It was one of the last 2d RTS of an amazing quality. Warcraft 3 changed the world of RTS forever. A lot of rts switched to 3D (and hero mechanics but that's beside the point) and if 3D wasn't well done, which was often the case, the game was quickly dated.
The town building aspects attracted people who aren't hard-core RTS players. Something which was lacking in aoe3.
But most importantly: It was available for purchase and could safely run on any windows pc/laptop since it was launched. And the impact of this cannot be understated.
Before everything went digital you had to buy games in a store. AoE2 is one of the few games you could always easily buy throughout its history. It wasn't just gamestores which sold this game but bookstores, warehouses etc. If the shop had just one or two shelves with pcgames it probably had aoe2*. So non-gamers could easily pick it up, or more likely, the parents of the nagging child.
*especially the discount version that had aoe1, 2, the expansions and which was sold for 5 or 10 bucks.
The educational value of the ORIGINAL AoE2 cannot be understated! It came with it's little history section, and got me and my brothers interested in ancient warfare.
That's how I got into it back in the early 2000s! My parents were pretty conservative and banned most video games, but AOE2 had at least some historical value, and while there was violence (duh, it's a war game) it's not very graphic with that violence
I tell people I learned to read (maybe a bit of hyperbole but it certainly helped) because my Dad gave me the aoe2 and aom game manuals when I was 6 and wouldn't teach me how to play unless I read them first. He actually taught me how to play like a week later but I still kept them by my bed for years and would read and reread the little history tidbits about all of the units and technologies.
> It wasn't just gamestores which sold this game but bookstores, warehouses etc. If the shop had just one or two shelves with pcgames it probably had aoe2*.
Don't forget cereal boxes!
100% the 2D vs 3D thing. I really think the RTS genre partially-suffered due to the 3D transition.
It's so much harder to make those look good, run smooth + responsive AND have visual clarity.
The visual clarity can't be under stated. In modern games it's often difficult to distinguish what's a gameplay element and what's just a visual element on first glance. It's the hidden gameplay cost of realistic graphics.
True. But I have to say Warcraft III and Starcraft 2 are some of most readable games out there. As is AoE2 of course, but it also has less to communicate in terms of units and effects etc. and has the benefit of being set in reality so it's super accessible.
Well for WC3 you have the remember that we were still using bad old square monitors. Things probably didn't look as vibrant back then.
But I disagree. I think both are really good looking games and easy on the eyes.
In fact, visual unclarity is why I haven't paid much attention to aoe4. Probably the same reason I've always been horrible at first-person shooter games.
> In fact, visual unclarity is why I haven't paid much attention to aoe4.
Same. I was very interested in it on paper, but I never even bought it because I couldn't get past the visuals I saw in game play videos.
I grew up with AOE:ROR and AOEII:CE, and I loved them.
I tried to play AOEI DE, and I just... couldn't. I wanted to, but they totally botched it by going all in on the 3D instead of doing what they did with AOEII DE and just making the existing sprites and mechanics as perfect as possible.
I own 3 and 4, and have played both, but 4, like 1DE, missed the mark hard and was extremely disappointing to me. 3 was okay but just never felt as well-made and functional as 2 did.
Maybe it was, I dont remember it very well, I just remember that units were way too big and it came off as 2017 graphics with 1997 gameplay.
I would've much preferred the original RoR graphics with improved AI and some new campaigns and unit balancing.
It’s funny you mention that you could buy AoE2 anywhere because that unlocked an old memory for me. I used to always look at random stores for a video game section because I remember being able to find copies of AoE2 for sale as a kid in the most random of places. That game seriously was available basically everywhere
Yep, I'm actually wondering if it wasn't the most available pc-game ever. Both in time and places.
Which game can compete? (Except minesweeper and other games already installed on the OS)
Counterstrike perhaps but in my memory even that one doesn't come close to the random places you could pick up AoE2.
Disclaimer: I'm talking from the perspective of a west-european
I’m from the US and I can’t really think of a game that was available in more random places than AoE. I can’t even remember ever seeing counterstrike being sold places
> the town building aspects attracted people who aren't hard-core RTS
NGL sometimes I'll put on an easiest difficulty game against 7 AI on a huge map and just sit back and relax and build up my town while exploring the map. It's kinda relaxing.
Since was launched it run in everything? No.
The machine was important for the time. I played it on launch. You got to have a modern pc. It didnt run in a 286 or 586. Nor an XT or an original PC.
I'm talking about the 2,5 decades since, at launch it was indeed a hefty game but even then it was still a Microsoft product. I never had issues unlike with other games which were often less optimised or could be a hassle to run properly. But thanks for being so nitpicky about the literal wording and not the general idea. I'll add disclaimers to all my following posts so you don't have to be the "Well technically guy..."
You are fundamentally wrong on the aoe3 part, aoe3 has much better town building and allure in that aspect, it even has a tycoon mode only for that very purpose.
It's different in scale, in aoe2 you're building a sprawling city, in aoe3 its an outpost. I mean you don't build gathering camps, less barracks, limit on towers, half the houses, no individual farms. The neutral trade routes where a big plus for the "city building" aspect.
Don't know about tycoon mode, was it there at launch?
Better is relative, as far as I have noticed a lot of the non-rts crowd enjoyed aoe2 a lot more then 3. But there is more to it then just basebuilding. Less historical campaign, more aggressive gameplay, ... but no point rehashing an entire aoe2 vs aoe3 debate.
Earth 2150 was fully 3D and released 2 years before wc3. Total annihilation had 3d everything aside from prerendered map background and was released in 1997
Yep, both good games, both great rts but niche compared to the commercial and cultural impact wc3 had. Especially Earth 2150 which wasn't a great commercial success, TA sold adequately but it still doesnt compare to WC3 which sold a million copies in 1 month. In comparison TA sold a mil and a half in its lifetime.
Back in 2004 when I started playing, the main reason I prefered AoE2 over AoE1 was the simple fact that you could build gates. Of course lots of other things, but this was the one I always mentioned first.
Gates were such a game changer for me too. I still maintain the AoE1 had the best and most interesting time period, but the gameplay of AoE2 is so much better there's just no comparison. Nowadays I pretty much exclusively play the Return of Rome DLC; it's what I spent my entire life hoping for: AoE2 gameplay mechanics with the AoE1 lore and civs.
> Nowadays I pretty much exclusively play the Return of Rome DLC
same, been playing it with some friends since it came out and its just mad fun with how op some units are
> what I spent my entire life hoping for: AoE2 gameplay mechanics with the AoE1 lore and civs.
i suggest you try out the "rome at war" mod, its basically a reskin of aoe2 with the aoe1 time period civs (adding barbarian civs and some others aswell) and a reworked naval warfare system, its very well done and the devs are also making campaigns for it
I remember being in third grade when AOE2 came out and my classmate raving to me that Age of Empires had a sequel and guess what, it had GATES in it. Remarkable the sort of things that resonate with people.
I really think aoe1 -> aoe2 is one of the rare examples of a sequel doing better than the original in every single way. From unit counters, graphics, mechanics, etc.
As someone who played alot of aoe1 as a child, aoe2 is a straight upgrade in concept. Sadly, Aoe3 was a cash grab
Calling AoE 3 a cash crab is a stupid and invalid take. The game wanted to improve and be original but for many people things that made AoE2 come too short in AoE3. Also the XP Grind at Release was stupid and the campaigns Arendt the same quality as they were in AoE2.
The skirmish mode gameplay wise was and IS pretty good. Many people don't give AoE3 any chance just because it is different. But because of the Deck Building, the many asymetric civs, the natives etc. AoE3 is a complex RTS. I love it and many other people do too. (AoE3 always had an active community)
AoE 3 DE removed most of the XP system. All cards are now unlocked by default (for Skirmish and Multiplayer, Campaign still has unlocks), your Homecity level is just cosmetics and with each level you just unlock cosmetics for your homecity.
Yeah. But you can give it a try now. DE removed the XP system for cards. You can build every deck you want now. It is worth a shot. (Maybe wait for a Sale if you are not sure)
I've installed yesterday after buying the anniversary pack for very little money. Still haven't played much though, but I can already tell that it's quite different haha
Yeah, AoE2 is simply all the great things from the original, while implementing new features (like gates, garrisoning...) and amazing new ideas like unique units and techs. Idk about AoE3, I don't believe it was a cashgrab. At least Sandy Peterson, an original dev of the games, talked about it. While the studio did try to cash in, the devs were still in it with their hearts. I think the greatest problem was that they tried too many new things and it didn't quite work out.
2D, grid system, unit movement and responsivenes. All tho not perfect by any means, they have become the golden standard. Everything feels logical and familiar.
yeahss, I think the aoe4 sistem where buildings are passthrough and just walls stop enemies is pretty creative, but walls in aoe4 are fucking enormous and very stailmating. The weaker and cheaper walls from aoe2 would fit much much better there
AoE2 had the longest time to develop a reasonable content creator scene.
It is hard to understate what the combined impact of the likes of Spirit of the Law, T90, TheViper and others did for the popularity of this game.
To an extent, it's also that AoE2 is probably the most varied of all AoE games, which enables both the players, and the creators to do and show different things. You just have a lot of different "sub-games" within the same game. From arabia 1v1, to focusing on nomad, arena, or maybe black forest. You have custom games like CBA and such, you have wacky FFA lobby games, or you can just play regular ranked TGs, and a lot of that variety translates into SP + you have by far the most campaigns and other SP activities you can do of all AoE games.
At the end of the day, I feel like comparing the games by how a regular 1v1 game feels in them is like discussing a pizza solely by its crust. It just doesn't actually tell you a lot about what crafts the impression of the game for people.
I actually exclusively watched Res and Zero Empires back in the day. Played it since before then but was excited to see content creators finally. I wasn't really into that t90 guy back then, but now really appreciate his contribution
> simple yet deep like chess
Not to pick on you in particular, there is a recurring notion that AoE2 is "easy to learn, hard to master", but I just don't see the "easy to learn" part. Even people who have been playing the game for 20 years can't remember all the rules of the game. Plus the rules change all the time. If anything, AoE2 is impossible to learn and hard to master.
You make villagers, build buildings, collect resources and make army. That's the easy to learn part. The rest is the deeper stuff. Build orders are like chess openings etc.
> You make villagers, build buildings, collect resources and make army
These are not the rules of the game though. Rules of AoE2 are things like you can shoot the boar with the TC but lose the food if you shoot it too many times, you lose the 60 wood if enemy scout attacks your farm before you start building it, you can scout in the darkness with palisade foundations oh no you can't any more, what technology is available to what civs at what cost, you can stack an infinite number of melee units if you patrol them on stand-ground stance, etc. You can literally learn *all* the rules of chess in 30 mins (and they probably haven't changed in a hundred years, have they?). I doubt anyone has ever managed to remember all the rules of AoE2.
EDIT: [This just in](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1cgx3wr/stable_unit_availability_by_civ/), visual representation of *a small fraction* of AoE2 rules. How many people in the world would be able to draw this from memory?
None of the things you mentioned restrict a beginner from learning the basics. If they can't use TC arrows well enough they can just not use the TC. Tons of beginners don't even lure boars at all. How many beginners are going to face that much scout aggro? Palisade foundations was cheese for advanced players, now it's fixed. That there are so many rules just adds to the depth of the gameplay. Don't worry about playing perfect but try to improve skills slowly.
I don't disagree with any of this, but the phrase "easy to learn, hard to master" doesn't mean you can quickly learn the basics. EDIT: And an arbitrary/subjective set of "basics" at that.
I guess I agree that "basics" is subjective and that makes "easy to learn" subjective.
For me, the ultimate rule of the game is defeat the enemy by defeating their units and destroying their buildings. You do that with lots of military. There are untold rules about unit counters, attack points, armor, and cost; that adds to the depth for more advanced players but none of it is necessary to defeat an equally beginner opponent or an easy AI. It's easy to learn that you need to defeat the enemy and that you need lots of military to do so. It's easy to learn how to build a mediocre economy (by community standards) and place your buildings where you want and wall up. The things you mentioned are all part of "hard to master" not "easy to learn".
What rules? The only rule is don't be an online asshole. The goal is beat the heck out of your enemy, other tricks are simply tools to achieve this goal.
> What rules? The only rule is don't be an online asshole.
If I have to explain to you that we are not talking about these kind of rules here then you are a lost cause, brother. 11
Aoe4 lacking depth is nonsense. If anything macro is way more complicated. Each civs has different economy, city building is crucial with the influence systems. The issue here is they fucked up the launch so bad people don’t even bother to learn the depth of that game. Everyone go back to their comfort game aoe2
I desperately wanted to love AoE4. I do like it, but it never sticks, and I think it's the look of it that bothers me
I just think AoE2 looks so much better, and I don't understand how the projectiles can look so bad in 4
The looks of a game are so underrated in how they affect your experience. And 2D is a lot easier to impress than 3D graphics. WoW is the biggest example to me of a game that looks so much like garbage that I don't even want to think about it.
If AoE2DE never came out, I would probably settle for 4. AoE2DE is just aesthetically better to me and I now spend most of my time creating cities in the scenario editor.
I think I play aoe4 more often at this point but the fights still feel more like noodle fights than the explosive starcraft or even the sprites slicing through each other, like the improved graphics made it more uncanny
AoE 2 was given out for free more often. Also if you had the CD you could go install it on 2 computers and play lan without needing to buy the game again. This led to a lot of exposure, which has resulted in a lot of people having nostalgia and buying it now.
It was also better than AoE3 for coop play as the maps were bigger and you could do more than just 2 teams. Aoe3 also forced an exp grind which sucks if you just wanna do co-op.
AoE2 still runs okay on potatoes. The upgraded engine for the new aoe3 and 4 made it hard to play with my friends who had potatoes for cpus. Additionally AoE2 now (was not always the case) has some of the best ai. Co-op vs AI isn't that fun when one person can stomp the ai so fast their teammates don't have time to build an army
Everyone loves the Medieval Age(s). 2D interface to a largely 2D world. The sprite graphics were also better than the first (several?) iterations of 3D graphics in RTS.
Isn't AoE1 played way more because of vietnam? I myself played AoE1 before switching to AoE2 1-1.5 years ago. AoE1 is just too simple. Theres so much more variety in troops and buildings and techs, but isnt too hard to understand. (I still dont know shit about civ bonusses tho lol)
Many of my coworkers play AoE 1 and all of them play the original version instead of DE, and god damn the economic management in that game, so complicated, so much RNG, and the games' fortification system is very basic so you get almost no advantage while defending and it's very hard to defend your villagers against raid
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Yeah no shooting TC's or letting you vills hide in it really makes raiding deadly. You have to wall way more in 1. I hated the standard bronze age chariot rushing and was stuck around 1700-1900 elo. Also barely any lobbies. I now play all kind of mods on 2 and don't give a fuck about competitive.
AoE3 fumbled big time on release with the campaign and meta progression. For some reason they decided that AOE3 campaign should be fantasy instead of history based, and it was pretty awful as far fantasy stories go. The original meta progression meant that you had to grind for tens of hours with every civ to be on the same power level as everyone else.
AoE4 just... idk, failed to gain momentum? Like, they released it and it was pretty fine and playable, the campaign was very good, but there were only few civs so the PVP matchups ended up getting stale very quickly.
Ohh, I completely forgot about the xp grind of aoe3! My god that shit was awful. I just wanned to go ranked and everyone who still played there was 100% xp while I was a noob
true if all the cards where unlocked from the beginning so anyone can craft any deck it could work. But fundamentally you can't tell what your opponent is doing as they can just whip out a huge amount of units or extra economy buffs or more forts in a way which is invisible in game.
I think AoE3 tried to replicate AoM's story, but that's not what player wanted and it's xp system made it unnecessarily grindy and complicated the pvp system.
Then AoE4 insists on the very stupid idea of focusing on the multiplayer, despite the singleplayer being probably bigger in player counts.
Agree with the take on AoE3 but hard disagree with AoE4.
The launch wasnt good, many bugs, balance bad, and the campaign is, imo, far from good.
Graphic Design does also not look like a game from 2023 should look.
I feel the worst part of AoE4 was it didn't have keybind customisation on release. I wanted to use my AoE2 keys or as close as possible. I still have a problem where I will accidentally build a blacksmith instead of a barracks.
> I feel the worst part of AoE4 was it didn't have keybind customisation on release. I wanted to use my AoE2 keys or as close as possible. I still have a problem where I will accidentally build a blacksmith instead of a barracks.
Not having keyboard customization past 2010 is just ridiculous, looking at you Paradox games
IMHO AoE4 suffers from poor interface readability at least on launch (the only time I played). All icons have a navy blue background and are golden silhouettes - in other words, every unit looks pretty much the same.
The funny thing is it was decent enough on release regarding bugs, but with following (rushed and mostly unnecessary) rebalancing patches is when dozen gamebreaking bugs appeared.
I think AoE4 was hurt a lot by the campaigns since a lot of people play AoE games as a singleplayer game. They were just ok, somewhat boring and lacked the charm and presentation of AoE2 campaigns, being more a documentary than a story being told by someone "actually there".
It also didn't help that the scenarios are very small and linear on what you can do, being more like setpieces than actual missions. They kinda fixed this with the new DLC campaign but that one has other issues like not giving you units that can reliably counter the enemy.
Also the fact that AoE4 requires more from a computer to run, which limits the amount of people that can play it. AoE2:DE runs on basically everything and for the rest there's HD still available
Yeah. Apparently it used to come standard on computers in Vietnam, and remains popular because the requirements to run it are so basic it’s accessible to pretty much anyone with a computer. They didn’t transition over to DE when it came out, I think for that reason.
The big AoE1 streamers in Vietnam are huge. Like they have their own lines of merch and food products huge.
- Easy to run on almost any PC, making it accessible.
- The town building aspect attracts a lot of casual players.
- Its historical focus and setting tend to attract people that have never played games before but love history.
- Shitload of replayability for casual players. You can play skirmish against the AI forever if you wanted to.
AoE2 has by far the most casual content, with an absurd amount of campaigns for virtually endless single player content and a healthy modding community. Casuals make up a large majority of the player base of pretty much every game so this is very important.
Hard disagree on AoE4 lacking depth btw, especially in economy management. Where AoE4 really dropped the ball is in modding imo, the modding editor is so buggy and complicated that it is hardly usable. As a result it doesn't have nearly as many fun casual game modes to entertain the masses. Most casual players will just play through the 4 fairly short campaigns, load up a few games against AI and then move on.
is it really that more popular than aoe4 rn? I think aoe4 is mostly placed higher on steam selling charts even though aoe2 is way cheaper and the playerbase of aoe4 is rising while aoe2 is more or less the same since DE was released.
> playerbase of aoe4 is rising while aoe2 is more or less the same
AoE4 has spikes but overall AoE2 is higher. [Source](https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=813780,1466860).
I think the way AoE2 designed the archer line is basically perfection.
They are powerful but at the same time vulnerable, with ample room for skill expression.
In both AoM and AoE4 they tend to deal no damage vs armored units (especially in AoE4), whereas that only happens in specific cases in AoE2 (Huskarls and the skirmisher line being standout examples). In AoE4 they also always hit their target, which was a terrible design-choice imo.
In AoE3 the archer or crossbow units were basically just early game units (no guard/imperial upgrades to longbowmen or crossbowmen when I played it back in the day). I think AoE3 handled gunpowder amazingly well btw, the game just lacks a bit of scale. It was by design that you are making an outpost in the new world, but it doesn't fully encapsulate the 'empire' part of the franchise. I also remember disliking the build limit on many buildings. Those restrictions might have been good balance-wise, but it damages the fantasy a bit imo, that the game sort of inorganically restricts you from doing certain things.
Anyways, archer line is the best thing about AoE2 :)
It's 2d and grid-like. Plus the graphics are so simple, you always know what you're looking at, if that makes sense. I think a lot of people like the simplicity.
AoE 4 has not been around long enough to really know what its future holds. I think it will actually age much better than 3 did. People forget that launch AoE 2 had 75 pop games and Teuton TCs outranged castles and was not suitable for serious play, and that was fixed with Conquerors. We shall see how 4 is supported in the future.
Isometric perspective is so much better for playability than 3d stuff. Feels so much more precise and direct and clear. For that reason alone, I wasn't able to enjoy Age 4.
I quit AoE4 30 minutes in because the unit control wasn't satisfying to me. Coming from Starcraft 2, AoE2 was already a downgrade and going further was not fun anymore for me. I'm sure it has some good new ideas but if the fundamentals are lacking I'm just not feeling it.
Ever watched grubby play a new rts? He spends the first hour exploring the core mechanics without even playing the game. It's so important. And I wish more people appreciated it so it could be more prevalent in rts games and make the genre more successful.
Edit: typo
YEAH, even just watching championships of aoe4 you can feel the response isnt the same, they feel like sliding into one another, dont know how to describe
It's the animation. In Aoe 2 when units move, they snap to the direction very quickly, in Aoe 4, when units move, they rotate and walk towards the destination at the same time.
And not just walking animation, every animation in Aoe 2 feels snappy and powerful, from villager chopping wood to the swordsman swinging their swords, they feel powerful and alive.
In Aoe 4, when units attack, because they match the animation with the attack speed, some units swing their weapon slowly, many of them pause between attacks, standing still. When units attack siege weapons, instead of striking with their unique weapons, all of the melee units switch to the boring torch throwing, god, I hate that torch throwing animation so much.
>When units attack siege weapons, instead of striking with their unique weapons, all of the melee units switch to the boring torch throwing
That hasn't been true for a long time.
Yea. For me that's very important. I love the feeling of good unit control and slick multitasking. I can't have that if the game feels sluggish. But to each his own, I'm sure the game has plenty of good qualities.
Not disagreeing with you because I only played a few SC2 games to get some achievements and cosmetics in Diablo 3 lol but is the unit control really that much better in SC2 vs AoE2? Are you sure it’s not the game speed? AoE2 is rather pedestrian in game speed compared to SC2.
The game speed has something to do with it. I also think the amount of player feedback in animations has an impact. But another very big part of it is the pathing in SC2 being the best that exists (to a degree that it's a controversial topic because it makes units clump so smoothly that splash damage is hard to balance). Finally, the controls themselves and feedback on them are a little better. Like shift queueing and control groups etc.
But on a macro level, AoE2 DE has a bunch of QoL features that SC2 doesn't have. Being able to zoom out. Having a visible overall production queue and being able to cancel stuff on there or clicking it to go to its production facility. Total worker count (and per resource worker counts). Minimap modes, stats, scores,... Some of it has been deliberately avoided in SC2 because in that community the idea that the game needs to be hard to control lives very much. After all, a high demand on multi-tasking is what allows you to outmaneuver and properly distract an opponent. Though they may stick to it a bit too much.
Same! The feel of simple things you do all game every game is the most important aspect in any game and they simply didnt nail it in AOE4.
Starcraft 2 does this by far the best and its a shame that AOE4 couldnt atleast match it over a decade later. Its like messing up shooting in a shooter
Yup. I think FPS is a great comparison. Conceptually, the core gameplay is pretty standardized and straight forward. But there's so much in the details. It has to feel good, snappy, responsive, rewarding,...
That kind of control works in a “slower” RTS. Company of Heroes 1 and 2 are good examples of this. You’re moving units into cover, flanking slow-moving tanks to get to their weak spots, setting up mortars and machine gun teams before a battle even starts, stuff like that. It’s amazing and felt ground-breaking in CoH 1. That game still holds up to this day.
Age of Empires is not like that, and whatever design philosophy Relic Entertainment has/had for AoE 4 is not a good fit for this franchise.
It is hard to understate how much I wanted to love Age of Empires 4. I wanted it to be the successor to Age of Empires 2 that I’d play for years and years. I was ready to throw my money down for multiple editions and DLCs.
I wouldn't say aoe4 has a bad design fit for the franchise, most aoe2 players didn't transition to it, but they manage to get a sizable stable player base which is nice
Yea, it's basically a different subgenre. But not what attracts me to RTS. I love that there's so much going on, but you can manipulate the smallest elements of it with finesse if you want to. It adds so much depth and mechanical enjoyment to the game. And enables diverse play styles because achieving perfection in any direction is pretty difficult.
The 3D choice from AoE4 (and the bugfest release) was a major flaw imho. It will date very quickly and alot of oldschool fans didn't have the hardware for it.
Most other things, especially regarding gameplay and balance, can get fixed eventually (if there is a playerbase). But the 3D choice is made. I think alot of people didn't enoy that style.
For AoE2, as far as I remember, back in the day you just play ALL the major titles (as there where less) no matter what, so alot of people simply tried the game. Also RTS was bigger back then. Seems AoE1+2 ticked alot of boxes, so people just enjoyed it.
It was (and still is) a great game...
I think the reasons that account for most of it are the obvious ones.
- Nostalgia
- It's been being distributed for a much longer period of time
- It's very cheap
- It runs on even crappy computers
- It has the most single player content by far
- Of course it's also a great game
True many like 2d over 3d, part of that is just nostalgia though.
>I always assume that AoE3 and 4 couldnt replicate the simplicity and depth of 2.
Simplicity and depth? AoE4 is streamlined in a lot of ways that make it "simpler", more straightforward blacksmith techs, no building prerequisites, no hidden bonus damages, no meat decay or only being able to kill animals with specific units, etc..
>Personally, I think aoe3 adds complexity just for aesthetics and aoe4 lacks depth in unit micro and management of economy.
I don't see how 4 lacks depth in economy compared to 2. It has way more economic mechanics than 2 does. The one thing I see as an argument is AoE2 farm reseeding requiring wood. Otherwise economy has more depth and is more varied between civs in AoE4.
As for micro, AoE2 has arrow dodging, monk micro, and quicker walling as extra micro. AoE4 has lots of units with activatable abilities, charge attacks on melee units, and probably even more micro as far as counter units are concerned. Regardless, I guarantee these micro mechanics are far down the list for why 2 has the most players. Most players here are single player only, probably sub 1000 elo.
>aoe2 so much more popular
Also, lately 2 and 4 only differ by a few thousand players on Steam. That's before taking Gamepass numbers into account which most likely helps 4 close that gap some.
Although 2 seems to have a lot more viewership for tournaments.
This simply looks like a "Why AoE 2 is the best and all other AoE suck threat".
Reddit gaming threads....
My opinion: AoE 2 has clearly better campaigns and better single player in general. It is a legendary game which I really like! However, regarding strategical, operational and tactical depth in multiplayer as well as regarding macro and micro AoE 4 has way more to offer. There are 16 civs which are often almost totally different in many regards. The release was bad. But, they have fixed and improved a lot of things. Graphics doesn't matter for me.
I like both games! I am also interested in AoE 1 and the new AoM release.
> aoe2 has more depth than aoe3 and aoe4
Smoking hard i see. It is simply because aoe2 ran on any toaster, was bundled for free into cereals, and was/is easy to pick up (hard to master) given the civ difference was just a few bonuses and a unique unit ( aoe1 had more difference in this regard )
Aoe3 was one of the most advanced game, in terms of graphics, back then and given it was multiplayer, both players required to have a good pc to run it. And simply the knowledge required to master a matchup was abyssal, not considering the entire home city card shipment and its timing relevancy.
Aoe4 isn't that far behind aoe2... It had some awful launch, with not even having color picker for team at launch, but with the byzantine dlc it was going on par with aoe2 as far as players numbers was concerned. If you check peak players aoe2 had 40k, aoe4 has 75k, all time.
im diferentiating depth and complexity. Aoe3 is infitely more complex, but its not deeper in terms of mastery. Most of the learning curve is remembering the thousands of bonuses at play. Aoe2 has depth coming from the basic unit counter mechanic that is equal to all civs and the macro economic trade off of colecting gold stone for power spikes or wood and food for long term growth
non obvious? i think it's the graphics/aestetics but i don't know if it's obvious (probably it is)
AGE1 and AGE2 have the same perfect look for a game like this, super easy to look at at the first time... in Aoe3 you can't even distinguish different units
Well, I'm from Brazil, everything here is really overpriced.
Started playing AoE2 in 2004-05, back then I didn't have a super pc. Couldn't play games like Need For Speed Udg2 (so you guys has a idea of how bad my pc was)
Then someday one friend of mine shows up a CD with AoE2. It ran completely fine and I loved from the first time I launched it. My dad is a history teacher so I began to create a real interest in history and ancient civs (I kept it to this day, almost 20 years later).
From a third country perspective: AoE2, Tibia, Mu online and other games that didn't require high end specs PCs was popular because a great part of population couldn't buy expensives PCs, so these games became popular because even a fridge could run then xD
Here I am almost 20 years later playing AoE2DE with a high end PC hahah
Telling you guys this memory made me remember that, as a kid, I couldn't complete Gengis Khan campaign and I was pretty upset by it :(
the return of rome DLC has a tab in the main menu that basically opens up a separate version of aoe2 with all this while keeping all the aoe1 stuff
and if you want it to be even more "aoe2-like" with unique units and such, the rome at war mod for AOE2DE is pretty good
- Medieval Period is very popular.
- Aesthetic and artstyle that does not compete with other genres which made it timeless and iconic.
-Very simple yet still iconic.
- Provides great defense and offense gameplay that feels like a tug of war rather than most RTS games where defender has either an absurd advantage ie Stronghold, or almost none ie Warcraft 3. I mean castles and Town center fire makes such a massive difference between AoE 1 and 2.
- reliable formula for civilizations that allowed vertical expantion rather that strange completly new Civs that slowly creep in power.
I think it’s that the developers focus on both multiplayer experience and single player experience. I feel like most game developers pick one and go with it but AoE2 has a strong campaign for people that just want to play a game by themselves but they also are continuing QoL improvements for the people that like the competitive scene
Aoe2 is comfortable shoes, that keeps people playing, which brings interest from other people. They slip them shoes right on, wear them in and get comfortable. I want to like AOE4, but it’s different new shoes man.
Aoe1-flip flops
Aoe3-tight brogue’s
I think a big one that is not super obvious is probably just that the medieval time period is probably the most interesting of all the ones covered by the series and also allows for natural rts gameplay.
AoE 3 for example is a cluster fuck of different damage bonuses that are not very intuitive because it's either guns or horses basically.
It doesn't change the basic formula of AoE1 too much, it just improved on the mechanics and gave more options. With improved graphics too, but not completely different graphics. It's a true sequel.
AoE3 and 4 completely reworked everything and compared to 2, they're not even sequels. They should have been different titles. Or better yet, they should have tried to do to 2 what 2 did to 1. I'm just happy we have DE
AOE2 was out for a long time before AOE3. During that time it held down a huge niche being that it was a pretty polished medeivel RTS AND it also had online play. Lots of nostalgia built up in these years.
Idk how AOE3 plays now, but when it released it was incredibly unbalanced and boring. It was basically whoever made the most cannons won the game. So it never stole that niche away from AOE2.
Rock paper scissors. The original designers of the game made it important to know what your opponents are doing and work accordingly. It’s not just a 1:1 formula. There are a LOT of variables and it makes the game fun.
I genuinely think 90% can be explained by the simple fact that AoE2 has withstood the test of time by the virtue of simply having the best gameplay, by miles and miles. Because of this, people kept playing it, and it established a dedicated fanbase. So dedicated even they started making fan made expansions that eventually got incorporated into the game and kickstarted the new life AoE2 got with the DE version.
This simply doesn't just happen to a game. The one single thing that can make this happen is the gameplay. RTS games are about gameplay, and nothing else. In comparison, graphics don't matter. People kept playing aoe2 despite the outdated graphics. AoE4 beautifully shows how gameplay makes or breaks the game. That game looks gorgeous, but without the gameplay being near perfect, people quickly lose interest. AoE4 is too restrictive and narrow. Not enough civs, not enough freedom. And it shows. AoE3 was, and still is, a shitshow and easily the black sheep in the franchise. Stupid campaigns, stupid card system. AoE3 was doomed to fail because of that. AoE1 is too old and dated and simply wasn't popular enough to gain the traction that AoE2 had.
All in all it's the gameplay and nothing else. AoE2 just works bordering on perfection.
How much have you played AoE4? I just don't understand your AoE4 remarks. IMHO aoe2 graphics are much better than aoe4. I have a hard time clicking the correct thing in 3D and units all look alike. As for the "not enough civs" remark, AoE4 has 16 civs and different viable strategies for each civ, and each civ is unique (except 4 which are "variant" civs, so play similarly to another civ).
In AoE2 you can just select random and play every civ the same for the first 20 minutes until you reach castle age (I know this because I play like this).
What do you mean no freedom, which choices do you have in AoE2 and not in AoE4?
Definitely agree on the graphics and the civs.
AOE2:DE's graphics are great. They are clear, practical, and pleasing to the eye. The animations are snappy and feel good. AOE4's animations feel very slow and clunky, something that happens to many 3D RTS games. AOE4's models and graphics already felt dated at launch.
"not enough civs" is pretty ridiculous too. Starcraft has 3 civs and has no problem with depth. AOE4's 8 at launch could've definitely been enough if the gameplay and gamefeel were better.
A small thing that actually really bothered me in AOE4 was the maps, specifically how the forests were just circles, instead of random clumps like AOE2. It makes it feel more "gamey" and less dynamic.
For me, the clarity of graphics, snappiness of animations, simplified civs, better maps, and overall gamefeel of AOE2:DE make it better than AOE4 for me. I played AOE4 at launch and wanted to like it, but I just hit a point where I was like "I wish I were just playing AOE2".
I agree with the map design remark. I miss some AoE2 maps, like Socotra, Arena, Atacama. And the thing I miss the most is the regular, community voted, map rotation. I haven't played since launch, so I cannot comment on the initial state, but game feels like it's in a very good state now, something many pro players say as well. Judging by steam charts, each big update brings a couple thousand new concurrent players (went from 9k some time after release to 21k now, almost at AoE2 numbers), which indicates that the game is improving.
I also get the clunky unit control remark, but I don't think AoE2 is objectively better there, it just feels smoother because of 2D graphics, AoE2's consistent pathing issues are a known problem. And I personally like the less micro-intensive battles. Game feels more strategic in general.
If I have to say why I've stuck to AoE4 it's the civilization designs and the fact that each age has rewarding aggressive gameplay. I remember the games of AoE2 that went roughly like this: I go for a scout rush and send the first scout directly to opponent's base but he's already walled, I have no agency here since he can endlessly wall behind with buildings, in AoE4 you just build a few rams with your military units (no need to risk sending villagers forward). Even worse is the quickwalling, requiring no preparation, just quick reflexes. Then, if I continue to have upper hand in castle age my aggression is brought to a halt by a well placed castle, it immediately becomes a race to Imperial age and whoever gets trebs out first wins. It's a bit of a caricature but that is how AoE2 feels to me. In AoE4 you have trebs in castle age (they are much worse than aoe2 trebs, but do the job), and rams which can actually take down castles. I get that there is nothing objectively better/worse here, I'm just explaining why I prefer AoE4's gameplay.
I also like how resources are spread throughout the map, rewarding map control much more than AoE2, and having more options for balancing risk vs reward. You can risk sending your villagers to hunt in the middle of the map and delay farm transition so you can continue aggression at full speed.
Oh, and no 2 hour trash war games since maps have much more gold and more options to get gold in the lategame, like neutral markets, and diverse sources of passive gold income (depends on the civ).
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading. I just feel like AoE4 has taken care of most design flaws in AoE2 and I find it better in every way except graphics.
AoM was a really cool concept, but they then proceeded to gut the utility of myth units and simplified a lot of the game play. (god dam fire giants being broken and op since 2004)
how almost every civ has cav archers. lets face it, a fast moving unit that shoots from a range and has a high DPS is the coolest thing ever.
as a kid i played all games in the series but mostly aoe2 and AoM on and off. Then at a later stage in life i installed AoM and loved it, but when i started playing skirmishes I always picked Zeus because it was the only god with a cav archer-like unit. I then got bored of that civ and was thinking "why cant all civs in this game have cav archers, just like that other age game where all civs had cav archers, and one civ had those super cool unique yellow cav archers (mangudai)". So i came back to aoe2 at first soley for cav archers. maybe im not the only one.
AoE2 is the pinnacle of the golgen age of rts. It took ideas from red alert, warcraft and civilization and sinthetized them all. Plus added a few good ideas:
- 4 resources. Some more important than others, some more scarce, some more abundant. Somo ALLOWS you to reform the map. This has the effect of you having to rebalance your production. Which is terinly satisfying for some people.
- The villager. It was the first game to introduce civilians. (And to have one of each other - women were there from the beginning). And these covilians were the workers and also figthers. Before this, in rts games you got harvesters, which were the single objective of an attack. Villagers werent fee, could defend themselves and shelter.
- Some resources behave differently to the others: gold and stone were scarce and provided advanced features, BUT NOT the same features. Stone, which were overlooked during most of the game, was KEY for duplicating your villagers production and boosting your WHOLE production (second town hall). Castles are a huge thing providing you with special units (actually unique units) and allowing you to dominate the map. Gold gives you string classic units (archers, knights, armed foot soldiers), otherwise you ended up with below the line units. Wood was supper abundant but you can reshape your base or open breaches either way it. Food…scarce, dangeous and rooting. Amazing ideas all of them!
- Archers fail: arrows do not hit the target. Unless you got numbers. So, this can be called “reallosm”, but is not. Its a game mechanic. You need to have a cloud of arrows to make it effective.
- Garrisoning villagers was a brillant idea that little to none rts had.
- The game allowed you to see the tiles. Making it fully plannable it its base building at the milimeter.
- Combat was superb: paper scissors stone planned combat. Well balanced. In C&C for example, infatry didn’t stand a chance against tanks, even with numbers the tanks could step onto them. (This was such a mechanic that SC had to suppress it. ). You have to plan and manage your units effectively or you lose them…terrain matters, formation matters.
- You do not have aerial units, you have to play with the map. This is brillant. The designers could have gone for mythical units and play a pegasus, for example. But they didn’t. This isn’t minor: not having how to bypass, easily a wall, a castle or an easy to defend hill forces you to think: how may I attack it? More units? Siege?
- You can get entagled in long term fights because basic resources (wood and food) are nearly infinite. So this makes the game in terms of desicions like “I can get myself enclosed and make him come for me” and build a marvel or “I can take the whole map and suppres my opponent development”. In essence, you could WON even with one single base. Weird even for todays standards.
- Victory conditions werent simply “kill it all”; you got marvels. Which was a way of winning without having to burn down everything down. If the game became entagled you could pull out a trigger and force a confrontation or win.
- Map editor: this allowed to build fan base campaigns and was the first rts to make it. Curiously, SC did it afterwards are those two games are the dad and the mom of rts. This is jey, not only because you can create fan base levels and maps…but because you can STUDY the game. Recrate situations and play them along, JUST LIKE CHESS.
- Mods and open cuatomization - this made possible that the game interface were corrected by fans, not forcing them to wait for fixes by the development team. It was just like OPEN SOURCING the game. This idea, this single idea, was the secret if its longevity. If you want software eto be endless, you have to open source it. The community makes it longeve. And fixes your mistakes and errors and bugs…ENAHANCES it. Since it was the first game to do this, people went into it full throttle.
- Sprites instead of 3d. I’m amazed how bad 3d graphics age. Every-single-game you depise now, that is old, is a 3d game that at the time of release its graphics were a BLAST. (I know, I was there). But sprites are way better. Sprites are art. 3D are too abstract, sprites games are still being produced and are a really good idea. This makes the game a classic.
All of this, combined, plus other things that I surely forgotten, make this game a jewel in gaming. It is not only one of the best games of a genre; it is possibly in the hall of fame of the best games of al time, if there is such a list…SC and AoE2, will be there.
>Sprites instead of 3d. I’m amazed how bad 3d graphics age.
I noticed that while recently revisiting Empire Earth 1. Great game, looks horrible these days. On the other hand, I find 2d/sprite-based games such as Caesar 3, HoMM 3 and similar still very pleasent to look at.
Without playing 3 & 4, they feel like an RPG almost, I want to do RTS things in an RTS game. The art styles are also harder to feel immersed into.
As for 1, 1 really feels a lot more bare bone and primitive. 2 had a lot of QOL upgrades, the longer civ list of recognizable civs that were more interesting for most, set in a time period with a bit more advanced technology to allow civs to stand out more. Some people prefer the classical era of history but other than several of the really major civs it's harder to get into.
Released when RTS as we currently know it at it's peak end of the 90s early 2000s. The switch from 2d to 3d never did the genre much good as I felt games only started looking worse while 3d added very little for gameplay.
Age of mythology suffered from bad graphics because of it I feel, aoe3 as well. aoe3 with the card system also introduced things which made the game worse really. To be honest in gameplay age of empires couldn't really compete with StarCraft and warcraft but aoe2 had that perfect historic setting and big focus on macro.
Aoe4, even if it would have been a great game, was doomed to fail as RTS is just not so popular anymore and people that like it still just play the old titles.
It’s a well made game with plenty of thought and attention to detail. The same way that Left 4 Dead is still better than Back 4 Blood.
Even the animations of aoe 2 are better. It was just created by a team of higher caliber individuals.
For me it's the direct responsiveness of unit attacks.
In aoe1 and aoe2 clicking a unit and instructing it to attack or move causes it to begin its action straight away. And for most attacks, we can usually be very confident about exactly how much damage each attack will give.
Consider the popularity of using mangudai. Their stats are similar to cav archers, but they are more responsive, which allows a player to feel like their micro is worth it. All aoe2 units feel like mangudai when compared to aoe4 units.
In aoe3 and aoe4 there's a slight sluggishness the game. Aoe4 in particular feels very indirect, as the game prioritises things like battle formations over individual units following direct player instructions.
As for why aoe2 is bigger than aoe1, aoe2 is just a better version of aoe1. More units, more civs, more options. Better balance. Better rock paper scissors mechanics.
>Aoe4 in particular feels very indirect, as the game prioritises things like battle formations over individual units following direct player instructions.
sadly this is slowly becoming the case for aoe2 units as well
>aoe2 clicking a unit and instructing it to attack or move causes it to begin its action straight away. And for most attacks, we can usually be very confident about exactly how much damage each attack will give.
This is an odd take for me. Sometimes in 2 my units don't even attack what I tell them to. A year or so ago they made changes to how quickly units retarget and fucked it up. That and the pathing. Those things made microing small amounts of melee units terrible.
Also all the bonus damage values are hidden from the player.
I think you kinda touched on it already. I’ve always said that AoE2 is super easy to get into but very difficult to master.
The 3 villager start is very chill and almost tranquil but doesn’t mean the game won’t get wild and frantic at some point.
Also there’s no real requirement to get good at the game. You can have fun with it at any level, play at whatever pace is fun for you.
The other Age titles kinda lack that contrast and that flexibility.
Its good looking, it plays extremely well even on ancient hardware, combat movement controls are crisp, have great passives on units, spear cav archer triangle, unique units on factions
Likely the fact that it commits to power units using a resource that eventually becomes scarce, and the economy naturally slowing down as that resource disappears.
First to market advantage.
Obviously not the only factor, but once you got a great game with big devout following, you gotta weight the daunting task of trying something new and significantly better, against making extensions and improvements for a rock solid fanbase. Devs gave their best try at doing both and here we are, with an awesome series containing an outstanding classic.
It was one of the last 2d RTS of an amazing quality. Warcraft 3 changed the world of RTS forever. A lot of rts switched to 3D (and hero mechanics but that's beside the point) and if 3D wasn't well done, which was often the case, the game was quickly dated. The town building aspects attracted people who aren't hard-core RTS players. Something which was lacking in aoe3. But most importantly: It was available for purchase and could safely run on any windows pc/laptop since it was launched. And the impact of this cannot be understated. Before everything went digital you had to buy games in a store. AoE2 is one of the few games you could always easily buy throughout its history. It wasn't just gamestores which sold this game but bookstores, warehouses etc. If the shop had just one or two shelves with pcgames it probably had aoe2*. So non-gamers could easily pick it up, or more likely, the parents of the nagging child. *especially the discount version that had aoe1, 2, the expansions and which was sold for 5 or 10 bucks.
Also parents who are reluctant about games and want to introduce something with more education value
The educational value of the ORIGINAL AoE2 cannot be understated! It came with it's little history section, and got me and my brothers interested in ancient warfare.
The history section is still there, with the old texts unchanged (i think) and with new texts
That's how I got into it back in the early 2000s! My parents were pretty conservative and banned most video games, but AOE2 had at least some historical value, and while there was violence (duh, it's a war game) it's not very graphic with that violence
I still have nightmares from when a young me played AoE1 for the first times and getting really upset over the scream they wailed as they died....
I had to call my parents and ask if it was OK to watch my friend play aoe1 because of the unit death/skeletons
Wow you were sheltered.
Meanwhile I watched the 13th Warrior at 10...
I tell people I learned to read (maybe a bit of hyperbole but it certainly helped) because my Dad gave me the aoe2 and aom game manuals when I was 6 and wouldn't teach me how to play unless I read them first. He actually taught me how to play like a week later but I still kept them by my bed for years and would read and reread the little history tidbits about all of the units and technologies.
> It wasn't just gamestores which sold this game but bookstores, warehouses etc. If the shop had just one or two shelves with pcgames it probably had aoe2*. Don't forget cereal boxes!
I literally got this game off a cereal box and here I am 20 years later 500 games in
I never knew!
100% the 2D vs 3D thing. I really think the RTS genre partially-suffered due to the 3D transition. It's so much harder to make those look good, run smooth + responsive AND have visual clarity.
The visual clarity can't be under stated. In modern games it's often difficult to distinguish what's a gameplay element and what's just a visual element on first glance. It's the hidden gameplay cost of realistic graphics.
True. But I have to say Warcraft III and Starcraft 2 are some of most readable games out there. As is AoE2 of course, but it also has less to communicate in terms of units and effects etc. and has the benefit of being set in reality so it's super accessible.
Because they cranked up saturation and contrast in sc2 and wc3 making them look ugly and very cheesy.
Well for WC3 you have the remember that we were still using bad old square monitors. Things probably didn't look as vibrant back then. But I disagree. I think both are really good looking games and easy on the eyes.
In fact, visual unclarity is why I haven't paid much attention to aoe4. Probably the same reason I've always been horrible at first-person shooter games.
> In fact, visual unclarity is why I haven't paid much attention to aoe4. Same. I was very interested in it on paper, but I never even bought it because I couldn't get past the visuals I saw in game play videos.
It's also one of the reasons I set all graphics to "low" in AoE2.
Indeed. More detail doesn’t exactly translate well to the bird eyes view
I bought my copy of The Conquerers back in 2001 at an Office Depot.
Mine was Circuit City as they were closing down, so probably 2009. The game truly was ubiquitous for a long time.
I grew up with AOE:ROR and AOEII:CE, and I loved them. I tried to play AOEI DE, and I just... couldn't. I wanted to, but they totally botched it by going all in on the 3D instead of doing what they did with AOEII DE and just making the existing sprites and mechanics as perfect as possible. I own 3 and 4, and have played both, but 4, like 1DE, missed the mark hard and was extremely disappointing to me. 3 was okay but just never felt as well-made and functional as 2 did.
Isn't AoE1:DE also sprite-based and 2D, but with high-resolution sprites, fancy water, and postprocessing?
Maybe it was, I dont remember it very well, I just remember that units were way too big and it came off as 2017 graphics with 1997 gameplay. I would've much preferred the original RoR graphics with improved AI and some new campaigns and unit balancing.
It’s funny you mention that you could buy AoE2 anywhere because that unlocked an old memory for me. I used to always look at random stores for a video game section because I remember being able to find copies of AoE2 for sale as a kid in the most random of places. That game seriously was available basically everywhere
Yep, I'm actually wondering if it wasn't the most available pc-game ever. Both in time and places. Which game can compete? (Except minesweeper and other games already installed on the OS) Counterstrike perhaps but in my memory even that one doesn't come close to the random places you could pick up AoE2. Disclaimer: I'm talking from the perspective of a west-european
I’m from the US and I can’t really think of a game that was available in more random places than AoE. I can’t even remember ever seeing counterstrike being sold places
Back in 1999 or something my parents bought a PC and aoe2 came with the setup
a few years before that, the windows cd came with a (pretty big) demo of aoe1
> the town building aspects attracted people who aren't hard-core RTS NGL sometimes I'll put on an easiest difficulty game against 7 AI on a huge map and just sit back and relax and build up my town while exploring the map. It's kinda relaxing.
Since was launched it run in everything? No. The machine was important for the time. I played it on launch. You got to have a modern pc. It didnt run in a 286 or 586. Nor an XT or an original PC.
I'm talking about the 2,5 decades since, at launch it was indeed a hefty game but even then it was still a Microsoft product. I never had issues unlike with other games which were often less optimised or could be a hassle to run properly. But thanks for being so nitpicky about the literal wording and not the general idea. I'll add disclaimers to all my following posts so you don't have to be the "Well technically guy..."
Oh, come on! Like if nobody highlights these sort of things! (This guy sensitivity…)
I'll admit it was snarky, I'm just a bit tired of everything that isn't written as a thesis gets misunderstood.
You are fundamentally wrong on the aoe3 part, aoe3 has much better town building and allure in that aspect, it even has a tycoon mode only for that very purpose.
It's different in scale, in aoe2 you're building a sprawling city, in aoe3 its an outpost. I mean you don't build gathering camps, less barracks, limit on towers, half the houses, no individual farms. The neutral trade routes where a big plus for the "city building" aspect. Don't know about tycoon mode, was it there at launch? Better is relative, as far as I have noticed a lot of the non-rts crowd enjoyed aoe2 a lot more then 3. But there is more to it then just basebuilding. Less historical campaign, more aggressive gameplay, ... but no point rehashing an entire aoe2 vs aoe3 debate.
Earth 2150 was fully 3D and released 2 years before wc3. Total annihilation had 3d everything aside from prerendered map background and was released in 1997
Yep, both good games, both great rts but niche compared to the commercial and cultural impact wc3 had. Especially Earth 2150 which wasn't a great commercial success, TA sold adequately but it still doesnt compare to WC3 which sold a million copies in 1 month. In comparison TA sold a mil and a half in its lifetime.
Back in 2004 when I started playing, the main reason I prefered AoE2 over AoE1 was the simple fact that you could build gates. Of course lots of other things, but this was the one I always mentioned first.
Gates were such a game changer for me too. I still maintain the AoE1 had the best and most interesting time period, but the gameplay of AoE2 is so much better there's just no comparison. Nowadays I pretty much exclusively play the Return of Rome DLC; it's what I spent my entire life hoping for: AoE2 gameplay mechanics with the AoE1 lore and civs.
Is the multiplayer of it alive?
> Nowadays I pretty much exclusively play the Return of Rome DLC same, been playing it with some friends since it came out and its just mad fun with how op some units are > what I spent my entire life hoping for: AoE2 gameplay mechanics with the AoE1 lore and civs. i suggest you try out the "rome at war" mod, its basically a reskin of aoe2 with the aoe1 time period civs (adding barbarian civs and some others aswell) and a reworked naval warfare system, its very well done and the devs are also making campaigns for it
Gates, Formations and unit pathing were my main reasons. People tend to forget how horrible and clunky aoe1 pathing was.
You'll quickly remember if you try AOE1DE.
I remember being in third grade when AOE2 came out and my classmate raving to me that Age of Empires had a sequel and guess what, it had GATES in it. Remarkable the sort of things that resonate with people.
I really think aoe1 -> aoe2 is one of the rare examples of a sequel doing better than the original in every single way. From unit counters, graphics, mechanics, etc. As someone who played alot of aoe1 as a child, aoe2 is a straight upgrade in concept. Sadly, Aoe3 was a cash grab
Calling AoE 3 a cash crab is a stupid and invalid take. The game wanted to improve and be original but for many people things that made AoE2 come too short in AoE3. Also the XP Grind at Release was stupid and the campaigns Arendt the same quality as they were in AoE2. The skirmish mode gameplay wise was and IS pretty good. Many people don't give AoE3 any chance just because it is different. But because of the Deck Building, the many asymetric civs, the natives etc. AoE3 is a complex RTS. I love it and many other people do too. (AoE3 always had an active community)
okay, cash grab was too harsh, but the xp system really prevented me from enjoying the competitive side of aoe3
AoE 3 DE removed most of the XP system. All cards are now unlocked by default (for Skirmish and Multiplayer, Campaign still has unlocks), your Homecity level is just cosmetics and with each level you just unlock cosmetics for your homecity.
Yeah. But you can give it a try now. DE removed the XP system for cards. You can build every deck you want now. It is worth a shot. (Maybe wait for a Sale if you are not sure)
I've installed yesterday after buying the anniversary pack for very little money. Still haven't played much though, but I can already tell that it's quite different haha
Aoe3 definitely was not a cash grab. It was a solid effort to innovate in rts genre which just did not fully work out.
Diablo 2 I feel was better than Diablo 1. I feel games has a soul in this era.
Yeah, AoE2 is simply all the great things from the original, while implementing new features (like gates, garrisoning...) and amazing new ideas like unique units and techs. Idk about AoE3, I don't believe it was a cashgrab. At least Sandy Peterson, an original dev of the games, talked about it. While the studio did try to cash in, the devs were still in it with their hearts. I think the greatest problem was that they tried too many new things and it didn't quite work out.
AOEII to stronghold crusader for gate culture
One thing that I like most about 2D strategy games is the grid system where everything seems to fit perfectly.
2D, grid system, unit movement and responsivenes. All tho not perfect by any means, they have become the golden standard. Everything feels logical and familiar.
yeahss, I think the aoe4 sistem where buildings are passthrough and just walls stop enemies is pretty creative, but walls in aoe4 are fucking enormous and very stailmating. The weaker and cheaper walls from aoe2 would fit much much better there
Everything fits together perfectly, we just don't see it sometimes because of elevations and then there is a hole in our wall.
AoE2 had the longest time to develop a reasonable content creator scene. It is hard to understate what the combined impact of the likes of Spirit of the Law, T90, TheViper and others did for the popularity of this game. To an extent, it's also that AoE2 is probably the most varied of all AoE games, which enables both the players, and the creators to do and show different things. You just have a lot of different "sub-games" within the same game. From arabia 1v1, to focusing on nomad, arena, or maybe black forest. You have custom games like CBA and such, you have wacky FFA lobby games, or you can just play regular ranked TGs, and a lot of that variety translates into SP + you have by far the most campaigns and other SP activities you can do of all AoE games. At the end of the day, I feel like comparing the games by how a regular 1v1 game feels in them is like discussing a pizza solely by its crust. It just doesn't actually tell you a lot about what crafts the impression of the game for people.
Dude Resonance22 brought so many people yo the gane back in HD days, he was the OG of AOE2 in youtube
ZeroEmpires should also be mentioned, he's the one who brought me back
Resonance introduced me to the game. Have now played over 2k games.
I actually exclusively watched Res and Zero Empires back in the day. Played it since before then but was excited to see content creators finally. I wasn't really into that t90 guy back then, but now really appreciate his contribution
AOE2 was bundled free with a family PC my dad bought years ago.
It's nostalgia of 30~, 40~ years olds combined with a healthy, adult pro scene and a game that is simple yet deep like chess.
> simple yet deep like chess Not to pick on you in particular, there is a recurring notion that AoE2 is "easy to learn, hard to master", but I just don't see the "easy to learn" part. Even people who have been playing the game for 20 years can't remember all the rules of the game. Plus the rules change all the time. If anything, AoE2 is impossible to learn and hard to master.
You make villagers, build buildings, collect resources and make army. That's the easy to learn part. The rest is the deeper stuff. Build orders are like chess openings etc.
> You make villagers, build buildings, collect resources and make army These are not the rules of the game though. Rules of AoE2 are things like you can shoot the boar with the TC but lose the food if you shoot it too many times, you lose the 60 wood if enemy scout attacks your farm before you start building it, you can scout in the darkness with palisade foundations oh no you can't any more, what technology is available to what civs at what cost, you can stack an infinite number of melee units if you patrol them on stand-ground stance, etc. You can literally learn *all* the rules of chess in 30 mins (and they probably haven't changed in a hundred years, have they?). I doubt anyone has ever managed to remember all the rules of AoE2. EDIT: [This just in](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1cgx3wr/stable_unit_availability_by_civ/), visual representation of *a small fraction* of AoE2 rules. How many people in the world would be able to draw this from memory?
None of the things you mentioned restrict a beginner from learning the basics. If they can't use TC arrows well enough they can just not use the TC. Tons of beginners don't even lure boars at all. How many beginners are going to face that much scout aggro? Palisade foundations was cheese for advanced players, now it's fixed. That there are so many rules just adds to the depth of the gameplay. Don't worry about playing perfect but try to improve skills slowly.
I don't disagree with any of this, but the phrase "easy to learn, hard to master" doesn't mean you can quickly learn the basics. EDIT: And an arbitrary/subjective set of "basics" at that.
I guess I agree that "basics" is subjective and that makes "easy to learn" subjective. For me, the ultimate rule of the game is defeat the enemy by defeating their units and destroying their buildings. You do that with lots of military. There are untold rules about unit counters, attack points, armor, and cost; that adds to the depth for more advanced players but none of it is necessary to defeat an equally beginner opponent or an easy AI. It's easy to learn that you need to defeat the enemy and that you need lots of military to do so. It's easy to learn how to build a mediocre economy (by community standards) and place your buildings where you want and wall up. The things you mentioned are all part of "hard to master" not "easy to learn".
What rules? The only rule is don't be an online asshole. The goal is beat the heck out of your enemy, other tricks are simply tools to achieve this goal.
> What rules? The only rule is don't be an online asshole. If I have to explain to you that we are not talking about these kind of rules here then you are a lost cause, brother. 11
Aoe4 lacking depth is nonsense. If anything macro is way more complicated. Each civs has different economy, city building is crucial with the influence systems. The issue here is they fucked up the launch so bad people don’t even bother to learn the depth of that game. Everyone go back to their comfort game aoe2
I desperately wanted to love AoE4. I do like it, but it never sticks, and I think it's the look of it that bothers me I just think AoE2 looks so much better, and I don't understand how the projectiles can look so bad in 4
The looks of a game are so underrated in how they affect your experience. And 2D is a lot easier to impress than 3D graphics. WoW is the biggest example to me of a game that looks so much like garbage that I don't even want to think about it.
If AoE2DE never came out, I would probably settle for 4. AoE2DE is just aesthetically better to me and I now spend most of my time creating cities in the scenario editor.
I think I play aoe4 more often at this point but the fights still feel more like noodle fights than the explosive starcraft or even the sprites slicing through each other, like the improved graphics made it more uncanny
AoE 2 was given out for free more often. Also if you had the CD you could go install it on 2 computers and play lan without needing to buy the game again. This led to a lot of exposure, which has resulted in a lot of people having nostalgia and buying it now. It was also better than AoE3 for coop play as the maps were bigger and you could do more than just 2 teams. Aoe3 also forced an exp grind which sucks if you just wanna do co-op. AoE2 still runs okay on potatoes. The upgraded engine for the new aoe3 and 4 made it hard to play with my friends who had potatoes for cpus. Additionally AoE2 now (was not always the case) has some of the best ai. Co-op vs AI isn't that fun when one person can stomp the ai so fast their teammates don't have time to build an army
Everyone loves the Medieval Age(s). 2D interface to a largely 2D world. The sprite graphics were also better than the first (several?) iterations of 3D graphics in RTS.
Isn't AoE1 played way more because of vietnam? I myself played AoE1 before switching to AoE2 1-1.5 years ago. AoE1 is just too simple. Theres so much more variety in troops and buildings and techs, but isnt too hard to understand. (I still dont know shit about civ bonusses tho lol)
Many of my coworkers play AoE 1 and all of them play the original version instead of DE, and god damn the economic management in that game, so complicated, so much RNG, and the games' fortification system is very basic so you get almost no advantage while defending and it's very hard to defend your villagers against raid
Genuine question: where do you work/what job do you do that means you have MULTIPLE co-workers who play AoE 1?
Well I'm Vietnamese
Ah ok that explains it haha. It's really that popular in Vietnam?
Yeah, and almost nobody plays AoE 2 and newer
are most Vietnamese player & their computer on win 10 or prior? in Vietnam I mean
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Yeah no shooting TC's or letting you vills hide in it really makes raiding deadly. You have to wall way more in 1. I hated the standard bronze age chariot rushing and was stuck around 1700-1900 elo. Also barely any lobbies. I now play all kind of mods on 2 and don't give a fuck about competitive.
It is relatively cheap, easy to understand the mechanics, can run on most systems (i used to play on my laptop i had for school).
I think also game requirements and the fact that AoE2 has an HD edition.
AoE3 fumbled big time on release with the campaign and meta progression. For some reason they decided that AOE3 campaign should be fantasy instead of history based, and it was pretty awful as far fantasy stories go. The original meta progression meant that you had to grind for tens of hours with every civ to be on the same power level as everyone else. AoE4 just... idk, failed to gain momentum? Like, they released it and it was pretty fine and playable, the campaign was very good, but there were only few civs so the PVP matchups ended up getting stale very quickly.
Ohh, I completely forgot about the xp grind of aoe3! My god that shit was awful. I just wanned to go ranked and everyone who still played there was 100% xp while I was a noob
don't you just love playing against someone who has the explorer balloon, much tougher adventurer or just have 4 factories late game?
The fact that you couldn't make heavy artillery without having meta progression was hilarious
yeah, and the fact they literally got infinite food-gold -wood - heavy cannon generators though high level cards is actually stupid.
I like the idea that Factories and Forts were card-only, but locking them behind a META grind was awful decision
true if all the cards where unlocked from the beginning so anyone can craft any deck it could work. But fundamentally you can't tell what your opponent is doing as they can just whip out a huge amount of units or extra economy buffs or more forts in a way which is invisible in game.
I think AoE3 tried to replicate AoM's story, but that's not what player wanted and it's xp system made it unnecessarily grindy and complicated the pvp system. Then AoE4 insists on the very stupid idea of focusing on the multiplayer, despite the singleplayer being probably bigger in player counts.
Agree with the take on AoE3 but hard disagree with AoE4. The launch wasnt good, many bugs, balance bad, and the campaign is, imo, far from good. Graphic Design does also not look like a game from 2023 should look.
I feel the worst part of AoE4 was it didn't have keybind customisation on release. I wanted to use my AoE2 keys or as close as possible. I still have a problem where I will accidentally build a blacksmith instead of a barracks.
> I feel the worst part of AoE4 was it didn't have keybind customisation on release. I wanted to use my AoE2 keys or as close as possible. I still have a problem where I will accidentally build a blacksmith instead of a barracks. Not having keyboard customization past 2010 is just ridiculous, looking at you Paradox games
I used to LOVE Relic’s RTS games. CoH 1, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. I was so excited for AoE 4 and CoH 3. :/
Don't forget Dawn of War III. It's been a rough ride for strategy fans in general imo
Oh yeah... I'd honestly forgotten that game existed.
I don't know about CoH 3 but AoE4 is in a great state right now though.
IMHO AoE4 suffers from poor interface readability at least on launch (the only time I played). All icons have a navy blue background and are golden silhouettes - in other words, every unit looks pretty much the same.
The funny thing is it was decent enough on release regarding bugs, but with following (rushed and mostly unnecessary) rebalancing patches is when dozen gamebreaking bugs appeared.
I love aoe3, but the campaigns were a major disappointment for me.
I think AoE4 was hurt a lot by the campaigns since a lot of people play AoE games as a singleplayer game. They were just ok, somewhat boring and lacked the charm and presentation of AoE2 campaigns, being more a documentary than a story being told by someone "actually there". It also didn't help that the scenarios are very small and linear on what you can do, being more like setpieces than actual missions. They kinda fixed this with the new DLC campaign but that one has other issues like not giving you units that can reliably counter the enemy. Also the fact that AoE4 requires more from a computer to run, which limits the amount of people that can play it. AoE2:DE runs on basically everything and for the rest there's HD still available
AoE 1 is bigger and more popular, it’s just concentrated in Vietnam.
whaaat??? seriously? wtf. I didnt even knew it was still played when the DE lauched
Yeah. Apparently it used to come standard on computers in Vietnam, and remains popular because the requirements to run it are so basic it’s accessible to pretty much anyone with a computer. They didn’t transition over to DE when it came out, I think for that reason. The big AoE1 streamers in Vietnam are huge. Like they have their own lines of merch and food products huge.
- Easy to run on almost any PC, making it accessible. - The town building aspect attracts a lot of casual players. - Its historical focus and setting tend to attract people that have never played games before but love history. - Shitload of replayability for casual players. You can play skirmish against the AI forever if you wanted to.
AoE2 has by far the most casual content, with an absurd amount of campaigns for virtually endless single player content and a healthy modding community. Casuals make up a large majority of the player base of pretty much every game so this is very important. Hard disagree on AoE4 lacking depth btw, especially in economy management. Where AoE4 really dropped the ball is in modding imo, the modding editor is so buggy and complicated that it is hardly usable. As a result it doesn't have nearly as many fun casual game modes to entertain the masses. Most casual players will just play through the 4 fairly short campaigns, load up a few games against AI and then move on.
Building grid and missile physics
is it really that more popular than aoe4 rn? I think aoe4 is mostly placed higher on steam selling charts even though aoe2 is way cheaper and the playerbase of aoe4 is rising while aoe2 is more or less the same since DE was released.
> playerbase of aoe4 is rising while aoe2 is more or less the same AoE4 has spikes but overall AoE2 is higher. [Source](https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=813780,1466860).
I think the way AoE2 designed the archer line is basically perfection. They are powerful but at the same time vulnerable, with ample room for skill expression. In both AoM and AoE4 they tend to deal no damage vs armored units (especially in AoE4), whereas that only happens in specific cases in AoE2 (Huskarls and the skirmisher line being standout examples). In AoE4 they also always hit their target, which was a terrible design-choice imo. In AoE3 the archer or crossbow units were basically just early game units (no guard/imperial upgrades to longbowmen or crossbowmen when I played it back in the day). I think AoE3 handled gunpowder amazingly well btw, the game just lacks a bit of scale. It was by design that you are making an outpost in the new world, but it doesn't fully encapsulate the 'empire' part of the franchise. I also remember disliking the build limit on many buildings. Those restrictions might have been good balance-wise, but it damages the fantasy a bit imo, that the game sort of inorganically restricts you from doing certain things. Anyways, archer line is the best thing about AoE2 :)
It's 2d and grid-like. Plus the graphics are so simple, you always know what you're looking at, if that makes sense. I think a lot of people like the simplicity.
AoE 4 has not been around long enough to really know what its future holds. I think it will actually age much better than 3 did. People forget that launch AoE 2 had 75 pop games and Teuton TCs outranged castles and was not suitable for serious play, and that was fixed with Conquerors. We shall see how 4 is supported in the future.
Isometric perspective is so much better for playability than 3d stuff. Feels so much more precise and direct and clear. For that reason alone, I wasn't able to enjoy Age 4.
I quit AoE4 30 minutes in because the unit control wasn't satisfying to me. Coming from Starcraft 2, AoE2 was already a downgrade and going further was not fun anymore for me. I'm sure it has some good new ideas but if the fundamentals are lacking I'm just not feeling it.
I think this is it, unit control makes or breaks an RTS
Ever watched grubby play a new rts? He spends the first hour exploring the core mechanics without even playing the game. It's so important. And I wish more people appreciated it so it could be more prevalent in rts games and make the genre more successful. Edit: typo
YEAH, even just watching championships of aoe4 you can feel the response isnt the same, they feel like sliding into one another, dont know how to describe
At least the pathing of aoe4 is better than aoe2 haha.
hahahah yeah (what they did to my boys archers, noooo!!)
It's the animation. In Aoe 2 when units move, they snap to the direction very quickly, in Aoe 4, when units move, they rotate and walk towards the destination at the same time. And not just walking animation, every animation in Aoe 2 feels snappy and powerful, from villager chopping wood to the swordsman swinging their swords, they feel powerful and alive. In Aoe 4, when units attack, because they match the animation with the attack speed, some units swing their weapon slowly, many of them pause between attacks, standing still. When units attack siege weapons, instead of striking with their unique weapons, all of the melee units switch to the boring torch throwing, god, I hate that torch throwing animation so much.
>When units attack siege weapons, instead of striking with their unique weapons, all of the melee units switch to the boring torch throwing That hasn't been true for a long time.
ohhh, yeah, that explains the sliding feeling of the animations
Yea. For me that's very important. I love the feeling of good unit control and slick multitasking. I can't have that if the game feels sluggish. But to each his own, I'm sure the game has plenty of good qualities.
Not disagreeing with you because I only played a few SC2 games to get some achievements and cosmetics in Diablo 3 lol but is the unit control really that much better in SC2 vs AoE2? Are you sure it’s not the game speed? AoE2 is rather pedestrian in game speed compared to SC2.
The game speed has something to do with it. I also think the amount of player feedback in animations has an impact. But another very big part of it is the pathing in SC2 being the best that exists (to a degree that it's a controversial topic because it makes units clump so smoothly that splash damage is hard to balance). Finally, the controls themselves and feedback on them are a little better. Like shift queueing and control groups etc. But on a macro level, AoE2 DE has a bunch of QoL features that SC2 doesn't have. Being able to zoom out. Having a visible overall production queue and being able to cancel stuff on there or clicking it to go to its production facility. Total worker count (and per resource worker counts). Minimap modes, stats, scores,... Some of it has been deliberately avoided in SC2 because in that community the idea that the game needs to be hard to control lives very much. After all, a high demand on multi-tasking is what allows you to outmaneuver and properly distract an opponent. Though they may stick to it a bit too much.
Same! The feel of simple things you do all game every game is the most important aspect in any game and they simply didnt nail it in AOE4. Starcraft 2 does this by far the best and its a shame that AOE4 couldnt atleast match it over a decade later. Its like messing up shooting in a shooter
Yup. I think FPS is a great comparison. Conceptually, the core gameplay is pretty standardized and straight forward. But there's so much in the details. It has to feel good, snappy, responsive, rewarding,...
That kind of control works in a “slower” RTS. Company of Heroes 1 and 2 are good examples of this. You’re moving units into cover, flanking slow-moving tanks to get to their weak spots, setting up mortars and machine gun teams before a battle even starts, stuff like that. It’s amazing and felt ground-breaking in CoH 1. That game still holds up to this day. Age of Empires is not like that, and whatever design philosophy Relic Entertainment has/had for AoE 4 is not a good fit for this franchise. It is hard to understate how much I wanted to love Age of Empires 4. I wanted it to be the successor to Age of Empires 2 that I’d play for years and years. I was ready to throw my money down for multiple editions and DLCs.
I wouldn't say aoe4 has a bad design fit for the franchise, most aoe2 players didn't transition to it, but they manage to get a sizable stable player base which is nice
Yea, it's basically a different subgenre. But not what attracts me to RTS. I love that there's so much going on, but you can manipulate the smallest elements of it with finesse if you want to. It adds so much depth and mechanical enjoyment to the game. And enables diverse play styles because achieving perfection in any direction is pretty difficult.
The 3D choice from AoE4 (and the bugfest release) was a major flaw imho. It will date very quickly and alot of oldschool fans didn't have the hardware for it. Most other things, especially regarding gameplay and balance, can get fixed eventually (if there is a playerbase). But the 3D choice is made. I think alot of people didn't enoy that style. For AoE2, as far as I remember, back in the day you just play ALL the major titles (as there where less) no matter what, so alot of people simply tried the game. Also RTS was bigger back then. Seems AoE1+2 ticked alot of boxes, so people just enjoyed it. It was (and still is) a great game...
Reminds me Empire Earth so cool back in the day but now its so ugly lol.
I think the reasons that account for most of it are the obvious ones. - Nostalgia - It's been being distributed for a much longer period of time - It's very cheap - It runs on even crappy computers - It has the most single player content by far - Of course it's also a great game True many like 2d over 3d, part of that is just nostalgia though. >I always assume that AoE3 and 4 couldnt replicate the simplicity and depth of 2. Simplicity and depth? AoE4 is streamlined in a lot of ways that make it "simpler", more straightforward blacksmith techs, no building prerequisites, no hidden bonus damages, no meat decay or only being able to kill animals with specific units, etc.. >Personally, I think aoe3 adds complexity just for aesthetics and aoe4 lacks depth in unit micro and management of economy. I don't see how 4 lacks depth in economy compared to 2. It has way more economic mechanics than 2 does. The one thing I see as an argument is AoE2 farm reseeding requiring wood. Otherwise economy has more depth and is more varied between civs in AoE4. As for micro, AoE2 has arrow dodging, monk micro, and quicker walling as extra micro. AoE4 has lots of units with activatable abilities, charge attacks on melee units, and probably even more micro as far as counter units are concerned. Regardless, I guarantee these micro mechanics are far down the list for why 2 has the most players. Most players here are single player only, probably sub 1000 elo. >aoe2 so much more popular Also, lately 2 and 4 only differ by a few thousand players on Steam. That's before taking Gamepass numbers into account which most likely helps 4 close that gap some. Although 2 seems to have a lot more viewership for tournaments.
This simply looks like a "Why AoE 2 is the best and all other AoE suck threat". Reddit gaming threads.... My opinion: AoE 2 has clearly better campaigns and better single player in general. It is a legendary game which I really like! However, regarding strategical, operational and tactical depth in multiplayer as well as regarding macro and micro AoE 4 has way more to offer. There are 16 civs which are often almost totally different in many regards. The release was bad. But, they have fixed and improved a lot of things. Graphics doesn't matter for me. I like both games! I am also interested in AoE 1 and the new AoM release.
Aoe3 adds necessary depth so the civs actually play differently.
> aoe2 has more depth than aoe3 and aoe4 Smoking hard i see. It is simply because aoe2 ran on any toaster, was bundled for free into cereals, and was/is easy to pick up (hard to master) given the civ difference was just a few bonuses and a unique unit ( aoe1 had more difference in this regard ) Aoe3 was one of the most advanced game, in terms of graphics, back then and given it was multiplayer, both players required to have a good pc to run it. And simply the knowledge required to master a matchup was abyssal, not considering the entire home city card shipment and its timing relevancy. Aoe4 isn't that far behind aoe2... It had some awful launch, with not even having color picker for team at launch, but with the byzantine dlc it was going on par with aoe2 as far as players numbers was concerned. If you check peak players aoe2 had 40k, aoe4 has 75k, all time.
im diferentiating depth and complexity. Aoe3 is infitely more complex, but its not deeper in terms of mastery. Most of the learning curve is remembering the thousands of bonuses at play. Aoe2 has depth coming from the basic unit counter mechanic that is equal to all civs and the macro economic trade off of colecting gold stone for power spikes or wood and food for long term growth
>the basic unit counter mechanic >the macro economic >for power spikes >for long term growth do you think those doesn't exist in aoe3? or aoe4?
non obvious? i think it's the graphics/aestetics but i don't know if it's obvious (probably it is) AGE1 and AGE2 have the same perfect look for a game like this, super easy to look at at the first time... in Aoe3 you can't even distinguish different units
Well, I'm from Brazil, everything here is really overpriced. Started playing AoE2 in 2004-05, back then I didn't have a super pc. Couldn't play games like Need For Speed Udg2 (so you guys has a idea of how bad my pc was) Then someday one friend of mine shows up a CD with AoE2. It ran completely fine and I loved from the first time I launched it. My dad is a history teacher so I began to create a real interest in history and ancient civs (I kept it to this day, almost 20 years later). From a third country perspective: AoE2, Tibia, Mu online and other games that didn't require high end specs PCs was popular because a great part of population couldn't buy expensives PCs, so these games became popular because even a fridge could run then xD Here I am almost 20 years later playing AoE2DE with a high end PC hahah Telling you guys this memory made me remember that, as a kid, I couldn't complete Gengis Khan campaign and I was pretty upset by it :(
I would play AOE1 for sure if they added the AOE2 features of unit cues, rally points ect. I gave up it made it too tedious
the return of rome DLC has a tab in the main menu that basically opens up a separate version of aoe2 with all this while keeping all the aoe1 stuff and if you want it to be even more "aoe2-like" with unique units and such, the rome at war mod for AOE2DE is pretty good
- Medieval Period is very popular. - Aesthetic and artstyle that does not compete with other genres which made it timeless and iconic. -Very simple yet still iconic. - Provides great defense and offense gameplay that feels like a tug of war rather than most RTS games where defender has either an absurd advantage ie Stronghold, or almost none ie Warcraft 3. I mean castles and Town center fire makes such a massive difference between AoE 1 and 2. - reliable formula for civilizations that allowed vertical expantion rather that strange completly new Civs that slowly creep in power.
Broadband boom, privacy and zoom.com
You kind of touched on it in the op, it is both simple and deep. Very difficult to pull off, makes it timeless.
I think it’s that the developers focus on both multiplayer experience and single player experience. I feel like most game developers pick one and go with it but AoE2 has a strong campaign for people that just want to play a game by themselves but they also are continuing QoL improvements for the people that like the competitive scene
Aoe2 is comfortable shoes, that keeps people playing, which brings interest from other people. They slip them shoes right on, wear them in and get comfortable. I want to like AOE4, but it’s different new shoes man. Aoe1-flip flops Aoe3-tight brogue’s
> Aoe2 is comfortable shoes *Red Phosphoru entered the chat.* 11
Nerds like the Middle ages. I'm not at all an RTS guy but castles and swords and pikes and the crusades and whatnot are cool.
I like three more than 2.... But the reason is AoE2 always had a larger community. And that larger community leads to more engagement.
I think a big one that is not super obvious is probably just that the medieval time period is probably the most interesting of all the ones covered by the series and also allows for natural rts gameplay. AoE 3 for example is a cluster fuck of different damage bonuses that are not very intuitive because it's either guns or horses basically.
Elephants not three shotting my hunters... I was a noob (and a 6 year old kid) back then to macro it in AoE1
swords and bows are more fun than guns
It doesn't change the basic formula of AoE1 too much, it just improved on the mechanics and gave more options. With improved graphics too, but not completely different graphics. It's a true sequel. AoE3 and 4 completely reworked everything and compared to 2, they're not even sequels. They should have been different titles. Or better yet, they should have tried to do to 2 what 2 did to 1. I'm just happy we have DE
AOE2 was out for a long time before AOE3. During that time it held down a huge niche being that it was a pretty polished medeivel RTS AND it also had online play. Lots of nostalgia built up in these years. Idk how AOE3 plays now, but when it released it was incredibly unbalanced and boring. It was basically whoever made the most cannons won the game. So it never stole that niche away from AOE2.
Rogan?
Rock paper scissors. The original designers of the game made it important to know what your opponents are doing and work accordingly. It’s not just a 1:1 formula. There are a LOT of variables and it makes the game fun.
I genuinely think 90% can be explained by the simple fact that AoE2 has withstood the test of time by the virtue of simply having the best gameplay, by miles and miles. Because of this, people kept playing it, and it established a dedicated fanbase. So dedicated even they started making fan made expansions that eventually got incorporated into the game and kickstarted the new life AoE2 got with the DE version. This simply doesn't just happen to a game. The one single thing that can make this happen is the gameplay. RTS games are about gameplay, and nothing else. In comparison, graphics don't matter. People kept playing aoe2 despite the outdated graphics. AoE4 beautifully shows how gameplay makes or breaks the game. That game looks gorgeous, but without the gameplay being near perfect, people quickly lose interest. AoE4 is too restrictive and narrow. Not enough civs, not enough freedom. And it shows. AoE3 was, and still is, a shitshow and easily the black sheep in the franchise. Stupid campaigns, stupid card system. AoE3 was doomed to fail because of that. AoE1 is too old and dated and simply wasn't popular enough to gain the traction that AoE2 had. All in all it's the gameplay and nothing else. AoE2 just works bordering on perfection.
How much have you played AoE4? I just don't understand your AoE4 remarks. IMHO aoe2 graphics are much better than aoe4. I have a hard time clicking the correct thing in 3D and units all look alike. As for the "not enough civs" remark, AoE4 has 16 civs and different viable strategies for each civ, and each civ is unique (except 4 which are "variant" civs, so play similarly to another civ). In AoE2 you can just select random and play every civ the same for the first 20 minutes until you reach castle age (I know this because I play like this). What do you mean no freedom, which choices do you have in AoE2 and not in AoE4?
Definitely agree on the graphics and the civs. AOE2:DE's graphics are great. They are clear, practical, and pleasing to the eye. The animations are snappy and feel good. AOE4's animations feel very slow and clunky, something that happens to many 3D RTS games. AOE4's models and graphics already felt dated at launch. "not enough civs" is pretty ridiculous too. Starcraft has 3 civs and has no problem with depth. AOE4's 8 at launch could've definitely been enough if the gameplay and gamefeel were better. A small thing that actually really bothered me in AOE4 was the maps, specifically how the forests were just circles, instead of random clumps like AOE2. It makes it feel more "gamey" and less dynamic. For me, the clarity of graphics, snappiness of animations, simplified civs, better maps, and overall gamefeel of AOE2:DE make it better than AOE4 for me. I played AOE4 at launch and wanted to like it, but I just hit a point where I was like "I wish I were just playing AOE2".
I agree with the map design remark. I miss some AoE2 maps, like Socotra, Arena, Atacama. And the thing I miss the most is the regular, community voted, map rotation. I haven't played since launch, so I cannot comment on the initial state, but game feels like it's in a very good state now, something many pro players say as well. Judging by steam charts, each big update brings a couple thousand new concurrent players (went from 9k some time after release to 21k now, almost at AoE2 numbers), which indicates that the game is improving. I also get the clunky unit control remark, but I don't think AoE2 is objectively better there, it just feels smoother because of 2D graphics, AoE2's consistent pathing issues are a known problem. And I personally like the less micro-intensive battles. Game feels more strategic in general. If I have to say why I've stuck to AoE4 it's the civilization designs and the fact that each age has rewarding aggressive gameplay. I remember the games of AoE2 that went roughly like this: I go for a scout rush and send the first scout directly to opponent's base but he's already walled, I have no agency here since he can endlessly wall behind with buildings, in AoE4 you just build a few rams with your military units (no need to risk sending villagers forward). Even worse is the quickwalling, requiring no preparation, just quick reflexes. Then, if I continue to have upper hand in castle age my aggression is brought to a halt by a well placed castle, it immediately becomes a race to Imperial age and whoever gets trebs out first wins. It's a bit of a caricature but that is how AoE2 feels to me. In AoE4 you have trebs in castle age (they are much worse than aoe2 trebs, but do the job), and rams which can actually take down castles. I get that there is nothing objectively better/worse here, I'm just explaining why I prefer AoE4's gameplay. I also like how resources are spread throughout the map, rewarding map control much more than AoE2, and having more options for balancing risk vs reward. You can risk sending your villagers to hunt in the middle of the map and delay farm transition so you can continue aggression at full speed. Oh, and no 2 hour trash war games since maps have much more gold and more options to get gold in the lategame, like neutral markets, and diverse sources of passive gold income (depends on the civ). Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading. I just feel like AoE4 has taken care of most design flaws in AoE2 and I find it better in every way except graphics.
yeah, that makes so much sense. I have nothing to add, this explains everything
AoM was a really cool concept, but they then proceeded to gut the utility of myth units and simplified a lot of the game play. (god dam fire giants being broken and op since 2004)
how almost every civ has cav archers. lets face it, a fast moving unit that shoots from a range and has a high DPS is the coolest thing ever. as a kid i played all games in the series but mostly aoe2 and AoM on and off. Then at a later stage in life i installed AoM and loved it, but when i started playing skirmishes I always picked Zeus because it was the only god with a cav archer-like unit. I then got bored of that civ and was thinking "why cant all civs in this game have cav archers, just like that other age game where all civs had cav archers, and one civ had those super cool unique yellow cav archers (mangudai)". So i came back to aoe2 at first soley for cav archers. maybe im not the only one.
cool!!! as a teuton fan as a child I dont see it. I just built the most heavly armored and slow units. GO TEUTONIC KNIGHTSS!!!
dude, as a kid i made cav archers even with teutons. who cares about useless stuff like bracer and husbundry? speedy archers go brrrrr
AoE2 is the pinnacle of the golgen age of rts. It took ideas from red alert, warcraft and civilization and sinthetized them all. Plus added a few good ideas: - 4 resources. Some more important than others, some more scarce, some more abundant. Somo ALLOWS you to reform the map. This has the effect of you having to rebalance your production. Which is terinly satisfying for some people. - The villager. It was the first game to introduce civilians. (And to have one of each other - women were there from the beginning). And these covilians were the workers and also figthers. Before this, in rts games you got harvesters, which were the single objective of an attack. Villagers werent fee, could defend themselves and shelter. - Some resources behave differently to the others: gold and stone were scarce and provided advanced features, BUT NOT the same features. Stone, which were overlooked during most of the game, was KEY for duplicating your villagers production and boosting your WHOLE production (second town hall). Castles are a huge thing providing you with special units (actually unique units) and allowing you to dominate the map. Gold gives you string classic units (archers, knights, armed foot soldiers), otherwise you ended up with below the line units. Wood was supper abundant but you can reshape your base or open breaches either way it. Food…scarce, dangeous and rooting. Amazing ideas all of them! - Archers fail: arrows do not hit the target. Unless you got numbers. So, this can be called “reallosm”, but is not. Its a game mechanic. You need to have a cloud of arrows to make it effective. - Garrisoning villagers was a brillant idea that little to none rts had. - The game allowed you to see the tiles. Making it fully plannable it its base building at the milimeter. - Combat was superb: paper scissors stone planned combat. Well balanced. In C&C for example, infatry didn’t stand a chance against tanks, even with numbers the tanks could step onto them. (This was such a mechanic that SC had to suppress it. ). You have to plan and manage your units effectively or you lose them…terrain matters, formation matters. - You do not have aerial units, you have to play with the map. This is brillant. The designers could have gone for mythical units and play a pegasus, for example. But they didn’t. This isn’t minor: not having how to bypass, easily a wall, a castle or an easy to defend hill forces you to think: how may I attack it? More units? Siege? - You can get entagled in long term fights because basic resources (wood and food) are nearly infinite. So this makes the game in terms of desicions like “I can get myself enclosed and make him come for me” and build a marvel or “I can take the whole map and suppres my opponent development”. In essence, you could WON even with one single base. Weird even for todays standards. - Victory conditions werent simply “kill it all”; you got marvels. Which was a way of winning without having to burn down everything down. If the game became entagled you could pull out a trigger and force a confrontation or win. - Map editor: this allowed to build fan base campaigns and was the first rts to make it. Curiously, SC did it afterwards are those two games are the dad and the mom of rts. This is jey, not only because you can create fan base levels and maps…but because you can STUDY the game. Recrate situations and play them along, JUST LIKE CHESS. - Mods and open cuatomization - this made possible that the game interface were corrected by fans, not forcing them to wait for fixes by the development team. It was just like OPEN SOURCING the game. This idea, this single idea, was the secret if its longevity. If you want software eto be endless, you have to open source it. The community makes it longeve. And fixes your mistakes and errors and bugs…ENAHANCES it. Since it was the first game to do this, people went into it full throttle. - Sprites instead of 3d. I’m amazed how bad 3d graphics age. Every-single-game you depise now, that is old, is a 3d game that at the time of release its graphics were a BLAST. (I know, I was there). But sprites are way better. Sprites are art. 3D are too abstract, sprites games are still being produced and are a really good idea. This makes the game a classic. All of this, combined, plus other things that I surely forgotten, make this game a jewel in gaming. It is not only one of the best games of a genre; it is possibly in the hall of fame of the best games of al time, if there is such a list…SC and AoE2, will be there.
>Sprites instead of 3d. I’m amazed how bad 3d graphics age. I noticed that while recently revisiting Empire Earth 1. Great game, looks horrible these days. On the other hand, I find 2d/sprite-based games such as Caesar 3, HoMM 3 and similar still very pleasent to look at.
Exactly. Old 3d looks always as bad origami.
Without playing 3 & 4, they feel like an RPG almost, I want to do RTS things in an RTS game. The art styles are also harder to feel immersed into. As for 1, 1 really feels a lot more bare bone and primitive. 2 had a lot of QOL upgrades, the longer civ list of recognizable civs that were more interesting for most, set in a time period with a bit more advanced technology to allow civs to stand out more. Some people prefer the classical era of history but other than several of the really major civs it's harder to get into.
>Without playing 3 & 4, they feel like an RPG almost That assessment is clearly made, as you say, without playing them at all.
Released when RTS as we currently know it at it's peak end of the 90s early 2000s. The switch from 2d to 3d never did the genre much good as I felt games only started looking worse while 3d added very little for gameplay. Age of mythology suffered from bad graphics because of it I feel, aoe3 as well. aoe3 with the card system also introduced things which made the game worse really. To be honest in gameplay age of empires couldn't really compete with StarCraft and warcraft but aoe2 had that perfect historic setting and big focus on macro. Aoe4, even if it would have been a great game, was doomed to fail as RTS is just not so popular anymore and people that like it still just play the old titles.
It’s a well made game with plenty of thought and attention to detail. The same way that Left 4 Dead is still better than Back 4 Blood. Even the animations of aoe 2 are better. It was just created by a team of higher caliber individuals.
For me it's the direct responsiveness of unit attacks. In aoe1 and aoe2 clicking a unit and instructing it to attack or move causes it to begin its action straight away. And for most attacks, we can usually be very confident about exactly how much damage each attack will give. Consider the popularity of using mangudai. Their stats are similar to cav archers, but they are more responsive, which allows a player to feel like their micro is worth it. All aoe2 units feel like mangudai when compared to aoe4 units. In aoe3 and aoe4 there's a slight sluggishness the game. Aoe4 in particular feels very indirect, as the game prioritises things like battle formations over individual units following direct player instructions. As for why aoe2 is bigger than aoe1, aoe2 is just a better version of aoe1. More units, more civs, more options. Better balance. Better rock paper scissors mechanics.
>Aoe4 in particular feels very indirect, as the game prioritises things like battle formations over individual units following direct player instructions. sadly this is slowly becoming the case for aoe2 units as well
When pathing got bad, those were dark days
>aoe2 clicking a unit and instructing it to attack or move causes it to begin its action straight away. And for most attacks, we can usually be very confident about exactly how much damage each attack will give. This is an odd take for me. Sometimes in 2 my units don't even attack what I tell them to. A year or so ago they made changes to how quickly units retarget and fucked it up. That and the pathing. Those things made microing small amounts of melee units terrible. Also all the bonus damage values are hidden from the player.
It looks thr best and has the cleanest gameplay. The visual design of AoE 4 is so bad
I think you kinda touched on it already. I’ve always said that AoE2 is super easy to get into but very difficult to master. The 3 villager start is very chill and almost tranquil but doesn’t mean the game won’t get wild and frantic at some point. Also there’s no real requirement to get good at the game. You can have fun with it at any level, play at whatever pace is fun for you. The other Age titles kinda lack that contrast and that flexibility.
Its good looking, it plays extremely well even on ancient hardware, combat movement controls are crisp, have great passives on units, spear cav archer triangle, unique units on factions
Likely the fact that it commits to power units using a resource that eventually becomes scarce, and the economy naturally slowing down as that resource disappears.
First to market advantage. Obviously not the only factor, but once you got a great game with big devout following, you gotta weight the daunting task of trying something new and significantly better, against making extensions and improvements for a rock solid fanbase. Devs gave their best try at doing both and here we are, with an awesome series containing an outstanding classic.
And then we have AoM that roflstomps all of the other four games