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Age of Empires IV


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Jeez! 98gb?? For real? darn! That's another good deterrent, beside the price ahahaha 

Yeah, I agree with the general sentiment. It just look "nice" and "fun" for a little game, but miles away from being as epic as the predecessor. 

Is not completely bad either, just simply "okay".

 

About the units yeah, they look ridiculous and proportions are completely off. But, once you get used to it, there are some lessons that can be learned on readibility I think. After a while I came to appreciate the fact that are immediately distinguishable on screen, while, if I can make an observation, in 0ad they're much easier to confuse and battles look messier. 

Maybe the new battalion feature can really be the gamechanger? ;) Ehehehe curious about that! 

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1 minute ago, Radiotraining said:

Jeez! 98gb?? For real? darn! That's another good deterrent, beside the price ahahaha 

Yeah, I agree with the general sentiment. It just look "nice" and "fun" for a little game, but miles away from being as epic as the predecessor. 

Is not completely bad either, just simply "okay".

 

About the units yeah, they look ridiculous and proportions are completely off. But, once you get used to it, there are some lessons that can be learned on readibility I think. After a while I came to appreciate the fact that are immediately distinguishable on screen, while, if I can make an observation, in 0ad they're much easier to confuse and battles look messier. 

Maybe the new battalion feature can really be the gamechanger? ;) Ehehehe curious about that! 

the only way to play this is to think it's starcraft 2 in the middle ages.

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Some of these are nicely done. They at least fit with the rest of the style. I will say the Great Khan Statue wonder is absolutely trash and should be remodeled/replaced in the first patch. The model looks like it's literally just a unit mesh scaled up by a factor of 100. It's terrible. Notre Dame looks super nice, but the video maker didn't bother to show us the world-famous iconic front façade. lol

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14 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Personally I really don't like the UI. All symbols are so minimalist, they don't have any flavor nor transport any vibe of medieval.

For the whole time I thought it was only a placeholder for the UI for developers or early demos and that they would have changed it in the final. I was wrong :D 

yeah, it does seem like a placeholder. Or at least that's the impression of the effort they put in it.

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10 minutes ago, Micfild said:

Funny. It's a new mechanic in AoE, but that is how it works in AoM.

 

  

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

 

 

 

This could be a good addition to 0ad.  A nice anti-snowballing mechanic to make sure players don't get penalized for forgetting a house early on, etc.  Makes it more newb-friendly imo.

Edited by Dizaka
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6 hours ago, Dizaka said:

This could be a good addition to 0ad.  A nice anti-snowballing mechanic to make sure players don't get penalized for forgetting a house early on, etc.  Makes it more newb-friendly imo.

I don't see how that's true. you would just delay by some seconds the production of houses in your build order and you would still risk being blocked.

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9 hours ago, Dizaka said:

A nice anti-snowballing mechanic to make sure players don't get penalized for forgetting a house early on, etc.

It might help early one, but i think it might break the late game, because of the batch mechanic. In Age games you'll only get one unit, but in 0AD you could be pop capped, start Batching 20 something units (which take a long time) and when your army gets killed, its instantly back.

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1 hour ago, Micfild said:

It might help early one, but i think it might break the late game, because of the batch mechanic. In Age games you'll only get one unit, but in 0AD you could be pop capped, start Batching 20 something units (which take a long time) and when your army gets killed, its instantly back.

Possibly.  It could be that once housing population-limit is maxed-out then the mechanic reverts to current 0ad status.

Alternatively, I actually don't think it'd be a bad problem.  You still need resources to build it and it won't pop the units out until there is space.  My belief is that you can achieve a better result by building multiple barracks (10+).

 

  

5 hours ago, alre said:

I don't see how that's true. you would just delay by some seconds the production of houses in your build order and you would still risk being blocked.

Yea, but sometimes missing a beat in the initial population build can have drastic consequences on time of reaching maximum pop.  This would help alleviate that snowball effect.

 

 

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Found this on Reddit. Two days after launch it's already 13th played title on Steam.

Like it or not, is anyway destined to be the next "big thing" for a while. At least is having a good momentum in the competitive arena.

I see this as an opportunity more than a menace to 0ad. It means that there's hunger for good old rts games out there, and I think it's a solid alternative to commercial titles with boisterous marketing teams but a bit of less soul in it

 

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Edited by Radiotraining
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Steam reviews:

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Age of Empires IV is a dumbed down version of Age of Empires II. Why you may ask, just let me list a few things :

No replays (yeah none what did you expect)
No editor (starcraft 1 had one in 1998)
No pause button (doesn't matter since the games are short right ? wait ...)
No scoreboard
No map filters
No ranked matchmaking
No guilds
No unit guard and patrol mode
No ability to choose player color
No ability to change teams mid-game (basically no diplomacy of any kind)
AI don't respond to defend/attack pings (I don't think they react to anything)
You can beat Hardest difficulty AI without effort
Poor design and balance (english longbow just to name one)
Can't select a unit inside a group (good luck trying to remove an injured unit from your group)
Limited camera zoom-in/zoom-out (why not ?)
Only a few factions (only 8)
Extremely poor graphics for 2021 (just look for yourself)
 

 

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The game is certainly unfinished. It's missing A LOT of fundamental aspects any RTS/Age of Empire player is going to notice, miss, and wish it was in AOE4. I am actually pretty disapointed that the game seems way to basic and not competitive at all. Hopefully the devs will add in those little things that AOE/RTS players prefer. Watch any number of YouTube reviews for examples.
HOWEVER! The Campaign is absolutely one of a kind. I am a major RTS, Total War, historical type PC player and I don't think I have ever played a cooler more well put together Campaign before. Every map you get a history lesson filled with beautiful graphics and awesome real life footage mixed in with Age of Empires sounds and aesthetics. 10/10 Campaign and I can't wait to play through it again. Utterly awesome. I felt like I was watching a mini-documentary and then given the keys to go act it out with the Age of Empires game model. So fun and so cool.
 

 

 

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Feels like good old AOE2 but need some improvements:

Cannot change playable color.
Where is patrol, defend etc options for troops.
Building rotation.
Auto explore for scouts.

There is many quality improvements but here some:
+ Can put troops in walls.
+ No need pay attention to farms.
+ Landmarks for leveling up to next age (those give different kind of bonuses).

These are just my opinion and I hope they continue improve game otherwise too. New civs and stuff are always welcome

 

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The game doesn't have any randomization options. No "random map", no "random civilization". It is very bizarre. That type of incredibly normal expectation not being met is kind of a hallmark of AoE4
 

 

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I love Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, this.... not so much.
Maybe in a year or two this game will be something, but it should not have released in this state.

I'm not going to give it a thumbs up for potential, this game is a big step back from Age of Empires 2 in it's current state.

Missing features
No replays
No scenario editor
No random map scripting
No custom AI
No scoreboard
No map filters
No unit guard mode
No unit patrol mode
No ability to choose player color
No ability to change teams mid-game
No blood or skeletons, I'm playing a game about medieval warfare right?
AI don't communicate
AI don't have any personality "A.I. Intermediate has been eliminated." Who dis?
AI don't respond to defend/attack pings

Other issues
Questionable design and balance
Poor unit readability
Limited camera zoom-in/zoom-out
Limited unit formations
Limited map types
Limited factions
Limited skirmish options
Cartoonish art style
Bugs! Game wouldn't end, last player had no units or buildings left but wasn't eliminated.

And I'm guaranteed to be missing some missing features because I've only played the game for 4 hours and that's already what's apparent to me.

Someone else wrote that this game feels like a demo, and I totally agree. When's the full game coming out?
 

 

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The game is great, definitely a good follow up successor for AoE2 but a a lot of the features are missing like why can't I zoom out further? Why is the population capped at 200? AND WHY TF CAN I NOT CHOOSE MY OWN COLOR IN SKIRMISH MODE? Blue gets boring after playing it over and over, it might be a nitpick but color change has always been a staple feature since AoE1. Fix these and to me this game would be 10/10
 

 

 

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It has the potential to be amazing. But right now I wouldn't buy it especially at this price (SGD 80). There's a lot of gameplay bugs and performance issues and the game feels empty. I played the beta, and unfortunately not much has improved since then, so I don't have high hopes that it'll improve going forward.

Some things are great:
- Large battles with siege and walls are epic
- Sacred site victory works well
- Some of the civ-specific mechanics good
- The changes to relics are good
- Placing units on walls is cool

The game performs like hot garbage. But I don't mind lowering my settings a bit. Issue is - the low graphics settings are outright broken. If you don't set (and meet) a framerate cap, the game hitches so badly it is unplayable. If you lower the resolution scale, unit healthbars disappear somehow. Shadow acne on the entire terrain. Trees pop in as you pan the camera. Performance issues are especially bad on water maps.

But even the performance issues I can ignore. There are numerous gameplay bugs and missing essential features that make the game unplayable for me.

Some examples:
- Often, I accidentally discover enemy positions when I attempt to place a wall or building in the fog of war. It fails if there's an enemy there. You can absolutely cheat this way.
- Often, I see flickers of building in the fog of war, or hear sounds of units marching.
- In team games, you can rush a wonder unreasonably fast.
- No ranked matches. No penalty for leaving games. Many team games are ruined by leavers.
- The camera is too zoomed in. This is an issue that's been raised by literally everyone ever. A trebuchet has a range much larger than one screen height. Naval battles are often of a similar size.
- Basic unit movement commands are bad. It's sometimes unclear whether villagers are rallied onto a resource or not. There's no visible path for units with shift-queued moves. There's no patrol command.
- Wall building issues. You cannot queue a gate on an unfinished wall. You cannot join a wall to an allies wall. Walls require huge clearance around them.
- You can't ungarrison a single unit at a time. This is especially apparent as Delhi Sultanate, who will regularly want to ungarrison one scholar from the mosque.
- Right clicking to garrison villagers only works sometimes (the garrison button always works). The back-to-work button also usually doesn't work.
- When you hotkey multiple types of production buildings, it combines the hotkey layout into one franken-layout with a mix of buttons from different buildings. It is incredibly stupid.
- Often, units will attack a building when there's an enemy military unit nearby. Sometimes they ignore focus-fire commands.
- Sometimes, units refuse to change back to the default formation. Sometimes, formations are stupid (e.g. warrior monks at the front)
- Ships owned by players who have surrendered can attack you, but you can't attack them unless you a-click the enemy ships. If you a-move, your ships will sail past and be killed.
- Often, the ingame chat censors non-swear words for no reason. It can't be turned off.

 

 

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Let me start out by saying that I’ve played aoe4 quite a bit already, both de NDA alpha aswel as the stress test.

I’m really dissapointed by the choices made. Not only did they remove a lot of skill elements, the game also has a lot of flaws that was given as feedback long long ago, and only rarely is there being listened.

The good.
- The Campaign is really well done.
- Runs well.

The bad.
- A lot of skill elements are not present, quick walls, micro. All not possible.

- Hotkeys, hotkeys in age of empires 2 are A LOT better, for example binding actions to the mouse is not possible which is a big nono for me.

- Responsiveness feels bad, units rarely do what I expect them to do. For example, clicking a villager to chop down a tree sometimes results in the villager standing idle, same goes for every resource.
Telling villagers to build something commonly results in them standing at it idle.

- Art choice, I don’t care to much about graphics, I do care about visibility. In age of empires 2 you can clearly see the difference in all units even in big battles. In this game everything just clogs up and it becomes one big color fest.

- UI, selecting a low HP unit or specific unit in a group is near impossible now that there are no separate icons for each unit when selecting a group.

- Zoom, can’t zoom out far enough even though its a bit better then before, I have the feeling it should be more.

- To delete something you need to hold a button for several seconds both for buildings and units, I guess this is to prevent misclicks but it should really be an instant action.

- Mods, map editor. Non exsitent.

- Support, I’m really worried the game is not gonna last, atleast multiplayer. All of the feedback given is not or rarley being listened to.

All in all, for a casual rts player this might be a good game. The campaigns are really well done. Its just the multiplayer part of the game that I really dislike.

If you’re a long time player of the franchise and hoped for a fresh experience, this is certainly different but in my opinion not what I hoped for as an age of empires 2 fan.

Overal game 3/10. Campaign 9/10
I reccomend getting the game via xbox gamepass, play the campaigns and go back to other tittles if you want to play multiplayer. Maybe get it on sale down the road, but for sure not full price.
 

 

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Let's keep it short (hopefully!): Age of Empires IV is a good AoE game. If you're a fan and you have money (because you need it for this one and the future dlcs) buy it, you will have fun. But if you agree with me with the negative points I'm going to tell you, WAIT, just WAIT for a better discount.

So let's summarise very quickly what I think of the game, after completing the first campaign (British) and played a few Skirmishes.

Positive things:
- Great campaigns with optional 4K videos that serves you as introduction before each mission, giving you some history facts, keeping you involved in the battles you're about to face.
- Big improvements with audio, with more quality and effects all around the game.
- It tries to be very similar to AoE II, which is a good thing...

Negative things:
- It seems that Microsoft paid A LOT of money to many famous curator, youtuber and streamers. This is why everyone is saying "the game is PERFECT". That's very disgusting for me... but that's my opinion of course. If you agree with those, fine for me.
- AI is super bad, not balanced (tested EASY and NORMAL, so scared to test the two more difficult ones), and very stupid sometimes.
- Graphic is absolutely NOT what I was expecting in 2021.
- Not much content in the game right now.. (maps, mod support, civs, features...).
- Price is totally wrong for what it offers.
- A few bugs are still present in the game, even after all the closed and open betas.

Conclusion:
If you want to have a fresh title now and you cannot wait to have it, there is a good chance you will enjoy the title, but my suggestion? WAIT for a better discount of at least 35/50%. I just think that AoE II DE may still be the best AoE in the market right now.

 

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I want AOE 1 everything with modern graphics.
 

;) 

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I don't have the sources for this claim. But I heard that the developer is planning to add more and more features post release. They are not the only developer to release an unfinished game and patch it later. That seems to be very common in the industry. It seems fair that not all people like this modern development cycle.

By the way, age of empires 2 DE also was undesirable on release (balance between civs, path finding, matchmaking in the lobby, resource placement on arabia, desyncs, lobby dodging, spectator features were all lacking). I don't know the entire list of issues, but you can check the dozen or so patches that have been released and the issues meantioned there. Also spirit of the law made on youtube overviews of each path, which had many quality of life changes that the game should have had at release. A few months after release, we saw some players come back to the original on voobly. The current version seems to be favoured over the original. Personally, I think age of empires 2 went downhill ever since the release of the african kingdoms.

So shortly, that is the reason why I am here and not on voobly.

Edited by LetswaveaBook
Personally I occasionally miss the times when I was doing monk rushes on arena.
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1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Steam reviews:

Yeah, I agree with pretty much they say.. I'm also a bit skeptical about the game overall. Nevertheless I think it's going to stay around for a while. In the end they will probably add new civs to keep it "new" and patch all the bugs and missing features until people will stick around. 

(Or maybe it will die quickly.. who knows?)

What I'm trying to say is that is better to recognize it as a new competitor in the scene without dismissing it quickly. I think it can stimulate some new dynamism in the rts arena and if people will end up being so disappointed, they can always come back to 0ad! ;)

That's why I see it as a positive opportunity! :)

 

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