setting.
-Tom
Yes, that is another one that slipped my mind. The Wargame and Steel Division stuff is always kind of its own thing in my mind. That would be interesting to see their take on an older time period.