Downloaded the game and played for the first time in a decade. Destroyed the cpu on standard. I remember none of the hotkeys.
Wow yeah. Yo has been in the top 5 of DE since it came out. Haven’t watched the games. Any highlights?
I probably should have used spoiler tags I guess. It was really just a wall-to-wall asskicking. It was the Empire Wars game mode where you start in Feudal with like 27 villagers. Yo was just really aggressive and never let up.
Is there any way to get villagers to automatically assume a task when they're created or jump into the closest resource? I suck at the game from start to finish but my biggest hangup is when I hit Castle age, build extra TCs to try to keep up and then get distracted with trying to throw troops together and also dealing with numerous villagers spawning at all times. That's when I start to really fall behind and I can usually never catch back up.
Not the subject of the thread necessarily, but Age 3 was awesome. Hands down the best RTS game I’ve ever played.
You can absolutely set waypoints by right clicking a resource after left clicking your TC. Then your villagers will go there upon creation. So what I do in Castle is build a TC immediately or as soon as possible and usually do it close to a wood line or a gold vein—both if possible. Depending on what I’m progressing to, I usually set my waypoint to gold. Villagers will automatically begin collecting any resource nearby if they build that resources storage as well so if you build your TC near a wood line and then find a gold vein, grab 5 of the villagers that are collecting wood and send them to build a mining camp. To keep from idle villagers, I typically have my TCs set to a wood line and take those villagers to start farms as you transition to castle and then imp. The micro with your army trips everyone up in terms of letting your eco lax, that’s probably the biggest learning curve of the game. A strategy that I was told by a really high player who was dumpstering me back in 1998-1999 when I was playing Rated on Microsoft’s Zone.com is that if you are initiating or attacking first in Castle, you should be building a TC at the same time and expanding your base. The enemy is either going to spend resources defending against you allowing you to have map control, or he’s going to counterattack. Early Castle, a TC is typically very good defense on its own and will stay alive until mangos or rams are created. By building the TC you are at the very least out eco’ing him because he’s probably spending those resources on defending his base. In this game with similarly skilled players, the villager count is usually the difference in the game unless they’re either microing really well or you’ve been caught in the middle of a boom with no army.
Oddly this thread got me back at it because I just suck ass at 2. It's really hard when you're used to 3 ai just doing things more efficiently. Been playing TAD now instead of nilla. It's not much different other than more shipments. It would sweet if they added some civs. Not sure why they haven't done that yet.
This is what I love about 3. You don't need lumber or mines you just set them on it. They're generally smarter ai also.
Age 3 helped elevate from the micromanagement requirements, the tactical level drag, of AOE2 to the true strategy level that these games are meant to tap into. It’s not for everyone. AOE3 is a real thinkers game, not the hotkey Surge gulping trench warfare that comes with #2. Respect it for the tracks that it laid and the nostalgia factor, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Gameplay wise - AI improvements, graphics, and flow aside - the unit and civs are so much more balanced that this becomes a no brainer.
It's up there. Imo the fanbase never caught on but in terms of balance, ai, graphics, and new features it's too notch And I've played every single aoe. Extensively.
That's ridiculous. LOL. It's set up with the concept of colonies being shipped resources by their home countries to wage war. You have to build your card decks for each game mode and strat. If you're playing a rush civ or plan to rush you need rush units and resources. Long game? You need advancement cards. Etc. And on top of that you still need to match your enemies units and exploit their weaknesses. So it's an additional level of chess.
I'm kinda triggered by the lack of respect for 3 and I just won't stand for it! Fwiw if you get the game just get it all because now more than ever people playing the Asian dynasty's more. So it's easy to find a low level game to get acclimated. I'll gladly show you guys the ropes.
I honestly didn’t know anyone played 3 anymore. I never liked it. It was on the Age of Mythology engine which was ok, but I was never a fan of the politics/god stuff system.
Check that. Never for into AoM. I think I demoed it. That's all. Never liked it. 3 is clean. It's just aoe warfare with shipments. 2 is ok. it's clear with the additional civs they did nothing about fixing the mismatches. The new ones are getting donkey dicked by the elite civs all the time.
I liked the Age of Mythology demo but never bought Rise of Nations was pretty sweet too. I like Supreme Commander also but it made my pc cry at the time
ehhhh 2 is arguably one of the greatest RTS games of all time in conversation with Starcraft and Warcraft 3. It’s why there are still 1000s of people who play it daily even though the game is over 20 years old. They still have massive money tournaments. AoE2:DE has 170,000 followers on Twitch alone. There are still tons who play AoE:HD. There are 27 people viewing AoE:3. AoE2:DE’s civs upon release were overpowered and destroyed in most matchups. The steppe lancers would kill anything in mass. Luckily for fans of the this franchise it’s getting regular updates and balance patches bc a lot of people still play the game. I believe AoE3 is getting its own definitive edition so it will be getting an update. I’ll be interested in seeing how popular it is.
Imo RTS as a whole declined around aoe3 so it never had a chance. There's nothing about the game that is weaker than any other outside of people's perception of the time period. Aoe3 engine and system during medieval era would blow 2de out of the water. I don't think people ever gave it a chance. Watch jailed streams to get a taste. Very good team play streams.
StarCraft was an outlier. Had a built in audience of zealots. Look at all the RTS that came after. The genre died out quick.
Boys boys boys I played lots of AOE3 and even had the war chiefs expansion. It’s not a bad game, in fact I really loved it. it’s a good game. But putting it above Starcraft 1&2, C&C, Total Annihilation Is a tough sell.
I’m not sure anyone here called it superior to Starcraft. Though I will say SC2 had to bastardize it’s original gameplay and speed up the pace some with added SCVs etc. at the start because it was getting boring. I’ll admit AoE for a long time was a pretty niche community but there has been quite the resurgence with DE. I’m not sure you can put C&C type games in the same sentence. They’re so awesome and I loved all of them (I have the decades). Westwood Studios was my favorite for a long time. I think it’s hard to compare RTS games with 1 and 4 resources. 2 and 4 is closer and the gameplay is similar.
TOTAL ANNIHILATION FOR FREE Fyi this is one of the goat RTS games. Came out around the same time as Starcraft so it was a bit overshadowed. https://www.gog.com/game/total_anihilation_commander_pack?pp=d051bf1ddf82f79c6af34f7f4e59707f081296ad https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/total-annihilation
Shannon Loftis, studio head of World's Edge, has shared a year-end update on the state of Age of Empires in its various incarnations, including the fourth one which we last saw in November of 2019. "I don't want to make you jealous," she wrote, "but we are literally playing this game every single day—both in Washington and in Vancouver." So yes, Age of Empires 4 is in development and currently in a playable state. Which doesn't mean that it's close to release, of course. As Loftis went on to explain, "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." Age of Empires 4 is being made by Relic Entertainment, who have a lot to prove after Dawn of War 3. What little we've seen of it so far suggests it may cover multiple periods of history, and feature walls. I'm all about building walls in Age of Empires games, so that's a positive sign. The update also mentioned that the Lords of the West expansion for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition will be out soon. According to the Age of Empires website, it'll be on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Game Pass for PC on January 26
Love T90. He’s done so much for the scene. That and the pros aren’t douchebags like in a lot of scenes.
I can't lie, the speed of the game is still so overwhelming to me. I'm used to Civ where you get turns, so when I play it's just a mess
Learn hotkeys. It’s critical to increasing your APM and for being any good. Start with 3-4 well rounded civs and work your way out.