Is Aoe3 too one dimensional?

[Papist]

I wonder what the thought process was behind the age up politicians. Did the developers really think aging with a few sheep would be a viable alternative? Did they playtest any of this?

I think they anticipated the game being a lot more similar to AoE2, where there is a little pressure in the early game, followed by a big late game fight -- just look at how much time and effort they spent designing the indus/imp techs, units, etc.. If you view the game through that lens, the sheep from the ageup don't look terrible at first glance -- if you're walling up and booming, you're getting 1200 food from your colonial aguep, right?

Unfortunately, AoE3 has small maps, weak buildings, expensive ageups, and huge amounts of natural resources that make the game way more fast paced than AoE2. Therefore, the sheep never pay off.

[Mitoe]

Just make more maps like Saguenay where 7 sheep is a totally legit card on livestock pen start.

[dansil92]

I think the trouble all stems back to the devs playing the game like an aoe2 player and staying discovery a long time, getting all 3 market ups, a tradepost, shipping vills, exotic hardwoods, maybe advanced market or mills to get a long term eco going then aging up with many options for continued booming (cows) infrastructure (wood) etc. Then making towers and a few archaic units to defend while aiming to get heavy artillery and powerful units...

I honestly wonder if any if them just slammed every vill on food for immediate age, dropped a rax close to opposing tc and spammed pikes off of 700 & 600 wood just to see what happens... it honestly feels like no one realized the power they gave 700 res shipments

I mean look at some of those vanilla discovery shipments lol team cheap discovery market ups for dutch team cheap church (doesnt even buff the good ones like mercantilism) or my personal favourite- team envoys

[deleted_user]

Competitive balance/game integrity were not such a focul point then. Aoe3 came out at a weird time for that.

[n0el]

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Next job is to focus on enabling more variety. I'd start with the dead content politicians

That's a personal opinion though.
I'd keep the civs close to the RE and enable more variety with new maps. Having a totally different game is confusing for the viewers who only play on the RE

This did matter when EP initially released, but as RE is quickly reaching its end-of-life, staying close to RE matters less and less.

Some people like me, like the game as it is on the RE. Furthermore DE will not replace the RE, it will be a new expansion. Thus if people don't like it, they'll stay on the RE.

Only If you want to play on GR.