Age Of Empires Corner

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Age Of Empires Corner

MrFlibble

#91 Posted 23 April 2019 - 10:25 AM

gemeaux333, on 23 April 2019 - 07:27 AM, said:

Empire Earth 3 was reportedly missing campaigns, replaced by a "global domination" mode (like in CNC3: Kane's Wrath)

Frankly it's the odd campaigns in EE1 that put me off; I remember reading one unfavourable review that mocked the alternate WW1-2 German campaign and even more so the futuristic Russian campaign. I just watched some videos of the campaigns and they failed to impress me. Especially with all the close-ups of low-poly models in cinematics. Random scenarios seem more interesting, just like Clint suggests in his video.

What about EE2 and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World? (I want your opinions; I know what these games are about, played some EE2 demo and watched some EDOWM campaign videos).

I honestly liked Rise of Nations a lot, both in terms of visual style and gameplay, but the mechanics are very different from AoE, and being stuck in one age (like in the expansion's historical campaigns) is rather boring because of the limited variety of units that you have.

MrFlibble

#92 Posted 05 May 2019 - 10:10 AM

MrFlibble, on 23 April 2019 - 10:25 AM, said:

What about EE2 and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World?

I played the demo versions a bit, watched some videos and read about these games. What I did not realise is that EE2 was made by Mad Doc Software who originally produced the Art of Conquest add-on for EE while Stainless Steel Studios went on to develop Empires. (This is something I did not realise back when the games came out originally.)

Basically, the first EE is the closest to AoE in terms of gameplay, and actually the visuals are pretty similar except now in full 3D. As far as I can tell, Empires more or less follows the same route but limits the scope to medieval times and modern warfare. The multiplayer/skirmish demo of Empires is only limited to the WW2 era, making it hard to judge how it compares to the AoE games. It certainly feels odd that you still have to order your citizens to chop trees, mine gold and forage berry bushes to produce WW2-era infantry and tanks. Also for some reason, citizens only initiate the construction of buildings which then build themselves up, although this might be some special power of the British side only (?).

Empires also has these prolonged campaign cinematics that feel overly dragged to me, and Wikipedia states that the singleplayer portion was not the main focus of development anyway.

EE2 on the other hand seems to innovate a bit (that is, compared to the basic AoE formula) and actually gets somewhat more similar to Rise of Nations. You have territories that you can occupy by building city centres, unlimited resource deposits, diplomacy that seems more versatile when dealing with the AI, and quite a bit of macro features, yes it still more or less retains the AoE kind of feel to the overall command of your settlements. It does require some getting used to.

There's also a project called Empires Apart which kind of follows the footsteps of AoK apparently but I gather it doesn't have a single player component as of yet.

On a related note, when I first played the demo ofAge of Mythology it really felt like a "return to the roots" of sorts in the franchise in spite of the mythological elements.

MrFlibble

#93 Posted 18 June 2019 - 01:51 AM

So some folks uploaded a video of Age of Empires II Definitive Edition from E3:

Zaxx

Banned

#94 Posted 18 June 2019 - 03:57 AM

It looks weird, I mean the graphics are awesome but the style of the update is very-very close to the original game. Maybe they used the original assets for the buildings?

MusicallyInspired

The Sarien Encounter

#95 Posted 18 June 2019 - 10:13 AM

Man it looks gorgeous. But I freaking hate the Windows Store.

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 18 June 2019 - 10:13 AM

brullov

Senior Artist at TGK

#96 Posted 18 June 2019 - 10:51 AM

I want to make maps for this! Looks amazing.

Lunick

#97 Posted 18 June 2019 - 03:16 PM

MusicallyInspired, on 18 June 2019 - 10:13 AM, said:

Man it looks gorgeous. But I freaking hate the Windows Store.

...it's coming to Steam though

MusicallyInspired

The Sarien Encounter

#98 Posted 18 June 2019 - 07:47 PM

Oh my! I didn't realize they put AOE1 DE there too. I never watched the XBox E3 though, was it all announced there?

Lunick

#99 Posted 18 June 2019 - 07:51 PM

I think it was announced prior to E3 haha

MusicallyInspired

The Sarien Encounter

#100 Posted 18 June 2019 - 08:17 PM

Lol well then.

BloodGuy

#101 Posted 29 June 2019 - 01:26 PM

So there exists a First Person Mod for Aoe2!

Posted Image

MusicallyInspired

The Sarien Encounter

#102 Posted 29 June 2019 - 09:49 PM

Lol what the heck.

Aristotle Gumball

banned!

#103 Posted 29 June 2019 - 11:37 PM

I'm glad someone's finally making my childhood fantasies come true.

MrFlibble

#104 Posted 27 August 2019 - 08:10 AM

Yesterday I found this very informative video on the Empire Earth series:

There's also some early pre-release AoE gameplay footage at around 3:28 which was unfamiliar to me.

HulkNukem

#105 Posted 27 August 2019 - 12:37 PM

I've always liked Age of Empires since first playing the demo way back in the 90s. I still enjoy playing the Rise of the Hittites level where you start with 2 priests or the multiplayer rumble map. Played them in the definitive edition and it brought back lots of memories.

It also reminds me that I really only enjoy the beginning of the matches where you are slowly building up a village and hate when the combat starts. I wish there was a game with similar mechanics without any of the combat (save for hunting).

Kingdom for Keflings was the closest thing.

MrFlibble

#106 Posted 28 August 2019 - 01:59 AM

HulkNukem, on 27 August 2019 - 12:37 PM, said:

I just watched some DE videos of the Hittite campaign, it appears that they reworked it quite a bit compared to the original demo version. In fact I believe that the only mission that remains more or less intact is the one with the two priests, although now it depicts the coming of the Hittites to the land of Hatti, whereas in the original demo it was a conflict with the then Egyptian-allied Mitanni. I believe the Mitanni war was deemed not particularly large-scale so they replaced it with the infamous sack of Babylon. I also see they added more in-depth stuff about the civilizations in the briefings.

The old demo is interesting in itself because it's based on a pre-release build of the game and has some differences from the final version. Also even though you can use the campaign file to play the demo campaign in the full version, the AI scripts seem not to work making it way easier to play.

One cool demo mission is actually the one coming after the two priests one (not included in DE as it seems), which I understood is to teach the player the importance of walls and navy. You begin with a Tool Age settlement but not enough resources to quickly raise an army, while the AI almost immediately starts pressing you with ground attacks including stone throwers. The only efficient tactic I found to counter this is to completely wall in choke points (there are two) and start building ships to take out the enemy forces more or less safely (the Hittites enjoying a hefty bonus to the ships' attack range; which I believe was to represent their "power of diplomacy"). Thankfully you have just enough stone and wood for the task. Once the enemy forces are exhausted you move in and reclaim the artifact from the Mitanni base.

There are several YouTube videos showing this mission played in the full version, with the AI's early attacks not present at all. So far I only managed to find one video showing the actual trial version and not the full version (the guy rushed for ships and didn't build walls though):

Zaxx

Banned

#107 Posted 28 August 2019 - 02:34 AM

You can find that mission in AoE DE, it's from Reign of the Hitties and they didn't alter it that much.

Tea Monster

Polymancer

#108 Posted 01 September 2019 - 04:45 AM

Interesting to see what they do with AoE III DE. I personally much prefer II for combat mechanics reasons, but III is still good fun now and again.

This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 01 September 2019 - 04:45 AM

Zaxx

Banned

#109 Posted 01 September 2019 - 06:37 AM

AoE 3 DE will be double interesting because a different team is working on it than the people who did the DEs for the first two games.

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 01 September 2019 - 06:38 AM

Zaxx

Banned

#110 Posted 06 September 2019 - 01:51 PM

I'm in the closed beta of AoE 2 DE (Microsoft's NDA is far reaching so no write up) and at this point a lot of people got invited so if you're one of those send me a PM and we'll get some games going.

Sledgehammer

Once you start doubting, there's no end to it

#111 Posted 08 September 2019 - 05:53 AM

So, do those games work on Windows 7? Gears 5 has Windows 7 listed on its page (Halo collection will too support it, but with Gears it's more relevant due to publisher being the same for both), so I wonder if anyone said anything related to that.

Zaxx

Banned

#112 Posted 08 September 2019 - 06:59 AM

No, both definitive editions only work on Win 10 officially though you can get AoE DE running on Win 8.1 too with a bit of tinkering. It's a bit weird because both games use DX11 so it should be possible to run them on Win 7 but afaik since at the start they were supposed to be Win Store exclusives there were a few things implemented that only run on Win 10.

As for Gears 5 that game will run on Win 7 but Win 10 is the recommended OS since Win 7 only received partial DX12 support. You'll get worse performance on Win 7.

Sledgehammer

Once you start doubting, there's no end to it

#113 Posted 08 September 2019 - 10:40 PM

Wait, Gears 5 supports DX12 only? MS are truly assholes. Good thing Halo collection won't be screwed like this, this is the only thing I really care about.

Anyway, I suspect the reason AoE doesn't work on Windows 7 is due to lack of some .dll support (i.e. sound related .dll) because they probably didn't set pre-Windows 10 support in the SDK when compiled the game, this happened to Konami Arcade Collection. No doubt people will make Windows 7 patch support either way (considering it already supports DX11), unless MS decide to use some bullshit file encryption system.

Zaxx

Banned

#114 Posted 08 September 2019 - 11:05 PM

Sledgehammer, on 08 September 2019 - 10:40 PM, said:

Wait, Gears 5 supports DX12 only?

I dunno, I'm just saying that the game relies very heavily on DX12 so if there is a DX11 mode (or a "minimalist" DX12 mode that works on Win 7) chances are it will run like crap. Even if you look at the system requirements the game needs better hardware on Win 7.

Anyway I don't know what the problem is these days (I mean there's a new forum thread popping up every week on just why Win 10 is shit, usually it's the "spyyyyyying" or the "broken updates") but really: Win 7 is 10 years old at this point, it's shit now so upgrade.

Sledgehammer

Once you start doubting, there's no end to it

#115 Posted 09 September 2019 - 04:30 AM

Windows 7 is not shit though, because on technical level it's not outdated, unlike, say, Windows XP. I personally have no need for 10, if anything it provided me way too much nuisances compared to Windows 7, so I got rid of that shit and got back to 7 again.

My biggest problem with 10, beside telemetry of course, is that it thinks way too much instead of users and it "knows better" than users too, not to mention updates that can't be disabled unless you use some bullshit workarounds that Windows 7 does not require. With 7 I'm in charge, but with 10 the system is in charge of users. But I guess it's a fine OS if you like to play video games (new ones that are compatible with 10) and browse internet.

This post has been edited by Sledgehammer: 09 September 2019 - 05:26 AM

Zaxx

Banned

#116 Posted 09 September 2019 - 05:47 AM

Sledgehammer, on 09 September 2019 - 04:30 AM, said:

Windows 7 is not shit though, because on technical level it's not outdated, unlike, say, Windows XP.

It's getting there though, Win 10 makes a better use of your system in general now and it has a fair bit of features that help when it comes to gaming so in general your performance is a bit more consistent, your frame times are a bit better depending on the game etc. It's not a paradigm shift compared to Win 7 of course but it's a lot, lot better than the old OS now and also a ton more secure. Plus everybody is supporting 7 less and less, not just MS so I think at this point it's recommended to switch if you want to do any kind of gaming whatsoever.

And really when it comes to most complaints MS is listening and implementing stuff based on user feedback so for example now you can kill off updates a lot easier (the system will usually know it better than you do though so I wouldn't recommend it, imo how it handles updates is really good now).

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 09 September 2019 - 05:48 AM

Zaxx

Banned

#117 Posted 15 September 2019 - 02:02 AM

The Definitive Edition of AoE 1 received no new content apart from some new campaign maps replacing the old, badly designed or lackluster ones but there is a map designer from Forgotten Empires who made 8 new custom campaigns. Here's the full list:
https://steamcommuni...62230378386568/

It's pretty great stuff that mostly focuses on adding some important parts of history that were missing from the game. So for example there are two campaigns about Alexander the Great (the original game had a lackluster map with him that didn't even feature the hero unit, the DE adressed that too with a new, much better map replacing the old) and it's good shit: Rise of Rome style, detailed, short and sweet campaigns + you play as the Macedonians instead of the Greek civ so more variety, yay!

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 15 September 2019 - 02:05 AM

Tea Monster

Polymancer

#118 Posted 15 September 2019 - 05:20 AM

They re-wrote the kernel for Windows 10 to be faster, leaner and more responsive. Unfortunately, they also loaded it up to the gunwales with stupid 'apps' that used to be handled by stuff like Media Player. That's not touching on the pervasive spyware and other crap they chuck onto it nowadays. When 10 came out, it was a given that anything that could run 8 or 7 comfortably would run 10 faster. Nowadays, not so much. It seems that I'm seeing a lot of systems that have stupid driver issues. Screens that black out after they connect to the web, network cards that run at turtle speeds, etc.

What we need now is "Windows 10 lite" to bring it back up to speed.

Zaxx

Banned

#119 Posted 15 September 2019 - 05:47 AM

Eh, you can turn that shit off though, I mean in general Win 10 is pretty flexible when it comes to sorting out what you need and what you don't, you can remove or deactivate pretty much everything including the "spyware".

Overall I like Win 10 a lot and honestly that says a lot to me because I literally only installed it back in the day so that I could play Killer Instinct. I don't even hate the Windows Store because I just like the idea that it's an integral part of the OS that handles every app so there is no separate client application. Basically starting up the OS is your login so for example if you have a Win Store game you just have an icon, you click it and bam, you're in the game just like in the good old days without having to mess with a client program. Of course a lot is wrong with how MS handled the whole thing and as a result some stuff connected to it is just weird as fuck but at least it's marginally better now and it seems like the new Xbox app that's still in beta will be a solution.

Also: Game Pass is just great, it's worth the price tag so much that it makes you wonder how MS is going to make this thing financially viable.

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 15 September 2019 - 05:49 AM

MrFlibble

#120 Posted 16 September 2019 - 03:05 AM

In the meantime I grabbed a copy of Empire Earth and gave it a go. So far it feels like a pretty decent direct successor to the original AoE and plays very similarly, if only with some changes and tweaks here and there. The graphics actually give a good impression of AoE visuals transitioned to true 3D, at least as long as you keep the default zoomed-out view. It is beyond me however why the developers thought it a good idea to show close-ups of the low-detail unit models for in-game cutscene purposes. It would've been cool if they made pre-rendered CGI or even live-action cutscenes instead (with the same level of cheesy acting) but I guess it was beyond the budget; but leaving the default map view during the non-interactive dialogue would've done just fine.

The game has very boring tutorial levels that are to the point when it comes to explaining mechanics, but too stringent in holding the player's hand to make it any fun. This is what originally put me off some ten years ago when I first downloaded the demo. However once you play the campaigns it's mostly similar to AoE in both the general mechanics and pacing, except maybe for the balance overhaul that they did with the units. Apparently the system of counters is based on weapon type vs weapon type, although there are several different armour types that underlie this kind of distinction. For example, the combat tutorial teaches that swordsmen always beat archers, while spearmen always beat swordsmen; this is accomplished by the swordsmen having good arrow armour but poor piercing armour, while spearmen have good "shock" armour against swords, maces or clubs. This is compared to the original AoE where there was only a distinction between armour against melee weapons and against arrows.