AOE4 All We Know From April 10th

[Cocaine]

Hi All!

Please only factual evidence. What do we see and know from the April 10th preview?

Link to the entire clip:


And below is a link to the AOE4 Village which gives you some extra info:
https://fanpreview.ageofempires.com/

I gather so far only 4 civs? Mongols Chinese Delhi Sultanate and English.
Release date Fall 2021

I saw some in game animation as I think I saw weapons being upgrades.. But obviously we got a lot of gameplay footage so post your observations below please!

[Miyawaki Sakura]

pathfinding is still shit

[Cocaine]

LOL! That is a great find, lets hope they fix it

[Arcuskike]

I thought it was AoE 4 not 2

[EAGLEMUT]

There's a video from Lidakor with some additional details not seen in the fan preview, including information about our community council, some game mechanics and design decisions

[comradecommissar]

Viper mentioned that AoE 3 folks were also invited to the community council. Anyone wanna fess up?

[Mitoe]

Surprised no one is talking about the information in the virtual village on ageofempires.com yet.

[comradecommissar]

Surprised no one is talking about the information in the virtual village on ageofempires.com yet.

I think most people are just digesting the USA civ right now.

TELL ME YOU WENT TO THE COMMUNITY COUNCIL?

[Mr_Bramboy]

Most NDAs prevent you from admitting to signing said NDA. Not that I would know, having not signed any NDAs, obviously.

[Vinyanyérë]

In this particular instance we are allowed to mention that we had a seat on the council

[Challenger_Marco]

Surprised no one is talking about the information in the virtual village on ageofempires.com yet.

I think most people are just digesting the USA civ right now.

TELL ME YOU WENT TO THE COMMUNITY COUNCIL?

prolly he lives in Canada and the work centre is near there?

[howlingwolfpaw]

Well Aoe 4 looks beautiful, and pretty smooth, I love all the unit types and the scale of the buildings. I see some interesting things like pikemen kneeling to intercept a heavy cavalry charge and I wonder what kind of stances and AI units will have or if units get any abilities such as cavalry charges. I think Delhi Sultanate will be my favorite civ at this point, but them showing us such a broad range makes me wonder what else they will add. I am guessing France (normans) Spain? German/ Barbarian? Japan? there are just so many they could use. The one thing I critique that is kinda a big appointment is that Siege units have no crew. It just cheapens all the work to make it so detailed and then miss out like that. Maybe those weird orange outlines as things unpack will turn into actual crew, otherwise that is kind of odd and why add it when there is no crew.

[Squamiger]

pathfinding is still shit

why do AoE3 longbows look so much better than those shitty bows in that GIF, they look like theyre made out of clay

[Miyawaki Sakura]

Hero ability (mind control)

It looks like age2 + warcraft3

[howlingwolfpaw]

Hero ability (mind control)

It looks like age2 + warcraft3

I do agree some of the special effects are futuristic looking, such as when travois pack up, and buildings are created, and that.

[Horsemen]

what a tease, still don't know enough about the gameplay

[howlingwolfpaw]

I dunno, after waiting a few years with hardly anything they gave us an overload of stuff, what more do you want to know?

Villagers have to dump resources at storage sites
4 resources
age ups with building "historical sites"
monks in game, so wololo?
variety in units and civ play stye, so many things can change per civ type
new features like forrest stealth
archers on walls
mongols only civ with hero unit


looks like 97% aoe 2


some questions are, what are the "sacred sites"
will they have native allies to align with (looks like not)

[Goodspeed]

The blend of small-scale micro with TW-like battle tactics is an obvious step forward but execution is key; It could go either way. There's certainly a lot of potential though for increased strategic depth in battles, compared to the mechanics fests that they were in both AoE2 and 3.

[Derrien]

My biggest Takeaway from the shown material is, that the freedom to place your buildings has been severly cut down. I don't kno, if there has to be a set 'free' zone around somebuildings or if certain buildings are required to be placed in pre-determined spaces. Looking at the british in the clips there a certain places that look 'empty' until a building is placed there. This seems similar to BfME 1 or Edain Mod base building.

Maybe it is just them making prttey pictures for the preview, but the building placement seemed a little too ... pre-determined.

I also believe that units will work very differently from how we are used to it. I don't believe that we will be able to do as much with a single unit as in previous games. Units like Spears and Swords seemed to be trained in troops and stay in the formation. In the conversion we can also see that two spearman are converted that are outside the radius. What speaks against this is the single trained cav units or the solo scout.

[RefluxSemantic]

The blend of small-scale micro with TW-like battle tactics is an obvious step forward but execution is key; It could go either way. There's certainly a lot of potential though for increased strategic depth in battles, compared to the mechanics fests that they were in both AoE2 and 3.

It feels like a logical step forward for the franchise. There has always been the bigger picture strategy, and there has always been the micro, but I feel like the franchise lacks real time tactics. Those can be really rewarding, especially for more casual players. The idea of winning a fight because you ambushed from the forests seems much more fun for a casual player than winning the fight because you kited well.

Im also interested in the apparent increase in relevant terrain features, with lots of elevation, rivers with bridges (might just be cinematic) and forests to hide in. In other aoe games the maps might as well be an empty battleground, which makes things like army movement and unit positioning somewhat irrelevant. I'm just speculating, but it looks like the map layout might become more important. From a casual pov this is once again amazing and time will tell how this turns out competitively.

[Astaroth]

Agree @RefluxSemantic.

Even as an experienced (although not good) RTS player (and Total war etc), emphasising decision making, tactics and positioning a bit more over "fast clicking" seems great. Tbh aoe2 does seem a bit lackluster in this regard, seeing that afaik small things like split micro, patrol etc are so important.

[Dolan]

Im also interested in the apparent increase in relevant terrain features, with lots of elevation, rivers with bridges (might just be cinematic) and forests to hide in.

Yeh, tbh, the only new and interesting element from these previews is that maps appear to have realistic elevation variations and they are more immersive than classic AOE maps.
Makes you wonder if they want to turn future AOE maps into a mix between classic AOE bird's-eye-view panoramic perspective and immersive map games like the Witcher.

[aaryngend]

The blend of small-scale micro with TW-like battle tactics is an obvious step forward but execution is key; It could go either way. There's certainly a lot of potential though for increased strategic depth in battles, compared to the mechanics fests that they were in both AoE2 and 3.

This rigt here are my exact thoughts. If the experiment works Relic Entertainment moved the whole RTS genre forward.
More tactical depth in combat is what pretty much everybody wants.

[RefluxSemantic]

Agree @RefluxSemantic.

Even as an experienced (although not good) RTS player (and Total war etc), emphasising decision making, tactics and positioning a bit more over "fast clicking" seems great. Tbh aoe2 does seem a bit lackluster in this regard, seeing that afaik small things like split micro, patrol etc are so important.

In a way it reminds me a bit of stronghold too. That game felt like it had a lot of real time tactics with the extensive sieges and defense. But I feel like micro is also great, maybe more so for the competitive playerbase. Being able to skillfully click stuff can also feel great.

I'm interested to see how it turns out, even if it's not too in depth but creates a bigger emphasis on map control/army movement/positioning it'd be great. In a way this is always an essential problem that RTS games face; how can you make the map actually relevant. You have somewhat bland solutions like the sector control style of company of heroes for example. You have aoe2/aoe3, where you only want to have access to the resources on the map and don't care much otherwise. I like sc2 (and maybe broodwar, haven't really played that), in how the geometry of the map matters quite a bit. But even there army positioning is not as relevant. I hope relic can push their map geometry concept forward and solve some of these problems.

[RefluxSemantic]

Im also interested in the apparent increase in relevant terrain features, with lots of elevation, rivers with bridges (might just be cinematic) and forests to hide in.

Yeh, tbh, the only new and interesting element from these previews is that maps appear to have realistic elevation variations and they are more immersive than classic AOE maps.
Makes you wonder if they want to turn future AOE maps into a mix between classic AOE bird's-eye-view panoramic perspective and immersive map games like the Witcher.

I don't necessarily think they want to do that, but I get the feeling that they want the map to be more than a visual decoration; because in terms of combat, that's essentially what it is in the franchise. It's just a skin for an empty space where units shoot and hit eachother. I do think that the map would be more immersive if it actually mattered. It's realistic too as things like hills, rivers and forests had an actual effect on combat. You might feel more like a general planning out his battle, trying to find good opportunities to outsmart the other general, than that you feel like a nerd sitting behind a computer screen thinking that he can click faster and more accurately than the nerd on the other side of the screen.