How many of you still play the game?

[Admiral Vostok]

Yay! I like starting clubs.

 

But getting back to SWGB: the reason I still enjoy it a lot more than other RTS comes down to a few things:

 

Random map generator. I think this is vital for game longevity. With Blizzard and EA/Westwood games, once you've played the maps on offer, sure you can download maps but it's got nothing on a generator. And when it comes to the maps you need a huge variety - AoM was excellent for the eye-candy side, but the maps were still more limited than SWGB: in SWGB you had forest maps, sea maps, asteroid maps, maps with heaps of resources, maps with heaps of non-player creatures, etc... certainly the forest map is one that I miss whilst plaing AoM.

 

A decent number of unique civs or at least variations on generic sets. AoM has this certainly, but with WC3's 4 civs and C&C:G's 3 civs things start to get repetitive (though C&C:G less so because you could choose General powers, and I believe this is deinitely better with Zero Hour). However, too many civs is bad too: AoC certainly had too many civs, and with that many it is very hard to get the balance right, hence some civs like Goths and Celts being rarely used.

 

A huge variety of techs is I believe far more important than a huge variety of units. Players usually limit their forces to a few of their favourite units anyway, so individuality and therefore replayability comes from the different orders of research, and differing levels of necessity for lesser techs. AoM has this to a degree, yet I think (for me anyway) the variety is greater in SWGB, and the benefits of researching techs are immediately obvious, unlike AoM. WC3 and C&C:G have only a handful of techs, which leads to them being researched in the same order and resulting in the same gameplay every time.

 

A decent interface. This is the thing I dislike the most about AoM. I hate how the military commands are hidden away in a side panel. I never use them because they are hidden away, and this no doubt has an adverse effect on my gaming. SWGB inherited the nice hover-over help from AoC, which WC3 and C&C:G also have to some degree. Also with AoM it pisses me of that they group like units together, so if you have a group of 20 guys and you want to select one for whatever reason, there is no easy way to do it. Also the units themselves are so hard to distinguish unless you are an AoM expert. I've be playing AoM for a long time, but I can't even tell you what most of the units look like, let alone their names. This makes the game hard to be familiar with.

 

Bonus marks for being Star Wars

 

[/rant]

[lukeiamyourdad]

I'm gonna post a Rant too I guess...

 

-AoM is extremely repetitive. At first, I thought, hey 3 cultures + 3 gods for each that's gotta have some good diversity...well not at all. It's not very different playing Odin or Thor. Sure it's a bit different but the same, units, the artwork makes it very repetitive.

 

-I enjoyed how Siege was represented in AoK. Big walls, mighty fortresses, plenty of siege units. That was just so fun and I thought it was a bummer not seeing that kind of epic battle in AoM.

 

-AoM had a weird fast pace, even in SP where everything goes very fast. It was a weird jump from AoK where things seemed slower.

 

-The game tried to be both a fast paced game while maintaining(sp?) the old collect lots of ressources game. It's either one or the other...

 

*Waits for sith to come kill me*

[Admiral Vostok]

I agree siege in AoM is a joke. I see this as mainly due to another thing I dislike about AoM: the designer's attitude towards certain (in my opinion) valid styles of gameplay. For some reason, they hate turtling, though I quite enjoy both being a turtle and sieging a turtle's base. In reaction to this AoM instigated the "only building Town Centres on Settlements rule", which I have no objection to, but they also decided to make walls and fortified buildings unrealistically weak. A handful of guys armed with swords can demolish a fortress-equivalent in a matter of seconds. This is clearly an example of where gameplay has destroyed realism so much that the gameplay itself suffers. As I've always maintained, you need both Gameplay and Realism for a good game, and without a necessary amount of Realism the Gameplay also suffers. AoM has gotten rid of much of the realism that made AoK good - and I'm not talking about the involvement of Gods, I'm talking about simple things like enemies can't walk into your base when your gate is wide open - WTF? Previously you had to decide whether it was worth sending forth an army when they might leave the gate open to infiltrators, now counter attacking requires no thinking. Another disregard for realism that annoys me is the "only build ten houses" thing. That makes absolutely no sense. They should have utilised a pop limit like normal that you ca build houses towards, then every settlement you capture goes beyond that, but instead they have a totally artificial feeling of ten houses no matter what size game you're playing.

 

I don't know what Ensemble has against realism but it is one of the major things that annoys me in AoM.

 

* Waits for Sith to finish off Luke's Dad before coming after me *

[lukeiamyourdad]

I agree about turtling, realistically talking, that's what happenned in most middle-age sieges and it was the same during the antiquity.

 

About the house. It does add somekind of "you have to expand or you're dead" so the idea is not all bad but true it was weird.

 

As for gates, well...I guess your soldiers need to learn to go through an open door...

[Sithmaster_821]

The main problem I see is that neither of you played AoK online or atleast competitvely. Almost all of the changes that you cite come from problems that people who played AoK had.

 

The housing limit comes from the complaint that people would use them as walls, seeing that they costed wood, had good hp, and were resistent to siege, or build an excessive amount of them so that there was no point in killing them. Now houses are prime targets for attack becuase each house lost will be guarunteed to affect your pop.

 

The lessened techs were due to 2 reasons-myth techs surplanting them and the fact that many techs were never researched. So they granted a bunch of generic techs that every one got and transferred the more off0beat techs into myth techs, so that you could have more control over which ones you wanted.

 

I don't really know why you guys are complaining that turtling is underpowered. Post-expansion, turtling has become a much more viable, with the rush becoming more of a gamble. I'd even hazard to bet that turtling is stronger in AoM than it is in SWGB. Siege is no more powerful than it was vs buildings, and is much more vurnable to units.

 

The town center limit was designed so that people couldnt tc push (the BIGGEST porblem with AoK), or build up their entire base in a super town at home with tons and tons of tcs pumping tons and tons of villagers. Many experts had upwards of 100 villagers working at a time.

 

The gate thing was necessary so that people couldnt make gate traps, or plant a unit in the gates way, making a free hole in the wall. I dont quite understand why this makes oyu upset, because it is a boon to your style of play.

 

The fast pace comes from the complaint that the games took too long. I will agree that it slightly hampers the single player experience, but the pacing makes multiplayer much much better. It actually tried to find the middle road between their old games, and everyone else's games, which has now made Ensemble the maker of the quintessential RTSs, and the people everyone is emulating.

 

Its only repetitive if you constantly play the same culture and same civ and same god path. Be adventurous

 

Buildings were made weaker becuase buildings in AoK dominated so much that you didnt need an army if you had one or two castles in an area. Now you need units, but buildings still throw battles dramatically in your favor. Its still suicide to fight under opponents buildings with equal forces, or even to attack an unprotected building with an inatiqute force.

 

There probably other things that I have forgotten.

[Admiral Vostok]

Originally posted by Sithmaster_821

The main problem I see is that neither of you played AoK online or atleast competitvely. Almost all of the changes that you cite come from problems that people who played AoK had.

True, but I believe they could have done things a bit better still.

The housing limit comes from the complaint that people would use them as walls, seeing that they costed wood, had good hp, and were resistent to siege, or build an excessive amount of them so that there was no point in killing them. Now houses are prime targets for attack becuase each house lost will be guarunteed to affect your pop.

Still my suggestion that houses supply a pre-set pop limit whilst TC's go beyond that would be more realistic. It would also anble you to have different size games of say 50 pop, which can be quite fun. You wouldn't be able to build past the pop limit to get rid of the over-building problem, and because they are still limited using them as walls isn't that feasible either.

The lessened techs were due to 2 reasons-myth techs surplanting them and the fact that many techs were never researched. So they granted a bunch of generic techs that every one got and transferred the more off0beat techs into myth techs, so that you could have more control over which ones you wanted.

This is fine, because they still have heaps of techs available. I was mainly lamenting the lack of techs in WC3 and C&C:G.

I don't really know why you guys are complaining that turtling is underpowered. Post-expansion, turtling has become a much more viable, with the rush becoming more of a gamble. I'd even hazard to bet that turtling is stronger in AoM than it is in SWGB. Siege is no more powerful than it was vs buildings, and is much more vurnable to units.

No, turtling is far easier in SWGB. The fact that towers and walls (maybe not so much fortresses) are so easy to destroy even late in the game is evidence of this.

The town center limit was designed so that people couldnt tc push (the BIGGEST porblem with AoK), or build up their entire base in a super town at home with tons and tons of tcs pumping tons and tons of villagers. Many experts had upwards of 100 villagers working at a time.

This one I agree with, as I said in my post.

The gate thing was necessary so that people couldnt make gate traps, or plant a unit in the gates way, making a free hole in the wall. I dont quite understand why this makes oyu upset, because it is a boon to your style of play.

Yes but it is unrealistic, which is why I object.

The fast pace comes from the complaint that the games took too long. I will agree that it slightly hampers the single player experience, but the pacing makes multiplayer much much better. It actually tried to find the middle road between their old games, and everyone else's games, which has now made Ensemble the maker of the quintessential RTSs, and the people everyone is emulating.

Why can't you change the speed setting? It just seems like a lot of freedom was take away for AoM.

Its only repetitive if you constantly play the same culture and same civ and same god path. Be adventurous

Well I thought about this and one of the things that makes it boring is the unit speech. To create an aspect of realism they all speak in Ancient Greek or whatever, which I can't understand, and everyone talks the same, so it all sounds the same. That makes it a bit boring for me.

Buildings were made weaker becuase buildings in AoK dominated so much that you didnt need an army if you had one or two castles in an area. Now you need units, but buildings still throw battles dramatically in your favor. Its still suicide to fight under opponents buildings with equal forces, or even to attack an unprotected building with an inatiqute force.

Why not keep the power the same but limit castles to the same amount of Town centres you have? That would fix the problem without making the buildings unrealistically weak.

[Sithmaster_821]

Still my suggestion that houses supply a pre-set pop limit whilst TC's go beyond that would be more realistic. It would also anble you to have different size games of say 50 pop, which can be quite fun. You wouldn't be able to build past the pop limit to get rid of the over-building problem, and because they are still limited using them as walls isn't that feasible either.

How is that different than it is now? Just imagine the pop limit to be 100, andyou've got your wish. And the ability to change pop creates two problems: this is a 3d game, so too many units is laggy andmany of ensemble's unit balance problems stemmed from the fact that they balanced the game perfectly at 75 pop, but very few people played at 75 pop. If you play with less pop, then the cheaper weaker units become more powerful, and with more pop the strong more expensive units become more powerful. I'm pretty sure SWGB was balanced for 200 pop, so thats why it seems so balanced, aside from the fact that troopers own early game, which stems from the fact that the pop is less than 200.

 

No, turtling is far easier in SWGB.

It maybe easier, but it is not veyr effective. There are veyr few people who are crazy enough to attempt to play defensively and boom in SWGB, whereas in AoM, nearly half the players do so effectively. You just have to play it right.

 

Yes but it is unrealistic, which is why I object.

Gameplay>Realism

 

Well I thought about this and one of the things that makes it boring is the unit speech. To create an aspect of realism they all speak in Ancient Greek or whatever, which I can't understand, and everyone talks the same, so it all sounds the same. That makes it a bit boring for me.

Vostok? Complaining of too much realism? I'm shocked! I'd bet anything that if they all spoke perfect English you'd be having a bigger fit. Andx they speak ancient greek, eygptian, and norse, respectively.

 

Why not keep the power the same but limit castles to the same amount of Town centres you have? That would fix the problem without making the buildings unrealistically weak.

Because units are built at fortresses and limiting their numbers that drastically severely limits their production.

[Admiral Vostok]

Okay, I'm willing to concede all points but the last:

 

Because units are built at fortresses and limiting their numbers that drastically severely limits their production.

There is a limit on Town Centers, and they build units too. But obviously if the Fortress were more limited the units it built would need to be built elsewhere, or more simply they become rarer units.

 

Let me clear something up: I think AoM is a great game, but it is far from being as perfect as you claim it to be, Sith.

[Sithmaster_821]

There is a limit on Town Centers, and they build units too.

The units that TC's build (villagers) were the main reason tcs were limited in the first place. None of the fortresses build units likethat that require limiting.