ESOCommunity

onabudget wrote:I think I have the original disks back at my parents home. I'll see if I can make some ISO files for you.

I gave my parents a visit and found the discs. Then when I got home I realized I had nothing to put them into as my laptop doesn't have a drive bay .

Will order one and post when I have results.

I think there were 2 or 3 Cd's for the original version.

@onabudget if you can upload an digital copy of the disc that would be awesome

I'd like to do that Smackdown one day or at least make a video about it

I have all three of my CDs for Mac back home.

qwixs wrote:I think there were 2 or 3 Cd's for the original version.

Hey qwixs, good to see you here!

That's right, there are 3 cd's in the box.

Interjection wrote:@onabudget if you can upload an digital copy of the disc that would be awesome

I'd like to do that Smackdown one day or at least make a video about it

I'll see what I can do for you! Might be fun to do some kind of comparison as well to show people how much the game has developed and become more balanced since then. Maybe it would entice people who were disappointed after the initial release to give the game another try!

So if i install my old discs and dont go online will i be able to play the original state of the game? Or do i need to take any other measures?

scarm wrote:So if i install my old discs and dont go online will i be able to play the original state of the game? Or do i need to take any other measures?

yes, i downloaded the patches. Everytime i reinstall the game i have to patch it first. There's definitely an older version on the disc. If you don't have the latest version you can't play without disc.

Yup seems to work, tried with Cassas and those at least are at the status pre rework. Also the interface is pretty strange lol.

edit: Also, is there a way to check unit attack and multipliers? Doesnt seem to be a menu option like in TAD and pressing alt only shows HP, speed and resist

I'd be interested, too, in the original version Morgan Black called Sahin a pagan hund, but it was censored shortly after the release, in one of the first patches

Interjection wrote:@onabudget if you can upload an digital copy of the disc that would be awesome

I'd like to do that Smackdown one day or at least make a video about it

Yeah you'd probably have to ban Ottoman at the least because Ottomans are just busted beyond belief because ES actually thought they'd be a turtle civ because they don't have to pay for villagers and therefore don't need map control to hunt. Yeah. That sort of logic really gets an insight as to how the game was released in such an imbalanced state but at least it didn't crash constantly or whatever like some games do today, so there is that. So unless you want to see lots of Ottoman Jan/Abus mirrors because their stats were ridiculous back then, ban them.

France are also pretty busted too starting with an extra CDB among other things. Germany with no shipment penalty and Mercantilism costing 1000 coin instead of 1500 also presents problems. Merc shipments also come in at 40 seconds like everything else... War Wagons with ridiculous range and skirms did not get a bonus against them though they were 5 speed IRC. Ugh, such a mess. That's just what I 'remember', it was nearly 15 years ago now . Game was a real real mess back then. Might make a nice documentary video but really, the novelty factor will wear off fast .

You'd be better off playing Age of Empires 1 which is also an imbalanced mess.

Also, Otto have an extra wood crate so you can even get 2 age 1 tps lol.
Edit: actually i am stupid, TPs were 250 so thats not an option, still, 500 wood start is preeetty good.

seems like the ESOC ESO-Community EP Patch Team EleGiggle® has finally embraced the original balance with cassadores

We will play AoE3 the way it was originally intended thank you very much, no bans

Interjection wrote:We will play AoE3 the way it was originally intended thank you very much, no bans

Haha okay. I don’t even remember the exact Jan and Abus stats but they were mind boggling. That on top of the fact Crossbows had no bonus against them and cost 60 wood. Ouch.

Though the words originally intended make me giggle a little. I think their intentions are so far away from what happened it was comical. Hell the game wasn’t even going to be called Age of Empires because of how different it was to the rest in the series but the higher ups at Microsoft made them keep the name. Even now I really doubt they intended so much of the game to remain unused.

Iromirro

pecelot wrote:Iromirro

If we are going all civs in release state since iro wasn’t in vanilla then iro would probably be number two. Starting Travois can build war huts? What could possibly go wrong? Unlike Ottoman though their units haven’t changed a great deal in stats.

Hey so I have an external drive bay and have been trying to make ISO files from the discs, but with no success. They seem to have some copy protection implemented on them which makes it impossible to copy them how I normally would. I've been reading up on it and apparently even if I manage to make a (somewhat partial) copy, the copy would need some sort of cracking done on it for the game to be able to launch after installation without the original disc present. It sucks for us as all we want is for people who already have the game to be able to play the original version, not spread illegitimate copies of the game, which is what this stuff is designed to prevent.

I am sorry to disappoint people!

i do wonder though, I haven't had time to take a look around in the game folders, but maybe the data that determines the stats of the units and the available cards for civs etc. (so essentially the balance stuff) is stored in files separate from the original executable, which would mean that we could copy those over into the folder of the steam version and be able to at least have a taste of what the original version of the game was like. Maybe someone with more technical knowledge about the game can shed some light on whether this is possible?

I have the 5 ISOs that were spread around in the two thousand tens (before steam was popular), might check what is the version on those. Keep in mind that unless you have the Complete Collection (DVD AFAIK), the 3CDs only hold the basegame. We take it for granted these days that the game installs with expansions.

When my playgroup all picked up this game, we rolled for what civ each would play during our Lan's. We were locked to that civ for the entirety of the event. I was Dutch, sucked balls always. The best player among us, also rolled Otto but we did not know that civ was busted on top of the highest skill player using them. Needless to say, this game only lasted a few weekends in our LAN rotation once France and Otto were easily determined to be far and above the best.

HeadKilla wrote:When my playgroup all picked up this game, we rolled for what civ each would play during our Lan's. We were locked to that civ for the entirety of the event. I was Dutch, sucked balls always. The best player among us, also rolled Otto but we did not know that civ was busted on top of the highest skill player using them. Needless to say, this game only lasted a few weekends in our LAN rotation once France and Otto were easily determined to be far and above the best.

Dutch isn’t great yeah. They didn’t get their vill coin gathering bonus until later. Probably not the worst, I’d think that’d be British with 150w manors and/or Portugal but FF was much stronger back then so I’d say Brit. I also might be forgetting details, Russia in particular I’m very foggy on but I thought Strelets have different and better stats then they do now.

Germans I’d say could compete against France because of no shipment penalty and 1000 coin merchantilism and War Wagons were ridiculous but Ottoman crushes both of them and anyone else badly.

crjensen4 wrote:When ever I have done that - it has always updated the game when trying to launch it. So not sure you can launch it in the original state

Impossible, non updated vanilla game is unable to get the patchs from internet as long as you have not downloaded and applied the first one. The reason? I think they changed the way patches were downloaded and installed in the mean time, but I can assure you that this can't happen, I had to redownload the 1st patch recently after reinstalling from scratch.
And yes, Vanilla game without any patch needs the CD for launching it.

Kao wrote:

crjensen4 wrote:When ever I have done that - it has always updated the game when trying to launch it. So not sure you can launch it in the original state

Impossible, non updated vanilla game is unable to get the patchs from internet as long as you have not downloaded and applied the first one. The reason? I think they changed the way patches were downloaded and installed in the mean time, but I can assure you that this can't happen, I had to redownload the 1st patch recently after reinstalling from scratch.
And yes, Vanilla game without any patch needs the CD for launching it.

Unless you crack it.

No reason to crack if you can mount the disk virtually.

Just checked, the ISOs I have come with:
Nilla v1.12
TWC v1.0
TAD v1.0

I know i'm bumping an old thread, but did anyone actually end up uploading this?