Age of Empires 4 Gameplay Trailer

[DickHancock]

[MiamiLife305]

Looks like a bad mobile game

no thanks jeff

[shyheimz]

The minimalism of AoE I & II is what made it good.
Really tried to like AoE3: Definitive Edition, but everything seems so... large & sluggish. What I hated most about it was the million customization options that ultimately really made no difference a lot of times + the fact that you don't build empires but small colonies.

Really curious to see what AoE4 will give - but the trailer makes me think of the large & sluggishness of AoE3 at first sight...

[tunafishha]

Lol looks disappointing.

[Chump1987]

As a huge AoE fan, this is disappointing.

Looks like chit, hopefully gameplay is better.

[Firefightn24]

AOE2 is still where it's at. Definitive Edition and they just released a small expansion recently.

[Barteh]

I have a hard time seeing this overtake AOE2 popularity wise. Especially since that entire community is booming right now.

[tnel00]

Looking forward more to hummanity

[ryankoch]

never really played any of these games. whats good about em? only real rts ive played is starcraft and wacraft

[tunafishha]

never really played any of these games. whats good about em? only real rts ive played is starcraft and wacraft

When I played Age of Empires 2 back in the days, the fun was in building your village and then waging war against the AI with a massive army.

As it is right now, the graphics doesn't look raw and mature like in AOE2. And the scale of the soldiers aren't in proportion to the buildings.

That said, RTS games are very hard to build because of the AI aspect. I'll give the game a try. RTS games have ALOT of potential to be played for years to come if they are made right. SC2 is a good example of the power of RTS games.

[ModernMazdak]

Graphic style is disappointing but it looks like they are returning to fundamentals of aoe 2. A quarter century and aoe 2 looks better lmao.

[Motiviert]

Age of empires 2: age of kings will always be the goat

[AgRyan]

Too many explosions in the fighting.... units are as tall as the structures... wtf

[TappingTheZen]

Yeah it didn't look very good. Aoe2 is the gold standard and i'll probably continue playing DE

AOE2 is still where it's at. Definitive Edition and they just released a small expansion recently.

DE is where it's at, but the expansion sucked, 2 new civs that are barely used in MP because they're so poor, i hope the next expansion offers more for the money.

never really played any of these games. whats good about em? only real rts ive played is starcraft and wacraft

It's probably the most well balanced, competitive RTS game of all time. The only game that really competes these days with Aoe2 DE is starcraft, but starcraft is far more linear than aoe2 when it comes to strategy. DE also looks great and really refreshes Aoe2, it's pretty much been by pandemic game and it's highly addictive. It is mildly annoying that they seem to introduce bugs with every damn update though.

[bongowongo]

Damn, I hope the gameplay is good but the graphics look really underwhelming. The lighting looks super flat, the units dont look detailed ... This is a 2021 game? even the framerate looks like it chugs at places.... Seems like they aren't trying to stray too far away from the look of AOE2.



At least xboxers get this on gamepass day one, so that's still pretty cool.

[Midgetkiller]

Looks like Age of Mythology quality graphics srs. I'd rather play AoE2.

[sooby]

Looks like a bad mobile game

no thanks jeff

honestly what I thought too lmao.

The minimalism of AoE I & II is what made it good.
Really tried to like AoE3: Definitive Edition, but everything seems so... large & sluggish. What I hated most about it was the million customization options that ultimately really made no difference a lot of times + the fact that you don't build empires but small colonies.

Really curious to see what AoE4 will give - but the trailer makes me think of the large & sluggishness of AoE3 at first sight...

I feel like the problem with some of these newer RTS games similar to Age of Empires is that it just all looks so cluttered, like there is just too much chit going on. basically sensory overload you can't tell wtf is going on. Yeah, wasn't really digging the colonies aspect of AoE3.

A lot of the games in the late 90s and early 00s really nailed it. crazy to think those games are more playable than these newer ones in 2021. AoE 2 is massively popular so not sure what AoE 4 brings, but I won't judge it yet.

[KingSWRV]

That don’t look right

I think it’s maybe because they keep showing cinematic view when the game is stylized for top down views.

Kinda like how everything looks funky if you zoom in on dota.

I wanna believe but I think the biggest turn off is there’s clusters of less units as opposed to being an insane amount of individual units swarming which is a big aspect of RTS addiction.

They just seem to keep making the mistake of trying to have it be “smaller” clusters instead of massive chaos free for all that’s a huge turn off.

Maybe if it ends up like City Skylines graphicss with AOE underneath and they just aren’t showing many units. But it’s not looking good at all.

The arcadey look, the weird size ratio of things. It looks clunky like a total war game but with outdated graphics and a caricature of itself and other games.

There’s actually a game called brass tactics from a designer of aoe and the game is like super simplified into clusters of units and I hope they didn’t do that here. They even have the same cavalry type charge attack from there.

I think they chose a weird tabletop-roots direction to go in unfortunately.

[Ephedra]

Played AoE2 for years online....mostly post imperial deathmatch. Remember having a 300-100 win loss online on MSN Zone.

Like you guys are saying, they need to keep it simple. 200 total population, can grab massive amounts of units at a time and not just small clusters, maps shouldn't be too big.

Hell, most of us online players just played Arabia map because it was so simple. Sometimes we'd play Black Forest but rarely.

Keep the resources simple...lumber, food, gold, stone.

Most importantly, face down camera angle without anything fancy.

The AoE2 formula works. Age of Mythology and AoE3 didn't.

[Polaris]

Played AoE2 for years online....mostly post imperial deathmatch. Remember having a 300-100 win loss online on MSN Zone.

Like you guys are saying, they need to keep it simple. 200 total population, can grab massive amounts of units at a time and not just small clusters, maps shouldn't be too big.

Hell, most of us online players just played Arabia map because it was so simple. Sometimes we'd play Black Forest but rarely.

Keep the resources simple...lumber, food, gold, stone.

Most importantly, face down camera angle without anything fancy.

The AoE2 formula works. Age of Mythology and AoE3 didn't.

Dude, that was the shyt - so much fun. I was all about the Post Imperial deathmatches too, well that and there was also some cool custom scenarios people had on MSNzone.

[i3oosted]

In on 4vs4 Castle Blood Fair games.

[nkiritsis13]

As someone who grew up on Age of Empires II... oh no. Oh no no no no no!



What the hell happened from that reveal?



- Everything has this vaguely cartoonish look to it between the lighting, the color grade, the proportions, and the general art direction, like someone spilled some AoE Online onto the visual direction. It certainly doesn't make anything clearer (or more pleasant) to see.

Age of Kings Definitive Edition looks better


Here's AoE 4:

Spoiler!

And here's a pic right from the Steam page of AoE3 Definitive Edition:

Spoiler!

Again, what the hell happened? Can we have the people who did AoE 2 and 3 Definitive Editions make a real AoE 4 instead of these ass clowns?

- Why are people giants?

- Why are the weapons massive even for the giants wielding them? It's like they were compensating for the overall lack of visual clarity of whatever the hell it is you're supposed to be looking at.

- What are formations? No, really. Why do the formations look terrible? The "armies" are so small that it's as though they had to pick between tight formations that make sense and spreading them out, again, to compensate. Taken alongside the already behemoth humans, the formations look sloppy as hell, and if I had to guess, their unit pathing can't handle keeping units too close without it somehow managing to look even worse.

In respect to the overall unit scaling, the best comparison I can make is it reminds me of how games like Civilization will use these extra large handfuls of units to represent an army. "The game can't actually run a massive, highly detailed army like any of its remotely competent peers, so here are some chonky soldiers to make it look bigger!"

- There are only eight civilizations?!? Fukkin' hell, typical Relic, man. According to the article, they won't have microtransactions - which should not be praised, it should be the norm for a full priced game - and future civs will be added post-launch. So either we're already talking about the game releasing incomplete, which seems to be the status quo, or they're going to charge extra just to branch out the wanting options for mixing up match ups.

- There is no blood. What kind of mobile, current year bullsh*t is that?!?

That don’t look right

I think it’s maybe because they keep showing cinematic view when the game is stylized for top down views.

Kinda like how everything looks funky if you zoom in on dota.

I wanna believe but I think the biggest turn off is there’s clusters of less units as opposed to being an insane amount of individual units swarming which is a big aspect of RTS addiction.

They just seem to keep making the mistake of trying to have it be “smaller” clusters instead of massive chaos free for all that’s a huge turn off.

Maybe if it ends up like City Skylines graphicss with AOE underneath and they just aren’t showing many units. But it’s not looking good at all.

The arcadey look, the weird size ratio of things. It looks clunky like a total war game but with outdated graphics and a caricature of itself and other games.

There’s actually a game called brass tactics from a designer of aoe and the game is like super simplified into clusters of units and I hope they didn’t do that here. They even have the same cavalry type charge attack from there.

I think they chose a weird tabletop-roots direction to go in unfortunately.

I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to zooming in revealing all the cracks with RTS games. But then I looked up Warhammer Total War, and I think it's just sh*t graphics here, period.

The size ratios are what kept distracting me, like how the humans are all oddly massive next to buildings, arrows are taller than a person, and everyone is casually swinging around buster swords.

Another thing is that the color palette is excessively vibrant with not nearly enough shading, which makes everything look extra flat. There's also no "dirt" or, I dunno age to anything; armies marched hundreds of miles through forests and marshlands looking cleaner than a Jeep after rolling through the car wash.

Subsequently, it all looks flat - except the ground, because literally the best thing going for this game's graphics is the f*cking dirt. That's about as high as the praise goes, because again, looking up Total War and even the long grass looks nice next to this.

All of those visual problems also translate into how the gameplay looks, with the attack cycles looking floaty, out of reach, and just like Total War before shelling out money on the bullsh*t microtransaction, completely bloodless.

Buildings collapse like they're made of styrofoam when the AoE2 Definitive Edition's new destruction animations are goddamn impeccable.

As a side note, I'm not buying a couple of elephants bursting through a fortification so easily without any sense of weight, impact... just some bloody difficulty. What I'm getting at is: was this seriously their idea of an "impressive" demonstration of a siege? How is it that battles in AoE2 DE still manage to look incredible and exciting, while Relic's showing looked like a bunch of bloody larpers?

Played AoE2 for years online....mostly post imperial deathmatch. Remember having a 300-100 win loss online on MSN Zone.

Like you guys are saying, they need to keep it simple. 200 total population, can grab massive amounts of units at a time and not just small clusters, maps shouldn't be too big.

Hell, most of us online players just played Arabia map because it was so simple. Sometimes we'd play Black Forest but rarely.

Keep the resources simple...lumber, food, gold, stone.

Most importantly, face down camera angle without anything fancy.

The AoE2 formula works. Age of Mythology and AoE3 didn't.

Agreed on keeping the AoE2 formula, but two things:

1) This is Relic, so god help us all. r

2) That Windows Central article is worth checking out for a few reasons, but specifically they say that they're sticking to the 200 population cap with 8 players. Hell, a lot of what they say sounds really cool as someone who loves the historical aspect of the games, e.g.:

[i]Each civilization will have its own theme that expands as the player ages up. Units on the field speak appropriate languages that also evolve as you progress. For example, you won't understand the English units in the Dark Age, but by Imperial Age the words spoken will be much closer to the modern tongue.

That sounds really awesome. My problem is that there is this clear disconnect between what they're claiming to aim for and what they actually showed. The gameplay look sloppy, with unit pathing in particular sticking out when we have games featuring hundreds of units on screen that are still able to move in formation, be perfectly readable in context of gameplay, and they look a hell of a lot better in combat.

Balance is definitely going to be a rough experience if they're going for unique play styles for each civilization. On one hand that is really cool and allows some civs to really stand out like how they should given their real life history. Then the other hand comes crashing down on the former because it's already a touch and go process with AoE2 DE to this day.

[MiamiLife305]

As someone who grew up on Age of Empires II... oh no. Oh no no no no no!



What the hell happened from that reveal?



- Everything has this vaguely cartoonish look to it between the lighting, the color grade, the proportions, and the general art direction, like someone spilled some AoE Online onto the visual direction. It certainly doesn't make anything clearer (or more pleasant) to see.

Age of Kings Definitive Edition looks better


Here's AoE 4:

Spoiler!

And here's a pic right from the Steam page of AoE3 Definitive Edition:

Spoiler!

Again, what the hell happened? Can we have the people who did AoE 2 and 3 Definitive Editions make a real AoE 4 instead of these ass clowns?

- Why are people giants?

- Why are the weapons massive even for the giants wielding them? It's like they were compensating for the overall lack of visual clarity of whatever the hell it is you're supposed to be looking at.

- What are formations? No, really. Why do the formations look terrible? The "armies" are so small that it's as though they had to pick between tight formations that make sense and spreading them out, again, to compensate. Taken alongside the already behemoth humans, the formations look sloppy as hell, and if I had to guess, their unit pathing can't handle keeping units too close without it somehow managing to look even worse.

In respect to the overall unit scaling, the best comparison I can make is it reminds me of how games like Civilization will use these extra large handfuls of units to represent an army. "The game can't actually run a massive, highly detailed army like any of its remotely competent peers, so here are some chonky soldiers to make it look bigger!"

- There are only eight civilizations?!? Fukkin' hell, typical Relic, man. According to the article, they won't have microtransactions - which should not be praised, it should be the norm for a full priced game - and future civs will be added post-launch. So either we're already talking about the game releasing incomplete, which seems to be the status quo, or they're going to charge extra just to branch out the wanting options for mixing up match ups.

- There is no blood. What kind of mobile, current year bullsh*t is that?!?



I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to zooming in revealing all the cracks with RTS games. But then I looked up Warhammer Total War, and I think it's just sh*t graphics here, period.

The size ratios are what kept distracting me, like how the humans are all oddly massive next to buildings, arrows are taller than a person, and everyone is casually swinging around buster swords.

Another thing is that the color palette is excessively vibrant with not nearly enough shading, which makes everything look extra flat. There's also no "dirt" or, I dunno age to anything; armies marched hundreds of miles through forests and marshlands looking cleaner than a Jeep after rolling through the car wash.

Subsequently, it all looks flat - except the ground, because literally the best thing going for this game's graphics is the f*cking dirt. That's about as high as the praise goes, because again, looking up Total War and even the long grass looks nice next to this.

All of those visual problems also translate into how the gameplay looks, with the attack cycles looking floaty, out of reach, and just like Total War before shelling out money on the bullsh*t microtransaction, completely bloodless.

Buildings collapse like they're made of styrofoam when the AoE2 Definitive Edition's new destruction animations are goddamn impeccable.

As a side note, I'm not buying a couple of elephants bursting through a fortification so easily without any sense of weight, impact... just some bloody difficulty. What I'm getting at is: was this seriously their idea of an "impressive" demonstration of a siege? How is it that battles in AoE2 DE still manage to look incredible and exciting, while Relic's showing looked like a bunch of bloody larpers?




Agreed on keeping the AoE2 formula, but two things:

1) This is Relic, so god help us all. r

2) That Windows Central article is worth checking out for a few reasons, but specifically they say that they're sticking to the 200 population cap with 8 players. Hell, a lot of what they say sounds really cool as someone who loves the historical aspect of the games, e.g.:



That sounds really awesome. My problem is that there is this clear disconnect between what they're claiming to aim for and what they actually showed. The gameplay look sloppy, with unit pathing in particular sticking out when we have games featuring hundreds of units on screen that are still able to move in formation, be perfectly readable in context of gameplay, and they look a hell of a lot better in combat.

Balance is definitely going to be a rough experience if they're going for unique play styles for each civilization. On one hand that is really cool and allows some civs to really stand out like how they should given their real life history. Then the other hand comes crashing down on the former because it's already a touch and go process with AoE2 DE to this day.

Well said

Game looks AWFUL

[BullittEV]

Used to nerd out with my one buddy back in college connecting on our WiFi to play aoe2 against each other while blazing blunts

[Weezy32]

Graphics are nothing to brag about but i think what will make or break this game is online multiplayer support. Back in the day Zone was great , it had a proper rank next to your name and it was easy to get even matches that were fun and competitive. I played deathmatch and remember having some amazing back and forth matches that would last 2-3 hours. Good times.

I tried playing recently and game is still good but its hard to find good even matches and there is no rank or reward for winning matches.

Imagine if they make elo system like in League of Legends game would be great.

[GainzMcgee]

Looks like a bad mobile game

no thanks jeff

This lol looks like forge of empires or some CHIT.

[KingSWRV]

Graphics are nothing to brag about but i think what will make or break this game is online multiplayer support. Back in the day Zone was great , it had a proper rank next to your name and it was easy to get even matches that were fun and competitive. I played deathmatch and remember having some amazing back and forth matches that would last 2-3 hours. Good times.

I tried playing recently and game is still good but its hard to find good even matches and there is no rank or reward for winning matches.

Imagine if they make elo system like in League of Legends game would be great.

What do you mean played it recently? you mean Definitive Edition?

Because they have ranked queue now like CS or DOTA and majority of people play ranked like that on DE.

[TappingTheZen]

Graphics are nothing to brag about but i think what will make or break this game is online multiplayer support. Back in the day Zone was great , it had a proper rank next to your name and it was easy to get even matches that were fun and competitive. I played deathmatch and remember having some amazing back and forth matches that would last 2-3 hours. Good times.

I tried playing recently and game is still good but its hard to find good even matches and there is no rank or reward for winning matches.

Imagine if they make elo system like in League of Legends game would be great.

There's literally 100,000 active players in age 2 DE every 24 hours lol....and it has ELO lol.. as above majority of people are playing ranked, which is a matchmaking queue system. It's booming right now.

https://aoe2.net/#aoe2de-leaderboard-rm-1v1
https://aoe2.net/#aoe2de-leaderboard-rm-team

Guys like TheViper, Hera, Jordan etc are in pro clans that pay them, and are making a LOT of money playing this game on twitch and tourneys aswell, so it's hardly dead as you imply - google GamerLegion and Tempo. Not to mention hidden cup 4 happened like a month ago which had a 60k prize pool put up by MS and had 58k viewers in the finals lol, there's two pools 2v2 tournie which has like 10k prize pool, and there will be battle of africa which will have like 50k total prize pool. There was also red bull wololo III like 6 months ago which had a 30k prize pool lol...and probably another red bull one coming at some point. There's probably been 200k worth of tournies in the last 6-12 months.

Have you ever actually played it lol? I've probably done 500 games during lockdown, and never had to wait more than a few minutes for a game until my TG elo got to like top 1%, then i sometimes have to wait 5 minutes. You sure you're not thinking of the original aoe2? or aoe2 HD which also sucked? In which case, ofc it's mostly dead, because age 2 DE is just a better version of age 2 so everyone is playing DE.

[Weezy32]

There's literally 100,000 active players in age 2 DE every 24 hours lol....and it has ELO lol.. as above majority of people are playing ranked, which is a matchmaking queue system. It's booming right now.

https://aoe2.net/#aoe2de-leaderboard-rm-1v1
https://aoe2.net/#aoe2de-leaderboard-rm-team

Guys like TheViper, Hera, Jordan etc are in pro clans that pay them, and are making a LOT of money playing this game on twitch and tourneys aswell, so it's hardly dead as you imply - google GamerLegion and Tempo. Not to mention hidden cup 4 happened like a month ago which had a 60k prize pool put up by MS and had 58k viewers in the finals lol, there's two pools 2v2 tournie which has like 10k prize pool, and there will be battle of africa which will have like 50k total prize pool. There was also red bull wololo III like 6 months ago which had a 30k prize pool lol...and probably another red bull one coming at some point. There's probably been 200k worth of tournies in the last 6-12 months.

Have you ever actually played it lol? I've probably done 500 games during lockdown, and never had to wait more than a few minutes for a game until my TG elo got to like top 1%, then i sometimes have to wait 5 minutes. You sure you're not thinking of the original aoe2? or aoe2 HD which also sucked? In which case, ofc it's mostly dead, because age 2 DE is just a better version of age 2 so everyone is playing DE.

I tried playing it on xbox gamepass

[Kabamaro]

I got age 2 DE with the recent discount

I still can't beat Moderate AI 1 v 1, can I play online or will I get wrecked?