Walls are imposing but take a long time to build: the Wall of Hadrian took over 6 years to build; the Wall of Theodosius took 9 years to build; the Great Wall of China took about 20 years...
@@nathantomaneng7259 lmao bitch tactics it's a counterattack that's the best move when you can't take the upfront battle. Surprised he never saw all the minimap pings. I guess the notifications could be better though
Blue from the video here! It was a pleasure playing against you. i dont think we would have won if I hadn't taken you out with the sneak attack haha :D. Also the top right icon gives you an overview of players, if you want to see who is who :)
Legit, I was getting so frustrated especially at that part hahaha... then I saw how little time was left on the video and realised it wasn't going to end well
Watching this helps alleviate a lot of fears about AoE4 tbh, the 1v1 vid mostly showed early game stuff, which felt very similar to AoE2, but actually seeing gameplay in Castle and Imperial Age, and seeing how drastically the gameplay changes, like with the significance of walls as defensive structure that you actually need siege to break down, the way the terrain influences strategic decisions (like the mountains), and the variety of units both sides use, it actually makes it feel really different from AoE2.
And it ran well, even when the going for tough! I was a bit unimpressed with the graphics at first, but seeing this made me realise they've done the right thing. Don't go too ambitious and have the top settings only work properly in 4 years time: design for the hardware we have now.
@@johannesmajamaki2626 The graphics are likely this way in order to keep the system requirements down. And that's likely a Microsoft decision, since the one system requirement they haven't let up on is Windows 10. They're basically using the game to get more people to upgrade to Win10, and so have kept all the other requirements low so as many people as possible choose to do it.
I really love how the battles look in this game. It actually kinda feels more like a war with people flanking, charges, protecting siege units etc. I had a game where my teammate was being pushed in, and the 3 of us charged in to the enemy from different directions and wiped them, and it was more satisfying than pretty much anything I did in AoE 2.
I played 2 games so far, one coop and one 3v3 and I liked the overall feel so far and how smooth it was. There were some nice details like infantry been able to build rams and things like that on their own that changes how war plays out when you compare it to aoe2. I still need a lot of cstch up to do because a lot of techs are researched on other buildings but it also seemed lime a more faster game that aoe2
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Guess we got used to them and this one has abit of a diffrent sounds...but main thing is its so mutch louder then any other sound, even louder then big armies fighting.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 in AOE2 I thought the TC only made the bell sound when you garrisoned all your villagers? In this game it seems to go off every time you click on it.
@@JustOneQuestion yep, but there are other sounds that play whenever you click anything or when things happen that we just zone out over the years. The farm running out sound was fun in the late game.
This map was gorgeous! Especially those hills and impassable areas of the hills. And I like that walling has a strategic importance now.\ A subtle details: Walls seem to automatically connect and blend in with the cliffs. That looks so neat! Wanted to see units climbing on the walls, military units charging, archers using spikes as shown in the previews.
You can mount walls like in the trailers but there just wasn't an opportunity for it. One of the longbow groups in the big fight did have palings active for anti-cav.
Spirit of the Law, pleeeeeease give us more 4v4 content. AOE2DE, AOE4, doesn't matter. Just more. This video was so much fun to watch, especially the epic mountain battle. Thanks for sharing!
one problem I notice is that its very hard to tell units apart - they are all too uniform in colour, without many distinguishing non team-coloured bits.
There is a reason why there is no game with that feature... if they are usefull it's too easy to turtle and early investment in army is not incentiviced. If they are too good, they need to be nerfed. Walls used to be better in aoe2, and nerfing it made the game better.
@@zuiop9993 You can't build stone walls right away though. If you harass the enemy before they are able to turtle up you will be able to strongly punish them for not building an army early on. You can actually see that stone walls took a significant ammount of time to come in for green in this game. There was plenty of opportunity to attack early on. Also, I, and I think a lot of people feel the same, preffer longer matches with epic huge army fights like what we saw here. I personally don't find it that exciting to see 3 archers vs 2 scouts fighting it out in the early game in AOE2.
The building shadows and the trees gently swaying looks so good! Edit: the buildings are casting accurate shadows on other buildings!! :O can we just take a minute to look at that. Edit2: Buildings stacked together allows units to move between them!! this is amazing as chokepoints.
The game has so many little details that you start to appreciate as you gradually discover them. It really seems that they want to make a good game and polish it as much as they can.
@@nathangamble125 I think he means as a departure from AoE2 where putting two buildings next to each other prevented movement entirely whereas this game the building foundation leaves a small gap for movement. So you can literally stack buildings/houses right on each other to create tons of narrow alleys which can be beneficial/detrimental depending on your composition.
@@nathangamble125 oh! I didn't know that. But it feels amazing watching a fight between units in a tight alleyway. Like a small part of the war going on in the streets of the city. :D
This detail is pretty amazing. As someone understanding mandarin, I can hardly understand any speech in first age. But in fourth age I can almost understand all unit speeches.
It's just today that I'm watching a bunch of the game play for it and I really am enjoying what I'm seeing like it looks like age of empires 2 but just more vertical design changes less horizontal, graphical based changes. And that's exactly what AOE needed. Verticality, depth. Not horizon
"Build both landmarks from an age to begin a new Dynasty" SOTL: Must not be important *Is skipping getting his most powerful archers pretty much immediately*
@@Lex-dw7ng so from what I can tell they're better against Cavalry than regular archers because of the extra shots, combine that with a decent number of them and they're quite scary, I think regular archers (or maybe just Longbowmen) have a little more range though
@@Admiral_Mortain So I got some time to have a look, and obviously these aren't final balance numbers but the Zhuge Nu does appear to just be flat out better than the archer - slightly shorter range and gets no bonus damage against light inf, but does 33 damage per burst as opposed to the archers 19 per shot against light inf. Slightly less range and a tad more expensive, but you got more HP and don't get "penalized" for shooting at non-light inf. Funnily enough I think it makes a fantastic archer counter.
@@Lex-dw7ng yeah, it's a very versatile unit that doesn't do as bad against cav as regular archers, and you can get them in Feudal instead of AoE II Castle Age like the Cho Ku No
The battles actually look really epic; the sound effects, music and the complex environment create this really awesome war-like atmosphere, really hypes you up. Still not the biggest fan of how large buildings are, they look so cumbersome... The battles though... now that is on point. Epic.
Ive actually found them to be okay now that theres gameplay. Its my issue with the difference in size of buildings that remains. Why are towers so weak, both visually AND mechanically?
Looking at that Imperial Tax mechanic, makes me feel like going for that 100% increased tax revenue would be insane if you are pocket. You had TONS of gold, and all from regular economic activity. Chinese seem like they could be brutal in long grindy games cause they'd always have some gold.
The tax is heavily unrealistic too. AoE is full communism. 100% tax already. Where is the gold coming from? The state (you) already get everything. It should at least decrease production.
After this video, I’m convinced that this channel is my go to for AoE content! It’s hard to find a good content creator and harder to find one that makes you laugh from gameplay. Keep it going Spirit!!!!!!!!
I'm not a big fan of the minimalist ui design. Feels like they want to make something streamlined, but in the end I'm not getting as much information as I would like.
yeah, it looked weird for me. I liked more of a traditional UI like aoe 2 with traditional sculpture and carving which differ with every civ. It make me feel like i actually dive into the past and actually feel like i belong to the civ which i play. Instead, here what i'm seeing is feel like a medieval town building simulator.
The UI, and the little yellow line-guys when building and manning the siege units makes it feel like I'm playing a game in the Assassin's Creed universe. Like, it's a simulation.
Really like that in battles the armies form the front lines; like, there's no or nearly no trickling of units in between, as the frontal soldiers get intertwined. And the way the masses of units move so fluidly, this pathfinding might actually beat the SC2 pathing for me. All together makes it feel like an actual medieval battle.
Yeah i really dont get all the hate. The game is much less cartoony than the trailers let us believe. The gameplay is good, sure, its similar to AOE2, but after AOE3 which was too different, they went back to what they knew was good. And now people are complaining that it's too similar to AOE2, lmfaoo.
@@braynaguilar8567 Yeah exactly, i never really got into AoE2, but i am really digging this beta. People are comparing it so much, and if it can be just as good as AoE2, it's gonna be great. And i can say, it's really good so far
Hey I love this, I was screaming at my screen around 40:00 Your base! Your base! Your base! The battles were epic and the strat to attack from behind while you were focused on attacking yourself was good, Nice vid, loving the look of AoE4 too.
Uughhh I wish I had a good enough PC to play this. Hopefully by Christmas ill have all of my parts ordered. By the time I have built my first gaming rig you guys will all be pros already lol. Can't wait though. I'll happily watch more skirmishes on your channel! Very unfortunate ending here, but GG
So I've been playing it now... I'm more positive than before, it's actually pretty entertaining. But the unit design, zoom and UI is still off-putting to me. Hmm. I hope they succeed!
Looks much better than the first gameplay trailer - especially in terms of graphics. Looking forward to it now. Thanks for these, quite entertaining. As always! :)
God this looks incredible. That battle where four different teams were there fighting...that was so epic. Can't wait to get my hands on this one in a couple weeks.
How do you feel about rotating map? I played few games and used it that my base would be in bottom corner, so i was always attacking forward, really helped with this riddiculously close zoom.
I never played AoE before, but i managed to sink in 20 hours during this stress test, i really like the game, even tho i got smacked around every game.
Because no one used walls in aoe2, not in the way they should be used at least. So you're supposed to use walls and then fortify them with keeps, not just use keeps.
@@Jasonwolf1495 Makes sense I suppose. I guess it stops people forwarding with castles. Although you'd think a keep would be the most fortified and stronger than walls.
SOTL was using an anti infantry artillery on a wall section. The nests of bees were hitting multi sections. and his melee units couldn't all fit to hit the wall. That really reduced his damage.
The viewing angle is so off. Especially in those mountainous regions. Like u watch the units from a different angle than buildings and you see the ground from another angle as well. Anyone else getting a headache from watching this?
The mechanics are closer to AoE2, but it feels closer to AoE3. However, the visual clarity is just worse than both. It's confusing and needlessly complicated to see what is going on.
@@braynaguilar8567 Probably because it is. Armour is more common, and units move slower relative to the map size. Which I like, it encourages people to crease armies instead of just spamming in one direction. But the monotone 2-colour icons don't really lend themselves to quick learning.
When you A-moved, you seemed to be clicking on buildings (farms specifically), which made your troops attack the targeted building, rather than a-moving, from what I've seen.
Its so annoying that when you attack move on a unit or building, its just like a regular attack. Thats exactly what I dont want to happen when attack moving!
@@schmid1.079 To be perfectly clear, this has been the exact way A-click has worked since the original AoE and even many other games before it. A-click is, by default, the attack order, but issued onto the ground, it becomes the attack-move order as a form of convenience. However, when you're used to A-moving this way, if you mess up and click a target, you're losing time focusing that target, rather than A-moving. Now, some games also feature a separate order for A-move, but you would have to check the controls for it to see what the button(s) for it is.
Man this is making me wanna age up my PC out of the Dark Age so I can play this. Visual and sounds design seems superb, especially the various yells echoing in the distance that take you right into the moment. The walls costing more but being much beefier plus giving damage reduction and +2 range to any unit standing on it makes assaulting fully-formed walls much more intense. Walls used to just delay the enemy's advance, but now they serve a whole new purpose. Makes me wonder how aggro vs stalling will play out in the game as the pros get a hang of things. Hope the town bell sound gets fixed and they let us customize attack move so you can choose to ignore buildings if you desire. I could personally use a little more camera zoom out for the player's view because it is a bit claustrophobic at the moment. Other than that I'm really liking what I see! EDIT: also I love beating people by taking out their landmarks. It encourages players to think about the layout of their base even more (because clumping landmarks together means the enemy can destroy them more easily). It also prevents people from hiding somewhere with 1 villager to prevent the game from ending lol
For what it's worth, I've got a i5-4670k mildly overclock, an AMD RX 460, and 32GB of DDR3 RAM (but had a ton of background processing running), and was keeping a solid 60 FPS in a 2v2. I think they've made an effort to keep the game well optimized given that the minimum requirements for processor is two generations newer than mine, and at least 8GB of RAM.
to be fair the notification for "landmark under Attack" is really not that noticable while in battle. There is no "Oh man shit is happening"- sound, its just the liltte text above the map
34:01 is the most epic battle in any rts game I have ever seen.So QL.Because of this awesome gameplay , and battles , I will buy this game for sure.Relic always knows how to make a great rts game , with epic ,awesome battles ;]/ Ps.I also love 3D maps with mountains and clifs.Thats why I didnt like AGE2 that much , because all maps look flat ;]
I'm a long time Starcraft player, and watching him ignore the base under attack notifications on the minimap was one of the most painful experiences I've ever had in gaming. That being said, great on you Spirit for giving us such good content, better luck next time!
I also missed the warning about the enemy attacking landmark, because I was distracted by Spirit being unable to use his vils to build the keep. Great vid as always mate!
I'm a big fan of the Song Dynasty for booming , but after a certain point it's probably more optimal to switch. The one for faster movement rate of villagers and military seems like it would be good in the late game. I'm not a big fan of the final one for +10% HP, though, as I think that's a step down from movement speed. Full list for anyone curious - 28:42
@@SpiritOfTheLaw Oh do you not get each bonus as you go up? I've had a real hard time actually connecting to games so have only played a couple as the English to try and get my head around the units and buildings
@@HazmanFTW My understanding is with the Spirit Way wonder you can still make the previous dynasty units, but always lose the dynasty-specific bonuses like faster villager creation etc.
The atmosphere during war was absolutely EPIC - the cries, the rush, the soundtrack all were flowing seamless! If Microsoft works harder on the physics, I bet this will be the AoE2-sequel we were waiting for.
Its hard to keep track of things in this game. I wish you could zoom out more and the UI was more color diverse. Just like SOTL I got raided multiple times from behind and didnt even notice. There should be a sound effect just like in aoe2.
At 27:23 notice that repairing the keep is only costing wood, not stone. This is very good information and means we should really try to repair keeps to be resource efficient?
Great to see you play new game. Why don't they allow for a more zoomed out view though? The bell alert is too loud for such a commonly used command. Hope they change that for the full game
Hey sotl! the imperial officials can also be put on lumber camps and mills to increase production. It would be interesting to see how much they provide to see if they are worth the extra food. As well as the first song dynasty building that increases tax(gold) on buildings built within its area and building that "replaces" the mill will stack passives on top of each other. I feel like if you built your city correctly as the Chinese you could produce units incredibly quickly. Edit: love the vids!
LOL! I was already asking since the start when you tech up to a dynasty but didn't click to get the buff. And then even brushed it away when you accidentally pressed it.
This looks really good. :) It looks like it has the simplicity of what makes AE2 so great but with updated graphics and small little features that make it feel modern. I think AOE3 tried to do wayyyy too much, which is ironically usually a great thing from developers, but in a classic PVP game it's often better to keep things more or less similar with little micro changes here and there to freshen the experience and add more to the game without making people want to stick with an older game due to massive differences (which will divide preferences more.)
It's AOE2 theme and game play with AOE3 graphics and some elements of Cossacks thrown in (like the tile farms). It's horribly out of scale too. Something tells me that many will stick to AOE2 DE, that looked more realistic than AOE4
I play a lot of AoE 2 and i do think this game is amazing. I will agree with people that animations look like it needs some work but other than that I do believe i'll be playing this a lot
A couple of things: Is it possible to zoom out more? Scoreboard (including age)? Is it possible to turn down the volume of the town bell? Was making ''the great wall of China'' intentional(lol)?
That zoom is as far as it goes. I don't think it could really go any farther, it gets kinda tough to click units. There is a tribute board in the top right that shows ages, but score is not visible in matchmaking. Hopefully they make the town center noise much gentler lol
"Enemy attacking landmark."
SotL: "This sign won't stop me, because I can't read."
looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool
lmao
it's beta testers like this, that when the game comes out the game has a bunch of a annoying popups.
i mean even is teammates were trying to help him on the mountain fight not in his base xd
Hey that's rudee
I love that walls are actually imposing. They should be a deterrent to an attack. Love that.
Walls are imposing but take a long time to build: the Wall of Hadrian took over 6 years to build; the Wall of Theodosius took 9 years to build; the Great Wall of China took about 20 years...
@@MikhalisBramouell How is that a long time compared to other great constructions?
@@MikhalisBramouell I mean a Wonder victory in AoE2 is something like 500 years, which passes in 10 minutes.. soooo....
I love that using siege is mandatory to destroy walls too
@@MikhalisBramouell Thats like saying houses take long to build and then list the most complex ones like the burj khalifa as examples.
My man spirit was so hyped mid battle he completely ignored the fact that his base was getting leveled 🤣
can't blame him tho, especially after how satisfying the mountain fight was
@@PolarMuttaqin Word. That was some field of pelennor tier clash all of the sudden, specially with purple bro joining the action
To be fair in all aspects he bested most if not all on the enemy team that blue had to rely on bitch tactics to win lmao
@@nathantomaneng7259 lmao bitch tactics it's a counterattack that's the best move when you can't take the upfront battle. Surprised he never saw all the minimap pings. I guess the notifications could be better though
@@flPiemanThe notifications were fine. I mean it's on SotL when the minimap is constantly flashing red showing him he's being counter attacked.
Blue from the video here! It was a pleasure playing against you. i dont think we would have won if I hadn't taken you out with the sneak attack haha :D. Also the top right icon gives you an overview of players, if you want to see who is who :)
Ah damn I need to not scroll through the comments before watching the video
@@Joker-yw9hl
tf were you expecting?
@@KCzz15 your mum
so you won?
@@AlexSwePR Yeah we did :)
Seeing you ignore your base getting destroyed put the stress in "technical stress test"
41:13
He even went back to his base, showed the ruins of his Town Center and he probably was like "just map scenery".
💀💀
Definetly too many vils on wood there.
Legit, I was getting so frustrated especially at that part hahaha... then I saw how little time was left on the video and realised it wasn't going to end well
Anyone else love the unit's shouting and directing your attention? Especially with the whistling.
The audio work is the standout aspect of the game thus far.
That's the scout calling out objects of interest it finds.
Yeah, I actually like that bit a lot. I usually set my scout lose and then forget about em, so that's a helpful feature.
SIEGE ENGIONS AT THE READY
It's the best!
Watching this helps alleviate a lot of fears about AoE4 tbh, the 1v1 vid mostly showed early game stuff, which felt very similar to AoE2, but actually seeing gameplay in Castle and Imperial Age, and seeing how drastically the gameplay changes, like with the significance of walls as defensive structure that you actually need siege to break down, the way the terrain influences strategic decisions (like the mountains), and the variety of units both sides use, it actually makes it feel really different from AoE2.
The terrain is a much appreciated addition.
And it ran well, even when the going for tough! I was a bit unimpressed with the graphics at first, but seeing this made me realise they've done the right thing. Don't go too ambitious and have the top settings only work properly in 4 years time: design for the hardware we have now.
@@johannesmajamaki2626 The graphics are likely this way in order to keep the system requirements down. And that's likely a Microsoft decision, since the one system requirement they haven't let up on is Windows 10. They're basically using the game to get more people to upgrade to Win10, and so have kept all the other requirements low so as many people as possible choose to do it.
Aoe 3 was drastically different. This is a little different.
It seems like even with the ability to put units on walls, players still don't do it.
That battle in the Hills was pretty epic, but you not realizing that your base was being destroyed for like 5 minutes was equally infuriating xD
To be fair I didn't notice it either, the fucking screen is just littered with garbage ui elements. It's pretty easy to oversee something.
@@007999999999999999 & like a third of those elements where saying that his base was being destroyed
40:40 "Enemy attacking landmark!" flashing in the middle of the screen. SOTL: "I'll ignore that"
The tunnel vision was real.
Wish the bodies stayed longer so you can properly see how large a battle really was.
I really love how the battles look in this game. It actually kinda feels more like a war with people flanking, charges, protecting siege units etc. I had a game where my teammate was being pushed in, and the 3 of us charged in to the enemy from different directions and wiped them, and it was more satisfying than pretty much anything I did in AoE 2.
I played 2 games so far, one coop and one 3v3 and I liked the overall feel so far and how smooth it was. There were some nice details like infantry been able to build rams and things like that on their own that changes how war plays out when you compare it to aoe2. I still need a lot of cstch up to do because a lot of techs are researched on other buildings but it also seemed lime a more faster game that aoe2
Let it to Spirit Of The Law to focus on details; he got the new Town Bell Simulator and spends hours on the RTS minigame. What a legend.
am I the only one who finds the sound absolutely annoying?
@@NeonLine you saying the age 2 and 3 town center noises weren’t annoying as well? If anything this is just a feature of the series.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Guess we got used to them and this one has abit of a diffrent sounds...but main thing is its so mutch louder then any other sound, even louder then big armies fighting.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 in AOE2 I thought the TC only made the bell sound when you garrisoned all your villagers? In this game it seems to go off every time you click on it.
@@JustOneQuestion yep, but there are other sounds that play whenever you click anything or when things happen that we just zone out over the years. The farm running out sound was fun in the late game.
That mountain fight between all the teams was EPIC!
Edit: At 33:52
Could you post the timestamp?
@@zelikris I think he is referring to 33:52
@@ivanesquivel7740 thanks
It reminds of the scene from Princess Mononoke when she ambushed the settlers in the hillside at night
The game really needs more than 200 units
Man, now I understand Danerys when she heard the bells. That stuff makes you crazy.
Dragons to insta gg
11
This map was gorgeous! Especially those hills and impassable areas of the hills. And I like that walling has a strategic importance now.\
A subtle details: Walls seem to automatically connect and blend in with the cliffs. That looks so neat!
Wanted to see units climbing on the walls, military units charging, archers using spikes as shown in the previews.
I noticed the wall detail. I love it c:
All can be done, Archers spikes are a unique ability to the English Longbow, probably a nod to their experience in fighting French knights
You can mount walls like in the trailers but there just wasn't an opportunity for it. One of the longbow groups in the big fight did have palings active for anti-cav.
i think the (pink?)archers did put down spikes in the hill battle
@@pokefuranku luk8kk
Spirit of the Law, pleeeeeease give us more 4v4 content. AOE2DE, AOE4, doesn't matter. Just more. This video was so much fun to watch, especially the epic mountain battle. Thanks for sharing!
one problem I notice is that its very hard to tell units apart - they are all too uniform in colour, without many distinguishing non team-coloured bits.
Yeah same i just rely on my control groups
A game where walls actually are usefull? unbelievable.
There is a reason why there is no game with that feature... if they are usefull it's too easy to turtle and early investment in army is not incentiviced. If they are too good, they need to be nerfed.
Walls used to be better in aoe2, and nerfing it made the game better.
@@zuiop9993 You can't build stone walls right away though. If you harass the enemy before they are able to turtle up you will be able to strongly punish them for not building an army early on.
You can actually see that stone walls took a significant ammount of time to come in for green in this game. There was plenty of opportunity to attack early on.
Also, I, and I think a lot of people feel the same, preffer longer matches with epic huge army fights like what we saw here. I personally don't find it that exciting to see 3 archers vs 2 scouts fighting it out in the early game in AOE2.
Stronghold crusader is a game with good wall mechanics
Its so cool how you can place buildings anywhere and right up against each other and paths, fountains and gardens pop up
Sucks they don't do anything. The game mechanics incentivize you to not care about it. Just makes it annoying if you want to win.
@@freedomofspeech2867 you can build over them and the paths make it so you can have more buildings in tighter clusters
@@mitchellemerson6916 Why wouldn't you be able to do that without the paths?
@@freedomofspeech2867 They do something... they look cool.
@@HighLanderPonyYT Subjectively. It will wear off fast. AoE2 will never.
Damn that bell is so annoying! 🔔
Great video as always!
I really hope it can be turned off, good grief!
@@JasonX2 Add a house to your TC control group and you don't get a sound. Easy fix :)
2 minutes in and im complaing about that bell.
@ReBuDO monster
Sound level of that bell should be reduced by at least 30% imho.
The building shadows and the trees gently swaying looks so good!
Edit: the buildings are casting accurate shadows on other buildings!! :O
can we just take a minute to look at that.
Edit2: Buildings stacked together allows units to move between them!! this is amazing as chokepoints.
The game has so many little details that you start to appreciate as you gradually discover them. It really seems that they want to make a good game and polish it as much as they can.
Putting buildings together creates chokepoints... just like in Starcraft from 1998.
@@nathangamble125 I think he means as a departure from AoE2 where putting two buildings next to each other prevented movement entirely whereas this game the building foundation leaves a small gap for movement. So you can literally stack buildings/houses right on each other to create tons of narrow alleys which can be beneficial/detrimental depending on your composition.
@@nathangamble125 oh! I didn't know that.
But it feels amazing watching a fight between units in a tight alleyway. Like a small part of the war going on in the streets of the city. :D
man, the building mechanics with the dynamic landscaping is so good. I would love a remake of Rise of Nations using the same tech
Was unsure after the 1v1, but this seems really fun honestly. I liked the vibe after you first broke into greens walls, seemed spooky
Furry sighted.
Boys, you know what to do...
@@kazum9746 Give him love and affection?
@@ultimategamer876 Yes.
Oh, wait...
This gameay look so shit, to diffetent then aoe3,
@@SuperNino111 Are you having a stroke?
I don't know what ancient Chinese sounds like, but the pronunciation really sounds more like modern Mandarin as you age up.
Ancient Chinese sounded much different since it had less tones, if I am not alltogether mistaken.
Yes, as you age up the unit pronunciation evolves from ancient language to early modern language.
@@PewPewPlasmagun I've heard some ancient Chinese and it does sound a looot different
@@pechorin5842 That's actually a neat detail.
This detail is pretty amazing. As someone understanding mandarin, I can hardly understand any speech in first age. But in fourth age I can almost understand all unit speeches.
Im suddenly actually getting hyped for this game
If they just fix the zoom levels & town bell, I'm sold
yeah, i wasnt reall interested before.. but the fights look like i always hoped for
@@ninjaxd9050 Dunno about zoom, but the bell is almost definitely gonna change. It wasn't even there in the closed beta.
Don't get hyped.
It's just today that I'm watching a bunch of the game play for it and I really am enjoying what I'm seeing like it looks like age of empires 2 but just more vertical design changes less horizontal, graphical based changes. And that's exactly what AOE needed. Verticality, depth. Not horizon
That TC bell is crazy what were they thinking lol.
I saw in another comment that it's apparently bugged right now. It's apparently supposed to sound the AoE 2
Definitely bugged it was not nearly that loud in the first closed beta.
Its unbareable
BING! BING!
Ding dong, are you going crazy yet?
"Build both landmarks from an age to begin a new Dynasty"
SOTL: Must not be important
*Is skipping getting his most powerful archers pretty much immediately*
How does the Zhuge Nu stack up to regular archers/crossbowmen? I haven't had a proper chance to look at and compare them because y'know - no editor.
@@Lex-dw7ng so from what I can tell they're better against Cavalry than regular archers because of the extra shots, combine that with a decent number of them and they're quite scary, I think regular archers (or maybe just Longbowmen) have a little more range though
@@Admiral_Mortain So I got some time to have a look, and obviously these aren't final balance numbers but the Zhuge Nu does appear to just be flat out better than the archer - slightly shorter range and gets no bonus damage against light inf, but does 33 damage per burst as opposed to the archers 19 per shot against light inf. Slightly less range and a tad more expensive, but you got more HP and don't get "penalized" for shooting at non-light inf. Funnily enough I think it makes a fantastic archer counter.
@@Lex-dw7ng yeah, it's a very versatile unit that doesn't do as bad against cav as regular archers, and you can get them in Feudal instead of AoE II Castle Age like the Cho Ku No
@@Lex-dw7ng WIth chinese its best to fast castle and make a mix of cav and infantry with nest of bees. Once you get to imp make hand cannon as well.
34:24 epic battle
And it ran smoothly too, this is the biggest selling point to me.
well the recommended specs are not hardcore, it runs off a GTX970 soooo yeah
At the end I was actually literally screaming at my screen lol good game. Liking it so far
Ding ding
The battles actually look really epic; the sound effects, music and the complex environment create this really awesome war-like atmosphere, really hypes you up. Still not the biggest fan of how large buildings are, they look so cumbersome... The battles though... now that is on point. Epic.
Ive actually found them to be okay now that theres gameplay. Its my issue with the difference in size of buildings that remains. Why are towers so weak, both visually AND mechanically?
I dont understand why people are obsessed with the bell sound. Most of the time you are focused on gameplay so you wont notice it.
Because ppl like to cry for everything nowadays
SOTL didn't notice the bell sound so hard that he didn't even notice when it was telling him his base was being destroyed
its also apparently a bug, the tc plays the dock sound but is supposed to play an AOE2 like town center sound
Its absolutely obnoxious. It too loud and too frequent.
That big battle was pretty cool. It is also nice the tension the soundtrack adds to the whole thing.
Looking at that Imperial Tax mechanic, makes me feel like going for that 100% increased tax revenue would be insane if you are pocket. You had TONS of gold, and all from regular economic activity. Chinese seem like they could be brutal in long grindy games cause they'd always have some gold.
The tax is heavily unrealistic too. AoE is full communism. 100% tax already. Where is the gold coming from? The state (you) already get everything. It should at least decrease production.
The tax mechanic is trash. Buildings have a cool down for each collection of gold. The value of imperial officials is in supervising mills/mines/wood.
@@freedomofspeech2867 if AoE was communist your money would get redistributed to the people equally
@@clem624 lol no
@@clem624 That's textbook communism. Not how it plays out in real life.
That epic fight on the mountain side has me pretty hyped for this. I'll definitely be picking this up when it comes out.
Try the free stress test its really fun! I was worried by the early talks and videos from youtubers, but now im hyped!!
After this video, I’m convinced that this channel is my go to for AoE content! It’s hard to find a good content creator and harder to find one that makes you laugh from gameplay.
Keep it going Spirit!!!!!!!!
I'm not a big fan of the minimalist ui design. Feels like they want to make something streamlined, but in the end I'm not getting as much information as I would like.
yeah, it looked weird for me. I liked more of a traditional UI like aoe 2 with traditional sculpture and carving which differ with every civ. It make me feel like i actually dive into the past and actually feel like i belong to the civ which i play. Instead, here what i'm seeing is feel like a medieval town building simulator.
It just doesn't have the type of memorable impression and imagery that the Aoe2 UI gives
Same
The UI, and the little yellow line-guys when building and manning the siege units makes it feel like I'm playing a game in the Assassin's Creed universe. Like, it's a simulation.
Mods could solve that issue
That battle on the mountainside should have been in the fucking trailer for the game, beautiful!!!!
I am a bit worried about the minimap the colours and all the stuff on it makes it harder to understand what is actually happening on the map
The most impressive part of this game is the walls. They look really good!
Really like that in battles the armies form the front lines; like, there's no or nearly no trickling of units in between, as the frontal soldiers get intertwined. And the way the masses of units move so fluidly, this pathfinding might actually beat the SC2 pathing for me. All together makes it feel like an actual medieval battle.
I love watching your vids so much man. You have such a solid grasp on the fundamentals
I know, his base defense and mini map awareness is top notch.
I like the sound design and the auto-scenery generation. It's shaping up to be a nice-looking game.
I really like how this looks it basically took the best parts of 2 and 3 but also added Cool new changes like the fire on buildings!
Yeah, I have high hopes for this game, if everything is implemented correctly :D
@@yourfellowhumanbeing2323 me too :DD!
Yeah i really dont get all the hate. The game is much less cartoony than the trailers let us believe.
The gameplay is good, sure, its similar to AOE2, but after AOE3 which was too different, they went back to what they knew was good. And now people are complaining that it's too similar to AOE2, lmfaoo.
@@Tiogar60 BUildings look fine, but the units look like shit. Even a game from 2005 looks better than this
@@braynaguilar8567 Yeah exactly, i never really got into AoE2, but i am really digging this beta. People are comparing it so much, and if it can be just as good as AoE2, it's gonna be great. And i can say, it's really good so far
The mountain scene was epic af. First time watching this kinds of fights without frame drops.
Hey I love this, I was screaming at my screen around 40:00 Your base! Your base! Your base! The battles were epic and the strat to attack from behind while you were focused on attacking yourself was good, Nice vid, loving the look of AoE4 too.
you should have padded it out for another 15 seconds so it was AOE4 4v4 44:44
Hey, if you click on the up-right corner button you can see all of the players and their current age!
Uughhh I wish I had a good enough PC to play this. Hopefully by Christmas ill have all of my parts ordered. By the time I have built my first gaming rig you guys will all be pros already lol. Can't wait though. I'll happily watch more skirmishes on your channel!
Very unfortunate ending here, but GG
this can run on almost any pc
@@SonnyBCreative not on windows 7. And im not putting windows 10 on my 10 year old laptop lmao
The thing in the courtyard of the Chinese town center is not a bell, but a gong. It shouldn't go "dong dong", but BANG BANG!
You sure its not supposed to go WA BOOM?
So I've been playing it now... I'm more positive than before, it's actually pretty entertaining. But the unit design, zoom and UI is still off-putting to me. Hmm. I hope they succeed!
Those exact things are the stand outs for me as well.
Seems they fixed the zoom from the beta. It looks fine here.
i literally clicking on the minimap when i saw "Enemy attacking landmark."
When this 40 minutes of Song Dynasty actually fought much better than the actual Song Dynasty
the shade lol
Relic please add option to stop ding ding
Technically I feel stressed. I wonder what tested me?
Is it the bell? If so, I have seen a comment in another video that it was bugged and will be changed soon
Looks much better than the first gameplay trailer - especially in terms of graphics. Looking forward to it now. Thanks for these, quite entertaining. As always! :)
They def need to work on the color. You can barely distinguish blue from teal. Great game anyway!
Yes I hope they'll add the possibility to choose the exact colors you want like in some games
The mini map is pretty chaotic in general. Colors and Symbols need to be more destinct.
Minimap is terrible. It's like age 3.
Also the overexposure does not help the reading. I have the constant urge to put on sunglasses.
Is there an option to set the Townbellsound to mute, or do i have to wait for an custom patch?
"I'll try more nest of bees"
>builds springalds
Yeah, at one point it was even like "I feel like nest of bees is doing really well, I can fight against 2 at once" :))) Hilarious.
SOTL has God tier mindset and attitude. Keep up the good vibes. I look forward to more AOE4 content!
SOTL I WAS IN YOUR GAME! I AM A BIG FAN! You was a good teammate!
Did you guys win in the end?
@@jasonsudana5320 The blue player who killed Spirit commented, he said that Spirit’s team lost.
@@jasonsudana5320 No, we lost after sotl went🥲
God this looks incredible. That battle where four different teams were there fighting...that was so epic. Can't wait to get my hands on this one in a couple weeks.
How do you feel about rotating map? I played few games and used it that my base would be in bottom corner, so i was always attacking forward, really helped with this riddiculously close zoom.
At 29:37 you can see "who the players are" by clicking the banner/halberd icon in the top right. That also shows you who's in what age.
I never played AoE before, but i managed to sink in 20 hours during this stress test, i really like the game, even tho i got smacked around every game.
Man that town hall bell sound will drive me insane
Why are those stone walls so strong but the keeps fall like paper?
Seems a little unbalanced to have them taken down so easily without siege units.
Because no one used walls in aoe2, not in the way they should be used at least. So you're supposed to use walls and then fortify them with keeps, not just use keeps.
@@Jasonwolf1495 Makes sense I suppose. I guess it stops people forwarding with castles. Although you'd think a keep would be the most fortified and stronger than walls.
@@richardsharpe3622 the keep has high dmg low defense so that walls can be your defense, while keeps (when guarded) are super dangerous
SOTL was using an anti infantry artillery on a wall section. The nests of bees were hitting multi sections. and his melee units couldn't all fit to hit the wall. That really reduced his damage.
Makes me think of AoE 1 and how fk strong the buildings are in that game, walling with houses was a smart move xD
well this tc bell is a hell of anoying... I would freak out all the time meaning I get attacked
The viewing angle is so off. Especially in those mountainous regions. Like u watch the units from a different angle than buildings and you see the ground from another angle as well. Anyone else getting a headache from watching this?
So glad I had the opportunity to play the stress test. I enjoyed it but I will say I felt SUPER claustrophobic the whole time.
The mechanics are closer to AoE2, but it feels closer to AoE3.
However, the visual clarity is just worse than both. It's confusing and needlessly complicated to see what is going on.
Exactly
I'm getting far more of a Battle for Middle Earth 2 + Empire Earth vibe from AoE4
@@braynaguilar8567 Probably because it is. Armour is more common, and units move slower relative to the map size. Which I like, it encourages people to crease armies instead of just spamming in one direction.
But the monotone 2-colour icons don't really lend themselves to quick learning.
Is the unit icon final version? Because if that's it, I'll be so disappointed.
I like this so far.
In terms of asymetry between civs, it feels like a middle ground between aoe3 and aoe2.
Which i hoped it would be
When you A-moved, you seemed to be clicking on buildings (farms specifically), which made your troops attack the targeted building, rather than a-moving, from what I've seen.
Its so annoying that when you attack move on a unit or building, its just like a regular attack. Thats exactly what I dont want to happen when attack moving!
@@schmid1.079 To be perfectly clear, this has been the exact way A-click has worked since the original AoE and even many other games before it.
A-click is, by default, the attack order, but issued onto the ground, it becomes the attack-move order as a form of convenience. However, when you're used to A-moving this way, if you mess up and click a target, you're losing time focusing that target, rather than A-moving.
Now, some games also feature a separate order for A-move, but you would have to check the controls for it to see what the button(s) for it is.
Man this is making me wanna age up my PC out of the Dark Age so I can play this.
Visual and sounds design seems superb, especially the various yells echoing in the distance that take you right into the moment.
The walls costing more but being much beefier plus giving damage reduction and +2 range to any unit standing on it makes assaulting fully-formed walls much more intense. Walls used to just delay the enemy's advance, but now they serve a whole new purpose. Makes me wonder how aggro vs stalling will play out in the game as the pros get a hang of things.
Hope the town bell sound gets fixed and they let us customize attack move so you can choose to ignore buildings if you desire. I could personally use a little more camera zoom out for the player's view because it is a bit claustrophobic at the moment. Other than that I'm really liking what I see!
EDIT: also I love beating people by taking out their landmarks. It encourages players to think about the layout of their base even more (because clumping landmarks together means the enemy can destroy them more easily). It also prevents people from hiding somewhere with 1 villager to prevent the game from ending lol
For what it's worth, I've got a i5-4670k mildly overclock, an AMD RX 460, and 32GB of DDR3 RAM (but had a ton of background processing running), and was keeping a solid 60 FPS in a 2v2. I think they've made an effort to keep the game well optimized given that the minimum requirements for processor is two generations newer than mine, and at least 8GB of RAM.
to be fair the notification for "landmark under Attack" is really not that noticable while in battle. There is no "Oh man shit is happening"- sound, its just the liltte text above the map
34:01 is the most epic battle in any rts game I have ever seen.So QL.Because of this awesome gameplay , and battles , I will buy this game for sure.Relic always knows how to make a great rts game , with epic ,awesome battles ;]/
Ps.I also love 3D maps with mountains and clifs.Thats why I didnt like AGE2 that much , because all maps look flat ;]
I'm a long time Starcraft player, and watching him ignore the base under attack notifications on the minimap was one of the most painful experiences I've ever had in gaming. That being said, great on you Spirit for giving us such good content, better luck next time!
Giant ENEMY IS ATTACKING THE LANDMARK across the screen? Probably nothing important.
I also missed the warning about the enemy attacking landmark, because I was distracted by Spirit being unable to use his vils to build the keep. Great vid as always mate!
Is it not worth going up the Dynasty as well?
I'm a big fan of the Song Dynasty for booming , but after a certain point it's probably more optimal to switch. The one for faster movement rate of villagers and military seems like it would be good in the late game. I'm not a big fan of the final one for +10% HP, though, as I think that's a step down from movement speed. Full list for anyone curious - 28:42
@@SpiritOfTheLaw Oh do you not get each bonus as you go up? I've had a real hard time actually connecting to games so have only played a couple as the English to try and get my head around the units and buildings
@@HazmanFTW My understanding is with the Spirit Way wonder you can still make the previous dynasty units, but always lose the dynasty-specific bonuses like faster villager creation etc.
The atmosphere during war was absolutely EPIC - the cries, the rush, the soundtrack all were flowing seamless!
If Microsoft works harder on the physics, I bet this will be the AoE2-sequel we were waiting for.
Its hard to keep track of things in this game. I wish you could zoom out more and the UI was more color diverse. Just like SOTL I got raided multiple times from behind and didnt even notice. There should be a sound effect just like in aoe2.
There is actually a sound effect that reflects attacks from the enemy.
At 27:23 notice that repairing the keep is only costing wood, not stone. This is very good information and means we should really try to repair keeps to be resource efficient?
The dynasty sign needs to be moved somewhere else, great game tho!
I really like how roads and paths form around buildings, gives your base an actual city vibe.
22:18 oh, yeah, that's the good shit
how did he split his army into two that fast at 34:25, looked like he just clicked 1 button? Can someone tell me? Much appreciated!
34:24 That mountain battle was pretty cool!
Great to see you play new game. Why don't they allow for a more zoomed out view though? The bell alert is too loud for such a commonly used command. Hope they change that for the full game
Is it wrongthink that I dislike 3D graphics in RTS?
It will take some time to adjust our eyes to this game haha, I generally have high hopes for this game, if everything is implemented correctly :D lol
Starcraft 2 does the job perfectly
3D graphics are fine if done well, these are not done well.
There is no such thing as wrongthink. No the game looks like playdough.
Hey sotl! the imperial officials can also be put on lumber camps and mills to increase production. It would be interesting to see how much they provide to see if they are worth the extra food. As well as the first song dynasty building that increases tax(gold) on buildings built within its area and building that "replaces" the mill will stack passives on top of each other. I feel like if you built your city correctly as the Chinese you could produce units incredibly quickly.
Edit: love the vids!
ARE YOU THE REAL SPIRIT OF THE LAW
Hehe…
@@minibjaris3675 holy shit isn't that you
LOL! I was already asking since the start when you tech up to a dynasty but didn't click to get the buff. And then even brushed it away when you accidentally pressed it.
It's amazing how far this game has come
This looks really good. :) It looks like it has the simplicity of what makes AE2 so great but with updated graphics and small little features that make it feel modern. I think AOE3 tried to do wayyyy too much, which is ironically usually a great thing from developers, but in a classic PVP game it's often better to keep things more or less similar with little micro changes here and there to freshen the experience and add more to the game without making people want to stick with an older game due to massive differences (which will divide preferences more.)
It's AOE2 theme and game play with AOE3 graphics and some elements of Cossacks thrown in (like the tile farms). It's horribly out of scale too. Something tells me that many will stick to AOE2 DE, that looked more realistic than AOE4
Yep, I'm one of those, so far I'm not convinced to for example drop playing AOE2DE
I play a lot of AoE 2 and i do think this game is amazing. I will agree with people that animations look like it needs some work but other than that I do believe i'll be playing this a lot
I guess the ringing bell each time you go to TC might hit on nerve quite fast.
"I think I'm putting pressure on him"
10 seconds later, all his army is dead XD
A couple of things:
Is it possible to zoom out more?
Scoreboard (including age)?
Is it possible to turn down the volume of the town bell?
Was making ''the great wall of China'' intentional(lol)?
That zoom is as far as it goes. I don't think it could really go any farther, it gets kinda tough to click units. There is a tribute board in the top right that shows ages, but score is not visible in matchmaking. Hopefully they make the town center noise much gentler lol