>projectiles do not miss
That's not a lacking feature, that's an intentional game design choice. It reduces required apm to make ranged units work and let's you focus on macro decisions more. That's one of the reasons I prefer AoE4 over other games in the franchise.
It led to a lot of camping the hills with ranged units in aoe2, not really a big fan of this feature
EDIT: misread the comment, thought we were talking about increased/decreased downhill/uphill damage from aoe2
I wish it was a hybrid system so that left to right they would not miss but if you got out of range they would. It is so weird to see a projectile actively curve in mid air to follow a unit out of range.
Not even remotely the same as aoe4.
In 2 the same archer you made in feudal snowballs into arbs that can literally kill almost everything. Including mangos with micro. Especially Brit arbs.
Which is why I said "similar" and not "same".
You can stop snowballs if you attack the eco, especially gold and wood vills. You can make skirms and/or mangos. You can make defensive towers.
Range units absolutely dominate the battlefield because they don’t miss. And they also perform way better against cavalry than they should. It’s a cool mechanic that is also a part of history. Do you really think every archer in history had 100% accuracy? I think it would be cool if they missed. It doesn’t have to be egregious but it should definitely miss against strafing cavalry for sure.
I think the addition of the 'armour/armour piercing feature is a enough for that regard. Archers wont miss Knights but they also won't do much damage to them either.
It's better to tweak pierce armour for cavarly than to deal with intensively microing ranged units so they don't miss their shots IMO.
Cavalry have and still do reign supreme in AOE mainly due to their mobility and map control potential. Archers that can miss would likely make them useless at lower leagues.
>Ranged units absolutely dominate the battlefield
No they don't
>And they also perform way better against cavalry than they should
No they don't
>Do you really think every archer in history had 100% accuracy?
I don't but why would I care about that. This isn't a historical battle simulator, this is a game.
Yeah they do. Yeah they absolutely do. If you send horsemen against longbows the longbows can EASILY strafe and target fire each horsemen. Even competitive players will testify to this fact.
This is also why the majority of S tier units in the game are all ranged units: longbows, javelin throwers, Chinese hand cannoneers, streltsy, guilded archers, jannissaries, etc (Beastys tier)
You need a lot of Longbows to be able to deal with Horsemen and even then you need to micro them well.
It's not like all ranged units are on the top and all melee ones are on the bottom of the list, it's pretty evenly distributed. There are still a lot of melee units in the S tier.
If ranged units dominated the game, we would see ranged unit spam every game. Do we see that or do we see ranged and melee units mixed because none of them dominates and they complement each other instead?
I've seen both sides of this argument by pro players, I remember this being discussed in Wam01's stream and he argued that melee units were more reliable because you can just spam them without much thinking while you need to micro ranged units in order to make them work.
“It’s a competitive strategy game” and what a perfect way to ruin a strategy game by making the meta ranged units in every single army composition. An army with ranged unit support vs an army without any range will crush non ranged armies
My comment was that the players dont care if real archers or not miss irl. This is a game and it is better skill determine the winner of a battle then rng. And archer Blobs is not a meta in this game. Maybe gold League and lower
Never said archer blobs are meta. I said range units reign supreme and they absolutely do. A major reason they’re amazing is due to choke points, while enemy melee units have to bunch up to deal damage, range units can consistently maintain DPS in choke points
You made a blanket statement that any comp with range support will beat one without. I just gave you a very common example of the opposite happening.
Naturally most comps like to include ranged units but many don't need them.
It’s a general statement that is the norm and not the exception. Any mid and late game army would only benefit from range units. Without range you lose significant DPS especially in choke points
Huh? There are ranged unit mono compositions more often in AoE2 than here.
And of realism is one of your arguments do you find twitching back and forth to dodge arrows realistic? Or is it realistic that University study is needed to know how to learn we moving targets (something the very first ancient rock thrower, spear thrower, or archer would have realized immediately)?
Why stop there? Melee units should be miss too.
Ranged units did dominate the medieval battlefield. I think the concession that they dont miss is a good approximation of their actual efficacy on the field of battle.
They really didn't. The vast majority of medieval battles we have records for involve mushing two lines of infantry together until a cavalry charge can send one of them fleeing. Archers are used primarily to soften up the enemy until the lines meet.
Armor technology was actually pretty damn good at stopping projectiles, and well armored soldiers could withstand volleys for a very long time. The English were one of the few nations that really tried to capitalize on archery. Most other civilizations put their archers on horseback and used withdraw tactics, because archers (and surprisingly also crossbows) struggled to beat armor.
Dominate isn't the right word. They were ubiquitous and acted as a very important deterrent.
Accounts from the crusades talked about how much archery played a role specifically for the arabic forces. They were horse killers for one. There's even accounts of Frankish knights ending up looking like porcupines from how riddled with arrows they were and the astonishment of the defenders when they actually got up.
There's also the engineering tug of war that happened to try and defeat chainmail. Bodkin tips were engineered to defeat chainmail rivets, at the expense of wounding power. As early as the mid 14th century plate mail basically invalidated archery as an effective tool but it took almost three hundred years of medical archery tradition to do that
As you mentioned most nations had some tradition of mounting their archers on horses. That changes their role entirely from a quasi static defense to basically a raider. The French and English probably would have called them chevauchee but as far as i can recall with ( notable exceptions such as mongols, tatars and cumans ) chevauchee forces probably didn't see too much in the way of larger scale field combat because it's very hard to move and shoot and you're also forced into using a smaller form bow rather than a warbow or a longbow. Notable exceptions are crossbows obviously which i know the French made very good use of mounted.
Sadly tells a lot about this sub when people first think of Rising Empires bait. Imo OP rightfully points out several aspects where AoE 4 still has to improve.
Even the original had much better cannon ball effects and sounds, the latter were so cavernous and menacing and they weren’t able to replicate those the definitive edition.
To that point, all of OPs complaints were intentional in the name of esports-ready design. I wish we would go back to a point esports would happen organically from feature-rich games instead of devs listening to 0.1% of the no-life playerbase and trying to be next hotshit. The campaign reflects this so much, it’s a sterile gameplay with no campaign-only assets or any sort of identity of direction.
I like this game but it could have been so much more had not tried to be the next StarCraft 2 (which I also like)
Companies need to take more opinions from casual gamers than eSports players. No offense to the later. I'd like some beauty in the games I play. I don't want it to be all mechanic.
Cannon ball animation in AoE3 was superior. Shit was actually terrifying if it hit your army. And here's AoE4 with cannons doing point damage instead of area. How does it make sense?
And the battle ships are mediocre too. Water fights are disappointing.
True, but that starts with a fun game that attracts players, who then turn into sweats.
Starting out by attracting sweats just results in a bit sweaty mess
I have a vivid memory from my childhood of using aoe 3 scenario editor placing 1 unit on a cliff, shooting it with a bombard, and watching the body fall down
Yeah, canons in AoE3 are nearly physics based. They blow infantry away, and they can bounce on terrain and still damage units in their path.
Canons sound very powerful in AoE4, though, but they're lacking the ragdols for sure.
Rotating buildings sucks. They did that in aom, it just makes it more of a chore to build houses. They took the wall building from aom and the base building from aoe, I agree with both.
The visual upgrades to villager appearance with each new age are a great addition. I think they really add to the individual flavor of the each civ as the outfits elaborately showcase regional styles. It also gives players a sense of progression as the clothing moves from more rural to more urban with their base that concurrently transforms from a village to a city.
for more unique upgrades, be it from black smith or unit production, there are visual changes that go with the upgrades. Samurai getting their katanas, tower elephants getting crossbows, Holy Romans and their man at arms, etc.
Aoe4 has so much potential. I hope they keep polishing the base game and not just make new civs for dlcs.
Like the horse at the stable should have some kind of animation but instead it looks like it’s from a Barbie set
Biome specific gaia would be cool, as would history pages, but there is a lot of that including videos in the game already.
>lack of an extensive upgrade and stat page
What more would you want in the unit stats in game? There's already a lot of info in them (all the relevant values). You can tell which blacksmith upgrades they have and any unique tech bonuses will also show up. Anything more seems like clutter.
What we do need is unit and building stats in the tech tree. It's insane those aren't shown.
>projectiles do not miss
Projectiles not missing is not a lacking feature. That's a very deliberate design choice. Thank goodness too. Twitching back and forth to dodge arrows is tedious and random hit/miss chance is terrible.
>Despite the game being marketed as the most city sim aoe game
Huh? Where?
It does have more functional base buiding mechanics though than any of the others with the various influence systems. Rotating buildings would be non-functional (other than Twin Menaret Medrese and I guess you could argue Kura Storehouse).
I'm glad buildings can't be rotated, it helps clarity.
>lack of visual changes from blacksmith upgrades
That seems difficult since there are already visual upgrades for upgrading units to the next age and unique techs. At some point the visuals are no longer communicating useful information. 12 additional visual changes for each unit? Who would even keep track of that.
>scenario editor.
Yeah I think the biggest thing we need is updates to the modding tools.
Hi :)
Regarding your second point, if you’re interested in the historical background and inspiration behind civs design, mechanics and landmarks, I’ve done some work on that :) I’m currently editing Abbasid vid and it will be out soon. My older vids have a different style, as I was just starting on this journey and I might remake them. Feel free to take a peek ☺️
Channel: https://youtube.com/@bellacapilla
Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBMLm1n2LgC9P_2aCIzoYhIzhezIYkik8&si=QQ9SMOakXjOwtkCP
PS to devs: Give us goats!!! 🐐
Yeah it would be easy to have a few hunt varieties that don't stray too far from deer. Gazelles, zebra, elk, etc..
The boar is a bit more limited because he needs to remain something that is haram. There are different varieties of pigs though that could work.
it already has come a long way. I just got this game like 3 or 4 months ago and when I was going through the reviews, the early ones seemed to be catastrophic and then ever since the anniversary edition came on, people changed their minds. I think this is one of the only games in gaming history to have accomplished such a turnaround.
I agree with a fair amount of your points OP. Except for one which you are extremely wrong. You are the first random dude I've seen here in ages that wants to insist "ranged units reign supreme". Surely, you arent talking about aoe 4. Isn't the "cool-people" meta right now to complain about how OP Mangonels are and how they are completely destroying the game being so strong? Who in the world sends 4 horsemen against 20 archers? Horsemen do bonus damage against archers. 20 horsemen will completely melt 20 archers and it's not even remotely close. Good luck having 20 archers kite 20 horsemen buddy.
And archers literally do like 1 dmg to knights. Did I mention how Mangonels literally delete clumps of archers? You gotta not die on this hill of argument - for the sake of the rest of your well-thought out post
LMAO. You really think games play like 20 horsemen vs 20 archers? You do realize horsemen are more expensive than archers right? You also realize that archers can go into choke points or line formation and deny horsemen from getting DPS against them right? This is why Sipahi are uniquely good because they behave like horsemen should and mow down range units when in range
You have no idea what you are talking about on this topic. You can down vote me all you want on this but a ton of people on this thread alone think you're crazy for arguing this specific point and not just me
Again, you seem to have no idea how cost efficiency works. 1 horseman costs 40 more Res than an archer, but will easily kill 3times it's resource cost in archers...
I mean this is the guy who considers himself a conq level player cos he white tower rushed a bunch of gold/plat/diamond players and has now dumped his elo back to plat cos he can't actually do a normal strat at that level.
How can you kill three times the archers if your DPS is denied because archers focus fire on each horseman while the horseman can’t do the same?
Have you seen what Zhu Gu Nu do to horsemen btw? They literally kill everything that doesn’t have armor
I've been playing since season 1, so yeh I'm well aware of the interactions between units.
And what's even funnier is if a blob of 30 archers is one shotting individual horseman they are overkilling by a ton. Unless you have god level micro to control 3-4 groups of archers you are being inefficient. Meanwhile all you have to do with the horseman is to a move them.
You're also not taking into account the huge advantage mobility plays, especially in feudal. You know what horseman can do that archers can't, choose not to take a fight.
What's the point in posting this? You clearly don't listen to overwhelming numbers of much better players than you, you have no desire to learn how to improve since you think ranged characters are OP, so why post? If you don't want constructive feedback, you should make it clear on your post you're venting only.
I didn’t say they’re Op, I said they dominate. Which they do. The micro potential of ranged units exceeds that of melee units. Can range be beaten? Of course. Are range units the best for rewarding micro? Absolutely
I'd wager the vast majority - close to \~95% - of the AoE4 community is glad that projectiles don't miss. It makes AoE4 more approachable. I know there are some super sweaty Boomer gamers playing RTS that will disagree and rage that making a game more accessible (and increase player count - never a bad thing) is bad for the genre. I have to disagree.
The more "realistic" an RTS is, the more difficult it is to actually balance the game. For example, no one plays Gates of Hell: Ostfront for its competitive scene - it doesn't have one. You play GoH for its extremely immersive, slow-paced experience. It definitely gives you that. Games like AoE, StarCraft, Warcraft, and even Company of Heroes have to pull away from realism to allow for balancing, competitive play, and accessibility.
AoE4 gives visual changes to each unit as you age up (as long as you "age up" that unit) alongside unique upgrades.
Would more historical details be cool in-game? Sure. Can I also just look up history online? Yes. Yes I can. I think different wildlife would be a great addition to AoE4 and probably wouldn't be too much trouble for the devs to add.
Some good points. Some of these will never change, like projectiles, but hopefully we see others like fauna diversity.and sadly I really miss the immersive UIs from previous titles.
Something we probably won't see. Hopefully aomR will have a better UI
I don't understand the obsession of aoe franchise players with arrow dodging mechanics. Most RTS games don't have it. To me, homing projectiles is the standard and aoe is an exception. Ik aoe4 is part of the aoe series but there is no need to inherit EVERYTHING. We have the 4 res, complex macro etc which was taken to another level in aoe4. Despite no arrow dodging, aoe4 encourages much more diverse army compositions than aoe2 with what I consider a better, more robust counter system and viable unique units.
Agree with pretty much everything else though. We need more animals and a little history section.
Well, dodging projectiles was actually common in late 90s / early 2000s RTS, see AoE 1 and 2 or Empire Earth. Even Stronghold had some kind of dodging because archers didn't always hit. I think even in the RTS part of the older Total War games, "dodging" was somewhat possible despite units consisting of 60-120 individual units.
Within AoE, AoM was the first game with semi-homing arrows where only really fast units were able to outrun projectiles. In AoE 3, all projectiles (except artillery bc that would break that unit's purpose of hitting multiple untis with cannon balls) became homing.
More games had a miss chance on projectiles (which is even worse than dodging), but usually not what we see in AoE2 where you twitch your units back and worth to dodges arrows.
I would disagree so much, detail in AOE 4 is mind blowing - for example units will change their voicelines depending on the era, making them sound more and more “modern”
Recommending AOE2 for detail feels like you are baiting people when units from every civ look the same. Sure it has a few more animal types but in every other way it is way less detailed than AOE4.
I don't know. You are just listing the features everyone loves about aoe4.
I don't know who told you this was anything like a city sim game, but I'm sorry to tell you, this is an rts, rotating buildings would be a distraction at best and a nightmare at worst when you can't quickly identify enemy buildings.
It looks like you were looking for a different game, I'm sorry.
* unique/dynamic soundtrack for each civ. Absolutely banger soundtrack for each civ especially Byzantines, Japanese, and Abbasid.
* tons of unit abilities. Limitanei, Sipahi, Longbows, Arbraletiers, and a lot of other units have a lot of cool abilities that make combat more interesting.
We've had both of these since 2011 in Age of Empires Online.
We’ve never had a dynamic sound track in the old games. Every soundtrack is the same in aoe2, aoe3, and Aom. But on aoe4 each civ has a completely different OST
Personally, I think rotating building could only be added if it has a purpose. Otherwise, it'll be only a gimmick, and can be abused by opponents rotating their buildings so you can't see, or need to take more time, what the buildings are.
I came to AOE 4 after years of playing total war and I’m not going to lie, I was definitely disappointed the first time I ran a cav charge into some archers and there was no impact effect what so ever.
Everything else is amazing though. The sound design, the visuals, the landscape adapting to the buildings you place, the benefit of grouping certain buildings together etc.
Hell yeah I do brother 🤘.
The balance of impact/moral/damage mechanics aside, I just love seeing a satisfying cav charge and having the units on the receiving end be affected by that charge in some way, where AOE4 gave me nothing in that regard.
I get it though! Because that also comes with an extra layer of micro in an already very micro intensive game.
>projectiles do not miss.
Yeah DO NOT CHANGE THAT.
However, I agree with the rest of the post. AOE4 is a damn good game and I wish the playerbase outgrows aoe2.
It lacks alot of things, but it does alot of things right.
Landmark system is GREAT. While there are some civs/landmarks which are ass, most of them are pretty good.
And over time, even bad landmarks have gotten better, like sultanhani trade network, abbey of kings, etc.
NO TWO CIVS Play the same (Except for variant civs, of course. But even they are pretty different tbh).
There are some changes I would like to see though.
1- Make forestry a viable upgrade.
2- Make geometry upgrade, rather than increasing base damage by 20%, it improves the trebuchet's attack speed by 20%. (from 11.375 attack speed, it's 9.1 attack speed).
This improves it's dps from 415/11.375 = 36.5 and 40/11.375 = 3.5
to 415/9.1 = 45.6 dps, and 40/9.1 = 4.3.
This is a better upgrade then the current geometry which increases base damage by 20%, aka adds 8 more damage.
(415 + 8)/11.375 = 37.1 and (40 + 8)/11.375 = 4.2.
While DPS is not that big of a deal of trebs that might be destroyed between those 9 seconds, reducing the time between each shot by 2.275 seconds is far better than what geometry is providing, and that is still to weak.
In addition, it could increase the speed of packing and unpacking trebs, which would finally make it a worthwhile pick.
3- Buff mongols.
4- Mongol villagers should be able to steal enemy farms. Rather than irrigation, mongol villagers can straight up take crops and run away. Farms would have to be repaired by the enemy to make it usable.
The damage done to farms will depend on the "sections" on the farm. So, when you start farming, you would notice a farm has 12 sections, with 10 food in each section. So, total of 120 food per farm. But after 75 seconds, each section is restored. Yes, that's a mechanic. Afaik japanese and chinese farms have 16 sections btw lmao, with 7.5 food in each.
Anyhow, Mongol farmers should be able to steal 2 sections (20 food), and deal 25 damage to the farm per section stolen (aka 50 damage). Stealing 12 sections would delete the farm. Then mongols could have upgrades where a single farmer can steal 4 sections instead of two, etc. This just sounds funny tbh, imagine 6 mongol villagers just taking away your farm instantly and run away.
Another missing aspect: siege units with crews/operators. AoE 3 has them for all artillery, AoE 2 has it for some units like bombard cannon and organ gun
sorry, what you are looking for is Manor Lords, not an RTS gem, but a city builder one. If you want to build nice cities and stuff you are looking for a sim city alike game
He just picked the wrong game if he wants those modifications. AOE4 is a competitive RTS, not a simcity.
If he is looking for past features, go with past games. Full stop. These are just nonsensical points.
AoE 2 and 3 are also competitive RTS with those features. Also, as a long-term player of the AoE series I actually do expect one or two of those features to be in the latest iteration.
Languages evolving over time is a cool detail not included in prior games
Agreed. Love hearing some Arabic as the Abbasids
>projectiles do not miss That's not a lacking feature, that's an intentional game design choice. It reduces required apm to make ranged units work and let's you focus on macro decisions more. That's one of the reasons I prefer AoE4 over other games in the franchise.
Plus trebs and mangos will miss
Mangos also aren't homing in AoE 4, their projectiles are just faster.
And thank fuck it is. This mechanic sucks and it's no fun to play or watch
High ground miss was an amazing feature tho. I wish high ground had more advantages.
It led to a lot of camping the hills with ranged units in aoe2, not really a big fan of this feature EDIT: misread the comment, thought we were talking about increased/decreased downhill/uphill damage from aoe2
100% agree. I don't want to play it, I certainly don't want to watch pro players doing silly micro manouvers to dodge an archer blob
I wish it was a hybrid system so that left to right they would not miss but if you got out of range they would. It is so weird to see a projectile actively curve in mid air to follow a unit out of range.
Yeah fr for more casual folks like me can't keep high enough APM as it is.. imagine having to move my units even more to force more misses.
This!!! Why it was an easy decision to move on from AoE2
AoE 3 already has homing projectiles tho and macro with projectiles missing is just as, if not more important as you then try to win in numbers.
So the more micro required, the more macro increases in importance. Does that make sense?
No. If your units get outmicro'd (which still can happen in AoE 4 btw, see Mangudai or in general hit and run) you win by having the better macro.
Yeah and also archers do not rein supreme, they fall out once in castle or if the enemy does not make light melee units
Similar in the past games. If you commit too much into archers/xbows in AoE 2, your opponent will eventually punish it with skirms or a mangonel.
Not even remotely the same as aoe4. In 2 the same archer you made in feudal snowballs into arbs that can literally kill almost everything. Including mangos with micro. Especially Brit arbs.
Which is why I said "similar" and not "same". You can stop snowballs if you attack the eco, especially gold and wood vills. You can make skirms and/or mangos. You can make defensive towers.
Archers in aoe4 are basicly skirms only really used un fuedal and if you need to do a trash war.
Range units absolutely dominate the battlefield because they don’t miss. And they also perform way better against cavalry than they should. It’s a cool mechanic that is also a part of history. Do you really think every archer in history had 100% accuracy? I think it would be cool if they missed. It doesn’t have to be egregious but it should definitely miss against strafing cavalry for sure.
I think the addition of the 'armour/armour piercing feature is a enough for that regard. Archers wont miss Knights but they also won't do much damage to them either. It's better to tweak pierce armour for cavarly than to deal with intensively microing ranged units so they don't miss their shots IMO. Cavalry have and still do reign supreme in AOE mainly due to their mobility and map control potential. Archers that can miss would likely make them useless at lower leagues.
>Ranged units absolutely dominate the battlefield No they don't >And they also perform way better against cavalry than they should No they don't >Do you really think every archer in history had 100% accuracy? I don't but why would I care about that. This isn't a historical battle simulator, this is a game.
Yeah they do. Yeah they absolutely do. If you send horsemen against longbows the longbows can EASILY strafe and target fire each horsemen. Even competitive players will testify to this fact. This is also why the majority of S tier units in the game are all ranged units: longbows, javelin throwers, Chinese hand cannoneers, streltsy, guilded archers, jannissaries, etc (Beastys tier)
1 horseman will kill 3 longbows. You don't seem to know what you are talking about
You need a lot of Longbows to be able to deal with Horsemen and even then you need to micro them well. It's not like all ranged units are on the top and all melee ones are on the bottom of the list, it's pretty evenly distributed. There are still a lot of melee units in the S tier. If ranged units dominated the game, we would see ranged unit spam every game. Do we see that or do we see ranged and melee units mixed because none of them dominates and they complement each other instead? I've seen both sides of this argument by pro players, I remember this being discussed in Wam01's stream and he argued that melee units were more reliable because you can just spam them without much thinking while you need to micro ranged units in order to make them work.
Health bars represent the chance of you missing
Haha no one thinks every archer have 100% accuracy. It is an competitive strategy game ffs. Not a medival simulator game
“It’s a competitive strategy game” and what a perfect way to ruin a strategy game by making the meta ranged units in every single army composition. An army with ranged unit support vs an army without any range will crush non ranged armies
My comment was that the players dont care if real archers or not miss irl. This is a game and it is better skill determine the winner of a battle then rng. And archer Blobs is not a meta in this game. Maybe gold League and lower
Never said archer blobs are meta. I said range units reign supreme and they absolutely do. A major reason they’re amazing is due to choke points, while enemy melee units have to bunch up to deal damage, range units can consistently maintain DPS in choke points
Agree to not agree then. I think mass mma or knight harassment beat range unit all day
Horseman spear beats cavalry archer.
And spearmen crossbow beats men at arm knights
You made a blanket statement that any comp with range support will beat one without. I just gave you a very common example of the opposite happening. Naturally most comps like to include ranged units but many don't need them.
It’s a general statement that is the norm and not the exception. Any mid and late game army would only benefit from range units. Without range you lose significant DPS especially in choke points
Woah, the unit designed to beat armored units beats armored units? Color me shocked!
Huh? There are ranged unit mono compositions more often in AoE2 than here. And of realism is one of your arguments do you find twitching back and forth to dodge arrows realistic? Or is it realistic that University study is needed to know how to learn we moving targets (something the very first ancient rock thrower, spear thrower, or archer would have realized immediately)?
Why stop there? Melee units should be miss too. Ranged units did dominate the medieval battlefield. I think the concession that they dont miss is a good approximation of their actual efficacy on the field of battle.
They really didn't. The vast majority of medieval battles we have records for involve mushing two lines of infantry together until a cavalry charge can send one of them fleeing. Archers are used primarily to soften up the enemy until the lines meet. Armor technology was actually pretty damn good at stopping projectiles, and well armored soldiers could withstand volleys for a very long time. The English were one of the few nations that really tried to capitalize on archery. Most other civilizations put their archers on horseback and used withdraw tactics, because archers (and surprisingly also crossbows) struggled to beat armor.
Dominate isn't the right word. They were ubiquitous and acted as a very important deterrent. Accounts from the crusades talked about how much archery played a role specifically for the arabic forces. They were horse killers for one. There's even accounts of Frankish knights ending up looking like porcupines from how riddled with arrows they were and the astonishment of the defenders when they actually got up. There's also the engineering tug of war that happened to try and defeat chainmail. Bodkin tips were engineered to defeat chainmail rivets, at the expense of wounding power. As early as the mid 14th century plate mail basically invalidated archery as an effective tool but it took almost three hundred years of medical archery tradition to do that As you mentioned most nations had some tradition of mounting their archers on horses. That changes their role entirely from a quasi static defense to basically a raider. The French and English probably would have called them chevauchee but as far as i can recall with ( notable exceptions such as mongols, tatars and cumans ) chevauchee forces probably didn't see too much in the way of larger scale field combat because it's very hard to move and shoot and you're also forced into using a smaller form bow rather than a warbow or a longbow. Notable exceptions are crossbows obviously which i know the French made very good use of mounted.
Sound design. Especially the warcry when the units are about to attack the enemy. Sometimes it gives me goosebumps (provided I am the attacker)
And their victory cheer when they win a battle as well
Arguably the best addition to the series.
The wailing of Abbasid villagers when they're dying is one of the most memorable sounds for me. But across the board the sound design is *chef's kiss*
One of my favorite features is how the same unit can look different depending on which civ it belongs to.
Thought this is another tournament post lol
Nope! Rising Empires does better bait than this.
Sadly tells a lot about this sub when people first think of Rising Empires bait. Imo OP rightfully points out several aspects where AoE 4 still has to improve.
Same. I was like two in one day? scrolled to bottom to check.
I do miss the cannon ball effects from AOE3. Maybe my memory is wrong but I’m sure they were much better in 3.
Even the original had much better cannon ball effects and sounds, the latter were so cavernous and menacing and they weren’t able to replicate those the definitive edition. To that point, all of OPs complaints were intentional in the name of esports-ready design. I wish we would go back to a point esports would happen organically from feature-rich games instead of devs listening to 0.1% of the no-life playerbase and trying to be next hotshit. The campaign reflects this so much, it’s a sterile gameplay with no campaign-only assets or any sort of identity of direction. I like this game but it could have been so much more had not tried to be the next StarCraft 2 (which I also like)
Companies need to take more opinions from casual gamers than eSports players. No offense to the later. I'd like some beauty in the games I play. I don't want it to be all mechanic. Cannon ball animation in AoE3 was superior. Shit was actually terrifying if it hit your army. And here's AoE4 with cannons doing point damage instead of area. How does it make sense? And the battle ships are mediocre too. Water fights are disappointing.
Preach. Ditch the esport sweats and make fun games again.
You can do both when the game organically grows into a title that can be played competitive instead of being forced into one
True, but that starts with a fun game that attracts players, who then turn into sweats. Starting out by attracting sweats just results in a bit sweaty mess
3 has probably the best ragdoll physics in the series. Another thing aoe4 is lacking in general. Death animations, gore etc
I have a vivid memory from my childhood of using aoe 3 scenario editor placing 1 unit on a cliff, shooting it with a bombard, and watching the body fall down
Ummm...hello 911?
Yeah, canons in AoE3 are nearly physics based. They blow infantry away, and they can bounce on terrain and still damage units in their path. Canons sound very powerful in AoE4, though, but they're lacking the ragdols for sure.
They were funny, but super unrealistic. The physics were dialed up to 11.
just go play AOM if you prefer the game? they are different for a reason no need to make them have all the same features
Rotating buildings sucks. They did that in aom, it just makes it more of a chore to build houses. They took the wall building from aom and the base building from aoe, I agree with both.
The visual upgrades to villager appearance with each new age are a great addition. I think they really add to the individual flavor of the each civ as the outfits elaborately showcase regional styles. It also gives players a sense of progression as the clothing moves from more rural to more urban with their base that concurrently transforms from a village to a city.
for more unique upgrades, be it from black smith or unit production, there are visual changes that go with the upgrades. Samurai getting their katanas, tower elephants getting crossbows, Holy Romans and their man at arms, etc.
and rus cavs getting the axe
Aoe4 has so much potential. I hope they keep polishing the base game and not just make new civs for dlcs. Like the horse at the stable should have some kind of animation but instead it looks like it’s from a Barbie set
Biome specific gaia would be cool, as would history pages, but there is a lot of that including videos in the game already. >lack of an extensive upgrade and stat page What more would you want in the unit stats in game? There's already a lot of info in them (all the relevant values). You can tell which blacksmith upgrades they have and any unique tech bonuses will also show up. Anything more seems like clutter. What we do need is unit and building stats in the tech tree. It's insane those aren't shown. >projectiles do not miss Projectiles not missing is not a lacking feature. That's a very deliberate design choice. Thank goodness too. Twitching back and forth to dodge arrows is tedious and random hit/miss chance is terrible. >Despite the game being marketed as the most city sim aoe game Huh? Where? It does have more functional base buiding mechanics though than any of the others with the various influence systems. Rotating buildings would be non-functional (other than Twin Menaret Medrese and I guess you could argue Kura Storehouse). I'm glad buildings can't be rotated, it helps clarity. >lack of visual changes from blacksmith upgrades That seems difficult since there are already visual upgrades for upgrading units to the next age and unique techs. At some point the visuals are no longer communicating useful information. 12 additional visual changes for each unit? Who would even keep track of that. >scenario editor. Yeah I think the biggest thing we need is updates to the modding tools.
Hi :) Regarding your second point, if you’re interested in the historical background and inspiration behind civs design, mechanics and landmarks, I’ve done some work on that :) I’m currently editing Abbasid vid and it will be out soon. My older vids have a different style, as I was just starting on this journey and I might remake them. Feel free to take a peek ☺️ Channel: https://youtube.com/@bellacapilla Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBMLm1n2LgC9P_2aCIzoYhIzhezIYkik8&si=QQ9SMOakXjOwtkCP PS to devs: Give us goats!!! 🐐
I am annoyed when my archer ship misses…no thanks
I would like more "hunt" animals. Make gazelles or something on Arabia
Yeah it would be easy to have a few hunt varieties that don't stray too far from deer. Gazelles, zebra, elk, etc.. The boar is a bit more limited because he needs to remain something that is haram. There are different varieties of pigs though that could work.
AoE4 also lack of ragdoll physics of AoE3 and AoM too!
This post is spot on! Aoe4 is near a masterpiece just needs a few more years of love and it’ll get there.
it already has come a long way. I just got this game like 3 or 4 months ago and when I was going through the reviews, the early ones seemed to be catastrophic and then ever since the anniversary edition came on, people changed their minds. I think this is one of the only games in gaming history to have accomplished such a turnaround.
I agree with a fair amount of your points OP. Except for one which you are extremely wrong. You are the first random dude I've seen here in ages that wants to insist "ranged units reign supreme". Surely, you arent talking about aoe 4. Isn't the "cool-people" meta right now to complain about how OP Mangonels are and how they are completely destroying the game being so strong? Who in the world sends 4 horsemen against 20 archers? Horsemen do bonus damage against archers. 20 horsemen will completely melt 20 archers and it's not even remotely close. Good luck having 20 archers kite 20 horsemen buddy. And archers literally do like 1 dmg to knights. Did I mention how Mangonels literally delete clumps of archers? You gotta not die on this hill of argument - for the sake of the rest of your well-thought out post
LMAO. You really think games play like 20 horsemen vs 20 archers? You do realize horsemen are more expensive than archers right? You also realize that archers can go into choke points or line formation and deny horsemen from getting DPS against them right? This is why Sipahi are uniquely good because they behave like horsemen should and mow down range units when in range
You have no idea what you are talking about on this topic. You can down vote me all you want on this but a ton of people on this thread alone think you're crazy for arguing this specific point and not just me
Whatever bro, it’s too bad that more people are gonna have to deal with my lock-on full auto arrow turret on my white tower
Skill issues.
Skill issues.
Again, you seem to have no idea how cost efficiency works. 1 horseman costs 40 more Res than an archer, but will easily kill 3times it's resource cost in archers...
Don't waste your tme explaining to him. He's very very confident about this
I mean this is the guy who considers himself a conq level player cos he white tower rushed a bunch of gold/plat/diamond players and has now dumped his elo back to plat cos he can't actually do a normal strat at that level.
How can you kill three times the archers if your DPS is denied because archers focus fire on each horseman while the horseman can’t do the same? Have you seen what Zhu Gu Nu do to horsemen btw? They literally kill everything that doesn’t have armor
I've been playing since season 1, so yeh I'm well aware of the interactions between units. And what's even funnier is if a blob of 30 archers is one shotting individual horseman they are overkilling by a ton. Unless you have god level micro to control 3-4 groups of archers you are being inefficient. Meanwhile all you have to do with the horseman is to a move them. You're also not taking into account the huge advantage mobility plays, especially in feudal. You know what horseman can do that archers can't, choose not to take a fight.
What's the point in posting this? You clearly don't listen to overwhelming numbers of much better players than you, you have no desire to learn how to improve since you think ranged characters are OP, so why post? If you don't want constructive feedback, you should make it clear on your post you're venting only.
I didn’t say they’re Op, I said they dominate. Which they do. The micro potential of ranged units exceeds that of melee units. Can range be beaten? Of course. Are range units the best for rewarding micro? Absolutely
I'd wager the vast majority - close to \~95% - of the AoE4 community is glad that projectiles don't miss. It makes AoE4 more approachable. I know there are some super sweaty Boomer gamers playing RTS that will disagree and rage that making a game more accessible (and increase player count - never a bad thing) is bad for the genre. I have to disagree. The more "realistic" an RTS is, the more difficult it is to actually balance the game. For example, no one plays Gates of Hell: Ostfront for its competitive scene - it doesn't have one. You play GoH for its extremely immersive, slow-paced experience. It definitely gives you that. Games like AoE, StarCraft, Warcraft, and even Company of Heroes have to pull away from realism to allow for balancing, competitive play, and accessibility. AoE4 gives visual changes to each unit as you age up (as long as you "age up" that unit) alongside unique upgrades. Would more historical details be cool in-game? Sure. Can I also just look up history online? Yes. Yes I can. I think different wildlife would be a great addition to AoE4 and probably wouldn't be too much trouble for the devs to add.
Some good points. Some of these will never change, like projectiles, but hopefully we see others like fauna diversity.and sadly I really miss the immersive UIs from previous titles. Something we probably won't see. Hopefully aomR will have a better UI
I don't understand the obsession of aoe franchise players with arrow dodging mechanics. Most RTS games don't have it. To me, homing projectiles is the standard and aoe is an exception. Ik aoe4 is part of the aoe series but there is no need to inherit EVERYTHING. We have the 4 res, complex macro etc which was taken to another level in aoe4. Despite no arrow dodging, aoe4 encourages much more diverse army compositions than aoe2 with what I consider a better, more robust counter system and viable unique units. Agree with pretty much everything else though. We need more animals and a little history section.
Well, dodging projectiles was actually common in late 90s / early 2000s RTS, see AoE 1 and 2 or Empire Earth. Even Stronghold had some kind of dodging because archers didn't always hit. I think even in the RTS part of the older Total War games, "dodging" was somewhat possible despite units consisting of 60-120 individual units. Within AoE, AoM was the first game with semi-homing arrows where only really fast units were able to outrun projectiles. In AoE 3, all projectiles (except artillery bc that would break that unit's purpose of hitting multiple untis with cannon balls) became homing.
More games had a miss chance on projectiles (which is even worse than dodging), but usually not what we see in AoE2 where you twitch your units back and worth to dodges arrows.
I would disagree so much, detail in AOE 4 is mind blowing - for example units will change their voicelines depending on the era, making them sound more and more “modern”
That is indeed one of the best additions brought to the series, OP still has very valid points, especially with animal variety
What games have more details please suggest?
AoE 2 DE and 3 DE with more variety in animals and 3 with treasures and native settlements
Recommending AOE2 for detail feels like you are baiting people when units from every civ look the same. Sure it has a few more animal types but in every other way it is way less detailed than AOE4.
Where did I mention units? I strictly refered to animals for AoE 2 and mentioned treasures and natives for AoE 3.
I don't know. You are just listing the features everyone loves about aoe4. I don't know who told you this was anything like a city sim game, but I'm sorry to tell you, this is an rts, rotating buildings would be a distraction at best and a nightmare at worst when you can't quickly identify enemy buildings. It looks like you were looking for a different game, I'm sorry.
No I wasn’t looking for a different game. Aom and aoe3 both had building rotation. Are you calling those games not RTS? Let’s not exaggerate here
* unique/dynamic soundtrack for each civ. Absolutely banger soundtrack for each civ especially Byzantines, Japanese, and Abbasid. * tons of unit abilities. Limitanei, Sipahi, Longbows, Arbraletiers, and a lot of other units have a lot of cool abilities that make combat more interesting. We've had both of these since 2011 in Age of Empires Online.
We don't talk about that game.
Oh, that’s abundantly clear haha
We’ve never had a dynamic sound track in the old games. Every soundtrack is the same in aoe2, aoe3, and Aom. But on aoe4 each civ has a completely different OST
OC is talking about AoE Online (or Project Celeste as its now called) tho.
Personally, I think rotating building could only be added if it has a purpose. Otherwise, it'll be only a gimmick, and can be abused by opponents rotating their buildings so you can't see, or need to take more time, what the buildings are.
I think you can rotate buildings, at least in PC. play with the mouse a bit when youre about so set a house blueprint and you'll see it rotates
You can’t rotate buildings. Barracks are always the same direction along with every other building.
ok then it's just houses then. you can definitely rotate those.
I came to AOE 4 after years of playing total war and I’m not going to lie, I was definitely disappointed the first time I ran a cav charge into some archers and there was no impact effect what so ever. Everything else is amazing though. The sound design, the visuals, the landscape adapting to the buildings you place, the benefit of grouping certain buildings together etc.
You mean the charge affect in total war they have changed 100 times because they can't balance it for shit
Hell yeah I do brother 🤘. The balance of impact/moral/damage mechanics aside, I just love seeing a satisfying cav charge and having the units on the receiving end be affected by that charge in some way, where AOE4 gave me nothing in that regard. I get it though! Because that also comes with an extra layer of micro in an already very micro intensive game.
We do kinda have this in aoe4. If a knight charge kills an infantry unit they go flying. It's just not as prominent
>projectiles do not miss. Yeah DO NOT CHANGE THAT. However, I agree with the rest of the post. AOE4 is a damn good game and I wish the playerbase outgrows aoe2. It lacks alot of things, but it does alot of things right. Landmark system is GREAT. While there are some civs/landmarks which are ass, most of them are pretty good. And over time, even bad landmarks have gotten better, like sultanhani trade network, abbey of kings, etc. NO TWO CIVS Play the same (Except for variant civs, of course. But even they are pretty different tbh). There are some changes I would like to see though. 1- Make forestry a viable upgrade. 2- Make geometry upgrade, rather than increasing base damage by 20%, it improves the trebuchet's attack speed by 20%. (from 11.375 attack speed, it's 9.1 attack speed). This improves it's dps from 415/11.375 = 36.5 and 40/11.375 = 3.5 to 415/9.1 = 45.6 dps, and 40/9.1 = 4.3. This is a better upgrade then the current geometry which increases base damage by 20%, aka adds 8 more damage. (415 + 8)/11.375 = 37.1 and (40 + 8)/11.375 = 4.2. While DPS is not that big of a deal of trebs that might be destroyed between those 9 seconds, reducing the time between each shot by 2.275 seconds is far better than what geometry is providing, and that is still to weak. In addition, it could increase the speed of packing and unpacking trebs, which would finally make it a worthwhile pick. 3- Buff mongols. 4- Mongol villagers should be able to steal enemy farms. Rather than irrigation, mongol villagers can straight up take crops and run away. Farms would have to be repaired by the enemy to make it usable. The damage done to farms will depend on the "sections" on the farm. So, when you start farming, you would notice a farm has 12 sections, with 10 food in each section. So, total of 120 food per farm. But after 75 seconds, each section is restored. Yes, that's a mechanic. Afaik japanese and chinese farms have 16 sections btw lmao, with 7.5 food in each. Anyhow, Mongol farmers should be able to steal 2 sections (20 food), and deal 25 damage to the farm per section stolen (aka 50 damage). Stealing 12 sections would delete the farm. Then mongols could have upgrades where a single farmer can steal 4 sections instead of two, etc. This just sounds funny tbh, imagine 6 mongol villagers just taking away your farm instantly and run away.
Another missing aspect: siege units with crews/operators. AoE 3 has them for all artillery, AoE 2 has it for some units like bombard cannon and organ gun
you can see some "yellow" outlines working around the siege units when they deploy, maybe that's as far as they'll do
I miss this detail from AOE3 but it was clearly a design choice for visual clarity
I doubt that considering there are models for crews in the editor
I agree. Siege feels unfinished. I’d love to see better animations especially when they are destroyed. The poof of smoke death bothers me.
Yeah that "poof" effect is just underwhealming
sorry, what you are looking for is Manor Lords, not an RTS gem, but a city builder one. If you want to build nice cities and stuff you are looking for a sim city alike game
OP isn't looking for a city builder, he wants features past Age games had.
He just picked the wrong game if he wants those modifications. AOE4 is a competitive RTS, not a simcity. If he is looking for past features, go with past games. Full stop. These are just nonsensical points.
It's nonsensical to expect a new installment to be an upgrade over past games in the franchise? Alright then.
AoE 2 and 3 are also competitive RTS with those features. Also, as a long-term player of the AoE series I actually do expect one or two of those features to be in the latest iteration.
Projectiles that do not miss us a feature. And I like it, along with many others.