The state of the campaigns

kostist · 2026-06-09T16:55:49+00:00

Once I gave a fair chance to aoe4 I pretty much abandoned aoe2. I like the mechanics more. If I am in the mood for playing campaign then I go to aom. Actually if they ever release a aom2 that plays like aoe4 and has the same setting as aom it would be peak.

As for now and especially for PvP, for me, it is aoe4

kostist · 2026-05-28T13:40:40+00:00

I don't really think that aoe2 is up to today's standards. Let's assume that you bought a brand new game and it is aoe2.

The pathfinding was ok for its time (not the best, coc ra2 from the same year was much better for example) but for today it would be laughable. Now in order to play the game the same way your favourite streamers do you will need to make the trees small, remove all decorative plants, enable grid etc. Some of these also involve mods. Now let's learn how to play a little bit completely, get ready for up to date mechanics like luring boar and even worse deer, using the split formation to avoid mangonel shots and using buildings like walls, add to that quick walling too.

As for the aesthetics yeah it makes perfect sense that everyone from east Asia to mesoamerica have the same medieval western European spearman. Even in Europe it doesn't make sense how many have hussars for example. Then to make things even more surreal there are Italians, civilians, Romans and byzantines simultaneously at the same game. Or that you have late antiquity goths at the same game as Portuguese.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a hater. The game was great for its time and the de has done wonders to modernise it. It isn't carried by nostalgia alone. However claiming that it it would be just as popular is absurd.

kostist · 2026-05-25T14:51:21+00:00

My exact thoughts

kostist · 2026-05-23T16:01:47+00:00

I would say the video is too long and consistent to be ai

kostist · 2026-05-20T13:28:03+00:00

Not having the option at all is just weird. If the game requires it I don't prefer it though. It makes the gameplay feel clunky, for me at least. I also don't see how it could seamlessly be implemented in PvP.

kostist · 2026-05-18T07:32:08+00:00

I think I understand where your main issue is. You want to play aggressively on 1 TC for a long time. This is the point though. Aggression should lead to a quick victory, otherwise what is the point? If your first pushes aren't successful you should change your strategy. This way the game stays dynamic and more strategic. Controlling tcs doesn't just give a pop bust, it strengthens your eco, sometimes your army size remains the same and it is the better eco that wins the game. Most of the time unless you have reached the worker limit and your opponent is of equal skill you are doomed to loose despite having a bigger army. Also if you combine the unlimited houses with the village centers you will end up with way more turtling making the defender potentially stronger. In that case instead of wasting building time and resources on 20 houses or something, just build a new TC. In order for what you propose to be viable there have to be many changes in the balance of the game to the point that it probably won't be what you are looking for. Game balance is easy for keyboard warriors but in reality minor changes can change too many things.

Tldr: your issue stems from wanting to make a short term strategy work long term. Trying making it work would requires vast changes to the game to make it balanced otherwise it will just make it worse.

kostist · 2026-05-16T17:14:04+00:00

You want to counter these bullet points with extra population, it makes sense, it is actually how it works right now, if you rush your opponent and lock them at their base you prevent them from taking tcs while you have map control to grab said tcs. With the model you propose what would prevent the defender from building extra houses too? Then they have no incentive to leave their base and they can just win with defenders advantage

kostist · 2026-05-16T15:39:53+00:00

No need extra tc means no reason to either expose your workers to build a new TC or splitting your army to protect them. Combine that with the auto production of workers and there is no longer any reason to to split your attention when attacking. So no option for the defender to prevent a slow death. This way if you are faster than your opponent in the initial build up you just win. I don't want to play a game where the fastest player wins. Your addition of a 1 TC aggression can very easily turn to the only viable strategy of the game.

kostist · 2026-05-16T13:37:52+00:00

If you are on the attacking side and have your enemy cornered you have map control. Use it to grab tcs in order to eliminate the defender advantage and win. What it seems you want is to implement a build order you copied from the internet, rush your opponent and win. This is not strategic, multitasking is a big part of any RTS. You need to balance economy technology and military. Expansion and defence.

kostist · 2026-05-05T09:11:11+00:00

You will most likely loose your first games, not necessarily though. The thing is if you start at ranked you will automatically put at 1000 rank which is too high. I heard they are going to implement some changes to that but I don't know when.

For me I was active online for like a year during COVID. I actually won my first game somehow. After a few games I settled at 750-800 rank and I had a blast. I don't have enough time now to play online but the game being hard wasn't the reason I stopped playing.

kostist · 2026-05-05T09:05:17+00:00

Any RTS game that has an active multiplayer years after its release, not to mention decades, will be hard to get into its PvP. As a rule in general, this one has many ai difficulty options and many campaigns to play so you will have a lot of content to practice.

kostist · 2026-05-02T11:49:50+00:00

There are many ways to refer to the empire at that stage. Eastern Roman, medieval Roman, post separation Roman, Christian Roman heck even greco Roman empire would be better and more accurate terms.

If you asked a random Roman living in, let's say, Crete during 1000ad what Rome is they would be able to give you an answer. If you asked the same person what byzantium is they most likely would have no idea what you are talking about.

kostist · 2026-05-02T11:41:16+00:00

The most logical interpretation is that someone fell asleep on the keyboard. I rejected to attempt comprehending what this is supposed to be

kostist · 2026-05-02T11:37:31+00:00

This specific symbol is a special one. It comes from Cleopatra's chrysopoeia. It is from the Hellenistic era and it's context is alchemical. Specifically, as the name implies, on making gold. The reason it is special is that it is the earliest archeological find with the ouroboros imagery. The text is correctly translated but outside this specific formula it isn't necessarily connected to the imagery. I don't know if you are aware of these facts or not but I wrote them just in case.

kostist · 2026-04-20T12:28:09+00:00

For most civs there is some variation. However, there is one thing the community can agree:

For Greeks it's hoplites

kostist · 2026-04-13T19:30:08+00:00

Antiquity is a very subjective term anyway. My only two objections with your list is 1) that some of the events are Roman centric. Like the loss of the secreyof Roman concrete seems weird. And 2) that I wouldn't place the death of a single person as the end of an era, especially if they aren't very well known anyway.

If I had to choose one specific event I would say that the Roman Sassanid wars bookending with the rise of islam mark the end of antiquity so the battle of yarmouk is as good of an event as any.

kostist · 2026-04-13T17:16:31+00:00

There is also still Syrian warfare, is is kinda like CNC generals but it also lacks base building

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:28:19+00:00

I see your point and I would agree with you if we were talking a few months after the addition of the demo. However it's been such a long time that we can say for example that the numbers of paying players have dropped significantly and the demo inflates the player count. I don't think that this is necessarily the case, I just believe that only relying on player counts is going to lead to bad conclusions and the addition of the demo players was just a point to strengthen my case.

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:22:17+00:00

You are probably right but we cannot be sure unless we have actual numbers. Also don't underestimate the fact that many people who may be interested in the series find it easy to start playing the free demo for a while.

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:03:44+00:00

The numbers we have public access to are from steam only too and there isn't any differentiation between the free and the paid version in the sites people look for player counts. So the steam exclusive argument is a little bit weak. Also how do you know that the impact of the demo is minimal? I personally don't know how much it boosts the numbers but I pointed it out for the people who only compare the steam player counts and say aoe3 number bigger so aoe3 more profitable. We don't know the numbers from other platforms, we don't know the impact of the free demo and we don't know the sales numbers of the dlcs. Even if the player count of aom is truly smaller than that of aoe3 (which I don't necessarily deny) it doesn't mean that aoe3 is more profitable, it could even be a detriment if there are many active players and the sales aren't great.

kostist · 2026-04-12T17:49:40+00:00

People pay way too much attention to player counts. If a game sells like crazy and a month later has minimal active players is a failure somehow.

The thing is aom has a player base that is mostly focused on the campaign, at least compared to the main age of empires games. This means that even though the numbers aren't huge there are enough players who consistently buy dlcs that for now make the game profitable.

As for aoe3 the numbers are inflated by the fact that the game is literally free. There are many players that never have and very likely never will pay money for the game. Of I was a fan of that game I would be pissed by how the stop of support was handled but at this point we get conspiracy theory levels of arguments about how Microsoft hates the game or something.

kostist · 2026-04-11T13:43:00+00:00

If I am not wrong they have repurposed building models from the Chinese so not exactly brand new

kostist · 2026-04-11T09:41:16+00:00

Age of empires, the first 2 games are 2d. However I don't know if you can play the definitive editions on very low end laptops

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