We are making great progress on Age of Empires IV. I don’t want to make you jealous, but we are literally playing this game every single day—both in Washington and in Vancouver.
RTS development is funny: it takes a while to build the separate systems (AI, economy, sim, rendering, etc), and then it takes a while for them to come together. But when they do, you suddenly have a game—a game that needs debugging and balance and polish— but the core of the game that you know you’re going to ship. And the best part is that it feels like an Age of Empires game.
Our partners at Relic have been incredible stalwarts as we all migrated development from office to home, and modified (through trial and error) our processes to help facilitate productivity to keep the game on track. So much passion, such great developers, artists, designers, narrators, audio experts, and community—not to mention the backbone functions that keep the company going.
Preview tomorrow morning:
A preview screenshot of the preview video?
A countdown to the start of the show, I think?
It looks nice, but that was a pretty short event.
Those models look really bad imo
Geez, Spirit of the Law didn’t waste any time in getting a video out. Wonder if he got a bit of a sneak peak beforehand, like Aussie Drongo did for the Age of Empires 3 content.
Wow, that’s very cool.
I still don’t know if there’s a market for traditional RTS games anymore, but it really looks like they’re making a classic Age of Empires in every way. The 3D graphics look as good as the 2D graphics from the old games, which is amazing.
I’m excited with trepidation. I like to see a new AoE game, having loved the originals back in the day. Also happy to see it’s going to be on Game Pass which makes it a no-brainer to try out without worrying about spending money when I’m unsure. Downside is I bounced off RTS games a long while ago, settling for the pace of TBS instead and I’m not sure I can go back.
So, going to be on board but I don’t know for how long.
I’ve noticed all my recent issues with strategy games that allow you to construct a civilization is that I’m constantly looking to build, build, build and explore and don’t want the battles, which goes against what the core of these games offer. I think I’m just trying to fit my play style into a genre that isn’t designed for it. That’s okay, though, and isn’t a failing of the games. I usually find a way to make it work.
Does this have a release date?
Just said Fall 2021. I usually just expect that to be pushed to after the new year for most these titles, but you never know.
Him and Drogo do seem to always be on top of things.
I would love to see a game between the two of them.
It’s really nice to read that civilizations will be more different from each other (even while sharing a common pool of units). One of my favourite RTS games back in the day was C&C: Generals, and one of the reasons was the three factions felt completely different. I guess Starcraft had been doing this from day one too, I just never played that series. It sounds like they’re trying to hit a happy medium of each civ feeling different, while preventing the need to redesign the wheel each time as they can use the common pool of standard units.
One thing that I like about the Age of Empires 2 model is that having a common pool of units reduces the learning curve. Age of Empires 2 seems like the different nations play the same, but the bonuses and limitations are enough that different unit compositions must be used for different nations. You rarely are going to see Paladins as Celts or Japanese (except in Hidden Cup, in the Japanese vs Celts game, when the Japanese surprised the Celts player by going Paladins), or see Goths not go Champion.
And of course, some nations rely on their unique unit more than others (like the Spanish and Mongols).
That being said, I will be happy if they go a little more in line with Age of Empires 3, or even (if we are lucky) Age of Mythology style of game play, were there are several different pools of unique units and the nations pool from a particular pool depending on the region they are in.
Wait the Japanese have Paladins now?
Like many long time players I have a long pondered bunch of imaginary games I wish I could make. The main thing though about Age 4 is that I hope they get the pace, and offensive defensive balance right. A big problem Age 3 has is pacing.
They do, not that you would general make them. But it was an understanding move against the Celts in the late game in Hidden Cup.
They were expecting to be flooded by Champions, so made siege and Demo Ships (the Hidden Cup Map is a bit bananas) and suddenly, out comes Paladins. Without Halbs prepped, it was decisive.
Interesting, this must have been a recent change, Japan used to have just Cavalier.
Japan is really a pretty great overall civ; i often make them into a Cav Archer and Halb civ in team games, things that aren’t exactly expected.
Of course Celts and Byz have Paladins as well, and sometimes those are fun to use in unexpected ways. Paladins as raiders / flankers rather than mainline cav can do a lot in certain circumstances. Getting the money to do that, otoh, is the hard part.
I’m dying to know if they were able to keep rms maps going in this release. Ensemble was able to make it happen for AoM and AoE3, so I hope it doesn’t die now. Watching the video again and seeing the ambush scene I wonder if all wooded areas are passable now. That would be a major change.
There’s some additional snippets of info in articles and videos being published since the event. According to an interview Nili conducted with the AoE4 developers there will indeed be Random Maps, as is tradition with the franchise.
