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Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

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Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#71

Post by frik »

svisser wrote: post #10
thegeekpirate wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening. And not only for StarCraft =) http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id... http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id...

Also for Command & Conquer: http://openra.net (currently C&C (Tiberian Dawn), C&C: Red Alert, and Dune 2000 with Tiberian Sun on the way).

I am a fan of C&C Renegade (the concept of 3D shooter and RTS gameplay is so awesome) and C&C Generals. Would love to see some community projects around them as well. Something like 0 A.D. for C&C Renegade and Generals (mind you both featured the same game engine)

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#72

Post by joshvm »

Houshalter wrote: post #57
BatFastard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from single player to multiplayer is like going from the pond into the ocean. The real action happens in the ocean, but it is not for the timid. I look at single player as just a tutorial for multiplayer.

Possibly. I don't really want to play against people who have been playing competitively for 16 years. And I like messing around in single player, building cool bases or trying different strategies. Not trying to be as efficient as possible and micromanaging every single unit. Competitive multiplayer games in general have never really been that enjoyable to me.

Battle for Middle Earth did that quite well. You could play on a ladder system that paired you up against people with a similar win/loss ratio. A friend and I used to play 2v2 quite a lot. We got to the point where we could comfortably beat 6 AIs and we were OK against people with a little online experience. Occasionally we played against serious people from the forums and got thoroughly destroyed.

It was fun, but beyond casual battles it became too much like exploitation of the engine - e.g. having to destroy farms yourself because you didn't want to give the enemy units experience.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#73

Post by neximo4 »

thejj wrote: post #32

I'd like to remind you that there's openage, a free engine for Age of Empires 2. https://github.com/SFTtech/openage It will be the future if you wanna accomplish things the original engine is incapable of doing, especially a sane mod API. Help us make it more awesome :)

Does anyone have an OS X build of this?

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#76

Post by gurkendoktor »

Houshalter wrote: post #42

I have just started playing AoE2 again. I have some complaints. The units are so stupid and frustrating. They will casually walk into the range of enemy castles and towers. They will chase units across the map if you don't put them into defensive mode. If you do put them into defensive mode, they can easily be take out by archers without fighting back. They will open gates and let hordes of enemies into your town. Th…

> The multiplayer is terrifying. I tried it once and within like 10 minutes my opponent had surrounded my base with cannon towers and trebuchets. I haven't played it since.

I think the issue is that new players start with a ladder score of 1600, which is WAY too high. As a newcomer (me), it is frustrating because I'll probably lose dozens of games until I finally meet low-ranked newbies that haven't internalised the whole Fast Castle choreography down to the last shortcut. And for players who deserve their score of 1600, it must be equally frustrating to have me on their team and then drag their score down :(

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#77

Post by rexerexer »

Avalaxy wrote: post #45
johnloeber wrote: post #4

I've played a great deal of AoE2. Here are some comments: * The two new expansions are nice. The developers have done an excellent job at maintaining the balance of the game and not pushing any outlandish changes. (After all, the game thrives on a nostalgia factor.) However, it's apparent that it comes from a tiny dev studio. Releases are usually littered with bugs and playability issues. This is a great shame, becau…

Regarding your last point: I really don't like that competitiveness. I don't get the fun in repeating the exact same schedule over and over again just to finish the game as quick as possible. I would rather prefer to build a nice city first and take it slow, but with strategy games that almost never works in multiplayer, which is why I never play them. I don't really get that feeling with FPS games, they seem to be d…

I can totally see where you're coming from but I think it's a differing view on what it fundamentally means to 'build a nice city'.

In this competitive arena, your current 'city' is the culmination of each game you've played under a certain set of meta-rules self-imposed in conjunction with the nuances of playing as a particular civilization.

While an opponent may only see it for a fleeting moment, your actual, current city is how, given specific starting conditions, under the constraints above, your pre-game-plan and ruleset have been tweaked and optimized to the point where they are not actively in need of changing.

The only resource that really matters is time. A nice city is one that cannot be defeated by an opposing 'city' in any arbitrary amount of time and frees you up to focus on the more reaction-dependent offensive strategy.

edit: Experience is mostly from Empire Earth, YMMV

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#78

Post by Houshalter »

frik wrote: post #67
JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #18

Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite games ever. What made it fun is not the real time strategy, but the custom scenario maps that people could create. This wasn't just the terrain, but the mechanics of the maps themselves. It was part "programming" as well as part design. The multiplayer servers are still online, but the certificate expired years ago. You can force AOM to connect to them with fiddler2, but y…

I prefer AoM too, it's IMHO the best RTS game of the AoE series. It was the first 3D game of the series, nevertheless had a very nice graphics. The AI is certainly the best of the series. And the random map generator was great too. (as well as the music, etc) AoE3 was great too (superb graphics and physics engine - very nice even today), but I wasn't so fond of the timeframe and several design decisions (8 tower limi…

BTW, if you don't like the original AI, it's quite easy to replace it with custom AI scripts made by other players. There is a whole collection of them here: http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/lister.php?category=ai

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#80

Post by stryk »

skittlebrau wrote: post #46
snydly wrote: post #19

One of the greatest breakthroughs of my life was realizing that you only had to type "cheese steak jimmy's" once, then ctrl-c, then ctrl-v as much as you want. It was a great day.

Strangely I am responsible for the name of this cheat code. It's an accidental-turned-intentional misnomer for a place we used to eat a lot during Age2 development called Fred's Downtown Philly.

I love to see/hear/read little behind-the-scene tidbits like this about the development of the great games of yore. It lifts the veil (or, the "fog of war" HAHA [sorry]) oh so slightly and lets you in on how the magic was made. Geez... I miss the 90's. I feel old now, but thank you for the skinny on that cheat code.
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