Age of Empires II r/aoe2 is looking for new mods. Please apply within.

r/aoe2 is looking for new mods. Please apply within.
Old but Gold
Age of Empires IV fails at the fundamentals of RTS but gets almost everything else right
On Arabia, none of my villagers exploded and I have a woodline, is this a bug?
Cheaters in aoe2? So, I was playing arena and 3 teammates left first seconds of the game. I did not immediatly leave because I was scared for a ban, i'm not really sure how the ban system works and I didn't want to take any risks. After a few minutes everything just exploded and I was defeated.
The hype is real!
Trying to reconnect my father with his old MSN buddies
Nothing crazy, my opponent wasn't paying attention, but still i'm kinda proud of myself
Mesoamerican trade carts be horsing around
First th(O)ughts after playing the AoE IV (C)ampaigns where you can create huge-ass armies right off the bat.
My TC and all units just got deleted as soon as game started?!! Anyone else faced this before?
Set Siege Weapon P6 :)
King of the Desert 4 Qualifiers this weekend!
Lobby Games Etiquette - A Guide
Double Standards
Nailed it
My TC and all my villagers exploded a second after the game started before me doing anything. Is this a new bug ?
Is a Shotel spam viable?
Hacking in DE. Is this new?
Epic 43 hour 1v4 win vs the Extreme AI | 13k kills, 27k lost, 1.6k buildings razed, 5.2m gold collected, 230mb replay file & 130gb recording (Longest AOE2 match ever?)
Calling off work for Age of Empires? I'd never do that!!
So I just had a map gen with no starting woodlines... Wasn't this bug supposed to be fixed last patch?
When you meet a random French couple on a Ukrainian beach and discover they are one of us
There was an attempt!
Hot Meme Incoming
It may not be much, but finally hit 1200 after a year of playing this game again, with the lowest elo being 550. FeelsGoodMan!

r/aoe2 is looking for new mods. Please apply within.

Posted: 27 Oct 2021 08:50 AM PDT

Hello!

First of all, thanks for being a part of /r/aoe2 and being a part of the community as it grows to nearly 125k members! We try our best to maintain this subreddit, but it's getting large and we could use some more help.

We need moderators who can help us with the following:

General rule enforcing - mostly just keeping behaviour at reasonable levels so we can keep this community welcoming to all.
Manage weekly threads
Manage and create announcements for community events
Anyone able to improve the subreddit in any way, CSS, modernising the subreddit for new reddit, or otherwise general upkeep would be a plus!

Please apply below and tell us how you can help. The post will be in contest mode.

submitted by /u/Pete26196
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Old but Gold

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 02:02 AM PDT

submitted by /u/PhantasticPh1l
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Age of Empires IV fails at the fundamentals of RTS but gets almost everything else right

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 11:56 PM PDT

I've played every major RTS game ever made and a *lot* of minor ones. I played Starcraft: Broodwar competitively for years (am old, slow and C+ now tho :D). I play Age2 only for fun and didn't really play it until DE came out (ELO is 1630 atm if anybody cares), but I feel I understand Age2 and why it's great quite well. I've also worked on multiple game engines and created games. There are for sure people who know more about RTS game design than me...but I'm comfortable saying that I know more than most.

Now, I'm going to start with the things that Age IV gets wrong, but in case you CBF reading this, I do actually like the game overall and I'll get to the good bits briefly later :).

Here's what I consider to be the absolute fundamentals of making an RTS game: 1. Unit movement/responsiveness/pathing 2. Optimised viewport 3. Unit/building clarity 4. Clear and readable UI 5. Good hotkey system 6. Game is at least mostly balanced 7. Units are fun to micro 8. Economy is fun to manage

Now, *most* RTS games mess up at least one of these things. Making games is so frickin' hard. Age IV, though, fails at most of them. Here's the problems.

1 - Unit movement/responsiveness/pathing This is just broken in Age IV :(. Unit responsiveness has been fixed since the first beta, but the problem is that movement/animations/pathing all combine to make units *feel* unresponsive. This should be the *FIRST* thing that is nailed down in development. If you're not confident in this part of your engine, you don't have an RTS game. Relic have missed the mark on this. The good news is that this is a technical problem and it *is* fixable.

2 - Optimised viewport Players *always* will want to zoom out. So you can't listen to players here, which makes this actually really hard. Even trickier is the viewing *angle*. To show off your awesome art you want to be low down, but to make micro-management work you need the camera to be much more overhead. Age IV gets this wrong. The camera is arguably too close, but it's just *objectively* too low-down.

Now, Age2 players are going to of *course* prefer a more zoomed out view, but actually being more zoomed-in is ok. Starcraft 2 is, mechanically, one of the best RTS games ever made and it is zoomed in a similar amount. But that should be a relatively early development decision - because if you want to zoom in, you need to have your unit pathing and responsiveness be much, MUCH better. Age 2 isn't great at #1, but it zooms out to reduce the focus on small-scale micro, which lessens the impact of that (relative) weakness.

3 - Unit/building/map clarity When you're making an RTS, you shouldn't be worrying about this bit until you've figured out #2. Because you need your view-port angle and distance figured out to know what your buildings and units and map should look like. Alas, buildings all look very samey, units are extremely difficult to distinguish from one another and determining pathable areas is essentially impossible. The map in general is super unclear also. From a more zoomed in view it would be easier to tell the differences (especially with the buildings), but also the game would essentially be unplayable, so that's not a solution, just an observation.

4 - Clear and readable UI Well this just fucking sucks. There's *heaps* of great new features in the UI, but the overall structure and all the *big* design decisions are bad ones. There is a drastic lack of contrast and there's no feedback on what you're actually doing.

5 - Good hotkey system This could be called 4b or something. The game does a fairly terrible job of this, but the reason the hotkey system sucks is mostly because of the UI around it. As an example of how terrible it is, hit "q" with a villager. There is the subtlest change in the UI. However, in addition to that, hotkeys often do unpredictable things - particularly when trying to build things with your vils. It's extremely frustrating.

6 - Game is at least mostly balanced I don't know enough about the game to comment on this, but right now it seems like some of the unit design is going to make this hard to balance and leave it fun. Way too early to say anything about this, so I'm definitely giving the devs a pass here.

7 - Units are fun to micro In addition to failing at point #1, which impacts this greatly, unit and combat design is seemingly specifically designed to make micro almost pointless. The heat-seeking arrows are one example - but they are a good one considering how brilliant the way Age2's projectiles is in terms of game design. I think re-thinking the way projectiles work and fixing up #1 would do enough here, although the game would be far from leading the pack in the genre.

8 - Economy is fun to manage Actually this is pretty good. The new age-up mechanic I'm actually starting to like. It gives a lot of flexibility. Initially I thought maybe too much, but actually now I think this was a really great decision. The scouts picking up deer mechanic is brilliant - however it really should be available from the beginning of the game and not require research. This would present additional strategic choices between scouts and vil production and, most importantly, would reward more mechanical players with improved collection rates because those players could manage a few scouts bringing in deer constantly. Missed opportunity here, but overally pretty good.

The Good So, what about "the rest" that I alluded to in the title?

Sound design and music. It's really great. Like just fantastic in almost every way. Bravo.

The campaigns. I like everything about them except the problems with the core gameplay that I outlined above. It's a novel, interesting and fun way to present RTS single-player and I like it a lot.

The "Art of War" stuff. This is a quite thorough, well-presented way to help new RTS players learn how to play. In addition the challenges are actually fun and I didn't instantly get gold on most of them, which means they aren't stupidly easy like these things sometimes are (when they are, they teach you nothing). In fact I actually got bronze in the unit counters one.

Also, the game runs reasonably well for me (my PC is admittedly quite decent though).

Overall, I've been highly critical of the game here, because the game is critically flawed. Age IV can never take over for Age2 in the state it's currently in. But I'm making this post because I beleive this game CAN be "fixed" - and if you "fix" what's "broken", I think the game becomes unambiguously great. Right now I think it's a pretty good RTS game that I would recommend to others. But there's more potential here.

Please devs, make this game great instead of just acceptable.

submitted by /u/althaz
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On Arabia, none of my villagers exploded and I have a woodline, is this a bug?

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 04:20 AM PDT

submitted by /u/TheBlackStuff1
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Cheaters in aoe2? So, I was playing arena and 3 teammates left first seconds of the game. I did not immediatly leave because I was scared for a ban, i'm not really sure how the ban system works and I didn't want to take any risks. After a few minutes everything just exploded and I was defeated.

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 03:22 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Petsmaximus
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The hype is real!

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 09:20 AM PDT

submitted by /u/ranchwalker
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Trying to reconnect my father with his old MSN buddies

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 06:10 AM PDT

(This was already posted in the AOE4 subreddit, thought I would try here)

I told him this would be a *complete* shot in the dark. My dad, who is now 57, bought AOE4. He *loved* AOE 1 & 2 (he hated 3 lol) and used to play online through the old MSN system. The first game I ever played was AOE and CIV 1 because of him (I'm 26). He went by Sirmauler on MSN and said the only friends he can remember went by the username "Ratboy" and another they called "Judge". He said it would be awesome if I could somehow track them down, but I made sure to preface him that it was incredibly unlikely.

submitted by /u/iamelloyello
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Nothing crazy, my opponent wasn't paying attention, but still i'm kinda proud of myself

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 03:46 PM PDT

submitted by /u/vgoldie
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Mesoamerican trade carts be horsing around

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 08:37 AM PDT

submitted by /u/BlueBoye88
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First th(O)ughts after playing the AoE IV (C)ampaigns where you can create huge-ass armies right off the bat.

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 04:33 AM PDT

submitted by /u/JimGam9
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My TC and all units just got deleted as soon as game started?!! Anyone else faced this before?

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 10:24 PM PDT

submitted by /u/abhijeet14antin
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Set Siege Weapon P6 :)

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 02:43 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Age_Of_Manolink
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King of the Desert 4 Qualifiers this weekend!

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 07:23 AM PDT

Hi all! Just a little reminder for you who want AoE2 streaming. This weekend we'll have an Arabia Marathon with the Qualifiers for KotD4. It will feature lots of pro players expecting to achieve one of the 16 remaining sports for the Main Event and I expect most of them to stream. If not, I'm sure MembTV, as the Host, will be there to entertain us these two days. Games are starting 14:00 GMT.

u/longinator and his fellows included all the data in this thread and in Liquipedia (Link in the aforementioned thread). Have a nice weekend!

submitted by /u/Azot-Spike
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Lobby Games Etiquette - A Guide

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 07:11 AM PDT

I mostly play ranked but sometimes like to mix it up with a few lobby games. At first I was really confused about the culture there but after a few months I think I finally got the hang of it, so let me be your guide:

In the lobby - as a host:

Give your game a descriptive and helpful title such as "no idiots", "GG", "54165465", "Jogo de Jack" or "HOST HERE". Plus points if your title is very long so that it scrolls left and right and cannot be read at once.
Make sure to set at least one game setting wrong so as to test the attention of the joining players. "Lock Speed" and "Lock Teams" are obvious choices here, plus points for something more tricky like "Victory: Score".
Be sure not to mention any actual ELO ranges in the title but instead use very specific code: Absolute Beginner (700-1200), Beginner (800-1000), Super Noob (900-1200), Noob (800-1200), Good Noob (800-1300), Very Good Noob (900-1400), Semi Noob (900-1500), Professional Noob (1000-1500), Average (1100-1500), Pro (> 1500).
Be aware that the ELO range of each category changes depending wether you are the host (higher) or a joining player (lower).
If you do acutally mention ELO ranges in the title, correct your mistake by then not enforcing them.

In the lobby - as a player:

Right after joining, spam "14", regardless if the lobby is full or not. This signals that you are ready to go. However, make sure to be the last to actually ready up.
If the lobby has a game setting mentioned in the title such as "RANDOM CIV", ask if you are allowed to choose a civ. Make sure to argue about it instead of hosting your own game.

In the game:

Resign at the slightest sign of pressure or failure. Your sneak vill was found? Resign. The opponent has more than one scout? Resign. You can't find all your sheep? Resign. You get to castle too slow? Believe it or not: resign. The opponent gets to castle too fast? Also; resign. Too slow - too fast, resign. The opposing team has the score lead in feudal? Absolutely, resign.
If at any point you are up against 2 players at once, even just for a second, make sure to immediately complain about it. Plus points if it is a 3v3, extra plus points if it is a FFA.
If you are being rushed do not alert your team mates until your position is completely lost, then complain about not getting any help.
If you do choose to alert your team, remember: One ping is no ping and goes unnoticed quickly. Ping at least a few times per thing you want to point out.
It is good manners to be AFK in at least one out of ten of your games.
The correct way of ending lobby games is not by saying "gg" but "gg noob team", extra points if you are the last one on the score board.

Hope that was helpful!

submitted by /u/der_bub_mit_dem_beil
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Double Standards

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 02:51 AM PDT