AoE2 HD: The African Kingdoms

[dibens]

Prepare for the machete squads:

The new expansion for AoE2 HD is coming out on 5th of November, featuring at least two new civs- Berbers and Malians, both with new unique architecture and fully voice acted campaigns.

Berber unique unit is a camel archer, while Malians proudly present female only ranged melee Gabato warriors- thus earning the title as the most incloosive civ in the game.

Bunch of african flora and fauna added as well.

Follow all the updates on their facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forgotten.empires.games

Same thing I wrote, but in video format:

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Why are the villagers white? #triggered

 

[WhiteGuts]

African people working ? This is already some fantasy shit

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

DO NOT BUY THIS

THEY HAVE SOME NERVE THINKING THEY CAN SELL THAT AFTER THE FORGOTTEN TRAINWRECK

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Ever wanted to be part of an actual Age of Empires game? Now is your chance! For the African Kingdoms expansion, we're doing a small voice acting competition. Everyone can submit their line and the best one will be put in the final game!

hahaha TERRIFIC

 

[thesheeep]

If constantly re-planting farms just wasn't such an incredible chore...
They should rather release new stuff for AoE 3.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Bad engine, shit graphics, bad animations, over complicated unit stats, overpowered boats, overpowered artillery that made defenses utterly useless and straight charge suicide, idiotic MMO city grind, boring campaign with absurd story, and a focus on ranged combat that did not really fit the game style. AoE 3.

 

[thesheeep]

That sounds useful. Hmmm.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

How could you miss this?

 

[dibens]

Because he's a sheep.

 

[thesheeep]

How could you miss this?

Uhm...

Because he's a sheep.

As good an explanation as any, to be honest.

Seriously, after it came out, I barely invested time into the game. And from what I remembered, that farming business was very annoying.
Never really got into any expansions and back then, it was kinda unusual that expansions or patches would change a mechanic like that.
Anyway, quite a few things about AoE2 just rub me the wrong way (like priests... whose idea was that, really?).

You are right about the defensive structures and the ridiculous campaigns in AoE3.
But besides that, I find it far more enjoyable and cannot agree with any other of your statements about it.

 

[Delterius]

Bad engine, shit graphics, bad animations, over complicated unit stats, overpowered boats, overpowered artillery that made defenses utterly useless and straight charge suicide, idiotic MMO city grind, boring campaign with absurd story, and a focus on ranged combat that did not really fit the game style. AoE 3.

AoE3 was quite beautiful in its time, the unit counter system is easy, case in point: the boats are easily taken out with artillery and the artillery is easily taken out with cavalry. Defenses are crucial in the early match and of course a straight charge is suicidal if you don't set it up. This is a skirmish level game.

On the other hand, the climax of the AoE3 campaigns entailed an american cowboy railroad builder who fought alongside Simon Bolívar after the Mexican American War, helping the cubans evict an Illuminati fortress right outside Havana. Reason for this conflict? The Illuminati stole Aztec Magic Water from a hidden Inca city, centuries after a bunch of knights from Malta followed the Ottoman Turks' well known expedition to Florida, where apparently the mesoamerican civilization thrived. Bonus points for being Assassins' Creed before its time. Further bonus points for expansion that ties it all to the american revolution because why not.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

the unit counter system is easy, case in point: the boats are easily taken out with artillery

and the artillery is easily taken out with cavalry

On the other hand, the climax of the AoE3 campaigns entailed an american cowboy railroad builder who fought alongside Simon Bolívar after the Mexican American War, helping the cubans evict an Illuminati fortress right outside Havana. Reason for this conflict? The Illuminati stole Aztec Magic Water from a hidden Inca city, centuries after a bunch of knights from Malta followed the Ottoman Turks' well known expedition to Florida, where apparently the mesoamerican civilization thrived. Bonus points for being Assassins' Creed before its time. Further bonus points for expansion that ties it all to the american revolution because why not.

Not if you snipe them

Not as they should

I can't tell if you're trying to defend this shit.

 

[Delterius]

Snipe them? Both artillery and cavalry is resistant to most ranged damage, you need to massively outnumber cannons for this to be cost effective or use light cavalry to counter heavy cavalry. As for the campaign, take a wild guess.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Snipe the buildings producing artillery, wear the artillery down. If you control the waters you already win this game. If you try and bring too much artillery on the shore he can make his own army lands easily.

 

[Delterius]

You are talking about an expensive late game ability of a unit that can not be mass produced as well as a tactic that hangs on controlling the seas
seas. Considering how cheap it is to maintain your part of the coast even in face of a superior naval force for the majority of the game, it is unlikely that things are resolved the way you describe.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Happened to me all the time when I was playing with friends. They rushed the ability. The problem is that maintaining your part of the coast is in fact impossible as soon as he has this ability, and most Age of Empires 3 map have water. There's even a dirty trick you can use on some maps to get the cheapest raiding capability in the game.

They must have fucked up somehow because, in the end AoE2 is still the one with an active competitive community. AoE3 is pretty much dead and never got anything serious going on for them. Yet it still tries very hard to be an AAA rts, not a fun rts like stronghold or Empire Earth.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If you're talking about the Explorer's Snipe ability, that's something ONLY the Explorer has, cannot be used against all units, and comes with a 30 second (IIRC) cooldown between uses.

If you're talking about the Mortar/Monitor long range shell, that's VERY late game and also has a cooldown.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Monitor. Cooldown is irrelevant when you're fielding a whole bunch of them.

 

[Reject_666_6]

THEY HAVE SOME NERVE THINKING THEY CAN SELL THAT AFTER THE FORGOTTEN TRAINWRECK

How did they screw that one up? I haven't followed the release.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

AoE3 was quite beautiful in its time, the unit counter system is easy, case in point: the boats are easily taken out with artillery and the artillery is easily taken out with cavalry. Defenses are crucial in the early match and of course a straight charge is suicidal if you don't set it up. This is a skirmish level game.

1. Age Of Empire 2 was a breakthrough for it's time and the height of 2D graphics in RTS. No matter what screenshot you take, it will look pretty. It will never look aged.

2. AoE 3 was made on a 3D engine for the WoW factor, and played it to it's fullest extant by featuring apex graphical quality, for 2005. It aged like milk. On most angles it will look plain. It's bloomy, blurry, to the point where it hurt my eyes the first times as I was not used to modern idiotism.

This is what the game looks like, on an average screen.

This is Age of Empire 2

I'm trying to give you average screens here.

That's purely on the graphical side. Nothing really catches the eye. I can remember, and I will remember the appearance of every units in AoE2, especially the memorable ones like Teutonic Knight, the Paladin, the Mameluke... The way the game presents it's assets makes them both unique, like playing with symbols. AoE 3 fails utterly at that.
The music, I can't remember a single tune from it, I don't think anyone really can.

The aberration that was the home city, which I believe they almost exclusively designed for promotional uses : make pretty screenshot, give the customer the image of bustling metropolis they'll manage in the game. But instead they're glorified screensavers that ruin the balance completely and turns an rts into an MMO. This is absurd.

The counter system, could get bloated for some units, with nonsensical distinctions. But I'm not speaking about that. The entire unit stat system, complemented by the UI, is clumsy. Just look at that

This is a bloat. You have to switch between screens just to see the unit stats. How could they think this was a smart rts UI.

Compare with AoE2 again.

Artillery in AoE2 was something you had to look for, depending on how you controlled it it could achieve completely different goals. You could also counter it in a multitude of ways, even with archers, and dodge it. The entire game, thanks to it's engine, encouraged thinking outside of the box and geometrical tricks. It's coherent square grid and fixed angle are to credit. AoE3 threw all that into the garbage with a generic 3D engine and twisted geometry, just look at the mini map, can't even display a normal square anymore. Resource management was simplified, forests lost their impact.
I have a whole lot of gifs somewhere, featuring a lot of pretty smart feats by players. I remember Cysion used to list some of the more weird stuff before he sold himself to microsoft.

The campaigns. . Designed with the dudebros in mind.



vs AoE 2



Understand these two games were meant for different crowd.


Age of Empire 2 was released 1 year after Starcraft. And it is still wildly remembered, played, and loved. It's got the biggest cult following out of all 3. Considered a classic rts and so on. AoE3 was released in a void of RTS, and didn't even catch on competitively. It's dead today. Why is it?

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

How did they screw that one up? I haven't followed the release.

It's a mod. They made you pay for a mod. I'm not making this shit up.

The Slav set stands out among the game like a piece of shit. I remember an old designer saying that they would design and redesign the building sets until it looked perfectly harmonious with the other assets. The Slav set was made by two modders.

The new campaigns were designed by another modder. If you like narrow corridors killing pathfinding, walls of text being thrown on the screen with 21th century forum style writing, immense bloated maps, tons of bugged triggers leading you through a linear walk by the hand, and almost no base building, resource managing, then you'll like them.

The inca unique unit is broken by the terrible pathfinding.

Some good changes, geared at making competition interesting, but again that was all in the Forgotten mod. And unfortunately it has not been adopted seriously by anyone. The multiplayer is still going on Voobly and Gameranger.

Age of Empire 2 HD in itself is an horrible failure. The performance makes the game simply unplayable. The pathfinding is more broken than ever. The framerate is dropping. On modern systems. For a 2000 game. As soon as too many assets are on the screen it's killed. The multiplayer performance was not fixed.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

AoE3 is p cool. The interface improvements are among the best in any RTS, it looks very good even today, has fairly different civs, much more so than aoe2, decent online capability (and it's still very possible to play it online...), runs at great pace compared the stuttering FPS of AOE2... The games are also considerably faster.

The campaign is pretty silly, but then it's not like the campaign of AOE2 was good.


It's OK to say AOE2 is better but to pretend AOE3 was all bad is just full retard, sorry to say.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

You cannot balance 15 different civs with competitive multiplayer in mind. Either it's more of the same thing like AoE2 or it's 3 radically different civs like Starcraft. AoE3 failed at being a fast paced competitive RTS, it did not even manage to replace warcraft 3 (which is what it was trying to achieve). Too bad they didn't free themselves from these design shackles knowing it wouldn't succeed in this direction . As far as the development team goes it's unsurprising to learn that none of the devs of AoE2 were in AoE3. Explains the sudden incompetence.

For the rest, I don't even know why I even bother to elaborate.

 

[wwsd]

The campaigns. . Designed with the dudebros in mind.

vs AoE 2

Understand these two games were meant for different crowd.


Age of Empire 2 was released 1 year after Starcraft. And it is still wildly remembered, played, and loved. It's got the biggest cult following out of all 3. Considered a classic rts and so on. AoE3 was released in a void of RTS, and didn't even catch on competitively. It's dead today. Why is it?

So I've never had the opportunity to play AoE3 and compare it to 2, but reading the story of the campaign on Wikipedia makes it sound pretty . I'm not entirely sure how they could have possibly thought that was a good idea. I mean, most singleplayer campaigns in these games have some derp moments, but they basically do the job. Surely anyone playing single-player in these games would want to play as Joan of Arc or Henry V or whatever, and not some made-up character with some stupid backstory that will never be as interesting as the existing historical or legendary characters.