[brullov]

I have just downloaded the new update Rise of the Rajas for AoE 2 HD. Looks really cool, a lot of brilliant stuff. Gonna play with friends soon and tell my feelings about the new 4 civs. You have to try it now!

[MusicallyInspired]

I have AOE2HD but haven't gotten any of the DLC yet. Used to play like crazy with family years ago.

[Shawneth]

I'm a huge AoE2 fan. Bought African Kings last year since it's not supported on Voobly. I've came around to playing some more games recently since the new patches (4.8?) seemed to fix some lag. It did not

[HulkNukem]

I love the first Age of Empires but could never get into the second one. It had a lot to do with the art; in the second one, things were much more detailed and 'gritty' while the original had a more stylized cartoon-like look to it.
I thought AoE3 was alright; I bought it back when there was a glitch on GFWL and AoE3 Complete was priced for a single penny.
I never got to play the free 2 play version.
I thought Age of Mythology demo was fun, but I never got the full game (I might get the HD version on Steam though)

I really like that AoE2 and AoM are still getting updates and expansions on Steam. I would LOVE the first one to get some lovin, but I understand why they chose AoE2 over it.

[Lunick]

If you like the first game then you should totally have the UPatch for it which allows higher resolutions, bug fixes and other neat stuff http://aoe.heavengam...&f=17,6327,,365

[Fantinaikos]

Lunick, on 19 December 2016 - 02:56 PM, said:

If you like the first game then you should totally have the UPatch for it which allows higher resolutions, bug fixes and other neat stuff http://aoe.heavengam...&f=17,6327,,365

Same for Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds+Clone Campaings that is based on the same engine.

https://steamcommuni...s/?id=636984276

And after applying the patch, install the gorgeous Expanding Fronts mod. 1.1 version has been recently released.

http://www.moddb.com...xpanding-fronts

PROTIP: Execute at least one time the original Battleground+Clone Campaings .exe before execute the Expanding Fronts .exe otherwise you will get an error and the game will not start.

[MusicallyInspired]

I loved the art of AOE1 as well, but AOE2 just adds so much more it's hard to go back once you've been at it for a while. Never really got into AOE3. I did enjoy what little of AOM I started playing, though. Just nobody else in the family played it and since I only ever played the MP with others, I never played as much...

For some reason Galactic Battlegrounds seemed to make things far more difficult. Nothing's recognizable so I'm not sure what I'm doing and they added an extra resource IIRC. I own them all though. Even made my own Age of Empires Collection DVD which includes AOE1, AOE2, and GB. Made a whole install program and launch menu. Fun times.

[brullov]

I love all AoE. Have great memories with all parts, but the AoE 2 is still played by me and friends. I think because of awesome gameplay, micro, graphic style and atmosphere.

[CatNapDreams]

My son and husband still play Age of Empires II regularly. We don't necessarily war, we just develop our lands and show them to each other mostly... then destroy the AI to end the game.
I have it for my old iPaq also, but seldom play it anymore.

CatNapDreams

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah, I always loved developing and building more than anything. After defeating the AI or even another player I just felt like "but I wasn't finished..."

I guess that's why I like games like Minecraft where it doesn't end and you can just keep developing.

[MrFlibble]

Being a long-time Warcraft II fan, I love Age of Empires, especially the first game and its expansion, Rise of Rome. AoK is indeed more polished but at the same time you get to feel the limitations more keenly. There's a certain charm in the departures from realism in the first game, like the Greek triremes or Hoplites that are used universally by all civilizations. Yet while playing AoK I often wondered why they didn't make every unit unique (at least in appearance) to each civilization type. After all, Galactic Battlegrounds does exactly that and each faction has unique unit designs (would be absurd if it were otherwise). It really feels weird to have European-looking infantry or crossbowmen being used by the Japanese or Mayans.

I'm also quite a fan of Rise of Nations. While this game has its own peculiarities I think it does some stuff better than AoK. For one, nation-specific units are not confined to a special unit type that is basically a hyped version of its regular counterpart. Instead, different nations get unique units instead of their regular counterparts at specific periods. Also most of the units have unique appearance that changes over time periods as well.

[Micky C]

I also prefer AOE 1 over 2. Sure the AI path finding is terrible, but I just love the atmosphere, and the time period. The whole thing just feels more epic. It feels like you're actually discovering new land and building up a great civilization. In AOK it kind of feels like the civilizations already exist, and all you're doing is expanding what's already there.

I liked AOM for similar reasons. Feels like a real globe-trolling adventure.

MusicallyInspired, on 20 December 2016 - 06:41 PM, said:

I guess that's why I like games like Minecraft where it doesn't end and you can just keep developing.

Like building eh? Try mapping. That doesn't end either

[MusicallyInspired]

Micky C, on 21 December 2016 - 03:45 AM, said:

I also prefer AOE 1 over 2. Sure the AI path finding is terrible, but I just love the atmosphere, and the time period. The whole thing just feels more epic. It feels like you're actually discovering new land and building up a great civilization. In AOK it kind of feels like the civilizations already exist, and all you're doing is expanding what's already there.

That's why I don't like AOE3 because it is actually like that. You're discovering the new world and not starting from scratch. You get upgrades from your home country or whatever.

Quote

Like building eh? Try mapping. That doesn't end either

I used to map, but I'm not good at it...or I'm not good at finishing stuff. I get a small idea started and then don't know where to go from there. Inspiration dies.

[HulkNukem]

Micky C, on 21 December 2016 - 03:45 AM, said:

I also prefer AOE 1 over 2. Sure the AI path finding is terrible, but I just love the atmosphere, and the time period. The whole thing just feels more epic. It feels like you're actually discovering new land and building up a great civilization. In AOK it kind of feels like the civilizations already exist, and all you're doing is expanding what's already there.

That's another part of why I like AoE so much. I really liked Rise of Nations too because of how primitive you start and yet you can end up in a time period where you are sending rockets into space. I still only ever had the demo for this, but it had a skirmish mode which was enough for me (plus I was young back then, and RoN had an option to turn on AI assistance so I liked 'cooperating' with the AI to create a nation)

For AoE1, I liked the time periods, and specifically my favorite part is the beginning when I'm doing nothing but creating more villagers, sending them out on hunts or chopping down giant dense forests; I almost prefer just that over the combat aspects. I even made custom maps on the largest map size possible with nothing but a huge forest separating me and the enemy, with lots of random pockets of other resources and water, just so I could essentially freeplay without fearing the AI (and when I get bored, enter in the steroids cheat and just send a massive overpowered army to crush the poor enemy)
I've yearned for a game similar to this. Start with a small pocket of cavemen, venture out to harvest and build up your village, meet other villagers who may be hostile or friendly, level up your people individually, so on and so on. The closest thing to this I've seen is a small game called Caveman Craig, but it's a sidescroller (still real fun)

[MrFlibble]

HulkNukem, on 21 December 2016 - 05:30 AM, said:

I really liked Rise of Nations too because of how primitive you start and yet you can end up in a time period where you are sending rockets into space. I still only ever had the demo for this, but it had a skirmish mode which was enough for me (plus I was young back then, and RoN had an option to turn on AI assistance so I liked 'cooperating' with the AI to create a nation)

For quite some time I also only had the demo versions of both Rise of Nations and the Thrones and Patriots expansion (there's a considerable portion of the Alexander the Great campaign in the T&P demo), and frankly both demos have a great replay value due to the skirmish (Quick Battle) mode on random maps. The T&P demo also doesn't have any limitations on custom settings for Quick Battle, although you still have only four nations to play (a different set compared to the RoN demo though).

A couple years ago I bought the Gold Edition which includes both the base game and its expansion, played it a bit, and apart from the excellent soundtrack there's very little that isn't already in the demos. The Conquer the World campaign is neat but I didn't find it too enticing. There's some weirdness too like in the early stages you fight non-playable "barbarian" nations (one of which is for some reason Sumerian), and these don't have any uniqueness to them, being just a combination of art from playable factions. At least in T&P they added unique portraits (and maybe models too) for barbarian units. IIRC each campaign scenario limits you to one age or one age advancement. I remember that more than one scenario may be confined to a single age. Overall the conquer campaign is certainly better and more featured than stuff like Emperor: Battle for Dune.

T&P's Alexander campaign is somewhat interesting (the campaign structure is more resemblant of classic single-player RTS games) but you're stuck in one age, removing a huge (no pun intended ) aspect of gameplay. It's still possible to do all the upgrades and research but you can't advance through the ages. I haven't tried other campaigns.

So I played around a bit with the full version, then it gathered some dust for a while and finally I gave it away to a friend who is a fan of AoE but has never played RoN.

That said, the game is still a lot of fun. Perhaps if I had more free time I would play the full version more. It's cool to have a lot of variety in playable factions, and even though there are some basic strategies that don't change a lot throughout the game there's enough diversity to keep things interesting in skirmish games. Also the art and graphics are very aesthetically pleasant. You can zoom in and out the playing field, and there's a lot of detail to structures and units. BTW, unlike AoK, the buildings of different cultures don't look like reskinned versions of the same model, so RoN is more like the first AoE in this respect. So I suggest to anyone who hasn't tried this to get the demos of both RoN and T&P (the latter may be even more preferable for more skirmish game options that are available).

What I didn't like was Empire Earth, even though this is supposed to be a "spiritual sequel" to AoE. It's probably the very crude 3D graphics that put me off. I guess the game didn't age well in this respect, which is sad as I remember there are some innovative ideas that were supposed to build upon the playing concepts of AoE.

[MusicallyInspired]

Empire Earth also takes you from the stone age to a futuristic age, doesn't it? I got it for free from GOG at some point for aome reason. Never played much though.

[LkMax]

Empire Earth goes from prehistoric age to digital "mecha" age, or to Space Age if you have the expansion. There was some 15 ages in the game, and something close to that in Empire Earth 2. Then came EE3 and f*cked it up by compriming the whole human history in 5 ages and cutting 80% of the different resource types.

[Micky C]

Isn't 15 a bit much? How can they possibly balance the game?

[CatNapDreams]

Interesting... fifteen seems like a lot. The one I play (AOE II: Age of Kings) only has four or five I think. We always start at the lowest and work our way up. If you have "all technologies" on, or you play as the Chinese, you can develop gunpowder for cannons and primitive firearms, and that is enough for me.
I can't imagine many more than that, but I am guessing it works quite differently. It seems like it might make strategy more difficult, like do I focus on lower civilization level with more mass, or do I focus on going up in level as fast as possible to use more tech for efficiency.

CatNapDreams

[Engel220]

I always loved AoE1 and 2. Played them both since childhood and they were the perfect RTS game for me; easy enough to get to grips with but challenging enough that you weren't always given an easy ride. They're the only RTS games I really play, though, so maybe I'm either heavily biased or too inexperienced with the genre to be seriously critical but I just have fun playing 'em when I want to relax or just kill time between releases.

I would love for Hidden Path to put together a HD re-release of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, too, but I imagine that would be a paperwork nightmare for them to get permission. A shame, really, as the current version on Steam is prone to incompatibility errors and other bugs and it's a great way to get the same AoE experience in a classic universe like Star Wars.

[LkMax]

Micky C, on 24 December 2016 - 01:57 PM, said:

Isn't 15 a bit much? How can they possibly balance the game?

Dunno, I didn't make it. Maybe it's not even well balanced, but I liked it anyway.
Unfortunately the AIs on skirmish mode are frigging cheaters.

[Tea Monster]

Nice surprise at E3 this year.




Not quite what we all wanted (AoE IV), but MS have teased that there will be some kind of AoE themed announcement at Gamescom in August this year. Dare we hope for a proper sequel?

Quite worrying with the debacle with what happened with AoK remastered, the beta requires that you have an XBox Live gamertag (All us PC gamers have one of those, right guys?) and the website is going down more often than Marilyn Chambers.

[Lunick]

I managed to sign up but I'm concerned that Steam isn't mentioned anywhere.

[Tea Monster]

Exactly. Paired with the requirement for XBoxLive bullshit, I smell a rat.

EDIT: Yeah, bad feeling is intensifying... Windows 10 and XBoxLive plastered all over it. I hope it's not some garbage to push XBoxLive onto Windows 10 PC users. We all know how well that turned out with Games for Windows right?

Heres hoping I'm wrong on this.

[HulkNukem]

I love the first AoE but that remaster looks like ass

[Fantinaikos]

Patch your original Age Of Empires with the Upatch then, it rebalance the game, increase the resolution, fix graphical bugs and make the game compatible on modern systems.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/upatch-hd
http://upatch-hd.weebly.com/

Probably the definitive edition will use the balancing of the original game with just few minor changes, I doubt they consider a fan-patch to enhance the game experience.

[MusicallyInspired]

Bah. I've already got the original if I want to play it (with a patch, as has been pointed out). AOE2 was the better one anyway. If it's not on Steam with no other requirements or DRM free I'm not getting it.

[Tea Monster]

Yeah. AoK knocked AoE to the curb pretty much. I'm going to put my DNF tinfoil hat on and pin my hopes on an August announcement of No. 4.

[Sledgehammer]

Tea Monster, on 13 June 2017 - 12:16 AM, said:

Dare we hope for a proper sequel?

There is more chance for a good Duke game to happen this year. It's like you forgot about "proper sequel" which is mobile shit.

Not only this is M$, but we're talking about an RTS game and this genre, well, I think it obvious to anyone how healthy it is. I mean, come on, the only worthwhile game M$ made was KI (and that was in 2013) which they still fucked up after last season, by the way. At best they would make it console RTS and that would be absolute crap, just like that shitty new Halo RTS game they pulled (not remaster one). I don't even think there are people left who can make worthy AoE sequel at this point.

AoE is doomed just like C&C, though AoE is getting better treatment, the second game specially.

[Micky C]

All I want with AOE 1 is improved AI pathfinding.

Edit: Some basic formations would also be nice.