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.
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 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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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
"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.
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.
One major thing that bothered me is when you select several barracks, for example, and press the button to create a unit, it will queue up one unit and not one unit per barrack.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Glad you touched on arrows. Had plenty of arrows magically fly towards my cav in the dumbest of circumstances from longbows. Looks stupid and doesn't feel right. I could see crossbow men having 100% accuracy but standard bows just fly to slow. Also why no friendly fire from siege?
For the game to be more appealing to new players, it must be more strategy-oriented and less on the archaic micro intensity of games over 20 years old.
@@Adribird Not positioning your troops out of fire isn't strategic? Huh... Sounds like a very subjective take. I guess everything you don't like is micro intensive...
@@squaeman_2644 There are many ways to micro. In these modern games you try to avoid the chance factor, or do you think that sometimes you miss or hit it because you always have a better or worse mic? Is not always that way.
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
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
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 wish there were proper ultra settings for those who want a nicer looking game, and I wish we could zoom out further. I just revisited AOE2 DE again, and you can see way more on screen there, AOE4 feels super claustrophobic.
I was super disappointed with my time on the stress test, the game looks awful graphically and everything is too zoomed in. Even at that excessive zoom, it was quite hard to tell units apart except for their stupidly large weapons that look terrible. The UI leaves a lot to be desired as well. I wasn't a fan of the audio design, it feels too busy and distracting but that might just be something you have to get used to. The mechanics however, there's a lot of interesting stuff with how you age up, and the different dynamics between units and their abilities.
The graphics look cartoonish and the buildings in my opinion are too large or the maps are too small. I played a game on black forest and I had not enough space to put down 20 farms.
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.
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.
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”
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
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.
Aoe2 4 life. I hate the cartoon stylization of everything. That's why I never played the civilization series. I want a more serious and emersive experience of military conquest.
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.
Props to the devs for somehow managing to make the graphics both beautiful and ugly simultaneously. The towns are lovely, but the battles are just blobs of neon.
The only saving grace with the select all military buildings hotkey in AOE4 is that you can use tab to switch between buildings similar to how you can switch between which unit you can use the special abilities from in Starcraft 2, but I get your point, and I'd still prefer having both separate select all hotkeys for each type of military building and having a select all military buildings hotkey.
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.
When you select your military buildings with f1, you do have the option of going into the box to the left of the one with the units, and selecting which subset you're looking at. That actually makes it feel quite nice to me after discovering it, especially since it seems to let you set the gather point for just that subset before switching to another
I am pretty concerned that the game won't have enough depth. Feels like a "dumbed down" version. Not much micro, eco seems simple, building placement looks rugged... Like this it also doesnt look like there is potential for esport. But let's see.
I think talking a step away from micro is a good design decision nowadays. It will attract a lot more players if the focus is more towards strategy than tactics and micro. There is a reason turn based strategy is much more popular these days. Though I am also afraid that the game is too shallow right now. I agree that the game looks a little rugged. Everything just seems too unresponsive.
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.
i personally think the more movement away from micro toward macro is a great thing. Micro can overcomplicate things and skew unit balances. I'm impressed with how this is all coming together. Looks like we are gonna have a great game coming our way.
i think the projectile problem is a big one for me just watching that arrow bend somehow damaged my immersion on its own and taking away a little bit from the skill ceiling is never a good sign for future That said games are always a bit finicky on release so idm
For me what broke the immersion was that pathetic dodge projectiles in AOE2. In terms of micro and skill it was really good, but it definitely broke the immersion.
1- We need custom hotkeys. 2 - (8:58) There's an option to disable this. 3 - The Zoom aspect is adressed when you incorporate the rotate camera into your play
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
Realistic ballistics: allows dodging but trajectory is faster and inaccurate Friendly fire on: including archer misses Higher damage: allowing to use archers as a siege aoe against masses or enemies
About the walls only being destroyed by siege, I think it would be interesting to have a "Sappers" technology that would allow villagers to destroy walls widout alerting the opponent unless there is a unit or a tower with line of sight to it.
I hope they eventually add the projectile physics back. Formation switching to dodge projectiles and subsequently winning a 5 v 10 archer battle or archer vs onager battle is so much fun
For the game to be more appealing to new players, it must be more strategy-oriented and less on the archaic micro intensity of games over 20 years old.
I would prefer walls to be better ,the can be destroyed with cannons really fast so they are not really a good spot to hold and defend so again the the tower will be never used against walls. If the game had the vibe of a castle will be awesome
@@metal_monocle7334 well yeah but no , indeed the cannons can destroy a wall fast but not the early cannons.the first cannons that cloud destroy walls faster was the ottomans,and even then walls provide some serious defence walls became not worthy it of the time was around 1700 and more thats why you see fort's at pirate era because the cloud hold vs the cannons of the ships for weeks or months...so yeah walls go down easily on AoM 4
@@Snapshot.Geo07 ... Not even remotely true though. The ottomans obliterated the walls of Constantinople thanks to their bombards in 1453, quite a bit earlier than the 1700's. Not to mention how the mongols managed to become a gunpowder empire already in the in the 1200's, or how Tamerlane brought gunpowder to India thus resulting in the yet another gunpowder empire with cannons a plenty.
@@metal_monocle7334 funny but the fight on Constantinople was lost because of the lack of the troops not because of the cannons anyway we can say we disagree.
