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Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

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Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#81

Post by my-next-account »

tsycho wrote: post #64
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most insane part of AOE2 is that I was a young teenager when I first played the game and the dominant players then are STILL the dominant players now - 27 years later

That's....not true. Maybe a few pros have been playing for 20+ years, but most of the top players (by championship wins) are young. Hera, Lierrey, Vinchester, Lewis...are in their 20s. And even the previous #1 Viper isn't that old.

The parent is exaggerating, but ACCM is 36 and top 8, DauT is 40 and is something like top 16, Nicov is 34 and top 8.

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#82

Post by narcraft »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #77
fylham wrote: post #13

For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.

To add to that: it also works fine under Linux (Proton), which I feel is important to mention because many Linux deniers believe that Linux can't run competitive multiplayer games, but AoE2 proves them wrong.

Also just found out that they released Definitive Edition for macOS earlier this year: https://www.ageofempires.com/news/age-of-empires-ii-definiti...

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#84

Post by rsynnott »

> I have absolutely had well-meaning people quite confidently inform me that Roman military strength was a consequence of their cultural and ethnic cohesiveness.

... Wait, how? I mean, I think popular culture _does_ generally gloss over the Italy-is-not-Roman dynamic, but movies and so on often depict auxiliaries. And certainly anyone who looked at the history would struggle to come to this conclusion.

Maybe those people literally _are_ basing their knowledge of Rome on Age of Empires!

(The Civ games eventually kind of figured this dynamic out; there are independent small nations which you can subjugate, though the subjugation is often fairly... whitewashed, and may consist solely of sending them a bunch of embassies.)

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#85

Post by rsynnott »

fylham wrote: post #13

For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.

... Huh. Hadn't realised there was a modern version, but it looks like it was re-released. I remember playing this _over a quarter of a century ago_.

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#86

Post by throwaway676712 »

modo_mario wrote: post #80
cauch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it's not rare to find people explaining that the roman empire, the roman armies or the roman cities were "all the same". Yet these persons seem to know that in real life population is not limited to 200 or that there is day-night cycles. The article talks about it, and makes the point that people who created AOE may have been biased by the same misconception that is also visible more generally. And it is an i…

>edit: in fact, it is illustrated by the ridiculous recent Elon Musk fit about "the odyssey" cast, itself fueled by the misconceptions that "having black guys in a roman army is woke because everyone knows the romans are not black". What roman army are you talking about ? Also yeah the vast vast majority of the romans were not black just like how in some african kingdoms later one could see a very rare arab trader or…

There are reports of black legionaries in Romain Britain as late as the reign of Septimus Severus (himself not very white if you look at portraits).

Black people in the Roman empire isn't that far fetched when you consider Rome had a huge presence in Africa and the Trans-Saharan slave trade was thriving at the time. Rome also had contacts with Merowe (Kush) through Egypt and other client kingdoms in North Africa. It's not a stretch to imagine a small but steady stream of black slaves (possibly manumitted later), mercenaries and merchants trickling into the empire and spreading throughout, especially when one considers that the military was one of the very few social advancement possibilities if you weren't already from an aristocratic or at least land-owning family (Rome would give veterans a money payout equal to all of their 20+ years' service arrears plus a bonus and Roman citizenship at the end of service, allowing one to retire in relative comfort).

So they wouldn't be as frequent as in the US, but they definitely wouldn't be an oddity either.

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#87

Post by throwaway676712 »

hatthew wrote: post #54
cauch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have "several hundred hours", maybe you approached the article a bit too defensively. When I read it, I did not see any "combative approach", it seems even to be tongue-in-cheek (the misnomer is qualified as "amusing silliness", this is not at all what you would expect from someone who is combative).

The article has a good point and is correct. But it gets too far down into the weeds. For example, the paragraph about how priest conversions don't count as empire-building seems like the sort of argument one makes when desperately clutching at straws—a position that's entirely unnecessary given how reasonable the premise of the article is. It's building a straw man for a nonexistent opponent.

The blog's name is "a collection of unmitigated pedantry" and the host is known for playing scores of video games including AOE2 itself. The explicitly avowed purpose of the blog is to talk about pop culture products as a gentle way to introduce the general public to deeper historical knowledge and concepts.

I think you may have missed the point.

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#88

Post by wasfgwp »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #62
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most insane part of AOE2 is that I was a young teenager when I first played the game and the dominant players then are STILL the dominant players now - 27 years later

How is this possible when StarCraft tournaments are dominated by the young? Is it lower APM and therefore less RSI? A more niche market?

At the very top probably not, at least these days. But historically low APM players were often able to overcome that through better decision making and get to the top 4 or so. That’s generally still the case outside of the top 4-8.

Now the meta is quite established and it’s much easier to get better at decision making through practice than becoming physically faster.

It’s very complex though while the factions are mostly symmetrical there are over 30 of them and they all have marginal advantages/disadvantages. Games are more usually than not won through optimally utilizing them. So in tournaments drafting became very important since using the same civilization twice or by opposing players is almost universally disallowed. So to be successful you need to outwit the opponent by picking the right faction(s), be capable of making the optimal strategic decisions and be very fast/good at micro (which is also probably more important than in most other games since arrows are not heatseeking missiles and pathfinding is extra wonky)

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#89

Post by wasfgwp »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #73
fylham wrote: post #13

For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.

Don't forget AOE4! It's really a great evolution of AOE2 - more unique playstyles per civ, has about 1/2 the playerbase of AOE2 but still plenty to play online and support its own pro scene (was also in the Wololo tournament).

I wouldn’t call it an evolution. The game might be good in its own right but its different in some very fundamental ways besides the historical setting. Especially on the competitive level.

Re: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)

#90

Post by wasfgwp »

rsynnott wrote: post #84

> I have absolutely had well-meaning people quite confidently inform me that Roman military strength was a consequence of their cultural and ethnic cohesiveness. ... Wait, how? I mean, I think popular culture _does_ generally gloss over the Italy-is-not-Roman dynamic, but movies and so on often depict auxiliaries. And certainly anyone who looked at the history would struggle to come to this conclusion. Maybe those pe…

Italy was Roman though. Or rather by making Italy Roman (to such an extent that other Italians would be willing to fight a war just for the right to be treated as other Romans) was basically what enabled their success by giving them a huge pool of manpower (and most importantly of people who had a vested interest in the success of the Roman state). Other ancient states like Athens were inherently exclusionary which put a hard limit on their power projection capacity since they depended on fickle allied or subjugated states to fight their wars.
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