Maybe they will make 3 or 4 "asymmetrical" factions, and then distribute the civilizations among those, each getting certain buffs like in AoE2, but still retaining stuff from their particular faction? (like "European cultures", "Middle Eastern cultures", etc, are factions, while "Spanish", "English", "Turks"/"ottomans", "Persians", are civilizations distributed between the factions.)
I was thinking the same thing, that you might have a European culture specializing in heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, a middle eastern one with cavalry archers and light cavalry, and an "Asian" or "Eastern" that's like an all rounder type tech tree or something like that, then have unique units like longbows and samurai and slightly different tech trees. You could even have mostly similar cultural tech trees with a few cultural unique units, like having horse archers for the middle eastern factions, or man at arms for Europeans.
22:48 They have changed it now but if it were the case , them the Mongols would actually be at an advantage as they can match the power of other civs' late game without needing to spend any resources and time on advancing to imp
Getting the right "number" of civs correct is an interesting question. A large part of Aoe2's multiplayer is 4v4 TGs, whereas I don't think many other RTS games have this heavy focus on TGs. I wonder how many civs are required for supporting 4v4s. If there are only 8 civs, then every 4v4 game would be repeating the same civilizations over and over and over again.
One thing that could work (which is kind of how I was expecting it from what I'd heard previously) would be if you have maybe two or three civ types, and then a number of civs within each one. Nomadic civs and more static civs, for example.
I think all AOE4 civs will fall into 3 or 4 archetypes such that European castle civs play very differently from nomadic civs. Basically civs within the archetype are symmetrical but between archetypes they're asymmetrical.
I actually think the card system is (a) something they should carry over and (b) is a means of providing balance opportunities. Certainly, using cards in such a system would surely increase the need to be aware of the cards (requiring more game knowledge) and would probably create a situation where everyone is basically compelled to use certain cards in their deck for certain match ups (reducing variety) /but/ I think it's a question of how to design the cards. In particular, I wouldn't use resource shipments and I'd have unit shipments mostly be geared towards defensive purposes (so they become a bit like minutemen), instead using cards as an alternative form of research... effectively choosing new paths for the same civ. With a card system, mirror match ups can become very, very different systems... potentially with multiple viable meta options (based on AOE III that's a more theoretical prospect). As you might expect, I'm a big fan of AOEIII but I don't play it properly. Consequently, I try strange things like British Grenadiers. There's a card called Improved Grenades or something that basically means Brits have Fortress or even Industrial level siege damage available in Colonial. And it opens up the prospect of absolutely crazy games. Playing around with cards is fun and I'm sure it's also fun for people who try and solve a balance problem natively too. Getting cards added to the game with patches in an attempt to address balance problems would add to this as people try and see if the interaction with existing cards actually had the intended outcomes. Something like that anyway.
I think the team-focus of Age games means that there is plenty space for a greater level of asymmetry between factions than we've seen before without providing too much cognitive load. The MTG colour wheel is a great example, there are 5 "factions" or colours, which can be combined in whichever way the player sees fit. Each of the colours has its own unique character that is different from the others and no one can possibly understand all of the different card interactions just within one specific colour, let alone between all the different combinations and matchups. But even so it is very common for players to switch between colours regularly whenever they feel that they want more variety in their play. Even if you have no idea what cards are in your opponents deck, you know that if they are playing pure red for instance that you can expect a large number of direct damage spells and adjust your play accordingly.
Have you heard of 0 A.D. it's a AoE inspired RTS with some very unique concepts. while I doubt I could convince you to review it due to your policy of not reviewing games before going gold and it being in open source infinite development, I think it would be worth your time to explore.
@@fazmoze5626 It's been a while since I played it but it /is/ cool. I also think it's harder to figure out than Age of Empires. But I'm no great shakes at AOE.
Also, I played CoH2, and I never really kept myself to only one faction. I would say I played every faction and at worse, I was below average in some of them, but not "Bad". The appeal for me of that system is trying out the other factions you are very likely to face, and know what they are capable of doing and more or less when. If you marry to only one faction, you are bound to lose more than if you played a bit of every faction.
I find your comparison to fighting games and MOBAs at 12:00 to be kind of contrary to your point. Fighting games and MOBAs are both strong examples of *asymmetrical* balance.
I think all your fears about being locked to one faction only are quite groundless. What I understood from the interview you linked is that there will be very unique civilization models (or templates) like in Starcraft and within that there will be some variety like in AoE2. For example the Britons will be part of the Western European template (with the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire maybe ?) and the Mongols will be from the nomadic templates (with the Huns and others). Other templates could be: Native merican civs, middle-eastern, asiatic, etc... So even if you have to stick to one template you'll have variation within it, like the Franks will have better cav than the English which will have better archers but they'll both have cav and archers... About balance you have to take the settings into account. SC being balanced is a fucking miracle when units have so much different stats, including things like movement speed (a zergling is twice as fast as a marine for instance). If the Mongols are so much more different than the English I'm sure they'll have faster cav, but how much, 10%? 20%? More than that and it's gonna look stupid to have horses move so much faster than other horses. I think it's gonna be much easier to balance a historical game where even if every unit *is* different there won't be extremes like in SC. Extreme unit stats are usually the biggest points for balance. In SC, there need to be chokes at bases for Terran and Protoss so they can wall-off zerglings, and the siege tank range is considered by every map creator because being able to hit one base from a safe position with one is a big deal as other races won't be able to retaliate. Longbows won't have twice the range of standard archers... If they go with the Mongols having no 4th age the game is gonna be harder to balance I agree. Will it make some civs one-trick poneys? It's too soon to say. Maybe their plan will be to take map control in feudal and castle age and deny the enemy important ressources like gold and stone. If you can prevent the English from using their 4th age units because they can't afford them, well you can have an even late-game. Maybe it's gooing to be impossible to design with random maps though, and maybe they'll have to go...but random or not remember maps can make weird designs work as shown by SC1 and SC2, which were NOT balanced when they came out and got balanced a lot through the maps (expecially BW which was patched very little).
i agree, i dont think the civs will be as asymmetrical as you think. I think that each civ will have the same types of units. i.e infantry, light cav, etc. but I think that what the devs mean is that every civ will have unique versions of those units, or even buildings. Aoe 3 vanilla wasn't as asymmetrical as that, since each civ had pikemen, skirmishers, hussars etc. Now imagine if each civ had unique versions of those units and buildings. In aoe 4, Mongols might not have a tc and train units from huts instead of requiring buildings like the english. I think the way that they will do this will make or break the game. In starcraft, a terran marine vs a protoss zealot is wayyyyyy different. The marine is ranged vs a zealot having a shield before taking damage and is melee. In aoe 4, it would be easier to balance, as even if each unit was different, the unit types would be the same. It would be much more like a zealot vs zealot.
If civs are too similar, games feel too repetitive too me. I kinda get bored of aoe 2 sometimes. And relic can’t just appeal to the competitive audience. There’s lots of games that don’t have a competitive player base but are still really great games. Like old Zelda games.
LordPeachew I like that there’s a bigger focus on hunting in aoe 3. I would like it if aoe 4 followed that path. The only hard thing is that there following the aoe 2 model so you have to return resources back to a windmill or town centre. Maybe if there was an upgrade at the town centre where your villagers wouldn’t have to return the food back to your town centre when hunting and as they gather it it would pop up in your resources stock pile.
Fazmoze I liked the home shipments too in the video he says to made it feel like you were building a town instead of a empire but you really are all ways building a city or a few cities at best. The home city with its build orders and high tier units really helped make every civ feel different and bigger than what’s shown on screen
dwarfplayer I wouldn’t say it’s harder with getting new players into the game. Aoe 3 has quite unique civs especially if u include the dlc. when I was a beginner and I first played aoe 3 it was still easy and fun to play. I first played it when I was 5. So if a 5 year old can play a game with unique civs so can everyone els. Also more unique civs gives a fame better replay ability. I’ve gotten bored of aoe 2 but not 3. I think there both good games though.
You could just pick one or two civs for online competitive play and then so that ur not missing out on the rest of the game you could try out other civs with casual online games with your friends or on single player.
I don't like the SC 1 and SC 2 comparison. SC2 is just not a starcraft game, its a glorified action game with starcraft names. SC really should've went the "use previous game as foundation" route, that added things (Rather than replacing a bunch of things with pointless more generic clones)
Wait, StarCraft 2 innovated too much from the original? Cause most of the changes were pretty small things. A new unit with a new ability, or maybe a new macro mechanic, like calling down Mules. It wasn't like Blizzard introduced a Relic style counter system, or cover, or heroes. What, is terrible pathfinding a feature, not a bug? Or maybe they should have workers need a double click to mine minerals!
Maybe they will make 3 or 4 "asymmetrical" factions, and then distribute the civilizations among those, each getting certain buffs like in AoE2, but still retaining stuff from their particular faction? (like "European cultures", "Middle Eastern cultures", etc, are factions, while "Spanish", "English", "Turks"/"ottomans", "Persians", are civilizations distributed between the factions.)
Claudio Fabián that’d probably be best
similarly to age of mythology, you don't have to specialise in that either
I was thinking the same thing, that you might have a European culture specializing in heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, a middle eastern one with cavalry archers and light cavalry, and an "Asian" or "Eastern" that's like an all rounder type tech tree or something like that, then have unique units like longbows and samurai and slightly different tech trees. You could even have mostly similar cultural tech trees with a few cultural unique units, like having horse archers for the middle eastern factions, or man at arms for Europeans.
Isn't that how AoE3 kinda works
22:48 They have changed it now but if it were the case , them the Mongols would actually be at an advantage as they can match the power of other civs' late game without needing to spend any resources and time on advancing to imp
Getting the right "number" of civs correct is an interesting question. A large part of Aoe2's multiplayer is 4v4 TGs, whereas I don't think many other RTS games have this heavy focus on TGs. I wonder how many civs are required for supporting 4v4s. If there are only 8 civs, then every 4v4 game would be repeating the same civilizations over and over and over again.
One thing that could work (which is kind of how I was expecting it from what I'd heard previously) would be if you have maybe two or three civ types, and then a number of civs within each one. Nomadic civs and more static civs, for example.
I was hype about the assymetric civs. Major buzz kill, bro.
Interesting points on the potential effect on the community which might come from very different factions.
I think all AOE4 civs will fall into 3 or 4 archetypes such that European castle civs play very differently from nomadic civs. Basically civs within the archetype are symmetrical but between archetypes they're asymmetrical.
I actually think the card system is (a) something they should carry over and (b) is a means of providing balance opportunities. Certainly, using cards in such a system would surely increase the need to be aware of the cards (requiring more game knowledge) and would probably create a situation where everyone is basically compelled to use certain cards in their deck for certain match ups (reducing variety) /but/ I think it's a question of how to design the cards. In particular, I wouldn't use resource shipments and I'd have unit shipments mostly be geared towards defensive purposes (so they become a bit like minutemen), instead using cards as an alternative form of research... effectively choosing new paths for the same civ. With a card system, mirror match ups can become very, very different systems... potentially with multiple viable meta options (based on AOE III that's a more theoretical prospect).
As you might expect, I'm a big fan of AOEIII but I don't play it properly. Consequently, I try strange things like British Grenadiers. There's a card called Improved Grenades or something that basically means Brits have Fortress or even Industrial level siege damage available in Colonial. And it opens up the prospect of absolutely crazy games. Playing around with cards is fun and I'm sure it's also fun for people who try and solve a balance problem natively too. Getting cards added to the game with patches in an attempt to address balance problems would add to this as people try and see if the interaction with existing cards actually had the intended outcomes.
Something like that anyway.
I think the team-focus of Age games means that there is plenty space for a greater level of asymmetry between factions than we've seen before without providing too much cognitive load. The MTG colour wheel is a great example, there are 5 "factions" or colours, which can be combined in whichever way the player sees fit. Each of the colours has its own unique character that is different from the others and no one can possibly understand all of the different card interactions just within one specific colour, let alone between all the different combinations and matchups. But even so it is very common for players to switch between colours regularly whenever they feel that they want more variety in their play. Even if you have no idea what cards are in your opponents deck, you know that if they are playing pure red for instance that you can expect a large number of direct damage spells and adjust your play accordingly.
Have you heard of 0 A.D. it's a AoE inspired RTS with some very unique concepts. while I doubt I could convince you to review it due to your policy of not reviewing games before going gold and it being in open source infinite development, I think it would be worth your time to explore.
That game looks pretty cool
@@fazmoze5626 It's been a while since I played it but it /is/ cool. I also think it's harder to figure out than Age of Empires. But I'm no great shakes at AOE.
What about Cossacks 3? :-)
Yay! Another video, thanx!!
Also, I played CoH2, and I never really kept myself to only one faction. I would say I played every faction and at worse, I was below average in some of them, but not "Bad". The appeal for me of that system is trying out the other factions you are very likely to face, and know what they are capable of doing and more or less when. If you marry to only one faction, you are bound to lose more than if you played a bit of every faction.
I find your comparison to fighting games and MOBAs at 12:00 to be kind of contrary to your point. Fighting games and MOBAs are both strong examples of *asymmetrical* balance.
I think all your fears about being locked to one faction only are quite groundless.
What I understood from the interview you linked is that there will be very unique civilization models (or templates) like in Starcraft and within that there will be some variety like in AoE2.
For example the Britons will be part of the Western European template (with the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire maybe ?) and the Mongols will be from the nomadic templates (with the Huns and others). Other templates could be: Native merican civs, middle-eastern, asiatic, etc... So even if you have to stick to one template you'll have variation within it, like the Franks will have better cav than the English which will have better archers but they'll both have cav and archers...
About balance you have to take the settings into account. SC being balanced is a fucking miracle when units have so much different stats, including things like movement speed (a zergling is twice as fast as a marine for instance). If the Mongols are so much more different than the English I'm sure they'll have faster cav, but how much, 10%? 20%? More than that and it's gonna look stupid to have horses move so much faster than other horses. I think it's gonna be much easier to balance a historical game where even if every unit *is* different there won't be extremes like in SC.
Extreme unit stats are usually the biggest points for balance. In SC, there need to be chokes at bases for Terran and Protoss so they can wall-off zerglings, and the siege tank range is considered by every map creator because being able to hit one base from a safe position with one is a big deal as other races won't be able to retaliate.
Longbows won't have twice the range of standard archers...
If they go with the Mongols having no 4th age the game is gonna be harder to balance I agree. Will it make some civs one-trick poneys? It's too soon to say.
Maybe their plan will be to take map control in feudal and castle age and deny the enemy important ressources like gold and stone. If you can prevent the English from using their 4th age units because they can't afford them, well you can have an even late-game.
Maybe it's gooing to be impossible to design with random maps though, and maybe they'll have to go...but random or not remember maps can make weird designs work as shown by SC1 and SC2, which were NOT balanced when they came out and got balanced a lot through the maps (expecially BW which was patched very little).
i agree, i dont think the civs will be as asymmetrical as you think. I think that each civ will have the same types of units. i.e infantry, light cav, etc. but I think that what the devs mean is that every civ will have unique versions of those units, or even buildings. Aoe 3 vanilla wasn't as asymmetrical as that, since each civ had pikemen, skirmishers, hussars etc. Now imagine if each civ had unique versions of those units and buildings. In aoe 4, Mongols might not have a tc and train units from huts instead of requiring buildings like the english. I think the way that they will do this will make or break the game. In starcraft, a terran marine vs a protoss zealot is wayyyyyy different. The marine is ranged vs a zealot having a shield before taking damage and is melee. In aoe 4, it would be easier to balance, as even if each unit was different, the unit types would be the same. It would be much more like a zealot vs zealot.
If civs are too similar, games feel too repetitive too me. I kinda get bored of aoe 2 sometimes. And relic can’t just appeal to the competitive audience. There’s lots of games that don’t have a competitive player base but are still really great games. Like old Zelda games.
Age of the empires 3 would be my model
LordPeachew I like that there’s a bigger focus on hunting in aoe 3. I would like it if aoe 4 followed that path. The only hard thing is that there following the aoe 2 model so you have to return resources back to a windmill or town centre. Maybe if there was an upgrade at the town centre where your villagers wouldn’t have to return the food back to your town centre when hunting and as they gather it it would pop up in your resources stock pile.
I also like the city shipments in aoe 3. It adds a sense of progression and makes things less repetitive.
Fazmoze I liked the home shipments too in the video he says to made it feel like you were building a town instead of a empire but you really are all ways building a city or a few cities at best. The home city with its build orders and high tier units really helped make every civ feel different and bigger than what’s shown on screen
I don’t like super similar civs personally. I hope their pretty different in aoe 4
dwarfplayer I wouldn’t say it’s harder with getting new players into the game. Aoe 3 has quite unique civs especially if u include the dlc. when I was a beginner and I first played aoe 3 it was still easy and fun to play. I first played it when I was 5. So if a 5 year old can play a game with unique civs so can everyone els. Also more unique civs gives a fame better replay ability. I’ve gotten bored of aoe 2 but not 3. I think there both good games though.
You could just pick one or two civs for online competitive play and then so that ur not missing out on the rest of the game you could try out other civs with casual online games with your friends or on single player.
I don't like the SC 1 and SC 2 comparison.
SC2 is just not a starcraft game, its a glorified action game with starcraft names.
SC really should've went the "use previous game as foundation" route, that added things (Rather than replacing a bunch of things with pointless more generic clones)
Yeah let's keep outdated mechanics and clumsy AI in modern games
youre just completely wrong mate
Didn't know genwhiners migrated from Pokémon to Starcraft.
Wait, StarCraft 2 innovated too much from the original? Cause most of the changes were pretty small things. A new unit with a new ability, or maybe a new macro mechanic, like calling down Mules. It wasn't like Blizzard introduced a Relic style counter system, or cover, or heroes. What, is terrible pathfinding a feature, not a bug? Or maybe they should have workers need a double click to mine minerals!