8:54 This drove me nuts until I realized its an option you can change. In the Game/UI settings you can select a dropdown option that says "select only" instead of "select and focus" which saves A LOT of pain when you're trying to deal with a battle and keep units producing.
I initially tried turning on that option, but the same option is unfortunately tied to the town center as well, so pressing H can no longer be used to move your camera back to your base. What's needed is for the option to be separated for multiple building selection hotkeys vs single building selection hotkeys.
@@wcko87 if spacebar operates as it does in AoE2 for going to selected, you could at least press H, space - an additional button press which isn’t ideal, but is similar to how you’d do it for unit group selection in AoE2, either double pressing the group number or pressing group number then space.
I agree with pretty much everything, but would add: They need to fix the minimap. It's such a clusterfuck and is completely useless after a certain point because you can't differentiate any icons in the massive blob of colour.
One thing I really like about SOTL is that he comes off as this aggressively friendly and helpful guy, to the point where you might wonder if he would say anything critical--but he's not afraid to speak his mind when there are things he doesn't like, either.
So happy you need siege to attack stone walls and that you can finally place units on walls! Some things I hope they work on are definitely the unmissable projectiles... which makes archers and siege a little op, making siege weapons have friendly fire which I think would add to realism/strategy, possibly ways to incorporate siege weapons into walls to make for some awesome fortress/defense gameplay and on the naval side, having the ability to fire on the go. But overall looks pretty cool, definitely excited!
I love how useful melee infantry is in AoE4. It's tanky, can hold or push the line and doesn't get shredded by ranged units unless they're anti-armor specialists. A long way from "anti-trash". Good point about the camera being too tilted.
Another aspect that promises to break the crossbowmens/Knights monopoly is the presence of gunpowder units in the late game (Age IV) to be much more significant than in the AOE2.
9:47 Hold up, that setup seems very familiar... spear and axemen on the hill and a mix of archers, infantry and cavalry on the bottom. That has to be the battle of Hastings!
That bell noise is the real stress test indeed xD Yeah able to change hotkeys is a must. Especially in RTS game I hope the game will be success, so RTS games' golden day will be back like in 2000s
I wonder what the reasoning is behind not allowing players to change hotkeys. I get that this is beta, but there are devs out there who genuenly do not allow players to change hotkeys (cough, Paradox, cough). I wonder why.
I found the UI lacking. Particularly the icons on the mini map. In larger games, the map was so cluttered, it was unreadable. Why do deer and berries have their own icons? Why is the mini map so small? The rest of the UI was better, but sometimes it was hard to tell what icon was for what in a hurry. Everything being gold and blue likely didn't help. Now these issues could be fixed by simply getting used to them and playing more. They also seem like things that would have mods made for them really quickly. Considering this, I'm not too worried about it.
I feel the same way. But my biggest gripe was the unit portrait icons. At a glance they all look the same, they just have outlines on a colored background instead of a proper portrait in order to be able to distinguish between different units.
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention the unit queue UI being individual tiles vs a single tile with a number on it. I found it almost impossible to deduce how many units I had queued, esp when you hit the width limit of the queue.
@@booradley6832 I had this same problem. Having colored icons like in the other AoE games could be a vast improvement. If they don't change it, maybe there'll be a mod for it.
It's also really hard to cancel construction queues for units as the icons are surrounded by clickable screen. So it is easy to click on the map and deselect the building instead of cancel. Very annoying.
@@louisr6560 Yeah the UI and lack of visual feedback was my main gripe in general. Not seeing my scout's waypoints REALLY through me off a lot more than I thought it would for instance. I really enjoyed the game in general and look forward to purchasing and playing it on release, but I hope they tighten up a lot of these aspects considerably before then.
The game just looks so _squishy_, like all actions are soft and smooth, even when not appropriate. AoE2 feels snappy, responsive and tight in comparison.
A good example of that is the lumberjacks and miners at 9:35. They gentle tap the resource and slowly swing their tool. There's no weight to the tool, and it looks like they're in molasses.
in general the game looks like just another 3d rts in *pick civilization era or fantasy world*. they all suffer from slow unit animations because for some reason devs believe that'll show off their hard work in animating them.
I immediatly turned my Mouse Speed Up ans that stupid camera acceleration off. That fixes this for me. But Just Like early AoE2 DE days the customizability in the settings isnt great enough
I think they add unit acceleration to groups with something akin to liquid physics, where the outer units accelerate to catch up to the group when you order them. The plus side is there is no delay to the input (units in aoe2 will turn around and inverse formations to move letting your opponent get many shots off), but the downside is it feels and looks kind of dumb and not realistic at all. I have not played yet but watched a lot of gameplay, and that is the impression I get.
Visually the only things that really bother me is how vibrant the colors of the units are and how at the top middle of the screen is too busy. It's also really spaced out so it just takes up a lot of screen space. Otherwise im loving what i see.
I was going to write the same thing. In AoE2 there was much less colors and more destiguish details of the units. Here its a colorfull mess like in modern painting. At first sight its hard to notice the difference between chu ko nu and crossbow or palace guard and men of arms. Same with cavalery. I would love to see it being changed.
@@konradpyszniak976 I agree it is very hard to differentiate units imo. I really do not like the over simplified styling of the units and the lack of detail on them. Maybe its just youtube vids but units just look like blobs of color with a long toothpick or plastic looking bow. Really dislike the lack of realism in the style.
One more thing I'd like to see discussed is balance. I thought some upgrades were really overpriced, so I dug into the math for how long it took feudal eco upgrades to pay off. Turns out it takes 6 minutes+ for double broadax to pay off with *10 villagers*, so you should basically never get feudal eco upgrades in feudal. I made a video about it on my channel on this topic if anyone is interested.
Yeah I was wondering the same thing. Since gold is now required to advance, it doesn’t make sense to spend it on upgrades. A 15% increase is the same as having 1.5 extra workers assuming you currently have 10 working. I would rather just train an extra villager or two to increase my production. The only upgrades worth taking are the farms since you’re pretty much locked to either 8, 16, or 24 farms. Increasing the efficiency of farms will increase your food production which is important for ramping up military production later on.
A month really isn't very long for some of these issues. I'd be surprised if they made any major changes before release, though I'm sure there will be polish if what's already there.
They also could have already fixed some issues we noticed, but used an older version where those issues still existed because that issue was the most stable version available for the stress test. If that's the case, development could be further along than we currently expect 😄
We as players could also just stop to take everything in just at release and even before... So we can get back good old times when games were actually finished on release...
@@fluxbomb3376 Except so often they weren't. There are a whole slew of games released in the 'good old times' that had massive gamebreaking bugs that had to be fixed through physical copy expansions, and in some cases like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and KotOR 2, were unfinished and abandoned on release by the publishers. Games can actually be fixed post-release immediately now, and without having to charge the consumer those fixes because they're no longer tied to physical media alone.
Even AOE 3 has better camera angle than 4. I tried playing Iron Harvest on Steam and can't stand the camera. It's very "on top" of the map and very zoomy. Just can't play RTS games like that.
Maybe have the angle start more from above and have it become more acute as the camera gets zooms in closer to the units? It's pretty common, but also pretty effective.
You covered a lot of my major gripes thus far - namely the smothering fog, projectile woes and lack of visible waypoints. And hotkeys ofc. If modding support is as extensive as they make it out, I'm sure any minor aesthetic changes can be made by the player. As you say, otherwise it's shaping up all right. Perhaps not the "dream AoE" people wanted, a but a decent RTS with lots to offer :)
In this era, you aren't used to hear a blackpowder weapon, it undoubtedly was frightful for anyone hearing them, so it could be reflected that way. This recalls me of Medieval 2: Total War, the blackpowder weapons there were really designed to be scary.
Why is every single action in this game delayed? You click, wait for the cursor animation to finish and then the action happens. Also, it looks as if the game was designed to look good in zoomed in shots but actual gameplay camera was secondary. So you end up with AoE2 looking way sharper and nicer looking during actual gameplay.
@@adrianhirst484 AoE might be old, but at least it's crisp. Doesn't matter how much better the unit models are if everything looks blurry. Starcraft 2 came out 10 years ago and has cleaner, crisper graphics.
@@radred609 Yeah, the game doesnt necessarily look bad, but everything looks so wobbly and washed out. There is very noticeable clipping between the units and the 3D graphic makes everything seem bent and squished. If you set up everything right the game can be very beautiful but during actual gameplay its just not crisp enough.
I think with the new archer and crossbow line they kinda split the role of the AoE2 archer line while also replacing the skirmisher line. The archers feel similar to skirmishers in that they are a cheap ranged unit good against low armor infantry (like spears) and are supposed to trade well against the low armor crossbows. On the other hand, AoE4 crossbows are like AoE2 archer-line in that they cost gold and when massed will shred most enemy units, but because they are expensive and lightly armored they will not trade cost-effectively against the cheap regular archers. Also as much as I enjoyed the beta, I'm not sure how I feel about arrows being homing projectiles. Even as a casual player I thought it was nice to have that higher skill ceiling w/ the ability to beat ranged units with good micro.
I love that guys throwing spears wrecking crossbow and longbowmen isn't a thing anymore. That said I would like to see projectiles actually miss, especially at max range since they just wreck villagers. They could then slightly reduce the piece armor of maa and knights to balance things out
I find that microing completely undermines the balance of various units. With good micro you can pretty much make some units useless, even quite expensive ones. They can't simply make those units cheaper or more powerful, as that would tip the balance where those who don't use micro get slaughtered. Making it so microing units wont stop them getting hit levels the playing field and allows a consistent balance. If it was fundamental, it would be in the tutorial.
@@jeffreyblack666 I agree, and while you might not be dodging projectiles, unit movement and kiting micro has a similar role still. StarCraft has this, where the person who micros will win, but will take more than 0 damage
They should also release graphics dlcs for free... e.g. customize how much texture is used for the units. Would also like to have different skins for the units. Somehow AOE2 units look more iconic and stylish than AOE4 units
Sorry to disapoint you but it is extremely odd that if they decide to do a complete pack of better graphics it will be free, games used to call this "elite" or "extreme" textures/graphics; anyway in my opinion it should be free too, since they set the bar really low.
It’s the lower fidelity of older graphics, so the designers are forced to highlight things more. But that wouldn’t look quite as good if the style is still the same.
@@braynaguilar8567 Actually the game is not that expensive in some countries, but pressed to guess, they will add this with an expansion pack, then more reason to buy it; in my book DE versions are already a remaster, I don't see the point of charging for graphic updates when they are already selling an old game again.
I'm not a fan of the cartoonish style. Takes away from the emersion for me, especially as a military history fan. I like a more serious and realistic motif
@@911treason3 i seriously don’t get that. I’ve played it and not once did anything feel or look particularly “cartoony.” Im a major military history nerd too, and what really caught my eye is how much aoe4 really made battles feel like they would happen in real life, or at least moreso than aoe2. Idk, the flow of battle, infantry lines, cav charges, and pacing all make it feel more believable in a “hmm, maybe medieval warfare looked something like this” sort of way.
the #1 thing I didn't like while playing AoE4 was the UI. Sure, you could say the flavour is bad and it looks really generic, but that isn't even my main problem. The big issue I have is that even though the iconography is simple it's hard to tell what you're looking at sometimes without reading the tooltips. Maybe it's just something I need to get used to but all the techs having different images and colours in AoE2 makes quick decision making a lot easier as long as I know what the tech is beforehand. I still got tripped up in 4 even after knowing what everything in the blacksmith was, for example
Compared to Age 2 where all the Icons are very easily distinguishable and have a lot of feel to them. That's probably my biggest gripe with age 4 so far.
Honestly for me AoE4 seems more like a continuation of Empire Earth than Age of Empires. From the graphical style to the simplified combat and eco systems, to the barely readable units at a glance, the design choices taken in AoE4 seem far closer to EE than the AoE2 that most people love, at least IMO
I don't know about you but units in EE are pretty recognizable. maybe in Atomic WW1 to Atomic Modern ages, you can get confused over aircraft but for the most part the game's units a differentiable.
You literally said everything that is on my mind! Especially all those QoL things, just as waypoints, that is the most confusing thing for me: Am I attacking now? Well, the circle is red, but... there is no visual feedback and no flag afterwards that gives me visual feedback that THIS is the target for a longer period of time.
There definitely are issues, but playing during the stress test was quite fun! I particularly enjoyed having my infantry build siege towers in the field and then deploy on top of an enemy wall for some up close and personal combat. Very 'siege of Minas tirith'. I had to adjust my brightness down right away because the 'washed out' look was just too much for me, though I feel like that's an aesthetic choice that's pretty common in games these days, lots of bright colors and an overall very light color palette.
For hotkeys, I do agree on more customization being always good - however, I do want to say that Grid hotkeys are (imo) the best default for an RTS, and I'm very happy they emphasized it. Being able to use hotkeys visually is very helpful, and much more user friendly (though perhaps less important in an age game, vs something like starcraft). I wouldn't mind some more automatization of buildings/units - maybe it's something I missed on how to do, but something like Age of Mythology's "continuously produce this unit" or "explore" options are very nice quality of life ones for this style of game, IMO. But I approach age games from a lot more of a casual side, and don't enjoy the more production/macro aspects as focused as Starcraft (the other RTS I've played extensively)
I also love the grid scheme that I just learned to use with aoe2 DE, still aoe4 grid scheme was slightly different and I had a bit of hiccups since I was jumping between both games that weekend, with a bit of customization I could use the same configuration for both games. Also I heavily rely on using 2 mouse hot keys to cycle through towncenters and the other one to select idle villagers. That's very important to me because I use my right hand for it instead of my left one that I use for everything else. I believe that if we complain enough about it they will add it into the game though.
i actually kinda dislike that the dark age is now so quickly over. why having a dark age in the first place then if it doesn't serve a good purpose. might as well just start in feudal then. i so wished for the new aoe to have strong and long lasting ages where you really have to think twice if you wanna pay a ton of ressources for the next age or if you want stay and se it for your current unit roster. now the dark age is basically over in 3 to 4 minutes...
Agree. To make an analogy to racing cars, legacy AOE 2 feels more like a mountain road race where there is more strategy to where you shift coming into various corners with more variety among the straights and corners and more time between these decisions to take in the sights. This version feels more like a 1/4 mile drag race where the only purpose of each shift is simply get through it so you can then quickly slam it into the next gear until the race is over seconds later.
"New age is upon us" during gameplay I saw future: Age of Mythology 2 in same engine maybe next 1-2 years its like they testing some features used in AoM for new games. It makes percfect sense coz AoE4 looks more like AoM then AoE2. Maybe we will see even Rise of Nations 2 in next decade. And I belive Microsoft and Relic would be working on these games. They know people still love they games and play them after all these years. Thats why they call it "new age". A New Age of their old strategy games. An this idea makes me happy.
@@yahyamusseb the developer company that made the og game now makes mobile games for nexon which is one of the worst among mobile gaming companies ( kinda like EA). Microsoft however still has the rights to rise of nations franchise.
Well AoE4 might find it's own fanbase. I for example love to watch AoE2 but don't really like playing it as it's just too hectic and stressful for me. AoE4 was a lot of fun so far though!
@@Waddehaddeduddedaa well i dunno about stressful, but there's certain things you "have to do" in AoE2 in multiplayer games that tick me off a bit. like making sure your villagers (at least 5) gather from the same sheep while also making sure your scout is pushing or "herding" the nearby deers towards your town center. then when it comes to military units its hard to keep track of which units are best at a given job depending on your civ. if you're a casual player and you come up against a pro who knows the in and outs of all civs you're gonna be toyed with. another thing that highly frustrates me is peoples tendency to do early rushes using either archers or scout cavalry. which is why i usually play the "Arena" map so the game at least gets started before its over, due to the walls providing some protection in the early game.
@@stefanvandersandt3956 In fairness the mmr system in AoE 2 is good. If you lose enough games you WILL find yourself amongst other bad players you can enjoy yourself with.
I think archers should be how AOM archers are. 1st shot is a 50% chance to hit, 2nd and 3rd shots are 75% to hit, and 4th shot is 100% to hit. I would rather have this if ballistics is not in the game.
@@Codexter1 except dodging arrows makes absolutely no sense. This way makes the most sense- they get more accurate the more often they shoot at a target as they more accurately judge distance and location.
@@mickethegoblin7167 it is very realistic and also detrimental to professional players who prefer skill solutions over rng ones. If the pros don’t like the game, it will have been a failure. No sponsorships no advertising no Red Bull wololo.
@@kaws8778 I suppose we have different metrics of what 'failure' entails. I could care less about 'pros' or those sponsored tournaments- and as long as enough people buy the game, it would not be a failure.
Hey Spirit, love your video! lots of good points here, especially regarding the town bell. I agree there should be complete customization available for the hotkeys, however, I think with the F keys they are intending for the player to press F1 for all military for example, then TAB cycle through the list. Like you would TAB to the barracks or siege workshops. There is even a way you can back up with TAB I think its like CTRL+TAB or Shift or something. Another way I found to use this TABing system, I designate a select all military hotkey and you can tab between the different unit types or even from within 1 control group. So you could tab to your cav to split them off, tab to your monks to hold them back, tab to your siege etc.
Honestly, even during the closed beta and stress test, I'm very pleased to say that I've already got a favourite civ. The Chinese have blown me away with how fun they are, and I'm probably going to be playing them mostly when the game finally comes out.
Being a fan of CoH (another relic game) watching how they’re handling CoH3 and it’s development they are SUPER receptive to the public and what they want. There’s a lot of hope for them to address stuff brought to them
Two things I wanna add which were done quite well imo: - selecting e.g. all military buildings via F1 (like at 8:45 ) - if Spirit would have clicked on e.g. the barracks symbol here, he could have selected all his barracks easily without loosing the view of all military buildings "selected". It enabled you to press one hotkey, click through the respective buildings (barracks, archery range, ...) and just spam shift+Q - similarly, when selecting different units in one group, you could select a part of the group (e.g. the archers) and command them without loosing the overview of the whole selected control group
My thoughts on them releasing the game and continuing to develop it afterward is that it's all predicated on how well they can listen to player feedback and what decisions they make with it. I'd love for aoe4 to become the next big RTS Esport, but I think it's too early to make the call of whether it will Edit: By the way, I think it's a good idea to not pick up the game on launch and wait a week (unless you really wanna try the single player) to see what state the game is released in. I'll be happy to wait if the game comes out with performance / stability / gameplay issues
@@benkusworl4934 Yeah, I honestly think waiting like that is a good idea. I'm personally really hyped for some fresh Age of Empires gameplay, so I'll probably wait less LOL
@@kunstderfugue Waiting is a best choice from a customer perspective. But from RTS player perspective, it makes sense to support new big RTS game, so publishers would see the genre as a worthwhile investment. Of course, if the game is not a complete failure. Which in my opinion it is not, I enjoyed playing Stress Test.
Day one purchase definetly shows more support, if you do like the game. If everyone held back a week it wouldn't do well. Nice to hear it's on Gamepass though.
I know this isn’t really what your channel is all about and it’s your channel so do what you want. But I LOVE your gameplay videos. I like the chill atmosphere and the game play is solid.
I have a feeling that they ARE reducing the effectiveness of micro and it does make it much friendlier to average players. RTS games have become too intimidating to play and shifted too much from strategy to tactics.
@@maximilianmusterhans4659 Bruh why dont they just make you code your age game? Why is it dumb down where you just turn on and play? There comes a point of asking whether something is actually fun or not.
With that unit readability, I think that once you get familiar with units you will start to see differences very easily. But now it feels little like every unit looks that they have same cape.
With how many unique units are in AOEII DE, if they tried to do that in AOE IV I don't know how they could keep this unit style, its already difficult enough trying to tell units apart as is, let alone a ton of unique units in this style.
Having 100% accurate arrows which magically move after being fired is a bit too much, and it will probably ruin one of the most striking and attractive to watch aspects of high level micro which is archer wars...they should definitively eliminate that
I personally found no glaring issues with the game play, other than the lack of strategy that people went for, often people just massed one unit and that was that. English longbows need a nerf, build time perhaps, cus you can mass them up in Feudal, boom to Imp and be nigh on unstoppable.
Funny enough, I watched Spirit of The Law do exactly this in a 1v1 right here on the channel against someone playing as the Holy Roman Empire. Guy stood no chance against the longbow death ball.
@@tankofnova9022 The 1v1 he uploaded here? That is a useless game to discuss balance because SotL played so much better. The opponent was far slower at everything he did and only ever built a unit hard countered by longbowmen.
@@88porpoise Because the Holy Roman Empire is true to how they lived. They are an infantry civ with a focus on melee. They have no answer to mass ranged, period.
@@tankofnova9022 Be that as it may, even if his opponent was playing a Civ that hard countered the English that game would have been a stomp since he clearly had no idea what he was doing. I am not commenting on the balance, but saying that game is in no way indicative of balance.
Hey Spirit, great video again. One thing I want to point out is that you can click a building’s icon after clicking F2 to see all it’s units. So I still found the button useful. The change of focus is quite annoying though like you mentioned.
well, it kept the AoE tradition of sentient siege machines, and the bombard tower projectile used to sharp turn in the flight in AoE2, so I can say they are pretty faithful to the predecessors
They'll change hotkeys, since that will be absolutely essential to attract gamers from aoe2. The projectile physics are really bad though. Let's see how that gets resolved. I think it's a good thing that you can't "dodge ballistics" however, like some elite players in aoe2. Focusing on bigger strategy choices is more interesting than single unit micro. But the hardcore esports crowd will disagree, which is cool.
It is also an ease of game balance thing. A lot of game balance uses mathematical models to estimate the strength of a certain strategy, but that is very difficult with the sheer variability caused by the impact of micro. Instead of archers having a consistent output, they have a wildly variable output depending on the scale of battle, the skill of the players, etc. Having archers have a consistent damage output simplifies that.
honestly only the pros dogde ballistics, and is not something game changer. You never see daut doing it and still he is top 10 in the world for example. AOE4 is a competitive game by nature, making it more casual dosent make sense.
8:45 If you have all buildiungs selected you just can press tab. It circles through all specific buildings so you have selected your siege workshop at some point. Same works with units. It's the same mechanic as in StarCraft 2 as example. It's commonly used there because you can only have so much controlgroups.
Settings -> Controls -> Find and Cycle Units & Buildings set that to Select Only. It stops the camera from moving when you select all buildings... also when you have all buildings selected you case use TAB and Ctrl TAB to go thru each unique group.
I believe the homing arrow 'issue' is indeed intentional. Basically making APM much less useful and let you focus on macro instead. There are much more active skills in units to compensate a little bit, but it will not make you win/lose battles that are otherwise impossible to be done. So yeah, basically it becomes a much more friendly game for casuals to just play multiplayer in weekend without worrying that you need to learn about stuffs like micro mangonels against archers in order to participate. Which I think is a good thing since it let people who enjoy the much more click intensive AoE2 to keep playing the game, and leave AoE4 for more chill massive army vs army engagements -- basically bringing new people to RTS which is always an intimidating task. I will stick with AoE2 for competitive viewing, but I might play AoE4 more for campaigns and casual pvp.
There's still going to be lots of micro advantages to leverage even if you cant dodge projectiles. Just look at other RTSes where projectiles arent dodgeable.
@Spirit Of The Law While I do agree that hotkey customization is a must, having all military buildings selected by one hotkey is not that bad. Actually if you look at e.g. Starcraft 2 many pros do that. What you then have to do is cycling through the different unit production options using the TAB key, generally helpful I hope :)
1:35 after almost 20 years of playing I have to admit that I hate the dark age. Always the same 10 minutes fucks me up every time I want to play it. I think it's clever solved in aoe4 to shorten up the dark age. What I also like is the ability to throw out rams in feudal age in aoe 4
@@booradley6832 Rams need to be tanky early age due to their pretty large cost for the point in the game that you get them in. late game there is more than enough infantry and cavalry to make them balanced and not super effective unless youre way far ahead. its really nice to just build 10 rams all of a sudden to finish someone off thats already lost and is just delaying the inevitable. it may be a lil op that archers can build them too tho lol should probably be kept to the men at arms or spearmen
Dear SOTL, first of all: I apreciate that you as an Age of Empires 2 Institution aka house of wisdom took a look on the Age of Empires 4 Beta! What I also really missed are the "jump-to-hotkeys" to all the eco and techbuildings. But there is maybe one little thing, that you missed, I think: The mechanic behind the Hotkey "Select all Military Buildings". In minute 8:42ff we can see a Selection of several, grouped military building types. The default-selection = "ALL" But here it comes: If you press the "tabulator"-key, you switch through the grouped buildings from left to right and so you can produce units from those buildings in that order. In my opinion, this is very smart in terms of accessability. Everyone knows, that preesing the tab-key means switching the cursor. So, you only need to know one Hotkey for military buildings and then: tab -> shift+q -> tab etc. It is even better, if you built a fowarad operating base wiith several military buildings, all bound to the hotkey 5 for example. So unlike in AoE2, where you needed to first select all forward baracks, then your forward stables and so on, you just need to press one single hotkey and then it is always the tab key. Sure, it is a tiny bit slower, than having one hotkey per building type, but I think in total, this doesn't add up enough to make it back into Age of Empires 4 compared to the better accessibility. What do the others think? Anybody else used this kind of building selection?
I direct your attention to the Monster Hunter series. Arguably they haven't released a D1 complete product in years, but nothing they have released FELT decisively incomplete, and while they keep SOME things secret they are in general pretty open about what is yet to come and when it will be, at least to the best of their ability. Plus, the pacing they use for the post-launch free updates is such that it makes sure the community sticks around in the newest game for a long time without leaving the game with nothing new for too long, which is vital for the series because multiplayer is a core component of the endgame gameplay of the series.
If there is no change between this and the full game, I'm not going to buy it. The hotkeys are a bit of a deal breaker for me, plus not being able to quickly jump to your barracks or stables etc makes it hard to remember where I put my buildings.
@@TheGoodLuc hotkeys are insanely important in any RTS. Idk why you don't accept his valid criticism. I like the game as a whole, but that is an obvious point that should be addressed.
There is always the option of putting your production buildings on a hotkey - but yes, the fact that it is a manual fix is not exactly ideal if you're used to there being a default hotkey to globally select them all.
@@temporaryname8905 The issue isn't that things arc, it's that they arc in unnatural ways, like homing arrows. Which is down to how hits are determined. Anyone who played Relic's earlier title CoH2 long enough is likely familiar with arcing projectiles, though it's far less prevalent there, as generally most things are fast enough that you wouldn't notice. Notorious though are homing Panzerfausts and satchel charges, because their projectile speed is noticeably lower. Similarly, in AoE4, most projectiles are slower than in a WWII game, so it is more noticeable if arrows start homing in on targets. Most of this is because a hit is determined when the projectile is fired, the animation then tries to match the result, instead of an arrow just flying predictably and based on whether the animation hits or not, its a hit.
I hope they allow full control of hotkeys. With the F1 to select all military, you can tab through, but it's damn confusing to remember which unit is which arbitrary grid space. Normally I prefer to hotkey production to 5 through 8, blacksmith 9, market 0, but when docks and siege workshops get involved then that isn't enough so a "select all docks" etc set of hotkeys would be awesome.
I just don’t know how the developers do not get that this digital cartoon style does make the units comical and childlike while the incredible high details made visible by extreme colour and lighting use is just distracting and kills the flair. Microsoft like so many companies miss design thinking at their core and its sad to see how it dies not reach the genius of AoE 1 and 2.
Bro they know what they are doing and every game from big companies will cartoonize sooner or later, that's what you get for having too many women out of the house. Your brain may not understand the connections but you can surely mark my words.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but personally I don't understand, what I have seen of the game looks great. The art style is a lot different from AoE one and two but I don't see how one or the other is better.
@@ankitmahajan4036 Dear Ankit being a big company means nothing in fact it makes many things harder to defend in a big company. For comparison see Microsoft vs Apple under Steve Jobs. Btw I am pretty sure nobody will ever (ever!) remember anything you are saying as long as you give such non-answers. Try again.
@@ankitmahajan4036 Are you really comparing or linking women leaving the house with state of cartoon like graphics in the gaming industry? Makes you sound like an intolerable neckbeard man
This is constructive criticism right here, no sugarcoat but also not plain toxic. A critic with solution to improving it not just trashing with “X is way better”
@@martinmartin9116 or you didn't. This game really goes in the right direction, whichout being a copycat. Tell me the other AAA RTS (not 4x) games that came out recently
@@VittamarFasuthAkbin I did, but AoE series is so specific and its not one-of-another-rts-game-for-fckin-15$ In AoE IV: - i totally missed UI in ancient-style - textures are only in FHD (who the fuck today use FHD?), for bigger res is used upscaling technique. - weird person animations, horses are sliding, villagers are moving like in honey, building is like by a ghosts, when lumberjack is animated, he pull up axe much faster than axe goes down (wow! how real is this?) - many of animation-logic bugs like villager goes through wall in TC, soldier through stone wall etc.. - animations of throwing items like arrows or torches are rough, not correct in basic physics law - ingame UX is terrible and chaotic - ingame icon are very cheap, they are like "free png icon castle/mill.." - 3D view (weird, too much zoomed in). 2D isometric is still meta - lack of some army tactics For me its only redesigned AoE III and totally ignored fame of AoE II. AoE IV is much more fancy game than AoE II and thats why I totally dont like it. AoE cant be fancy for 13 yo kids. It is also overpriced game, AoE IV cost is for me like 20-25 $. AoE II is not perfect for these days, but AoE IV not fix them, but adds another new. Stronghold Crusaders are much more better than AoE IV.
@@VittamarFasuthAkbin It still pales in comparison to AoE2 and W3 (more for the editor than the actual game). The graphics and the homing projectiles are enough to keep me away from it.
Archers on the wall and infantry's inability to attack stone walls are pretty cool! But in other aspects.. Best campaign storyline: Age of Mythology Best visuals: Age of Empires 3 Most realistic units: Total Wars Series Best game mechanics: Empire Earth I In my opinion.
8:54 There was an option to set which F keys would jump and which would just select, on standard it would jump. I don't know if it was the angle of the camera, but I though maybe a Field of View slider as found in most 3d games could help.
About projectiles like arrows always hitting, from my experience with coding i think that's actually intentional, since making projectiles follow the target is actually harder to code than just launching the projectile and letting it go its set path, and tbh? I actually rly like having projectiles being consistent with 100% acc rather than being inconsistent and able to be dodged, not only melee units (including infantry) feel much stronger than before (so they can deal with 100% projectiles), having consistent projectiles will also infinitely help the devs later on when they try to balance units, because it's just much easier to balance a unit that has a predictable behavior than balance a unit that sometimes stomps everything, and sometimes dies without accomplishing anything of value.
I think it depends on how you make the code. You can create a parabola that constantly links the shooter (or where it was when it shot) and the target, than you make the projectile follow that line. It make it simpler to determine when the target is hit and takes damage. Maybe the path would be simpler the other way, buy determining hits and misses would be more complicated, specially with a 3D terrain.
@@thomasfplm well yeah, but when it doesn't need to follow u can actually make a much simpler code that just aims at a location and that's it, everything else is basic physics also AoE4 already detects if it's colliding with other stuff because of the stone walls, so this hard part is being done one way or another ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@MasterSonicKnight, what I mean is that maybe taking the target is easier than checking if the arrow hit it when at the end of the movement widout tracking.
I was totally hooked the whole weekend and played as much as I could. I love it even though the projectiles are weird and the ai would glitch out a lot and get their siege units all stuck in the stealth trees. The game seems to take longer to finish than aoe2 since late game resources are so plentiful but it's kinda chill because of that. We beat the hardest ai in a 2v2 on Sunday and I felt proud :,)
I think the game should have an expensive tech to reveal the map Or only The landmarks Like aom had Makes hunting for the last landmarks not as tedious
I still find it hard to understand how they manage to make some things way worse than in previous games (especially of the same franchise). I get the team might not be exactly the same, but why wouldn't they start by checking what good/great features the other games (that are way more polished) had that they should keep in this game? The projectiles redirection issue, for instance, is a quite glaring one... In the end, with most of the things that have been said, I guess you can have some fun with it, but I just don't feel as excited to play this game as I thought I would be (unlike, say, AoE2).
Projectile redirection in itself is not a problem. It was actually a very AoE 2 thingy that you could dodge a projectile. In SC2 for example you simply can't dodge auto-attacks. it looks weird in Age 4 because of the arching.
One thing that came in mind lately: I hope for the campaigns they do something unique. One really strong point for Starcraft 2 was how the campaigns were totally different than multiplayer. With unique units, techs, and really varied mission mechanics. Not just a skirmish vs the AI with preset buildings. I hope there will be some cool things they cook up.
The only thing I don’t like is the projectile mechanic because it’s the most fun and skill intensive part of aoe2. I think they have to change it to have a good esport environment
@@booradley6832 i dont see how the game devolves towards massing archers. if the enemy is massing archers theres hard counters against it in castle age. even in feudal ive had great success making a few rams filling them with men at arms and since they were doing nothing but massing archers and pikemen i roll over them.
@@booradley6832 you are talking about a completely different thing: avoiding gameplay mechanics and spells. Not about dodging PROJECTILES. You can never dodge brood lords, rockets, stalker lasers and suchs in SC2. So your argument is nonsensical this way. On the other hand, me supporting dodging is also true, as I despise the fact you can't even dodge fricking trebs. That's bull ...
@@booradley6832 I mainly agree with you other than one thing. Age 2 is exactly the same, as you can research 100% accuracy. Then we had the same and it still didn't make archers OP and break the meta. You are talking about something that didn't even happen yet and we can't know how it's going to continue, as currently, there is no metagame for this to be a problem.
Yeah i agree that Starcraft was very big but for my part Kiting, dodging, Randome maps, multiple resources are the reason why i play Age and not Starcraft
It's interesting to see the Company of Heroes influence. Both the grid keys and F key system for selecting production buildings are lifted directly from micro solutions that Relic and the Community developed for CoH over it's lifetime. However, in CoH, the F keys select a production building without moving the camera.
I didn't play the stress tests . I was kinda thinking I don't want to buy it . But I did . And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised . This game is pretty fun . I'd like to see increased population caps (like on a 1v1 match) and the ability to zoom out further . But other than that I've been playing the heck out of this .... also it's interesting to know about the farm building mechanic . Imma give that a try next time I play . I like that you can put archers on the walls . It's a bit difficult at times to line them up but it's a really cool addition .
Some things i expect devs to work on is on options of game speed, population, micro control and make the arrows miss (because aparently any projectile has 100% chance to hit)
@@rogerwingfield8553 I dont mind if u get 100% accuracy in the imperial age, but like sotl pointed out, the projectiles do a very weird angle to reach his objetive in the end, means that they need to polish if they want to keep it that way. Plus takes out the competitve micro
@@weeabooman2867 I'm the one who should ask: What is the problem with not having projectiles missing? It's not something inherent in the RTS genre at all. And not even in the AOE franchise, it's something that just the AOE2 has. This game shouldn't have to copy everything from AOE2.
I'm really thankful to see this review, I saw a lot of people bashing it as "Not as good as AoE2", and as someone who's never played the earlier titles, that made me anxious despite really enjoying my time in the Stress Test. A lot of the issues I was seeing was from Pro Gamers, who have spent decades mastering RTS, complaining the game was too simple to make a good E-Sport ever. I see where they are coming from, and don't want to see them pushed out of the community, but as someone who doesn't have triple digit APM, I'd also like to be able to play semi-competitively, so I like that it feels a bit slowed down. I wanted to get into SC2 not too long ago, but the entry level was so high I just didn't have time to get into it. I look forwards to picking this up on gamepass with my friends, and maybe buying it down the road once the inevitable DLC comes out. Thanks for sharing your 2 cents SotL!
All the issues you've brought up are non-issues for me. Lack of hotkeys, lack of micro and more focus on macro is the more fun AoE that I want to play. I want to play online but I want more of a casual play not concentrate on dodging arrows etc. This is the AoE I want to play online against others.
That's understandable, but if you want to play seriously/competitively, then hotkeys are a must I'm afraid. Heck, even against the AI in AoE2, you'd struggle to beat the tougher difficulties using only the mouse... So it makes sense that many people are hung up on the hotkeys.
Not a popular opinion, but I believe removing focus from micro is a great design decision. This is a strategy game. It should be battle of minds, experience and intuition. It should not require months and years of building muscle to play optimally.
I really enjoyed it, the only thing I think needs improving is the optimization... you said they were aiming for low end computers, but I'm not so sure, as my low-ish end pc had trouble running the game at 900p, the game ran good when the camera is standing still, but as soon as I moved it, the frames drop... pretty weird stuff. Overall the game seemed to run around 50 fps, which is playable, but considering the graphics are simple, I expected better... Civ 5 and 6 run perfectly fine on their highest graphic settings, and AoE 2 DE runs fine even with the 4k texture pack, only dipping to 40 and 50s on the intense benchmark, I don't think I ever saw it dip that low in real gameplay
![TheViper Faces A Defensive MASTERPIECE [AoE4]](/img/1.gif)
8:54 This drove me nuts until I realized its an option you can change. In the Game/UI settings you can select a dropdown option that says "select only" instead of "select and focus" which saves A LOT of pain when you're trying to deal with a battle and keep units producing.
OMG is true, i remember that but i never used it 11
1
I initially tried turning on that option, but the same option is unfortunately tied to the town center as well, so pressing H can no longer be used to move your camera back to your base.
What's needed is for the option to be separated for multiple building selection hotkeys vs single building selection hotkeys.
@@wcko87 some rts games also have camera save hotkeys and that's also a good alternative.
@@wcko87 if spacebar operates as it does in AoE2 for going to selected, you could at least press H, space - an additional button press which isn’t ideal, but is similar to how you’d do it for unit group selection in AoE2, either double pressing the group number or pressing group number then space.
I agree with pretty much everything, but would add: They need to fix the minimap. It's such a clusterfuck and is completely useless after a certain point because you can't differentiate any icons in the massive blob of colour.
Also icons like sites relics and resource patches need a readability update
I agree
Honestly starting a 4v4 will make the minimap instantly useless. 3v3 is already barely readable for the most important resources.
either an option to scale it larger or scale the icons down, preferably both.
This! I have seen it less spoken. I thought it was too small for me. it needs to be customizable like other things he suggested
One thing I really like about SOTL is that he comes off as this aggressively friendly and helpful guy, to the point where you might wonder if he would say anything critical--but he's not afraid to speak his mind when there are things he doesn't like, either.
I really like that
He's simply a sincere, confident Canadian :)
Typical Canadian lol
Not to be dramatic, but I’d die for him
Just Canada things.
So happy you need siege to attack stone walls and that you can finally place units on walls!
Some things I hope they work on are definitely the unmissable projectiles... which makes archers and siege a little op, making siege weapons have friendly fire which I think would add to realism/strategy, possibly ways to incorporate siege weapons into walls to make for some awesome fortress/defense gameplay and on the naval side, having the ability to fire on the go. But overall looks pretty cool, definitely excited!
naval ships can fire while moving with exception of the archer ship, where the dhow is the only version that can
I would love to see towers built ON the walls
Castles now have upgrade which gives them cannons. Not exactly on the wall but it is something.
Having to use siege to bring down walls is a game-changer. Looking forward to it!
Archers are trash units though, and it's because they're kinda shit unless you have a ton of them, even then, horses plow through them.
I love how useful melee infantry is in AoE4. It's tanky, can hold or push the line and doesn't get shredded by ranged units unless they're anti-armor specialists. A long way from "anti-trash".
Good point about the camera being too tilted.
That's great, one of the things I hate about AOE2 is the fact that 80% of games are knights and crossbowmen. The melle infantry is simply useless
100% agree with this. So satisfying to have a group of men at arms run down and waste a bunch of longbowmen that are undefended.
Another aspect that promises to break the crossbowmens/Knights monopoly is the presence of gunpowder units in the late game (Age IV) to be much more significant than in the AOE2.
@@rogerwingfield8553 Try Malay, Slavs, or Maya. Their melee troops are anything but useless
@@Jaxck77 I agree with you, but unfortunately these are exceptions.
9:47 Hold up, that setup seems very familiar... spear and axemen on the hill and a mix of archers, infantry and cavalry on the bottom. That has to be the battle of Hastings!
Even reminded me of the Med2 Total War version of the battle.
@@anmerpozzo Yeah thats exactly why it jumped out to me so fast. :P
A bit unrelated but it makes me feel giddy inside to see people just know what battle is being fought just by the layout of terrain and armies
Uhhh.......cause it is the battle of Hastings.
@@surgeonsergio6839 That's what he said, yes.
That bell noise is the real stress test indeed xD
Yeah able to change hotkeys is a must. Especially in RTS game
I hope the game will be success, so RTS games' golden day will be back like in 2000s
this ^ heavily. The golden days need to come back xD
I wonder what the reasoning is behind not allowing players to change hotkeys. I get that this is beta, but there are devs out there who genuenly do not allow players to change hotkeys (cough, Paradox, cough). I wonder why.
*DING DING*
warcraft 4
My brain will explode with that ding ding.
I found the UI lacking. Particularly the icons on the mini map. In larger games, the map was so cluttered, it was unreadable. Why do deer and berries have their own icons? Why is the mini map so small? The rest of the UI was better, but sometimes it was hard to tell what icon was for what in a hurry. Everything being gold and blue likely didn't help.
Now these issues could be fixed by simply getting used to them and playing more. They also seem like things that would have mods made for them really quickly. Considering this, I'm not too worried about it.
I feel the same way. But my biggest gripe was the unit portrait icons. At a glance they all look the same, they just have outlines on a colored background instead of a proper portrait in order to be able to distinguish between different units.
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention the unit queue UI being individual tiles vs a single tile with a number on it. I found it almost impossible to deduce how many units I had queued, esp when you hit the width limit of the queue.
@@booradley6832 I had this same problem. Having colored icons like in the other AoE games could be a vast improvement. If they don't change it, maybe there'll be a mod for it.
+1
It's also really hard to cancel construction queues for units as the icons are surrounded by clickable screen. So it is easy to click on the map and deselect the building instead of cancel. Very annoying.
Let´s just say the UI in general could be improved. It doesn´t look good and lacks functionality.
@@louisr6560 Yeah the UI and lack of visual feedback was my main gripe in general. Not seeing my scout's waypoints REALLY through me off a lot more than I thought it would for instance. I really enjoyed the game in general and look forward to purchasing and playing it on release, but I hope they tighten up a lot of these aspects considerably before then.
The game just looks so _squishy_, like all actions are soft and smooth, even when not appropriate. AoE2 feels snappy, responsive and tight in comparison.
A good example of that is the lumberjacks and miners at 9:35. They gentle tap the resource and slowly swing their tool. There's no weight to the tool, and it looks like they're in molasses.
in general the game looks like just another 3d rts in *pick civilization era or fantasy world*. they all suffer from slow unit animations because for some reason devs believe that'll show off their hard work in animating them.
I immediatly turned my Mouse Speed Up ans that stupid camera acceleration off. That fixes this for me. But Just Like early AoE2 DE days the customizability in the settings isnt great enough
I think they add unit acceleration to groups with something akin to liquid physics, where the outer units accelerate to catch up to the group when you order them. The plus side is there is no delay to the input (units in aoe2 will turn around and inverse formations to move letting your opponent get many shots off), but the downside is it feels and looks kind of dumb and not realistic at all. I have not played yet but watched a lot of gameplay, and that is the impression I get.
@@ivoivic2448 i tottsly agree. it looks like another aoe3 but with more cartoonish.
Visually the only things that really bother me is how vibrant the colors of the units are and how at the top middle of the screen is too busy. It's also really spaced out so it just takes up a lot of screen space. Otherwise im loving what i see.
Especially as chinese. Annoying dynasty tab on the screen all the time.
1.Agree about rainbow "puke" on units and buildings
2.walls are way too big and barracks too small
I was going to write the same thing. In AoE2 there was much less colors and more destiguish details of the units. Here its a colorfull mess like in modern painting. At first sight its hard to notice the difference between chu ko nu and crossbow or palace guard and men of arms. Same with cavalery. I would love to see it being changed.
@@konradpyszniak976 I agree it is very hard to differentiate units imo. I really do not like the over simplified styling of the units and the lack of detail on them. Maybe its just youtube vids but units just look like blobs of color with a long toothpick or plastic looking bow. Really dislike the lack of realism in the style.
Agreed
One more thing I'd like to see discussed is balance. I thought some upgrades were really overpriced, so I dug into the math for how long it took feudal eco upgrades to pay off. Turns out it takes 6 minutes+ for double broadax to pay off with *10 villagers*, so you should basically never get feudal eco upgrades in feudal. I made a video about it on my channel on this topic if anyone is interested.
Yeah I was wondering the same thing. Since gold is now required to advance, it doesn’t make sense to spend it on upgrades. A 15% increase is the same as having 1.5 extra workers assuming you currently have 10 working. I would rather just train an extra villager or two to increase my production. The only upgrades worth taking are the farms since you’re pretty much locked to either 8, 16, or 24 farms. Increasing the efficiency of farms will increase your food production which is important for ramping up military production later on.
A month really isn't very long for some of these issues. I'd be surprised if they made any major changes before release, though I'm sure there will be polish if what's already there.
it depends on how recent the build was we got. if this was the most recent version, id say this is what we will get with barely any changes
@@DarkxOver very good point! We can hope. 🤞
They also could have already fixed some issues we noticed, but used an older version where those issues still existed because that issue was the most stable version available for the stress test. If that's the case, development could be further along than we currently expect 😄
We as players could also just stop to take everything in just at release and even before... So we can get back good old times when games were actually finished on release...
@@fluxbomb3376 Except so often they weren't. There are a whole slew of games released in the 'good old times' that had massive gamebreaking bugs that had to be fixed through physical copy expansions, and in some cases like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and KotOR 2, were unfinished and abandoned on release by the publishers.
Games can actually be fixed post-release immediately now, and without having to charge the consumer those fixes because they're no longer tied to physical media alone.
They need to make it more flat/table-top style rather than that center-zoom fisheye lens view
Yes, I think it would greatly help readability of what is happening on the screen.
You might get more on screen with the fish eye
Yeah I think this would make a huge difference,
Even AOE 3 has better camera angle than 4. I tried playing Iron Harvest on Steam and can't stand the camera. It's very "on top" of the map and very zoomy. Just can't play RTS games like that.
Maybe have the angle start more from above and have it become more acute as the camera gets zooms in closer to the units? It's pretty common, but also pretty effective.
You covered a lot of my major gripes thus far - namely the smothering fog, projectile woes and lack of visible waypoints. And hotkeys ofc. If modding support is as extensive as they make it out, I'm sure any minor aesthetic changes can be made by the player. As you say, otherwise it's shaping up all right. Perhaps not the "dream AoE" people wanted, a but a decent RTS with lots to offer :)
It’s sad people don’t realize we already have it, with AoE2
Personally, I feel the cannons in AoE4 is so underwhelming comparing with AoE3's artillery pieces, at least in terms of graphical effects
they are for sure, but its also technically 100s of years earlier cannons so they arent as well made and intimidating.
In this era, you aren't used to hear a blackpowder weapon, it undoubtedly was frightful for anyone hearing them, so it could be reflected that way. This recalls me of Medieval 2: Total War, the blackpowder weapons there were really designed to be scary.
@@SuperMoine777 yea in medieval 2 they were better used against fortifications but a good well supported number could really be scary
Naval combat to me is the most underwhelming downgrade from AoE3 to 4
i dont like that cannons can transform instanly from mobile mode to attack mode compared to aoe3
Why is every single action in this game delayed? You click, wait for the cursor animation to finish and then the action happens. Also, it looks as if the game was designed to look good in zoomed in shots but actual gameplay camera was secondary. So you end up with AoE2 looking way sharper and nicer looking during actual gameplay.
Some professional players pointed that out even in close beta, so i guess they will be working on polish that
Man's tripping if he thinks AoE2 looks better than AoE4 during gameplay
@@adrianhirst484 AoE might be old, but at least it's crisp.
Doesn't matter how much better the unit models are if everything looks blurry.
Starcraft 2 came out 10 years ago and has cleaner, crisper graphics.
@@adrianhirst484 You are tripping if you think AoE4 somehow looks better.
@@radred609 Yeah, the game doesnt necessarily look bad, but everything looks so wobbly and washed out. There is very noticeable clipping between the units and the 3D graphic makes everything seem bent and squished.
If you set up everything right the game can be very beautiful but during actual gameplay its just not crisp enough.
6:39 "projectile mechanics haven't quite hit the mark" ayyyy
I was looking to see if someone else in the comments caught that lol
oh... now I get it.
I think with the new archer and crossbow line they kinda split the role of the AoE2 archer line while also replacing the skirmisher line. The archers feel similar to skirmishers in that they are a cheap ranged unit good against low armor infantry (like spears) and are supposed to trade well against the low armor crossbows. On the other hand, AoE4 crossbows are like AoE2 archer-line in that they cost gold and when massed will shred most enemy units, but because they are expensive and lightly armored they will not trade cost-effectively against the cheap regular archers.
Also as much as I enjoyed the beta, I'm not sure how I feel about arrows being homing projectiles. Even as a casual player I thought it was nice to have that higher skill ceiling w/ the ability to beat ranged units with good micro.
I really love this new ranged balance. Feels like it makes a lot more sense than running around with spear throwing dudes.
I love that guys throwing spears wrecking crossbow and longbowmen isn't a thing anymore. That said I would like to see projectiles actually miss, especially at max range since they just wreck villagers. They could then slightly reduce the piece armor of maa and knights to balance things out
I find that microing completely undermines the balance of various units.
With good micro you can pretty much make some units useless, even quite expensive ones.
They can't simply make those units cheaper or more powerful, as that would tip the balance where those who don't use micro get slaughtered.
Making it so microing units wont stop them getting hit levels the playing field and allows a consistent balance.
If it was fundamental, it would be in the tutorial.
@@jeffreyblack666 I agree, and while you might not be dodging projectiles, unit movement and kiting micro has a similar role still. StarCraft has this, where the person who micros will win, but will take more than 0 damage
My thought is if the projectiles can't be dodged, there should at least be a chance to miss (perhaps before researching a thumb ring equivalent).
They should also release graphics dlcs for free... e.g. customize how much texture is used for the units. Would also like to have different skins for the units. Somehow AOE2 units look more iconic and stylish than AOE4 units
Sorry to disapoint you but it is extremely odd that if they decide to do a complete pack of better graphics it will be free, games used to call this "elite" or "extreme" textures/graphics; anyway in my opinion it should be free too, since they set the bar really low.
It’s the lower fidelity of older graphics, so the designers are forced to highlight things more. But that wouldn’t look quite as good if the style is still the same.
@@braynaguilar8567 Actually the game is not that expensive in some countries, but pressed to guess, they will add this with an expansion pack, then more reason to buy it; in my book DE versions are already a remaster, I don't see the point of charging for graphic updates when they are already selling an old game again.
I'm not a fan of the cartoonish style. Takes away from the emersion for me, especially as a military history fan. I like a more serious and realistic motif
@@911treason3 i seriously don’t get that. I’ve played it and not once did anything feel or look particularly “cartoony.” Im a major military history nerd too, and what really caught my eye is how much aoe4 really made battles feel like they would happen in real life, or at least moreso than aoe2. Idk, the flow of battle, infantry lines, cav charges, and pacing all make it feel more believable in a “hmm, maybe medieval warfare looked something like this” sort of way.
the #1 thing I didn't like while playing AoE4 was the UI. Sure, you could say the flavour is bad and it looks really generic, but that isn't even my main problem. The big issue I have is that even though the iconography is simple it's hard to tell what you're looking at sometimes without reading the tooltips. Maybe it's just something I need to get used to but all the techs having different images and colours in AoE2 makes quick decision making a lot easier as long as I know what the tech is beforehand. I still got tripped up in 4 even after knowing what everything in the blacksmith was, for example
Compared to Age 2 where all the Icons are very easily distinguishable and have a lot of feel to them. That's probably my biggest gripe with age 4 so far.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to wait to get this until the campaign editor is available. I spent wayyy too much time on that in the other games.
did you already release one of your scenario publicly ?
@@Moaningbird No, it was on an old disc version, and I don't think I have them saved anywhere anymore.
Honestly for me AoE4 seems more like a continuation of Empire Earth than Age of Empires. From the graphical style to the simplified combat and eco systems, to the barely readable units at a glance, the design choices taken in AoE4 seem far closer to EE than the AoE2 that most people love, at least IMO
I don't know about you but units in EE are pretty recognizable. maybe in Atomic WW1 to Atomic Modern ages, you can get confused over aircraft but for the most part the game's units a differentiable.
Glad you're still at it. I remember watching your early AOE 2 videos years ago.
You literally said everything that is on my mind! Especially all those QoL things, just as waypoints, that is the most confusing thing for me: Am I attacking now? Well, the circle is red, but... there is no visual feedback and no flag afterwards that gives me visual feedback that THIS is the target for a longer period of time.
There definitely are issues, but playing during the stress test was quite fun! I particularly enjoyed having my infantry build siege towers in the field and then deploy on top of an enemy wall for some up close and personal combat. Very 'siege of Minas tirith'. I had to adjust my brightness down right away because the 'washed out' look was just too much for me, though I feel like that's an aesthetic choice that's pretty common in games these days, lots of bright colors and an overall very light color palette.
Yeah, I hate this trend
As a Protoss (SC), Spanish (age II), & Sioux (age III) main I can't wait too see the Mongols and try some annoying early pressure builds...
I really enjoyed Sioux/Lakota in aoe3 and I’m also excited for mongols! Big fan of faster more aggressive games
Protoss rules!
I played, it was fun, some smaller issues. Overall, a win in my eyes.
For hotkeys, I do agree on more customization being always good - however, I do want to say that Grid hotkeys are (imo) the best default for an RTS, and I'm very happy they emphasized it. Being able to use hotkeys visually is very helpful, and much more user friendly (though perhaps less important in an age game, vs something like starcraft).
I wouldn't mind some more automatization of buildings/units - maybe it's something I missed on how to do, but something like Age of Mythology's "continuously produce this unit" or "explore" options are very nice quality of life ones for this style of game, IMO. But I approach age games from a lot more of a casual side, and don't enjoy the more production/macro aspects as focused as Starcraft (the other RTS I've played extensively)
I also love the grid scheme that I just learned to use with aoe2 DE, still aoe4 grid scheme was slightly different and I had a bit of hiccups since I was jumping between both games that weekend, with a bit of customization I could use the same configuration for both games.
Also I heavily rely on using 2 mouse hot keys to cycle through towncenters and the other one to select idle villagers. That's very important to me because I use my right hand for it instead of my left one that I use for everything else.
I believe that if we complain enough about it they will add it into the game though.
i actually kinda dislike that the dark age is now so quickly over. why having a dark age in the first place then if it doesn't serve a good purpose. might as well just start in feudal then. i so wished for the new aoe to have strong and long lasting ages where you really have to think twice if you wanna pay a ton of ressources for the next age or if you want stay and se it for your current unit roster.
now the dark age is basically over in 3 to 4 minutes...
Agree. To make an analogy to racing cars, legacy AOE 2 feels more like a mountain road race where there is more strategy to where you shift coming into various corners with more variety among the straights and corners and more time between these decisions to take in the sights.
This version feels more like a 1/4 mile drag race where the only purpose of each shift is simply get through it so you can then quickly slam it into the next gear until the race is over seconds later.
I mean... you normally get to Castle Age within 10-12 minutes in AoE II as well, so...
@@pyrus2814 proves my point. instead of making theages longer, they shortened it even more.
I think their catering to younger people who are more for instant gratification and can't appreciate the journey.
"New age is upon us"
during gameplay I saw future:
Age of Mythology 2 in same engine maybe next 1-2 years
its like they testing some features used in AoM for new games. It makes percfect sense coz AoE4 looks more like AoM then AoE2.
Maybe we will see even Rise of Nations 2 in next decade. And I belive Microsoft and Relic would be working on these games. They know people still love they games and play them after all these years.
Thats why they call it "new age". A New Age of their old strategy games.
An this idea makes me happy.
I would be down for a new Rise of nations game.
@@sakib9102 do the studio made rise of nations still around? I can't remember the name
@@yahyamusseb the developer company that made the og game now makes mobile games for nexon which is one of the worst among mobile gaming companies ( kinda like EA). Microsoft however still has the rights to rise of nations franchise.
thanks to rise of nations, i got mine first kiss,thank you microsoft,i hope the same
I think AOE2 is still going to be the fan favorite.
Well AoE4 might find it's own fanbase. I for example love to watch AoE2 but don't really like playing it as it's just too hectic and stressful for me. AoE4 was a lot of fun so far though!
@@Waddehaddeduddedaa stressful? Its just a game. Just be brave when you play and believe and you will be a very calm and good player.
@@Goagubbe79 not everyone is a zen master who can compartmentalise their brain like that
@@Waddehaddeduddedaa well i dunno about stressful, but there's certain things you "have to do" in AoE2 in multiplayer games that tick me off a bit. like making sure your villagers (at least 5) gather from the same sheep while also making sure your scout is pushing or "herding" the nearby deers towards your town center.
then when it comes to military units its hard to keep track of which units are best at a given job depending on your civ.
if you're a casual player and you come up against a pro who knows the in and outs of all civs you're gonna be toyed with.
another thing that highly frustrates me is peoples tendency to do early rushes using either archers or scout cavalry. which is why i usually play the "Arena" map so the game at least gets started before its over, due to the walls providing some protection in the early game.
@@stefanvandersandt3956 In fairness the mmr system in AoE 2 is good. If you lose enough games you WILL find yourself amongst other bad players you can enjoy yourself with.
I think archers should be how AOM archers are. 1st shot is a 50% chance to hit, 2nd and 3rd shots are 75% to hit, and 4th shot is 100% to hit. I would rather have this if ballistics is not in the game.
This is why AOM was the best
Stupid mechanic, hit chance should be based on how good your arrow dodge micro is, not some rng
@@Codexter1 except dodging arrows makes absolutely no sense. This way makes the most sense- they get more accurate the more often they shoot at a target as they more accurately judge distance and location.
@@mickethegoblin7167 it is very realistic and also detrimental to professional players who prefer skill solutions over rng ones. If the pros don’t like the game, it will have been a failure. No sponsorships no advertising no Red Bull wololo.
@@kaws8778 I suppose we have different metrics of what 'failure' entails.
I could care less about 'pros' or those sponsored tournaments- and as long as enough people buy the game, it would not be a failure.
Hey Spirit, love your video! lots of good points here, especially regarding the town bell. I agree there should be complete customization available for the hotkeys, however, I think with the F keys they are intending for the player to press F1 for all military for example, then TAB cycle through the list. Like you would TAB to the barracks or siege workshops. There is even a way you can back up with TAB I think its like CTRL+TAB or Shift or something. Another way I found to use this TABing system, I designate a select all military hotkey and you can tab between the different unit types or even from within 1 control group. So you could tab to your cav to split them off, tab to your monks to hold them back, tab to your siege etc.
Honestly, even during the closed beta and stress test, I'm very pleased to say that I've already got a favourite civ. The Chinese have blown me away with how fun they are, and I'm probably going to be playing them mostly when the game finally comes out.
They're so versatile! I really liked rockets spam with high HP from monument with spears or the explodi cavalry
palace guards are so underrated too
The devs finally made Chinese historical and it's fun
I need the "unknown" map from AoE III where everything is randomized to a certain extent for this game to be a massive success in my book.
The best map in AoM. So fun.
Thats also in other age games, so it will probably also be in this one
Being a fan of CoH (another relic game) watching how they’re handling CoH3 and it’s development they are SUPER receptive to the public and what they want. There’s a lot of hope for them to address stuff brought to them
Just because of DoW1 and CoH1, I really want them to redeem themself, especially for DoW3 fiasco.
New Factions Trailer for AgeOfEmpiresIV - Ottomans & Malians
ruclips.net/video/CT0BTDX3ETs/видео.html
Fun looking game, but there is still a lot of stuff to fix before release
Two things I wanna add which were done quite well imo:
- selecting e.g. all military buildings via F1 (like at 8:45 ) - if Spirit would have clicked on e.g. the barracks symbol here, he could have selected all his barracks easily without loosing the view of all military buildings "selected". It enabled you to press one hotkey, click through the respective buildings (barracks, archery range, ...) and just spam shift+Q
- similarly, when selecting different units in one group, you could select a part of the group (e.g. the archers) and command them without loosing the overview of the whole selected control group
Yeah or just hit tab to cycle instead of clicking.
My thoughts on them releasing the game and continuing to develop it afterward is that it's all predicated on how well they can listen to player feedback and what decisions they make with it. I'd love for aoe4 to become the next big RTS Esport, but I think it's too early to make the call of whether it will
Edit: By the way, I think it's a good idea to not pick up the game on launch and wait a week (unless you really wanna try the single player) to see what state the game is released in. I'll be happy to wait if the game comes out with performance / stability / gameplay issues
Better wait 1 or 2 years and buy it for 1/3 the price. You get a more finished game and be less depressed.
@@benkusworl4934 Yeah, I honestly think waiting like that is a good idea. I'm personally really hyped for some fresh Age of Empires gameplay, so I'll probably wait less LOL
@@kunstderfugue Waiting is a best choice from a customer perspective.
But from RTS player perspective, it makes sense to support new big RTS game, so publishers would see the genre as a worthwhile investment.
Of course, if the game is not a complete failure. Which in my opinion it is not, I enjoyed playing Stress Test.
Day one purchase definetly shows more support, if you do like the game. If everyone held back a week it wouldn't do well. Nice to hear it's on Gamepass though.
Never buy day one
Buy it after a month if all
Seems in order
I know this isn’t really what your channel is all about and it’s your channel so do what you want. But I LOVE your gameplay videos. I like the chill atmosphere and the game play is solid.
I have a feeling that they ARE reducing the effectiveness of micro and it does make it much friendlier to average players. RTS games have become too intimidating to play and shifted too much from strategy to tactics.
As a strategy guy I really like the sound of these changes. That said, it seems AOE2 players tend to be very micro focused
Agreed 100% man
Good observations. Agreed!
The term you are looking for is "dumbed down". I especially love the homing missile arrows. Lmao.
@@maximilianmusterhans4659 Bruh why dont they just make you code your age game? Why is it dumb down where you just turn on and play? There comes a point of asking whether something is actually fun or not.
With that unit readability, I think that once you get familiar with units you will start to see differences very easily. But now it feels little like every unit looks that they have same cape.
With how many unique units are in AOEII DE, if they tried to do that in AOE IV I don't know how they could keep this unit style, its already difficult enough trying to tell units apart as is, let alone a ton of unique units in this style.
6:39 You see Ivan... if you become one with mountain, you become immovable like mountain
Having 100% accurate arrows which magically move after being fired is a bit too much, and it will probably ruin one of the most striking and attractive to watch aspects of high level micro which is archer wars...they should definitively eliminate that
As someone who played a lot of Empire Earth I love the changes, makes me feel more at home.
Empire earth best game ever
Keep it up man, your videos are great! And I think your channel will explode over 1million subs pretty soon (especially with AoE4 content)
The F based key bindings is pretty problematic for people on laptops that put media controls on the same keys
I personally found no glaring issues with the game play, other than the lack of strategy that people went for, often people just massed one unit and that was that. English longbows need a nerf, build time perhaps, cus you can mass them up in Feudal, boom to Imp and be nigh on unstoppable.
Keep spamming units? Except age 4 has a harder counter system than age 2 right?
Funny enough, I watched Spirit of The Law do exactly this in a 1v1 right here on the channel against someone playing as the Holy Roman Empire.
Guy stood no chance against the longbow death ball.
@@tankofnova9022 The 1v1 he uploaded here? That is a useless game to discuss balance because SotL played so much better. The opponent was far slower at everything he did and only ever built a unit hard countered by longbowmen.
@@88porpoise Because the Holy Roman Empire is true to how they lived. They are an infantry civ with a focus on melee. They have no answer to mass ranged, period.
@@tankofnova9022 Be that as it may, even if his opponent was playing a Civ that hard countered the English that game would have been a stomp since he clearly had no idea what he was doing.
I am not commenting on the balance, but saying that game is in no way indicative of balance.
I've enjoyed the game to the point that I've broken the rule of not pre-ordering a game.
Now I'm counting the days for october 28.
Since you got to try the game, you could probably say its just a bent rule. ;)
Same here man. I never preorder but after playing both betas, I was sold. So excited.
To rebalance arrows, simply reduce accuracy and increase damage
I would like it if they made the sheep corpses easier to click!
Hey Spirit, great video again. One thing I want to point out is that you can click a building’s icon after clicking F2 to see all it’s units. So I still found the button useful. The change of focus is quite annoying though like you mentioned.
well, it kept the AoE tradition of sentient siege machines, and the bombard tower projectile used to sharp turn in the flight in AoE2, so I can say they are pretty faithful to the predecessors
Great analysis as always.
Thank you for the review SOTL!
They'll change hotkeys, since that will be absolutely essential to attract gamers from aoe2. The projectile physics are really bad though. Let's see how that gets resolved. I think it's a good thing that you can't "dodge ballistics" however, like some elite players in aoe2. Focusing on bigger strategy choices is more interesting than single unit micro. But the hardcore esports crowd will disagree, which is cool.
It is also an ease of game balance thing. A lot of game balance uses mathematical models to estimate the strength of a certain strategy, but that is very difficult with the sheer variability caused by the impact of micro. Instead of archers having a consistent output, they have a wildly variable output depending on the scale of battle, the skill of the players, etc.
Having archers have a consistent damage output simplifies that.
@@whatrnames it also makes quite quite boring
maybe they won't disagree, because esport can be played very strategically (rather than tactically) as well
honestly only the pros dogde ballistics, and is not something game changer. You never see daut doing it and still he is top 10 in the world for example. AOE4 is a competitive game by nature, making it more casual dosent make sense.
@@rafamilk1 you ll see people dodging projectiles in most games above ELO 1000.
8:45 If you have all buildiungs selected you just can press tab. It circles through all specific buildings so you have selected your siege workshop at some point. Same works with units. It's the same mechanic as in StarCraft 2 as example. It's commonly used there because you can only have so much controlgroups.
Projectiles and hotkeys seem like massive issues Im surprised at. Outside of the the game seems great.
Settings -> Controls -> Find and Cycle Units & Buildings set that to Select Only. It stops the camera from moving when you select all buildings... also when you have all buildings selected you case use TAB and Ctrl TAB to go thru each unique group.
I believe the homing arrow 'issue' is indeed intentional. Basically making APM much less useful and let you focus on macro instead. There are much more active skills in units to compensate a little bit, but it will not make you win/lose battles that are otherwise impossible to be done.
So yeah, basically it becomes a much more friendly game for casuals to just play multiplayer in weekend without worrying that you need to learn about stuffs like micro mangonels against archers in order to participate. Which I think is a good thing since it let people who enjoy the much more click intensive AoE2 to keep playing the game, and leave AoE4 for more chill massive army vs army engagements -- basically bringing new people to RTS which is always an intimidating task.
I will stick with AoE2 for competitive viewing, but I might play AoE4 more for campaigns and casual pvp.
There's still going to be lots of micro advantages to leverage even if you cant dodge projectiles. Just look at other RTSes where projectiles arent dodgeable.
@Spirit Of The Law While I do agree that hotkey customization is a must, having all military buildings selected by one hotkey is not that bad. Actually if you look at e.g. Starcraft 2 many pros do that. What you then have to do is cycling through the different unit production options using the TAB key, generally helpful I hope :)
Looking at I generally think this isn't really much of an improve, in term of grafics compared to Aoe 3
Yeah I agree it doesn't look impressive. I don't think the bright colors are doing them any favors either.
always dropping good content, thank you spirit!
1:35 after almost 20 years of playing I have to admit that I hate the dark age. Always the same 10 minutes fucks me up every time I want to play it.
I think it's clever solved in aoe4 to shorten up the dark age. What I also like is the ability to throw out rams in feudal age in aoe 4
@@booradley6832 Rams need to be tanky early age due to their pretty large cost for the point in the game that you get them in. late game there is more than enough infantry and cavalry to make them balanced and not super effective unless youre way far ahead. its really nice to just build 10 rams all of a sudden to finish someone off thats already lost and is just delaying the inevitable. it may be a lil op that archers can build them too tho lol should probably be kept to the men at arms or spearmen
Rams should simply not get a bonus against non wall buildings and should not be able to be build by archers
That's why I'm liking ranked empire wars more and more for aoe2
Dear SOTL,
first of all: I apreciate that you as an Age of Empires 2 Institution aka house of wisdom took a look on the Age of Empires 4 Beta!
What I also really missed are the "jump-to-hotkeys" to all the eco and techbuildings.
But there is maybe one little thing, that you missed, I think: The mechanic behind the Hotkey "Select all Military Buildings".
In minute 8:42ff we can see a Selection of several, grouped military building types.
The default-selection = "ALL"
But here it comes: If you press the "tabulator"-key, you switch through the grouped buildings from left to right and so you can produce units from those buildings in that order.
In my opinion, this is very smart in terms of accessability. Everyone knows, that preesing the tab-key means switching the cursor.
So, you only need to know one Hotkey for military buildings and then: tab -> shift+q -> tab etc. It is even better, if you built a fowarad operating base wiith several military buildings, all bound to the hotkey 5 for example. So unlike in AoE2, where you needed to first select all forward baracks, then your forward stables and so on, you just need to press one single hotkey and then it is always the tab key.
Sure, it is a tiny bit slower, than having one hotkey per building type, but I think in total, this doesn't add up enough to make it back into Age of Empires 4 compared to the better accessibility.
What do the others think? Anybody else used this kind of building selection?
Ah yes, the "buy our unfinished product and we swear we'll finish it" pepega industry practice
I direct your attention to the Monster Hunter series.
Arguably they haven't released a D1 complete product in years, but nothing they have released FELT decisively incomplete, and while they keep SOME things secret they are in general pretty open about what is yet to come and when it will be, at least to the best of their ability. Plus, the pacing they use for the post-launch free updates is such that it makes sure the community sticks around in the newest game for a long time without leaving the game with nothing new for too long, which is vital for the series because multiplayer is a core component of the endgame gameplay of the series.
That Technical Stress Test moving around the screen is giving me far more stress than it should.
If there is no change between this and the full game, I'm not going to buy it. The hotkeys are a bit of a deal breaker for me, plus not being able to quickly jump to your barracks or stables etc makes it hard to remember where I put my buildings.
Filtered
Yes, too much sameness is bad.
@@TheGoodLuc hotkeys are insanely important in any RTS. Idk why you don't accept his valid criticism. I like the game as a whole, but that is an obvious point that should be addressed.
There is always the option of putting your production buildings on a hotkey - but yes, the fact that it is a manual fix is not exactly ideal if you're used to there being a default hotkey to globally select them all.
@@robin9740 I'm not about hotkeys. You're right, hotkeys are very important. I just worry the game will be nearly AOE 2 in 3D.
I desperately need the ability to change the zoom and tilt. It's going to be an amazing game if they take these changes into consideration
AoE2 players might not be used to arcing arrows, but as a CoH2 player, I feel right at home. Lelic at work...
@@temporaryname8905 The issue isn't that things arc, it's that they arc in unnatural ways, like homing arrows. Which is down to how hits are determined. Anyone who played Relic's earlier title CoH2 long enough is likely familiar with arcing projectiles, though it's far less prevalent there, as generally most things are fast enough that you wouldn't notice. Notorious though are homing Panzerfausts and satchel charges, because their projectile speed is noticeably lower. Similarly, in AoE4, most projectiles are slower than in a WWII game, so it is more noticeable if arrows start homing in on targets.
Most of this is because a hit is determined when the projectile is fired, the animation then tries to match the result, instead of an arrow just flying predictably and based on whether the animation hits or not, its a hit.
Yup, I hate it.
Nothing else to add.
@@masafromhell I think people who are pro players will stick with 2 so they can micro all day and others who just want to have fun will play 4.
I hope they allow full control of hotkeys. With the F1 to select all military, you can tab through, but it's damn confusing to remember which unit is which arbitrary grid space. Normally I prefer to hotkey production to 5 through 8, blacksmith 9, market 0, but when docks and siege workshops get involved then that isn't enough so a "select all docks" etc set of hotkeys would be awesome.
I just don’t know how the developers do not get that this digital cartoon style does make the units comical and childlike while the incredible high details made visible by extreme colour and lighting use is just distracting and kills the flair. Microsoft like so many companies miss design thinking at their core and its sad to see how it dies not reach the genius of AoE 1 and 2.
Bro they know what they are doing and every game from big companies will cartoonize sooner or later, that's what you get for having too many women out of the house. Your brain may not understand the connections but you can surely mark my words.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but personally I don't understand, what I have seen of the game looks great. The art style is a lot different from AoE one and two but I don't see how one or the other is better.
@@ankitmahajan4036 Dear Ankit being a big company means nothing in fact it makes many things harder to defend in a big company. For comparison see Microsoft vs Apple under Steve Jobs. Btw I am pretty sure nobody will ever (ever!) remember anything you are saying as long as you give such non-answers. Try again.
@@JamesonHuddle fair enough
@@ankitmahajan4036 Are you really comparing or linking women leaving the house with state of cartoon like graphics in the gaming industry? Makes you sound like an intolerable neckbeard man
I’m anxiously awaiting for release
So glad to hear the town bell sound will be nerfed, drove me crazy in just the few matches I watched.
I'm just mad that "technical stress test" didn't bounce around like the DVD logo back in the day.
Man if that thing hit the corner sometime.. 👌
Hey Spirit, any chance you'll return to Romans vs Barbarians? Another gameplay video or official DE version would be great.
Loved that scenario video!
@@justinsmiley-oyen59 Yeah, me too!
Greate video as always. Thank you for your work!
released 28 seconds ago but two comments from hours ago. WHAT
Haha you just wanted the glory of being first!
thats what happened if u are not a sponsor/patron of this channel...git good.
This is constructive criticism right here, no sugarcoat but also not plain toxic. A critic with solution to improving it not just trashing with “X is way better”
So excited for this. Best RTS i've played for years.
you probably did not play much games..
@@martinmartin9116 or you didn't. This game really goes in the right direction, whichout being a copycat. Tell me the other AAA RTS (not 4x) games that came out recently
@@VittamarFasuthAkbin I did, but AoE series is so specific and its not one-of-another-rts-game-for-fckin-15$
In AoE IV:
- i totally missed UI in ancient-style
- textures are only in FHD (who the fuck today use FHD?), for bigger res is used upscaling technique.
- weird person animations, horses are sliding, villagers are moving like in honey, building is like by a ghosts, when lumberjack is animated, he pull up axe much faster than axe goes down (wow! how real is this?)
- many of animation-logic bugs like villager goes through wall in TC, soldier through stone wall etc..
- animations of throwing items like arrows or torches are rough, not correct in basic physics law
- ingame UX is terrible and chaotic
- ingame icon are very cheap, they are like "free png icon castle/mill.."
- 3D view (weird, too much zoomed in). 2D isometric is still meta
- lack of some army tactics
For me its only redesigned AoE III and totally ignored fame of AoE II. AoE IV is much more fancy game than AoE II and thats why I totally dont like it. AoE cant be fancy for 13 yo kids. It is also overpriced game, AoE IV cost is for me like 20-25 $.
AoE II is not perfect for these days, but AoE IV not fix them, but adds another new. Stronghold Crusaders are much more better than AoE IV.
@@VittamarFasuthAkbin It still pales in comparison to AoE2 and W3 (more for the editor than the actual game). The graphics and the homing projectiles are enough to keep me away from it.
@@martinmartin9116 I don't see the connection to age 3, it's rather a spin up of Age 2 modernized. Still, the best RTS released for years
Archers on the wall and infantry's inability to attack stone walls are pretty cool! But in other aspects..
Best campaign storyline: Age of Mythology
Best visuals: Age of Empires 3
Most realistic units: Total Wars Series
Best game mechanics: Empire Earth I
In my opinion.
8:54 There was an option to set which F keys would jump and which would just select, on standard it would jump. I don't know if it was the angle of the camera, but I though maybe a Field of View slider as found in most 3d games could help.
About projectiles like arrows always hitting, from my experience with coding i think that's actually intentional, since making projectiles follow the target is actually harder to code than just launching the projectile and letting it go its set path, and tbh? I actually rly like having projectiles being consistent with 100% acc rather than being inconsistent and able to be dodged, not only melee units (including infantry) feel much stronger than before (so they can deal with 100% projectiles), having consistent projectiles will also infinitely help the devs later on when they try to balance units, because it's just much easier to balance a unit that has a predictable behavior than balance a unit that sometimes stomps everything, and sometimes dies without accomplishing anything of value.
I think it depends on how you make the code.
You can create a parabola that constantly links the shooter (or where it was when it shot) and the target, than you make the projectile follow that line.
It make it simpler to determine when the target is hit and takes damage.
Maybe the path would be simpler the other way, buy determining hits and misses would be more complicated, specially with a 3D terrain.
@@thomasfplm well yeah, but when it doesn't need to follow u can actually make a much simpler code that just aims at a location and that's it, everything else is basic physics
also AoE4 already detects if it's colliding with other stuff because of the stone walls, so this hard part is being done one way or another ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@MasterSonicKnight, what I mean is that maybe taking the target is easier than checking if the arrow hit it when at the end of the movement widout tracking.
@@thomasfplm ah ok, and yeah maybe
for better or worse ,aoe4 looks like what mobile rts ads want to achieve
I was totally hooked the whole weekend and played as much as I could. I love it even though the projectiles are weird and the ai would glitch out a lot and get their siege units all stuck in the stealth trees. The game seems to take longer to finish than aoe2 since late game resources are so plentiful but it's kinda chill because of that. We beat the hardest ai in a 2v2 on Sunday and I felt proud :,)
I think the game should have an expensive tech to reveal the map
Or only
The landmarks
Like aom had
Makes hunting for the last landmarks not as tedious
I still find it hard to understand how they manage to make some things way worse than in previous games (especially of the same franchise). I get the team might not be exactly the same, but why wouldn't they start by checking what good/great features the other games (that are way more polished) had that they should keep in this game? The projectiles redirection issue, for instance, is a quite glaring one...
In the end, with most of the things that have been said, I guess you can have some fun with it, but I just don't feel as excited to play this game as I thought I would be (unlike, say, AoE2).
Projectile redirection was never an issue in AOE3. So I don't think its unforgiveable.
Projectile redirection in itself is not a problem. It was actually a very AoE 2 thingy that you could dodge a projectile. In SC2 for example you simply can't dodge auto-attacks. it looks weird in Age 4 because of the arching.
SOTL the Stronghold vibe reference was gold! Nostalgic as hell.
I really love AoE IV, it was a friggin blast to play. I've already preordered
Preorders are dumb.
One thing that came in mind lately: I hope for the campaigns they do something unique. One really strong point for Starcraft 2 was how the campaigns were totally different than multiplayer. With unique units, techs, and really varied mission mechanics. Not just a skirmish vs the AI with preset buildings.
I hope there will be some cool things they cook up.
The only thing I don’t like is the projectile mechanic because it’s the most fun and skill intensive part of aoe2. I think they have to change it to have a good esport environment
Huge disagree. There is very minor projectile dodging in StarCraft 2 and it's still the king of competitive RTS games
@@booradley6832 i dont see how the game devolves towards massing archers. if the enemy is massing archers theres hard counters against it in castle age. even in feudal ive had great success making a few rams filling them with men at arms and since they were doing nothing but massing archers and pikemen i roll over them.
@@booradley6832 you are talking about a completely different thing: avoiding gameplay mechanics and spells. Not about dodging PROJECTILES. You can never dodge brood lords, rockets, stalker lasers and suchs in SC2. So your argument is nonsensical this way. On the other hand, me supporting dodging is also true, as I despise the fact you can't even dodge fricking trebs. That's bull ...
@@booradley6832 I mainly agree with you other than one thing. Age 2 is exactly the same, as you can research 100% accuracy. Then we had the same and it still didn't make archers OP and break the meta. You are talking about something that didn't even happen yet and we can't know how it's going to continue, as currently, there is no metagame for this to be a problem.
Yeah i agree that Starcraft was very big but for my part Kiting, dodging, Randome maps, multiple resources are the reason why i play Age and not Starcraft
It's interesting to see the Company of Heroes influence. Both the grid keys and F key system for selecting production buildings are lifted directly from micro solutions that Relic and the Community developed for CoH over it's lifetime. However, in CoH, the F keys select a production building without moving the camera.
If they don't add a pause option or at least speed control to single player, that would be a deal breaker for me.
@@booradley6832 in previous AOE games there is a pause button (F3) which allows you to move camera, select and give orders.
I didn't play the stress tests . I was kinda thinking I don't want to buy it . But I did . And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised . This game is pretty fun . I'd like to see increased population caps (like on a 1v1 match) and the ability to zoom out further . But other than that I've been playing the heck out of this .... also it's interesting to know about the farm building mechanic . Imma give that a try next time I play . I like that you can put archers on the walls . It's a bit difficult at times to line them up but it's a really cool addition .
Some things i expect devs to work on is on options of game speed, population, micro control and make the arrows miss (because aparently any projectile has 100% chance to hit)
I disagree on the issue of projectiles. By the way, this is a bigger issue for purist AOE2 fans.
U want a faster or slower pace?
@@rogerwingfield8553 Why though? What's wrong with projectiles missing?
@@rogerwingfield8553 I dont mind if u get 100% accuracy in the imperial age, but like sotl pointed out, the projectiles do a very weird angle to reach his objetive in the end, means that they need to polish if they want to keep it that way. Plus takes out the competitve micro
@@weeabooman2867 I'm the one who should ask: What is the problem with not having projectiles missing? It's not something inherent in the RTS genre at all. And not even in the AOE franchise, it's something that just the AOE2 has. This game shouldn't have to copy everything from AOE2.
The sound of the game is amazing as you mentioned. The trebuchet sound is wooow!
yikes, those projectile mechanics are bad, I hope they change them. Rest seems solid.
I'm really thankful to see this review, I saw a lot of people bashing it as "Not as good as AoE2", and as someone who's never played the earlier titles, that made me anxious despite really enjoying my time in the Stress Test.
A lot of the issues I was seeing was from Pro Gamers, who have spent decades mastering RTS, complaining the game was too simple to make a good E-Sport ever. I see where they are coming from, and don't want to see them pushed out of the community, but as someone who doesn't have triple digit APM, I'd also like to be able to play semi-competitively, so I like that it feels a bit slowed down. I wanted to get into SC2 not too long ago, but the entry level was so high I just didn't have time to get into it.
I look forwards to picking this up on gamepass with my friends, and maybe buying it down the road once the inevitable DLC comes out.
Thanks for sharing your 2 cents SotL!
You should play SMT.
All the issues you've brought up are non-issues for me. Lack of hotkeys, lack of micro and more focus on macro is the more fun AoE that I want to play. I want to play online but I want more of a casual play not concentrate on dodging arrows etc. This is the AoE I want to play online against others.
That's understandable, but if you want to play seriously/competitively, then hotkeys are a must I'm afraid. Heck, even against the AI in AoE2, you'd struggle to beat the tougher difficulties using only the mouse... So it makes sense that many people are hung up on the hotkeys.
Not a popular opinion, but I believe removing focus from micro is a great design decision.
This is a strategy game.
It should be battle of minds, experience and intuition.
It should not require months and years of building muscle to play optimally.
Eeewww
I really enjoyed it, the only thing I think needs improving is the optimization... you said they were aiming for low end computers, but I'm not so sure, as my low-ish end pc had trouble running the game at 900p, the game ran good when the camera is standing still, but as soon as I moved it, the frames drop... pretty weird stuff. Overall the game seemed to run around 50 fps, which is playable, but considering the graphics are simple, I expected better... Civ 5 and 6 run perfectly fine on their highest graphic settings, and AoE 2 DE runs fine even with the 4k texture pack, only dipping to 40 and 50s on the intense benchmark, I don't think I ever saw it dip that low in real gameplay