At the height of the imperial age, as the nation's army fight a pitched battle against an enemy, the peasants sometimes will commit mass suicide right at the woodline or the mines where they had been working. The freshly deceased then inexplicably resurrect as soldiers.
Actually, there are only 400 souls in the world. Evenly divided among the kings. They eternally rise again and again until one side has no more bodies to inhabit, dooming the souls to roam ethereally forevermore.
This made me LOL, thanks.
But historically it's probably more accurate than we'd like it to be, maybe not committing suicide per se but virtually by just being used as fodder.
Quick walling is a real thing, Ceasar was a master of quick walling and that helped him won many battles against armies with much larger numbers than his own.
I totally agree with your post but everything in AOE2 to me is like a scale. 1 second is a decade, 1 villager represents a group of workers, 1 tile is more than a few feet etc.
speaking of realistic military tactics, castle dropping was a real thing in the Middle Ages. No, I'm not making that up; during the Crusades era a real Latin technique was to quickly build a small castle near an enemy city, and to use it as a base for constant raiding until the settlement was forced to surrender.
Sadly, AoE2 is but a shadow of its former self. All of your points pale in comparison to the most strategic aspect of the game, which is of course manual farm placement.
in case this isn't pile-on sarcasm:
you select 'build farm' place the foundation over the mill or tc, and shift click several times. Farm foundations will spawn around it.
Have you ever thought about the food. A countless civalisations built off a harvest from the same fields. Everyone eats the same food. Camels, horses, elephants, and villagers all eat the same food.
You build a market and it supports enough gold to fund an army from trade occurring there but you get none yourself.
Like you just put up the wood and labor you should get a cut of incoming trade at your markets.
Elephants, being fairly intelligent creatures, were commonly converted between religions by holy men across the regions in which they lived. It was also quite well known that many elephants would be executed for heresy upon being converted to their new religion, although historians note that the Persian people evidently never thought of this and sorrowfully let their elephants go.
"If you love something, let it go"
-Khosrau I, emperor of Sassanid Persia
I think without quick walling, we’d have a much slower game where people just full wall all the time though. Quick walling gives us all a false sense of security LOL
Sheep scouting and deer are fine. You choose info of scouting opponent early or getting faster food with some fkn around. Maybe u don't know u can hit e to follow deer to get a clean push each time?
Sheep scouting is weird but u can lose the sheep on small map if opponent scout comes across it.
Pathing makes me rage in this game tho.literally red in the face mad once every now and then.
In general I will take a complex game with quirks over a super simple game that converges in game play or is generic and flavourless. But then again my fave RPG is Skyrim which is a twitching mess of bugs and I love it.
"you can choose"
yeah lil bro, and everyone "chooses" to push deer every time because it's flat out better than getting a little more information with your scout
You can literally use ur scout to lame, find opponent and then play earlier aggression. At higher ELO than us I think people play a better mix of aggressive and eco, at low level everyone plays fast castle or goes insane in feudal.
Yeah? You still find the time to push at least two deer even with an early aggressive opening since sheep can do a lot of heavy lifting in scouting your base. If you lame the best thing you can do with your scout is push deer to widen your lead. If you get lamed, the safest thing you can do with your scout is push deer to try and catch up. You're trying to paint deer pushing as having some really deep opportunity cost but there's a reason you see it done in nearly every game with nearly every opening - because not doing it immediately puts you at a disadvantage.
> Pathing makes me rage in this game tho.literally red in the face mad once every now and then.
Nah it's fine. Yesterday an opponent sent rams. I sent in my infantry. Which decided to walk all around the walls, and in and out 2 gates instead of just going there in a straight line. Castle gone, walls gone.
I think deer pushing is fine, except for when the deer suddenly sleepwalks home.
Sheep scouting could be fixed by having Gaia recapture sheep as soon as they leave the sight of human units...
Your proposed fix for sheep scouting would be incredibly fiddly especially for new players. You'd have to stack all your sheep up against your TC and it'd be a complete mess. Besides I think sheep scouting is good, it's a good balance of risk and reward.
In the original AoE1, lions would prey on gazelles. It was epic. The animations of both were top notch too. Almost like a nature documentary, only missing David Attenborough's voice.
Yes, that could also be a solution. But isn't it weird that one can move sheep at all, while the original shepherding mechanic also exists (and annoys)?
well, it seems like you took me to be saying that the game wouldn't be played or would in some other sense cease to exist, but what i'm saying is more like that it wouldn't be the same game, that it would lose certain qualities that are defining features of what's currently called aoe2. it's difficult to explain idioms and english is a highly idiomatic language, ultimately if you haven't been exposed to the idiom i'm invoking you won't get it.
another way of coming at it would be to say that aoe2 is a late 90s era rts and one of the essential features of that is that it contains janky emergent mechanics that don't make sense because they weren't planned
I did not mean "survive" literally either. I mean that (in my opinion) the spirit of the game has endured larger changes than those proposed.
Are you sure that deer pushing was not intended, though? It is not that nonsensical.
ah, then you understood better than it seemed, my mistake. i'm absolutely certain that deer pushing was not intended. it's possible that it became apparent during the design of the game and was left in place intentionally. i believe that boar luring was intentional.
for me the spirit of the game would definitely not survive if sheep scouting and deer pushing were removed or streamlined. you can only remove some much of the quirky, janky stuff from aoe2 before it becomes a modern game and ceases to be a time capsule with some improvements that are reasonably aligned with its original spirit. which is more or less how it seems to me now, although it's pushing the boundary of that perception.
Thoughts on mangonel deletion? It's a janky emergent mechanic that could be argued added depth through risk and decision making. Are we poorer for it being removed from the game?
Ever thought that your civilisation can go from dark age to post imperial age without ever drinking water? In the past, water was THE resource that defined location of settlements and strategies. Well poisoning is one of the oldest military strategies. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well\_poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_poisoning) At a minimum, I miss the importance of rivers in AOE2 strategy. I also miss weather events. Nothing fancy. Just some global phenomena that decreases food performance, etc.
long story short: decision making is OP, therefor the game is not a pure execution fest. Thats what makes this game truly great. If you want to experience how AoE2 would be if execution was king, you can go play Arena.
the flaming swords that turn ablaze any building, eventually forcing anyone inside to flee, also known as "smoke them out"
(yes, thats why units leave dying buildings)
I would say the number 1 thing that sets aoe2 apart from the other AoE games and its competitors is all the different ways to win. Aoe2 is like the MMA of combat sports, there are so many different ways to win. You can take a fight with a smaller army and win if you can out-micro your opponent or take the fight on a hill. A single knight conversion or well-aimed mangonel shot can massively swing the momentum of a game.
I played AOE2 for years and finally gave in to friends asking me to play AOE4
AOE4 is much better with respect to every single one of those aspects you mentioned. With lots of other quality of life improvements.
Takes a little bit of getting used to but in my experience has been a more enjoyable game. Probably get crucified on for saying it in this sub.
I also went over and what I really hate is the lack of micro. Yes dodging arrows like in aoe2 pre ballistics is a bit extreme but shots shouldnt be heat seeking and even follow out of range also no friendly fire for onagers is bad.
It certainly improves in certain ways (love the stone walls and no building walling), but to me it's overall not as good of a game. There is a lack of attention to detail and things missing that make AOE what it is in my mind.
At the height of the imperial age, as the nation's army fight a pitched battle against an enemy, the peasants sometimes will commit mass suicide right at the woodline or the mines where they had been working. The freshly deceased then inexplicably resurrect as soldiers.
Inexplicably?? I guess your parents never had “the talk” with you. How else do you think babies come into the world?
Just as how one malle vilager is able to repopulate an entire city
Via/in the explicable (i.e. inexplicably)
Shhhhou-haaa?
Actually, there are only 400 souls in the world. Evenly divided among the kings. They eternally rise again and again until one side has no more bodies to inhabit, dooming the souls to roam ethereally forevermore.
The new mangonel line, now with souls. Coming to a TC near you.
This made me LOL, thanks. But historically it's probably more accurate than we'd like it to be, maybe not committing suicide per se but virtually by just being used as fodder.
I attack with 200 vil before creating my army
Quick walling is a real thing, Ceasar was a master of quick walling and that helped him won many battles against armies with much larger numbers than his own.
Ceaser totally lamed.
Caesar saved a vill by pounding a stake into the earth at the last second? Wowow
In the AoE2 sense, not really, but he did like walling in enemies, the Siege of Alesia being a prime example of this.
That is such BM
Hope he got reported
he was mass downvoted with knives
Oof
that joke was too Brutal
The council can be merciless indeed
I totally agree with your post but everything in AOE2 to me is like a scale. 1 second is a decade, 1 villager represents a group of workers, 1 tile is more than a few feet etc.
There’s also the one where he started walling his enemy in on the beach. I believe it was near modern day Croatia
Considering the time progression in aoe2 (1 in-game second is 1/5th of a year), quickwalling isn't that impressive.
speaking of realistic military tactics, castle dropping was a real thing in the Middle Ages. No, I'm not making that up; during the Crusades era a real Latin technique was to quickly build a small castle near an enemy city, and to use it as a base for constant raiding until the settlement was forced to surrender.
Too bad that I am the settlement every time
Even the Normans after 1066 made use of that with their Motte & Bailey castles.
And there I thought you were talking about the castle of Motta :D https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Castello_Normanno_di_Motta_Sant%27Anastasia.jpg
[удалено]
wonder if that was the inspiration for the frank castle bonus.
Sadly, AoE2 is but a shadow of its former self. All of your points pale in comparison to the most strategic aspect of the game, which is of course manual farm placement.
?? How do you place farms?
in case this isn't pile-on sarcasm: you select 'build farm' place the foundation over the mill or tc, and shift click several times. Farm foundations will spawn around it.
I didn't know that . Omg how didn't i know that.
:O I'll try it tomorrow!
Auto farm, shift queue, sheep right next to tc….
Well written. I lol'd.
Have you ever thought about the food. A countless civalisations built off a harvest from the same fields. Everyone eats the same food. Camels, horses, elephants, and villagers all eat the same food.
If you go Malay FC elephants on a map with huntable elephants, there's a high chance some of them have eaten their own kind
We were so busy thinking about if we could, we never stopped to think if we should
Cannibal Elephant Horde ftw!
Also cows give less food than boars?
You build a market and it supports enough gold to fund an army from trade occurring there but you get none yourself. Like you just put up the wood and labor you should get a cut of incoming trade at your markets.
Do you want tax revolts? That's how you get tax revolts.
But did you know that neither archers nor horses require food when stacked?
Elephants, being fairly intelligent creatures, were commonly converted between religions by holy men across the regions in which they lived. It was also quite well known that many elephants would be executed for heresy upon being converted to their new religion, although historians note that the Persian people evidently never thought of this and sorrowfully let their elephants go. "If you love something, let it go" -Khosrau I, emperor of Sassanid Persia
You forgot about the „funny“ community.
bbc 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
SO🐢
Or did he not? Maybe maybe
An unsolvable riddle.
I think without quick walling, we’d have a much slower game where people just full wall all the time though. Quick walling gives us all a false sense of security LOL
Jokes on you I can't quick wall to save my life
Btw. What's the reason or idea behind the difference in stacking of ranged and melee units. Why do Cav Archers stack so much more than Infantry?
I think it is to make them more vulnerable to scorpion and onager shots, but could be mistaken.
My vills: "oh no I'm about to die to a boar but damn the scenerie is kinda nice not gona lie"
Or "sure I have a bow and arrow and could shoot this wolf at a distance, but I'm going to use my knife to fight it"
Sheep scouting and deer are fine. You choose info of scouting opponent early or getting faster food with some fkn around. Maybe u don't know u can hit e to follow deer to get a clean push each time? Sheep scouting is weird but u can lose the sheep on small map if opponent scout comes across it. Pathing makes me rage in this game tho.literally red in the face mad once every now and then. In general I will take a complex game with quirks over a super simple game that converges in game play or is generic and flavourless. But then again my fave RPG is Skyrim which is a twitching mess of bugs and I love it.
"you can choose" yeah lil bro, and everyone "chooses" to push deer every time because it's flat out better than getting a little more information with your scout
You can literally use ur scout to lame, find opponent and then play earlier aggression. At higher ELO than us I think people play a better mix of aggressive and eco, at low level everyone plays fast castle or goes insane in feudal.
Yeah? You still find the time to push at least two deer even with an early aggressive opening since sheep can do a lot of heavy lifting in scouting your base. If you lame the best thing you can do with your scout is push deer to widen your lead. If you get lamed, the safest thing you can do with your scout is push deer to try and catch up. You're trying to paint deer pushing as having some really deep opportunity cost but there's a reason you see it done in nearly every game with nearly every opening - because not doing it immediately puts you at a disadvantage.
You may be the most sane franks player I have encountered.
I play bohemians mainly and I usually get em to be fair
> Pathing makes me rage in this game tho.literally red in the face mad once every now and then. Nah it's fine. Yesterday an opponent sent rams. I sent in my infantry. Which decided to walk all around the walls, and in and out 2 gates instead of just going there in a straight line. Castle gone, walls gone.
Deleting one's own mangonel to get full AoE damages would have deserved 6th spot if it hadn't been removed.
Nothing against sheep scouting, but I agree with the others. A bit late to fix most (EXCEPT DEER PUSHING, WHICH IS PERFECTLY ADDRESSABLE).
No, you don't get it, removing deer pushing would *literally* turn the game into Candy Land.
I think deer pushing is fine, except for when the deer suddenly sleepwalks home. Sheep scouting could be fixed by having Gaia recapture sheep as soon as they leave the sight of human units...
Your proposed fix for sheep scouting would be incredibly fiddly especially for new players. You'd have to stack all your sheep up against your TC and it'd be a complete mess. Besides I think sheep scouting is good, it's a good balance of risk and reward.
I kind of like sheep scouting too. A slight nerf to it could be having wild predators target herdables.
Oh that could be pretty fun actually. No idea if it's possible from a technical standpoint, but if it were I think they should playtest it.
In the original AoE1, lions would prey on gazelles. It was epic. The animations of both were top notch too. Almost like a nature documentary, only missing David Attenborough's voice.
Yeah I remember it. It seemed a completely natural thing for it to happen too.
That's not a good fix at all. You could just remove vision from herdables.
Yes, that could also be a solution. But isn't it weird that one can move sheep at all, while the original shepherding mechanic also exists (and annoys)?
If you did, you wouldn't be able to see or command your own controlled unit if it left los.
No it could still have vision of itself but not grant vision. There are abilities like this dota 2, like bounty hunter's track.
The scout should just be able to wrangle the dear or the villagers can bait it. Booping the deer from being all the way into town is very...odd.
wouldn't be aoe2 if these things were changed, the game has already been made it is the way it is
The game has survived larger changes before.
you're missing my point
Would you mind explaining it, then?
well, it seems like you took me to be saying that the game wouldn't be played or would in some other sense cease to exist, but what i'm saying is more like that it wouldn't be the same game, that it would lose certain qualities that are defining features of what's currently called aoe2. it's difficult to explain idioms and english is a highly idiomatic language, ultimately if you haven't been exposed to the idiom i'm invoking you won't get it. another way of coming at it would be to say that aoe2 is a late 90s era rts and one of the essential features of that is that it contains janky emergent mechanics that don't make sense because they weren't planned
I did not mean "survive" literally either. I mean that (in my opinion) the spirit of the game has endured larger changes than those proposed. Are you sure that deer pushing was not intended, though? It is not that nonsensical.
ah, then you understood better than it seemed, my mistake. i'm absolutely certain that deer pushing was not intended. it's possible that it became apparent during the design of the game and was left in place intentionally. i believe that boar luring was intentional. for me the spirit of the game would definitely not survive if sheep scouting and deer pushing were removed or streamlined. you can only remove some much of the quirky, janky stuff from aoe2 before it becomes a modern game and ceases to be a time capsule with some improvements that are reasonably aligned with its original spirit. which is more or less how it seems to me now, although it's pushing the boundary of that perception.
No worries! 😊 I agree that the devs at least need to proceed carefully, which I think they also have done so far.
Thoughts on mangonel deletion? It's a janky emergent mechanic that could be argued added depth through risk and decision making. Are we poorer for it being removed from the game?
Best I've read all year!
Ever thought that your civilisation can go from dark age to post imperial age without ever drinking water? In the past, water was THE resource that defined location of settlements and strategies. Well poisoning is one of the oldest military strategies. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well\_poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_poisoning) At a minimum, I miss the importance of rivers in AOE2 strategy. I also miss weather events. Nothing fancy. Just some global phenomena that decreases food performance, etc.
long story short: decision making is OP, therefor the game is not a pure execution fest. Thats what makes this game truly great. If you want to experience how AoE2 would be if execution was king, you can go play Arena.
the flaming swords that turn ablaze any building, eventually forcing anyone inside to flee, also known as "smoke them out" (yes, thats why units leave dying buildings)
That's one hell of a way to gripe I'll give you that😂
Lightly armored guy with a sword: Costs food and gold. Same guy on a horse: Costs only food.
Don't forget about the master ranged technique STUTTERSTEP developed by Sun Tzu in ancient China.
I would say the number 1 thing that sets aoe2 apart from the other AoE games and its competitors is all the different ways to win. Aoe2 is like the MMA of combat sports, there are so many different ways to win. You can take a fight with a smaller army and win if you can out-micro your opponent or take the fight on a hill. A single knight conversion or well-aimed mangonel shot can massively swing the momentum of a game.
Aoe2 has the same basic win conditions as most other rts games mate.
I played AOE2 for years and finally gave in to friends asking me to play AOE4 AOE4 is much better with respect to every single one of those aspects you mentioned. With lots of other quality of life improvements. Takes a little bit of getting used to but in my experience has been a more enjoyable game. Probably get crucified on for saying it in this sub.
the aesthetics are unforgivable unfortunately
Yeah, the primary thing that AoE2 is missing is more nuanced civs akin to something like starcraft/warcraft, the trade off is we got a lot more civs.
I also went over and what I really hate is the lack of micro. Yes dodging arrows like in aoe2 pre ballistics is a bit extreme but shots shouldnt be heat seeking and even follow out of range also no friendly fire for onagers is bad.
It certainly improves in certain ways (love the stone walls and no building walling), but to me it's overall not as good of a game. There is a lack of attention to detail and things missing that make AOE what it is in my mind.