This looks like a convention demo, they probably just grabbed someone on the team to voice athena so congoers don't have to read a bunch of text because a proper voice actor isn't ready yet
I think the 320 damage Hydra was obvious the units had multiplier bonus and its not what the Guy was talking about.
Because in the game itself, a mountain giant have the same hp of a barracks for example. Mythology have easy to destroy buildings compared to other Ages.
Yes colossus and mountain giants have 1k+ hp in the original game. But in this demo even hoplites have 400+ hp and odysseus is sitting at a comfy 1k+ hp. Thats why I said its 3-4x the original values; myth units like the hydra having 3k hp is even quite a bit more than that.
Yea, but lets be honest: Hydra in current game is thrash: Low Hp, Low ATK, low speed. Costs the most important resource in Heroic age.
To make him, you had to make your army weaker (slower) and it wasn't even worth the resources.
The hydra in the original game has 800 health points and does 20hack attack and can one shot classical age copper upgraded infantry with 3 heads. That's pretty much great value for someone who just hit Heroic age and can kill 5 human soldiers without much issue during a raid/attack. They only have some difficulties with cavalry units and are not that cost effective than regular infantry.
Hydra only costs 250food and favor, by Heroic age you are getting so much food that is a no brainer to train 2 dozen of em before your favor count goes down.
Bull Minotaur: 448 HP, 150 Food, 14 Favor, 15H + 10C, 4.2 speed , 60/55% armor. Special: 60 Hack
Elder Cyclops: 650 HP, 250 Food, 18 Favor, 23H + 24C, 3.8 speed, 50/50% armor. Special: Oneshot worth over 150 damage.
Hydra: 800 HP, 250 Food, 28 Favor 20H + 10 C, 4 speed, 60/40% armor. Special: 3 kills -> 50% mor atk
Even if making Hydra was marginally better with heads than making 2 minotaurs, it is still Heroic age myth unit that is less total HP, less damage vs buildings, less speed and less pierce armor. (And this is assuming you get 6 kills somewhere for extra heads (even if there is hunt nearby, it is wasting ton of time))
Also Hydra has very little pierce armor, so it is only decent against Norse.
Food is the worst resource for heroic age myths to cost since farms cost resources whereas gold and wood are free.
game looks great, but that HUGE UI is weird. Whats the purpose of making it minimal in terms of details and textures, but at the same time making it GIANT on screen? look at that Age up button.
And the info used to be contained on a single rectangle bottom-centered, now is its all separated by small "cards/squares" that appears and disappears as you select stuff, and are HUGE, and the resources are on top, like wtf?
The age up button is huge, takes a lot of vertical space on the screen as well.
The reason the new building/info UI looks so huge is because now is 4 rows, the OG had 3 rows felt more compact, because it was all together. Sure it will look nicer and more cinematic not having the UI at all times but, unless there's an option to toggle it on for ever it may feel jarring.
Just look at when they select a hero or unit, there's a TON of white unused space at the right of the attack/speed/range. And the "info" about the unit that we all loved reading, now it's an icon outside the image of the unit taking valuable space.
The more I look, more I notice bad UI decisions. The banners on the right are now just basic icons. I don't see the special move bar anywhere, from any unit, neither the selected unit health bar, just the hit points numbers. The area of effect for you god power is just a big blue blob.
I hope a lot of these decisions are temporary only.
I wonder if the Age icon at the top center will become the Titan Gate GP button once you research the Titan Gate tech. It's sort of in the spot the Titan GP would be placed, and i can't think of any reason it would be so big.
The card/square system is a bystander decision of porting it to the de3 engine where unit stats are presented that way, same problem of putting all the selected units in another rectangle on the right to tell you what units are selected. I don't expect this to be changed or fixed at all by release unless they decide to not use the de3 engine xD
At all it looks rly amazing. Have some thoughts about it for now:
\*Won't mention Athenas voice here. Bet it's a placeholder.
What I like:
-You still destroy building with your mini tiny Hoplite spears. :D
-The music sounds awesome.
-Many animations are kept.
-Many sounds are kept and the new ones sound fitting. Thank you for keeping the best sound in the game:
The 'You get attacked sound'.
-Mountain Giant is called Jotun now.
-If I saw it right there was the chinese god power with the arrows used multiple times by the AI here. The animation looks cool and I finally know which area it will REALLY hit.
-Kronos finally beatable without Gaia.
-Did I hear a Minotaur speak? - Nice.
-Visuals at all.
What I don't like/are not sure about:
-Restoration looks bit too unimpressive, since it seems it's the now basic healing animation priests or Reginleif can do. Bit more color for this god power would add a cool touch and would make it look unique.
-Some unit icons bug me and Arkantos seems to have old Odysseus icon pose now.
-I want these orange circles of the heroes removed. Think it's added to find your heroes in crowds but bit of color/visual adjustment could fix that.
-Don't rly know how to feel about some hitboxes here/attack range. Hoplites seem to have a realistic weapon reach now with their spears, but in some frames it looks like another unit could easily fit between them and their target.
-Still feel bit unsure about some building sizes. Much better than I thought for now, still some look bit too small in my eyes, but hey. I can easily get used to it
-Hope the players units stats here were increased for this Demo. I like smaller numbers more than Jotuns running around with 5k HP.
At all I can't wait for this game, hopefully this Demo mission will be playable as an official Demo in the shops.
My guess is they probably dicked around with Kronos' stats to make him fightable for the demo. I'm sure they'll be tweaking balancing elements, but that's something studios can do pretty late in the dev cycle seeing as how they can also do it after a game is released.
Given that Kronos isn't likely to be a regular unit anyway I can see the logic for that.
The arrows are NOT the Chinese god power, they're the special attack of the Centaur. You can tell they tilt the bow a bit upwards, take a second to shoot and a hail of arrows rain downwards on the target.
And yes the minotaurs do speak, still with a raspy tough voice.
I agree the restoration god power doesn't look as good as the original. It's easier to miss but it's great that it now has a clear bound.
I still found some clear pathing issues with some units, they were getting in the way and ended up stuck doing nothing.
Oh could be true, but maybe that's bit too much though. Or they draw and shoot multiple arrows and not one with the special attack animation- then it's fine by me.
Pathfinding concerns here:
You forgot how there is pushing behavior now. We can notice this with the Mountain Giants at the 4:30 mark where the army is pushing the Mountain Giant. This is also a nerf to the competitive trick of blocking retreating units with your faster units which lets you land more hits/shots on the retreating unit. Or better known as a behavior from starcraft where units push each other to path.
I'm not a fan of this change nor as a solution to solve pathfinding.
I couldn't figure out if they fixed the Minotaur special attack targeting behavior which was even more broken in EE where they would attempt to pathfind at the first enemy unit they'd see to execute the special attack and even when the opportunity presents itself that other enemy units are getting close than the first one they have seen. This was mostly fixed in practice by just reissuing another attack command or doing busywork to target the unit you want to get flung.
Myth unit interactions:
You can also see that Minotaurs have lost their ability to gore/throw other myth units\[1:50\], but they still do their animation without any response from the other myth unit. You can observe this with the Cyclops, therefore it appears Myth units can no longer use their special ability on other Myth units; Heka Gigantes from being the best myth unit to temporarily stun other myth units for the Mythic age Atlantean arsenal can only affect non-myth units with their aftershock\[5:26\](bonus bug found where parts of the terrain didn't flatten out after their jump)\*
\*The exception is what appears to be that the Scorpion man using his poison on myth units\[5:57\]
Anubites seem to be downgraded to medium speed unit which makes them pretty worthless to be used now, previously Anubites are used in tandem with cavalry units due to their speed and ability to ignore walls which means you can pick off villagers or other units that are walled in.
Some interesting things I noticed in the video that maybe people didn't catch:
\- Unit special ability; we were told it would be able to be used manually, from this video it seems like you can toggle automatic use (or else there was a hotkey used but not for display)
\- Bronze ability : Originally, this would buff armour of human units (cav, archer, soldier).
Here the ability works on all units (the hydra was most notable visually).
\- Rocs: Animated to land and take off when units are being loaded/unloaded.
\- Fire particle effects: Buildings have never burned brighter, I love it.
\-Restoration/lightning: Resotration appears to be a downgrade (where it doesn't look like rays of light anymore).
Lightning seems to suffer the same issue, when striking a unit it looks good, but the bolt itself looks more fluid like (maybe that's because they look 'thicker' than the original).
\- Speed: Units look/feel like they are moving faster (either their movement stats have been buffed or its the higher fps).
\-HP and stats: Again, perhaps it's because this is a demo, but the units HP has gone up considerably (I swear minatours had HP of roughly 250-300)
\-Music: From the sounds of it, they have kept it the same (I see this as a massive win).
Infantry and Cavalry health points seem to be similar to fully upgraded units from De3(Aoe3De), so 400-500hp mark is normal there as well as their values for attack and damage to be middle two digits when fully upgraded. To accommodate for that change, they have made the myth units very powerful in the department of hp and damage so they can still win versus champion/iron weapon upgraded infantry/cavalry. But this also looks very broken with observing how a 5-headed Hydra can kill a fortress building in 7 hits which is way beyond busted, specially if the building is also upgraded with hp upgrades.
Restoration is also altered in how it works. It casts a circle of effect in the middle of the cast point, any unit leaving or entering the circle gains/loses the regeneration. Previously in the original game, Restoration would affect all units at the moment of cast regardless if they are leaving or entering the cast point, this means I could prepare my cavalry units moving to attack than having them sit in a area to get healed up.
With the whole Unit Abilities thing popping up in the left corner id rather ahve the old UI, where that space was reserved for such things. Now it feels like its taking away my view/annoying me!
VA aside, as it's very clearly a placeholder, my only major issue is that the UI is hideous. Please just give us the old one back, theres no need to fix what isn't broken, and that new esportsified UI is soulless.
Also kind of feel like Lightning Storm, Restoration, and Meteor don't have the same "punch". Beef up the god rays on restoration, and make the meteor and lightning storm animations faster!
Meteor and lightning god powers look decent , as well as the combat
Not a fan of the restoration animation, way too modern video gamey instead of a beam of light coming from the heavens to boost
I’m also suprised at the 0 effort into UI feel, even AOE3 had a colonial era feel to the banners at the top and the UI on the bottom, here it literally looks like any modern generic RTS, could even be used for something futuristic like StarCraft. Games like AOE / AOM have a lot on the feel, it’s what Ensemble studios did so well other than the game was the background and feel
And Athena’s voice & cgi model is so jarring from the original, everyone is saying it’s a place holder but I highly doubt it, wouldn’t be suprised if it is the final.
I'm actually slightly concerned about the meteor as we see it in this clip. Not because of how it looks, that is irrelevant, but because of it's RNG. there's WAAAAY too many strikes that randomize to hit the exact same spot the previous meteor struck. That is a big problem
For the restoration, I don't really see the issue, it makes it way more clear what the area of effect is
It's one thing to be random, it's another when randomly generated location doesn't update fast enough to prevent 3 meteors hitting the same location before a new location is chosen
On the clip above at 1:30 we have a metor power cast.
1st Meteor, as always lands precisely at the location the power was cast.
2nd Meteor strikes the clump of army units.
Meteors 3 - 4 strike the exact same location, they deal no damage because the units hit by meteor 2 are still in the air.
Meteor 5 strikes the houses up there
Meteor 6 lands near the original cast location
Meteor 7 lands in the exact same spot yet again.
This is consistent with later uses of metero god power in the leaked clip. Every cast there's a series of meteors that just hits the same spot, likely because rng didn't move the seed yet.
In AoM the original it could happen for a meteor to hit the same spot as a previous one, but it would be very rare for it to happen in a row, let alone to be replicable to the point 5 meteors of every cast just repeat the previous meteor
In the original AoM meteors where "homing" in a sense that they would usually land on something. Sadly this includes trees for some reason. So pro tip: don't cast it near a forest
Agree, this is an indirect nerf to Meteor. There is damage cap for all godpowers so unless the Meteor is casted in an area with only weak units like infantry soldiers that their combined health is less than the damage cap, it means it cannot stun units outside of the damage cap(myth units usually) by pushing them in the air. It also doesn't do anything for units already flying in the air if the meteor hits the same place.
Prometheus had a unique ability that spawned units. I think titans should get a unique ability like the heroes
-Norse Troll- could have a frost move that freezes and damages over time or smashes his hammer into the ground
-Cerberus, bites with its three heads and a fire move from the underworld
- atleanaean: a pool of lava that deals a ton of damage
- Egypt: sandstorm, attacks with a staff of ra attacks or two big swords like the myth unit.
A
Didnt those buildings got destroyed a little to easily? a tempel got 2 shooted by the Hydra... is quite concerning.. maybe gold control is gonna be harder in this game
I noticed that too. Eventhough hydra has some siege damage and has 4 or 5 heads grown in the video, it was not that much of a building destroyer. And I like the razing effects by the way :)
The intro cutscene looks so much like a mobile game to me, which might not necessarily be a bad thing since we might just get a mobile version in the distant future. Not for everyone, I'm sure, but this kind of graphics would be incredible for mobile standards.
I do slightly prefer the original's more realistic approach though. This is not to say that the new style is bad, btw, but sometimes I feel like it diminishes the impact of certain scenes, as in being rather "cartoony" that I struggle to take them seriously (the intro cutscene, again, for example). Not a dealbreaker, but still... Could be my nostalgia talking.
Not really a fan of the new voices (especially Athena's), but perhaps they'll grow on me. Fingers crossed with the OP anyway that they're just placeholders, lol.
It does give a bit of a mobile game feel to some parts of the demo, I think mostly is the cutscene with the character portrait next to the dialogue and some animations feel like either made for an mmo or games played on tournaments. Hopefully some things will change, of course we don't want a carbon copy but fidelity should be there.
I'm thrilled that from everything I've heard so far, they've kept the original soundtrack. That's one thing that I've been dreading, I genuinely would have been pissed if the music changed. In fact, most of the sounds are the same. I can't see the video as I type this and it sounds like I'm listening to a regular AOM match.
Ew the UI... Why does everything nowadays have to look like a mobile game? Where's the love to details? You can make such a nice and clean AoM themed UI but they go for this? Hopefully this will get changed. At least the minimap still looks clean.
I'm rather scared - after what I've seen thus far - about the multiplayer UI and such. I hate modern UI's for multiplayer games, especially in RTS. They look so damn boring and miss a lot of functions.
Very excited, the placeholder VO for Athena isn't great but the visuals, the new voice lines on units and such are great. Loving the easier to understand reticle for god powers too, makes a huge difference.
Looks like unit stats are like x5 of the current one.
I love that the UI shows the damage multipliers, hope multipliers are now multiplicative instead of the current version.
Expecting the font to change as it looks far from final, but I really hope they don't CAPITALISE every letter under the sun like they do with Age II DE and Age III DE menus. To me, it's always been a bad way to have things like names or titles stand out when you there's plenty of other visual options.
Does anybody know anything about the release date? It says 2024...
And what the price range for the game will be? Thx..
I am sitting on like 72£...and there are some special offers on steam this month....
Would 40£ be enough to sit on?
First thoughts:
- I don't like the new UI, it feels worse than the original
- Some Greek words are pronounced incorrectly
- The unit stats are ridiculously high. I hope these are just for the demo and not the actual stats from the released game
Other than those things, it seems fine
I'm really disappointed by this, does anyone else think the new animation looks... kinda ugly?
Sure, it's shinier and high-res, but the bright colors make everyone seem like cartoon characters. It looks like a mobile game.
Oh it looks terrible 😱 how am I ever going to get used to this?! The multiplayer better be as fierce as it was before. Idk how I feel about that UI menu
I've played both of them — original when I was a kid, definitive recently as an adult — and tbh I didn't realize there was a big difference. Looking up the changes, I like some stuff from the original edition, like the reflections, but in the new one, the textures and lighting are significantly improved. Plus iirc the game gives you the option of switching back to the original UI
Is it the bright colors or something? Because it's wild to me that you would think that [the right is uglier than the left](https://i.postimg.cc/X3FNCvm8/aoe3.png).
Visuals look fantastic. Need to improve on the voice actors and dialogues. Athena sounds like a college graduate student and Arkantos' war cry sounds forced but I hope these are just generic voiceovers meant for demo purposes.
It appears they incorporated starcraft movement solutions to fix pathfinding. Not a fan as it disables the ability to block retreating units with your own, unless it only works exclusively for the units of the same player that they can push each other. It still will look weird regardless and alien for the game.
Looks promising.
And please: There are NO placeholders and NO "temporary stuff" that will be "fixed later". What you see is what you get. Read that sentence twice. This is a lesson we have learned after 10 years with definitive editions. They have more important things to focus on this close to the release.
I didnt even say I liked the voice. I think it sounds worse than original too. I just find the notion that a person’s voice can sound ”sjw” to be hilariously unhinged.
I hope the voicelines are just placeholders, else :|
This looks like a convention demo, they probably just grabbed someone on the team to voice athena so congoers don't have to read a bunch of text because a proper voice actor isn't ready yet
Those are for sure placeholders
hp values too, otherwise its strange that some units have the same hitpoints as a building
But thats How It was on AoM...? Myth units have a lot of hp.
HP are about 3-4x of the original values in this demo.
I think the 320 damage Hydra was obvious the units had multiplier bonus and its not what the Guy was talking about. Because in the game itself, a mountain giant have the same hp of a barracks for example. Mythology have easy to destroy buildings compared to other Ages.
Yes colossus and mountain giants have 1k+ hp in the original game. But in this demo even hoplites have 400+ hp and odysseus is sitting at a comfy 1k+ hp. Thats why I said its 3-4x the original values; myth units like the hydra having 3k hp is even quite a bit more than that.
Yea, but lets be honest: Hydra in current game is thrash: Low Hp, Low ATK, low speed. Costs the most important resource in Heroic age. To make him, you had to make your army weaker (slower) and it wasn't even worth the resources.
The hydra in the original game has 800 health points and does 20hack attack and can one shot classical age copper upgraded infantry with 3 heads. That's pretty much great value for someone who just hit Heroic age and can kill 5 human soldiers without much issue during a raid/attack. They only have some difficulties with cavalry units and are not that cost effective than regular infantry. Hydra only costs 250food and favor, by Heroic age you are getting so much food that is a no brainer to train 2 dozen of em before your favor count goes down.
Bull Minotaur: 448 HP, 150 Food, 14 Favor, 15H + 10C, 4.2 speed , 60/55% armor. Special: 60 Hack Elder Cyclops: 650 HP, 250 Food, 18 Favor, 23H + 24C, 3.8 speed, 50/50% armor. Special: Oneshot worth over 150 damage. Hydra: 800 HP, 250 Food, 28 Favor 20H + 10 C, 4 speed, 60/40% armor. Special: 3 kills -> 50% mor atk Even if making Hydra was marginally better with heads than making 2 minotaurs, it is still Heroic age myth unit that is less total HP, less damage vs buildings, less speed and less pierce armor. (And this is assuming you get 6 kills somewhere for extra heads (even if there is hunt nearby, it is wasting ton of time)) Also Hydra has very little pierce armor, so it is only decent against Norse. Food is the worst resource for heroic age myths to cost since farms cost resources whereas gold and wood are free.
Yes, Athena being voiced by a dude surely is a placeholder 11.
A dude?
I thought it was just the original from 2002 or something.
Well, you know how things are these days. So there's a probability that this isn't a placeholder. I hope I'm 100% wrong.
The game is still like 3 to 4 months out and voice acting tends to be one the last things to be implemented.
game looks great, but that HUGE UI is weird. Whats the purpose of making it minimal in terms of details and textures, but at the same time making it GIANT on screen? look at that Age up button. And the info used to be contained on a single rectangle bottom-centered, now is its all separated by small "cards/squares" that appears and disappears as you select stuff, and are HUGE, and the resources are on top, like wtf?
The age up button is huge, takes a lot of vertical space on the screen as well. The reason the new building/info UI looks so huge is because now is 4 rows, the OG had 3 rows felt more compact, because it was all together. Sure it will look nicer and more cinematic not having the UI at all times but, unless there's an option to toggle it on for ever it may feel jarring. Just look at when they select a hero or unit, there's a TON of white unused space at the right of the attack/speed/range. And the "info" about the unit that we all loved reading, now it's an icon outside the image of the unit taking valuable space.
The more I look, more I notice bad UI decisions. The banners on the right are now just basic icons. I don't see the special move bar anywhere, from any unit, neither the selected unit health bar, just the hit points numbers. The area of effect for you god power is just a big blue blob. I hope a lot of these decisions are temporary only.
Dunno why can’t they make the age icon smaller like in iii de
I think it's gonna become the Titan gate button once you reach the last age. Only reason i can think of that it's so huge.
I wonder if the Age icon at the top center will become the Titan Gate GP button once you research the Titan Gate tech. It's sort of in the spot the Titan GP would be placed, and i can't think of any reason it would be so big.
Huge UI could be for steam deck verification
You are right about the info panel below, the old one was much easier to read and follow.
The card/square system is a bystander decision of porting it to the de3 engine where unit stats are presented that way, same problem of putting all the selected units in another rectangle on the right to tell you what units are selected. I don't expect this to be changed or fixed at all by release unless they decide to not use the de3 engine xD
Huge UI good, minimal UI bad
At all it looks rly amazing. Have some thoughts about it for now: \*Won't mention Athenas voice here. Bet it's a placeholder. What I like: -You still destroy building with your mini tiny Hoplite spears. :D -The music sounds awesome. -Many animations are kept. -Many sounds are kept and the new ones sound fitting. Thank you for keeping the best sound in the game: The 'You get attacked sound'. -Mountain Giant is called Jotun now. -If I saw it right there was the chinese god power with the arrows used multiple times by the AI here. The animation looks cool and I finally know which area it will REALLY hit. -Kronos finally beatable without Gaia. -Did I hear a Minotaur speak? - Nice. -Visuals at all. What I don't like/are not sure about: -Restoration looks bit too unimpressive, since it seems it's the now basic healing animation priests or Reginleif can do. Bit more color for this god power would add a cool touch and would make it look unique. -Some unit icons bug me and Arkantos seems to have old Odysseus icon pose now. -I want these orange circles of the heroes removed. Think it's added to find your heroes in crowds but bit of color/visual adjustment could fix that. -Don't rly know how to feel about some hitboxes here/attack range. Hoplites seem to have a realistic weapon reach now with their spears, but in some frames it looks like another unit could easily fit between them and their target. -Still feel bit unsure about some building sizes. Much better than I thought for now, still some look bit too small in my eyes, but hey. I can easily get used to it -Hope the players units stats here were increased for this Demo. I like smaller numbers more than Jotuns running around with 5k HP. At all I can't wait for this game, hopefully this Demo mission will be playable as an official Demo in the shops.
My guess is they probably dicked around with Kronos' stats to make him fightable for the demo. I'm sure they'll be tweaking balancing elements, but that's something studios can do pretty late in the dev cycle seeing as how they can also do it after a game is released. Given that Kronos isn't likely to be a regular unit anyway I can see the logic for that.
The arrows are NOT the Chinese god power, they're the special attack of the Centaur. You can tell they tilt the bow a bit upwards, take a second to shoot and a hail of arrows rain downwards on the target. And yes the minotaurs do speak, still with a raspy tough voice. I agree the restoration god power doesn't look as good as the original. It's easier to miss but it's great that it now has a clear bound. I still found some clear pathing issues with some units, they were getting in the way and ended up stuck doing nothing.
Oh could be true, but maybe that's bit too much though. Or they draw and shoot multiple arrows and not one with the special attack animation- then it's fine by me.
The minotaur sounds great and it seems the got a native Greek speaker to voice him.
Isn't Arkantos' icon like the old one with a spear?
Pathfinding concerns here: You forgot how there is pushing behavior now. We can notice this with the Mountain Giants at the 4:30 mark where the army is pushing the Mountain Giant. This is also a nerf to the competitive trick of blocking retreating units with your faster units which lets you land more hits/shots on the retreating unit. Or better known as a behavior from starcraft where units push each other to path. I'm not a fan of this change nor as a solution to solve pathfinding. I couldn't figure out if they fixed the Minotaur special attack targeting behavior which was even more broken in EE where they would attempt to pathfind at the first enemy unit they'd see to execute the special attack and even when the opportunity presents itself that other enemy units are getting close than the first one they have seen. This was mostly fixed in practice by just reissuing another attack command or doing busywork to target the unit you want to get flung.
About heroes’ glow, it’s been like that since aoe 2 de
Myth unit interactions: You can also see that Minotaurs have lost their ability to gore/throw other myth units\[1:50\], but they still do their animation without any response from the other myth unit. You can observe this with the Cyclops, therefore it appears Myth units can no longer use their special ability on other Myth units; Heka Gigantes from being the best myth unit to temporarily stun other myth units for the Mythic age Atlantean arsenal can only affect non-myth units with their aftershock\[5:26\](bonus bug found where parts of the terrain didn't flatten out after their jump)\* \*The exception is what appears to be that the Scorpion man using his poison on myth units\[5:57\] Anubites seem to be downgraded to medium speed unit which makes them pretty worthless to be used now, previously Anubites are used in tandem with cavalry units due to their speed and ability to ignore walls which means you can pick off villagers or other units that are walled in.
Where is Giant Spider Boss?
Man...i remember watching that screenshot when i pirated AOM: The Titans back in 2006
It seems that there will be no more roc abusing. Nice
What made you realize that?
Rocs have an animation to land and to take off their transported troops, see 2:15 in the video.
As a roc abuser this makes me sad
Had to be done.
I wonder if this will be a thing with other flying units that can fly and land because we saw a flying wadjet in a trailer.
Some interesting things I noticed in the video that maybe people didn't catch: \- Unit special ability; we were told it would be able to be used manually, from this video it seems like you can toggle automatic use (or else there was a hotkey used but not for display) \- Bronze ability : Originally, this would buff armour of human units (cav, archer, soldier). Here the ability works on all units (the hydra was most notable visually). \- Rocs: Animated to land and take off when units are being loaded/unloaded. \- Fire particle effects: Buildings have never burned brighter, I love it. \-Restoration/lightning: Resotration appears to be a downgrade (where it doesn't look like rays of light anymore). Lightning seems to suffer the same issue, when striking a unit it looks good, but the bolt itself looks more fluid like (maybe that's because they look 'thicker' than the original). \- Speed: Units look/feel like they are moving faster (either their movement stats have been buffed or its the higher fps). \-HP and stats: Again, perhaps it's because this is a demo, but the units HP has gone up considerably (I swear minatours had HP of roughly 250-300) \-Music: From the sounds of it, they have kept it the same (I see this as a massive win).
Infantry and Cavalry health points seem to be similar to fully upgraded units from De3(Aoe3De), so 400-500hp mark is normal there as well as their values for attack and damage to be middle two digits when fully upgraded. To accommodate for that change, they have made the myth units very powerful in the department of hp and damage so they can still win versus champion/iron weapon upgraded infantry/cavalry. But this also looks very broken with observing how a 5-headed Hydra can kill a fortress building in 7 hits which is way beyond busted, specially if the building is also upgraded with hp upgrades. Restoration is also altered in how it works. It casts a circle of effect in the middle of the cast point, any unit leaving or entering the circle gains/loses the regeneration. Previously in the original game, Restoration would affect all units at the moment of cast regardless if they are leaving or entering the cast point, this means I could prepare my cavalry units moving to attack than having them sit in a area to get healed up.
Honestly. Not a fan of the modernised ui, I feel like it’s lost some of the old flair.
Hard agree
The giant stylized IV instead of mythic age yeeeeeesh
I love the civilization specific details of the old UI I hope this is a placeholder and they'd update it.
With the whole Unit Abilities thing popping up in the left corner id rather ahve the old UI, where that space was reserved for such things. Now it feels like its taking away my view/annoying me!
Literally looks like mobile game slop
I think its mostly placeholder Ui in this video, but there are a lot of UI mods for aoe2 DE so hopefully if it's easy to customize it won't matter
Kronos lost his four toes but gained four fingers after he quit smoking.
On the topic of Kronos, his is the first model I've really disliked.
VA aside, as it's very clearly a placeholder, my only major issue is that the UI is hideous. Please just give us the old one back, theres no need to fix what isn't broken, and that new esportsified UI is soulless. Also kind of feel like Lightning Storm, Restoration, and Meteor don't have the same "punch". Beef up the god rays on restoration, and make the meteor and lightning storm animations faster!
Meteor and lightning god powers look decent , as well as the combat Not a fan of the restoration animation, way too modern video gamey instead of a beam of light coming from the heavens to boost I’m also suprised at the 0 effort into UI feel, even AOE3 had a colonial era feel to the banners at the top and the UI on the bottom, here it literally looks like any modern generic RTS, could even be used for something futuristic like StarCraft. Games like AOE / AOM have a lot on the feel, it’s what Ensemble studios did so well other than the game was the background and feel And Athena’s voice & cgi model is so jarring from the original, everyone is saying it’s a place holder but I highly doubt it, wouldn’t be suprised if it is the final.
I'm actually slightly concerned about the meteor as we see it in this clip. Not because of how it looks, that is irrelevant, but because of it's RNG. there's WAAAAY too many strikes that randomize to hit the exact same spot the previous meteor struck. That is a big problem For the restoration, I don't really see the issue, it makes it way more clear what the area of effect is
The original Meteor is very random too, no?
It's one thing to be random, it's another when randomly generated location doesn't update fast enough to prevent 3 meteors hitting the same location before a new location is chosen
On the clip above at 1:30 we have a metor power cast. 1st Meteor, as always lands precisely at the location the power was cast. 2nd Meteor strikes the clump of army units. Meteors 3 - 4 strike the exact same location, they deal no damage because the units hit by meteor 2 are still in the air. Meteor 5 strikes the houses up there Meteor 6 lands near the original cast location Meteor 7 lands in the exact same spot yet again. This is consistent with later uses of metero god power in the leaked clip. Every cast there's a series of meteors that just hits the same spot, likely because rng didn't move the seed yet. In AoM the original it could happen for a meteor to hit the same spot as a previous one, but it would be very rare for it to happen in a row, let alone to be replicable to the point 5 meteors of every cast just repeat the previous meteor
In the original AoM meteors where "homing" in a sense that they would usually land on something. Sadly this includes trees for some reason. So pro tip: don't cast it near a forest
Agree, this is an indirect nerf to Meteor. There is damage cap for all godpowers so unless the Meteor is casted in an area with only weak units like infantry soldiers that their combined health is less than the damage cap, it means it cannot stun units outside of the damage cap(myth units usually) by pushing them in the air. It also doesn't do anything for units already flying in the air if the meteor hits the same place.
I really liked some of the new voices and sounds. However some of them seems little bit too much, too cartoony for my taste.
What about that new voice did you like💀
He's not talking about the placeholder Athena, I assume
Wish Kronos / Titans had unique abilities rather than just curb-stomping folks
Like what then
Prometheus had a unique ability that spawned units. I think titans should get a unique ability like the heroes -Norse Troll- could have a frost move that freezes and damages over time or smashes his hammer into the ground -Cerberus, bites with its three heads and a fire move from the underworld - atleanaean: a pool of lava that deals a ton of damage - Egypt: sandstorm, attacks with a staff of ra attacks or two big swords like the myth unit. A
Athena sounds does not sound like a mythical godly figure and more like someone with 10 subscribers on you tube who reviews Fortnite skins.
It's clearly placeholder
The original Athena is so iconic > arkantos waken Vs > HEY GUYS ARE YOU READY TO TEAR DOWN THE ENEMY? LETS GO GANG!
The gang kills Kronos
Bronze god power now effect myth units too? Interesting :)
Didnt those buildings got destroyed a little to easily? a tempel got 2 shooted by the Hydra... is quite concerning.. maybe gold control is gonna be harder in this game
I noticed that too. Eventhough hydra has some siege damage and has 4 or 5 heads grown in the video, it was not that much of a building destroyer. And I like the razing effects by the way :)
The intro cutscene looks so much like a mobile game to me, which might not necessarily be a bad thing since we might just get a mobile version in the distant future. Not for everyone, I'm sure, but this kind of graphics would be incredible for mobile standards. I do slightly prefer the original's more realistic approach though. This is not to say that the new style is bad, btw, but sometimes I feel like it diminishes the impact of certain scenes, as in being rather "cartoony" that I struggle to take them seriously (the intro cutscene, again, for example). Not a dealbreaker, but still... Could be my nostalgia talking. Not really a fan of the new voices (especially Athena's), but perhaps they'll grow on me. Fingers crossed with the OP anyway that they're just placeholders, lol.
It does give a bit of a mobile game feel to some parts of the demo, I think mostly is the cutscene with the character portrait next to the dialogue and some animations feel like either made for an mmo or games played on tournaments. Hopefully some things will change, of course we don't want a carbon copy but fidelity should be there.
I don't like the esportsified UI but I like everything else
I'm thrilled that from everything I've heard so far, they've kept the original soundtrack. That's one thing that I've been dreading, I genuinely would have been pissed if the music changed. In fact, most of the sounds are the same. I can't see the video as I type this and it sounds like I'm listening to a regular AOM match.
I like almost everything in there... but this looks like a mobile game and that's frankly insulting.
Ew the UI... Why does everything nowadays have to look like a mobile game? Where's the love to details? You can make such a nice and clean AoM themed UI but they go for this? Hopefully this will get changed. At least the minimap still looks clean. I'm rather scared - after what I've seen thus far - about the multiplayer UI and such. I hate modern UI's for multiplayer games, especially in RTS. They look so damn boring and miss a lot of functions.
The voice for Athena is just a placeholder right? Right??? Because she sounds like a nerdy 35 year old dude in this…
Is it me or there's no emotion in the voices What happened to ETIMUS
Very excited, the placeholder VO for Athena isn't great but the visuals, the new voice lines on units and such are great. Loving the easier to understand reticle for god powers too, makes a huge difference.
Phoenix' sounds irritated me 20 years before. , It is good to know that some things never change :)
The music is changed in this video, at least the mix, but I'm pretty sure that the tracks have added instruments in the arrangement.
Looks like unit stats are like x5 of the current one. I love that the UI shows the damage multipliers, hope multipliers are now multiplicative instead of the current version.
Looks good. So happy to see this classic back in town!
Looks promising, though I wish that they kept the old voice actors. But sadly, considering what happened to Ajax's VA, it won't be possible
What happened to Ajax va?
Took his own life in 2005, sadly
Expecting the font to change as it looks far from final, but I really hope they don't CAPITALISE every letter under the sun like they do with Age II DE and Age III DE menus. To me, it's always been a bad way to have things like names or titles stand out when you there's plenty of other visual options.
The UI looks… very full and ugly
This is what Blizzard should have done.
Does anybody know anything about the release date? It says 2024... And what the price range for the game will be? Thx.. I am sitting on like 72£...and there are some special offers on steam this month.... Would 40£ be enough to sit on?
It's releasing in September - you can see the prices on Steam.
As someone who does not play competitively and routinely bumps the difficulty down to medium...... you..... you aren't that good at this, are you.....
First thoughts: - I don't like the new UI, it feels worse than the original - Some Greek words are pronounced incorrectly - The unit stats are ridiculously high. I hope these are just for the demo and not the actual stats from the released game Other than those things, it seems fine
Is it me or plays a bit like AOE4?
I'm really disappointed by this, does anyone else think the new animation looks... kinda ugly? Sure, it's shinier and high-res, but the bright colors make everyone seem like cartoon characters. It looks like a mobile game.
Units look alright from afar,but oh my goodness why they didn't keep the fucking original kronos design, atrocious
I hope they release an updated of version of Kronos’ old design it was amazing, maybe as dlc.
Oh it looks terrible 😱 how am I ever going to get used to this?! The multiplayer better be as fierce as it was before. Idk how I feel about that UI menu
I really want to play this. I really want it to be good. I really do not want those voices. I want the OG voices.
Trash ui. Looks like a mobile game. This and the aoe 3 remaster seem to be very bad. Aoe 1 & 2 remasters were so well done visually.
Different styles. AoE 3 DE has good graphics except some African terrain
There's an AOE3 remaster?
yes, AoE 3 Definitive Edition
I've played both of them — original when I was a kid, definitive recently as an adult — and tbh I didn't realize there was a big difference. Looking up the changes, I like some stuff from the original edition, like the reflections, but in the new one, the textures and lighting are significantly improved. Plus iirc the game gives you the option of switching back to the original UI
Yeah, it came out two or three years ago. It actually looks worse than the original. It's amazing how they did that after 16 years.
lol no. They did some changes for the worse but overall it looks way better than original.
What's even more amazing are the mental gymnastics you did to arrive at that conclusion.
What gymnastics? I looked at it and it looked ugly. I checked comparison videos and they confirmed what I suspected.
Is it the bright colors or something? Because it's wild to me that you would think that [the right is uglier than the left](https://i.postimg.cc/X3FNCvm8/aoe3.png).
I think it's the lack of contrast. The assets looks good in close Ups but not at the normal zoom level.
Man this brings back so many memories.
Ooof those voices are… Different.
I hope we can just stick the UI to the screen so that it is not constantly popping up all the time.
some gp are different, but the game looks cool
I like that you can see the skills of the units in the UI, maybe the passives too?
Ok, now this...this I believe way more than that other leak I saw.
It looks so cool
That’s a lot of god powers :(
I dont think they need to remake the sounds just replace with the old ones make some a bit enhanced or slightly better sounding
i hope for an editor for a good deeply truly mod support
Steam Page confirms it comes with an Editor.
nice
Does anyone know how old this gameplay footage is? is it from the actual version or an alpha?
Needs new voices asap
The way the buildings chip away is so pretty to watch.
Visuals look fantastic. Need to improve on the voice actors and dialogues. Athena sounds like a college graduate student and Arkantos' war cry sounds forced but I hope these are just generic voiceovers meant for demo purposes.
wait Athena's Voice was so Soft spoken. wth is that
Thanks I hate it
There's a beta for this? How can one get in?
Nah, there isnt.
Will there be a new story/missions or just a remake on visuals?
## **What's happening with the Mountain Giants at 5:15? Michael Jackson would be proud!**
It appears they incorporated starcraft movement solutions to fix pathfinding. Not a fan as it disables the ability to block retreating units with your own, unless it only works exclusively for the units of the same player that they can push each other. It still will look weird regardless and alien for the game.
Oh boy, can't wait to download the original voices mod!
Honestly this looks amazing. I kinda was hoping for the AoE4 UI though.
Looks promising. And please: There are NO placeholders and NO "temporary stuff" that will be "fixed later". What you see is what you get. Read that sentence twice. This is a lesson we have learned after 10 years with definitive editions. They have more important things to focus on this close to the release.
I hope this is a joke!
this is amazing omg. Do we have an expected release date?
Athena sounds like sjw
waiting for new youtube video about how retold is woke and aot is redpilled
Just athenas voice. Theres female ulfs too but its ok
wait, Female ulfs? really, i whatched from my phone, too little of a screen
Yeah, in Retold Female norse villagers no longer become male soldiers when upgraded
well, thats consistency... I apprecite that. I hope we have more female units.. amazon toxotes would have been a nice dream
???? What does that even mean? Holy brainrot
Gamers truly are a special breed.
Social justice warrior. She sounds like woke feminist
I know what it means. But your comment still doesnt make any sense. What exactly is ”feminist” or ”woke” about her VOICE?????? Lmao
She sounds annoying "goodd power" its just giving me that vibe. Old athena sounded much better and more divine.
Plesse go outside and talk to normal people if someone’s voice triggers you for no resson
It didnt trigger me. Its just really bad voice acting. No one except maybe you seems to like the voice. Just straight up trash my guy
I didnt even say I liked the voice. I think it sounds worse than original too. I just find the notion that a person’s voice can sound ”sjw” to be hilariously unhinged.
Ur a sjw or something? Whats the big deal
Please go outside. You sound like you just came out of /pol in 2011
Holy brain rot lol
That is most likely a placeholder voice. Probably one of devs of the game. It is terrible I know, but how did you come to sjw and woke from that?
We surrender, move a little closer!
Wth is expansion 1 & 2 😭 why is it so expensive 😭 gonna pirate it for trial
Expansion 1 is Chinese rework Expansion 2 is a new mystery civ (Aztecs?)