AoE4 First Gameplay Detailed Analysis 

There are roads in AoE 2 campaigns as well, so the ones in the trailer might be placed in scenario editor and non-functional like the ones in AoE 2. Same goes for the cathedral and some other structures. They might just be unique campaign buildings.

Welcome to "Age of Empires II: 2"

ZeroEmpires, I recognize your efforts to spread the culture of playing Age of Empires, a game that I play for 20 years. Thanks!!

AoE IV has to be revolutionary, because AoE II is already excellent and stand against the test of time.

AOE3 had 3d as well. it was still forced isometric, but you could see 'behind' things more as you moved toward them; they weren't just a flat sprite units could move behind.

Age of Empires 4 = AOE2 Definitive HD 3D Edition

Seems like this match was played by GOT script writers. English foot soldiers charge directly to Mongol cavalries on open field forgetting that they have a big damn wall.

I always wished you could have soldiers on the walls to defend, I’m really looking forward to that feature in this new game. I’m also really excited that it’s medieval themed.

Also that “big” church is the Durham Cathedral, so it’s a Wonder.

It does look great but come on... No personnel manning the trebuchets? Even aoe 3 had guncrews at the cannons. It's 2019...

Amazing analysis man, learned a ton! Keep up the good work!

I get the feeling that they are showing us scenarios so that the towns look properly constructed. Aoe2 had a similar video when it came out. But maybe, they defiantly COULD do a lot to it.

I know it's cynical but my guess is that this trailer is probably just a well scripted in game cinematic intro for a campaign that's being labeled as "gameplay". It looks beautiful though and I'm excited to play whatever it is.

I hope streets are a tech you need to develop to increase speed of units inside your town. And let it be procedurally generated

I would say the Mongol "hero units" are just pulled from a campaign and won't actually be in multiplayer.

I'll get my guesses in now... I think: - Walls will initially be very chunky and unwieldy, but be shrunk shortly after launch. - Roads will be procedurally generated if more than 2 buildings are placed in close proximity. There will be an engine that tries to make your base look unified and whole. - Units will not 'lock on' to those roads or move around your base any differently, it's just an aesthetic thing. - A swordsman will be a swordsman for every civ, but will have civ-specific models. Again, just an aesthetic thing to make your army visually different from your opponent. - No more or less unique units than in AOE2. Between 1-4 per civ sounds about right. - Perhaps each civ will have their own specific buildings, but I doubt it. I'd say a barracks is barracks for everyone. - Big focus on individual unit abilities, such as 'entrench', 'fortify', 'build bridge' - Yes, an engineer unit that can build bridges and such.

This looks like what stronghold crusader 2 should have been

Great analysis! This really looks awesome!

You have made so many great points with analysing only a small video. Good job.

Im spanish and i like your videos because i can practice my listening and comprehension. Your accent and way to speak is so clear.

@ZeroEmpires Great video and analysis - you picked up on all sorts of minor details I missed, so thank you. All I'd add is... expect the base game to have a small number of civs; nowhere near the 13 in AoE II. I'd say 6 - 8 is more likely given that they're all going to look completely different and presumably have unique unit/building rosters and more customised mechanics. Expect plenty of the good/expected civs to be DLC.

Can't wait to see what could it be. Nice breakdown by the way!

Thank you for this amazing preview

I love videos like this!

Mr.Wololo himself XD

Excellent analysis.

Great analysis, best video about AOE4 so far

Thanks ZE for the vid. What we've seen looks great.

What I'm curious about is the vills. I see a lot of them walking around and do nothing but I haven't seen any that where collection resources. Were there even any of them on those farms?? Also curious what the fighting is going to be like. This looks like only massive army vs massive army kind of thing but it's also just a very littly vid of the game. Hope that the small armies and raiding is still going to be there. I don't mind a bit more city building aspect, secretely I like that. I do love that they used the same ages (again) love that period for this game. I rather have a swordfighter then a dude with a gun and a cavalry unit than a tank.

This is either gonna be awesome or shite

Wow you made a good point, the mongols being nomadic and being able to move camps sounds like a really different yet awesome mechanic!

I just hope cavalry can trample units and there's gonna be some cool ragdoll physics with catapults and such.

I'm hopefully optimistic for this game.

You mention lances being carried by lancers (long spear type weapons carried on horseback - think jousting and you are imagining a lance). You appear to mean the foot soldiers carrying pole-axes - slightly different weapon to a lance - sometimes have very nasty head to them - hooked blades for cutting your opponents hamstrings and or Achilles tendons to immobilise them.

Is the Xbox x edition going to be 4k enhanced ?

It is a pre-alpha footage according to what it says. So this game isn't anywhere close to launch. Is it going to take another 2-3 years?

Okay so serious question. What is the big sell for me to leave total war series to AOE?

Paths are like from outpost2 where you could make a path for units to stick to, and which let's them travel faster while on the path.

9:23 There's a tower collapsing, but it reveals an intact wall under itself. In my opinion this means that towers which will either host archers like in stronghold, or shoot enemies themselves will be an "upgrade" to a section of the wall. If you ever played Battle for Middle-Earth 2, you should know this concept intimately.

Pretty cool that archers can place spiked fortifications now, ranged units are in desperate need of more power

"The "cathedral" clearly showcases the "Flying Buttress" construction used by real life cathedrals. So it's definitely not just a normal church... Could be a wonder too! My guess

Those units up the hill are called the Khans and are one of Mongols UU. Basically aoe 4 will have Generals which boost your army strength, and Khans are Mongols general. The hawk shown at start of the trailer is one of Mongols special ability which allows you to know the location of your enemy's base on the map and have logistic info about your enemy army composition. At least this is what an article beyond a pay wall said. It also said English are similar to what they are in aoe 2 while Mongols are very different and unique, and every civ will be strongly characterized. There will be way fewer civs than aoe2 to choose from.

Empire Earth 2 has buildable bridges, and they work really well - it's an interesting trade-off between having a faster route to your enemy, being on a choke point, and potentially having the bridge destroyed with your units on it. It's got roads as well, which mean you have to plan out your building layout in the early game, or demolish buildings in the midgame to make way for roads to boost trade and get your armies to the front quickly.

Is it coming out for both PC and Xbox?

Perhaps roads will be like Company of Heroes roads: faster movement when exposed on the road!

It's worth mentioning that unique unit rosters for each civ isn't entirely new to the franchise: this was a thing in age of mythology, and in AoE3 it's only the base game civs that share a unit pool, the expansion civs (native american and asian) all have entirely unique rosters

You know, with the way the original announcement teaser trailer was, I wouldn't be too surprised if the next gameplay trailer we see is set in AOE3's time period, or even AOE1. I have a feeling they might hit us with another time period out of left field

What if the camera angles are for spectators and the gameplay is top down traditional style. Would be incredible for like casting and tournaments! Also, roads could be manually added like in Empire Earth where they increase unit movement speed and units take preference to move along the road.

Tell me, who builds a keep at the bottom of the hill instead of top of it? This way you can be easly overrun!

Really hope this game stays true to the gameplay of aoe2 and it only looks like total war gameplay for this trailer. My main concern, if they release a gameplay of like a random map it would at least give some answers

I wonder if do we get AoE III DE before this? I hope so.

What if this just a background in menu display? Like Age of Empires III?

By now, i'm kinda disappointed because I hoped that new AoE would be not only in like medieval/ancient style and both trailers are held in these ages. I want to see tanks in AoE finally :(

welp so far its looking good but I will have to see more before I determine if I will buy this or not.

It looks more cartoony than AoE2 (unfortunately), but I can't quite put a finger on exactly why. Maybe it's just the vibrant colors? Every other issue I can think of (scale of details, etc.) was in AoE2 as far as I can tell.

Is this Street Empires 2: Extreme Final Ultra?

i think the streets just appear when u build building

When does this come out?

when is next looks coming?

I noticed something, it seems to me that units move well like group of units. So maybe because one of devs are Relic, the ones who made CoH there might be something of that.

I think it will have a much larger emphasis on tactics. Right now on AOE2 the only thing that diverges from unit stats and numbers, is elevation. This put aside, units will behave consistently. Here, we can put units on walls, archers can deploy sharpened stakes in front of them (automatically murders incoming cavalry), so I assume other tactics will come. Cavalry causing more damage when charging, attacks from the sides or from behind behind more devastating, and so on. Making battles look more like Total War instead of just being a question of economy, unit choices and micro.

I'd love to see 1 thing in age of empires. have a competitive possibility of being on the same colour as well as same team. i used to love playing on the same colour with friend so one could take control say of a specific army and flank etc. Though something would have to be built in to agree who controls which units.

I remember you can rotate the camera in AOE 3?

thanks for the insight. - negative reception confirmed. I can, quite regretfully, cancel that game episode. AoE I & II (and a bit of III) seems as far as it goes with me. Am rooting for more updates in the AoE II series :)

Complete speculation, but it could be that each culture will have a certain lineup of units and gameplay mechanics, rather than each civ being unique. That way the English and Franks could have similar army compositions, while Mongols and Huns have a different set of common units. That way the different cultures will have more than graphics to set them apart, while still keeping the civs easy to understand.

Where can I buy it?

I am so pumped my inner city building self is also very happy

I'm just begging to know what will the system requirements be :(

Nice Total War 4 breakdown

It's 2019. Is it really difficult to make a game that has 1:1 scale between people and buildings?

You can see three different types of houses, the ones outside the city (though they are also inside), other that seem to be the regular ones, and some that look bigger. Also, close to the main castle and cathedral there is something like a mansion. In 8:53 you can see them, the "poor"/countryside looking ones at the top left, the regular ones next to them at the right, and the "rich" ones at the bottom.

To be honest, it doesn't really feel like an Age of Empires game in terms of looks. I hope that the gameplay does though, since that's what I'm mostly worried about.

Im guessing unit skins look different like building skins have been

i dont really see Age 4 as a sequel, but rather a fresh restart considering its been 15 or so years since Age 3 (i dont mind it being the same time period as 2 because lets face it is the majority's favourite). Age 2 encompasses a wide range of civs in the middle ages spanning a good 1000/1500 ish years between some of the civs give or take. they specifically mentioned medieval time period which is really only a portion of the time period age 2 had. what im wondering is, is there enough breathing space for this game to bring in new things or is this just stronghold age 2.

It would be cool for online, if on winter maps you had to build fires to warm up at

To be fair, The models look kind of unrefined and crooked (As expected of pre-alpha I suppose), I mean the armor and weapons don't shine and not to mention the unmanned trebs.

I would kill if my AOEII villagers could build roads and paths in my towns.

You seem so sure about the medieval setting. The announcement trailer showed a lot of different ages, from ancient greek times to the american revolution. I think/ hope, this is going to be a next gen AoE game, showcasing all the three that came before it. (Sry mythology.. ) The medieval setting trailer was just an appeal, because after all these years AoE 2 has more fans than all the others combined. This is just my opinion tho, I don't want them to overwhelm themselves with the scale of such an endeavour and then give out a half-assed game.

I'm getting Empire Earth 3 vibes...I hope I'm wrong though.

Another potentially big thing: In some shots you can see Mongol units running through the trees which might mean no more impassable forest.

It seems that they have taken the learnings & feedback from Aoe2 and Aoe3 quite well. The expansions to Aoe3 had civs which had fully unique units. I bet the Aoe3 DE edition would be a prelude to a lot of features for Aoe4

zack, where are you? what do you do for a living? its like you prepare all these tournaments and shit, then you disappear for months. im very curious about your lifestyle.

I hyped it the moment they said its medieval and relic is doing it

I thought the video frame was not working dude don't stop at 1 frame like that cause YT have a similar gitch and it is annoying

What would be cool is to see a LotR RTS style with AoE gameplay. Maybe that's just me.

Hope they dont remove micro management

Release date?

Not 2 churches, It's an university

It looks like they might be increasing the number of units you'll typically see. Maybe they'll have it so that units are generally cheaper than they were in AoE:2, but individually weaker. Or maybe they just had massive armies for the sake of the trailer. I think it would be neat if the game focused on having more units, just so everyone can agree that Warcraft 3 was stupid for intentionally limiting the number of units you can create.

it s me who raised wall with troops demand in many forums . i thought they denied this suggestion .

Im also very excited. If you can build the streets thats just wow. It would be extremly cool. Lets hope its not like stronghold in this regard. I think micromanagement of villagers and army units is a core point of aoe and it would make the game less exciting if you would build houses and villagers would walk automatically. This freedom of untit management is a core thing to make aoe different from total war, stronghold, settlers and make the game more complex.

After manned walls all I want is build-able roads and bridges. EE 2 had it and that was well over ten years ago.

Age of Empires 3: DE will be the best looking age game.

I do really hope that all resource gathering and villagers work the same. Same as units. I’m not a huge fan of “squads” like company of hero’s. I would like it to take more of what strong hold has done then company of hero’s. But I am all for city building! If I can build my city like the one in this trailer I’m a happy camper cause idk about you but when I play AOE I like to make my city look goood

I can't fucking wait omg im so excited

I can't see any gameplay

The graphic style is a good sign. Cartoony styles tend to not impress as much as realism, but they age a lot better and are used for games that are expected to stick around for quite a while. They're also often easier to run, allowing more people to play it, it's the reason people associate it with Fortnite or mobile games, which are often built for longevity since they make money of constant new content. The question is how much content will come with it and how do they monetize it.

Age of Stronghold 😊

I'd just like to mention that for some civs (asian and american) in AoE3, all units are unique, even vils and ships, even mechanics like wonders and fire pits (with unique dances per civ), so I think the complete uniqueness of civs has been tried before, and that's what I liked the most about AoE3 (although overall AoE2 is my favorite). I'm eager for that

I do hope that we'll be able to upgrade from Medieval to Colonial like similar AOE games. Please tell me that their are muskets and cannons!!!!