What's So Great About Age of Empires II - An RTS That Stands the Test of Time
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ส.ค. 2017
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For our tenth episode, we take a trip back in time to the medieval world of Age of Empires II and take a look at one of the most popular Real-Time-Strategy games of all time.
#gaming #ageofempires #strategy - เกม
For me this is the best rts game of all time.
Same
I think objectively too - it's so well balanced
Me too
duh same
@@maxs713 I agree. It is a fantastic game with near perfect balance but it's easy to balance a game when the civs don't really have any flavour. They are a little different but it doesn't change the way the game plays really. Where as something like battle for middle earth 2 has your armies and strategy completely change the way you look at the match.
this video is now 3 years old. since then microsoft has picked up some slack and forgotten empires has become an official developing team. AOE2 is back in the tournament scene and has steadily rising player numbers.
The fact TH-cam starts recommending this video again 3years after i last saw it is just fascinating. the Renaissance of a 20 year old game :) i love it.
Your comment is now 3 years old. Update on AOE2, it's on Xbox one and has become beloved by even more players who may have never played it before including myself.
@@kevinmc3252 And AOE 4 has launched and mostly died in the meantime haha
I got into the original AoC from watching my grandpa play it as a kid. It's surreal to know that he's been gone for over 10 years now but the game continues to thrive. He would have been happy to know that at least.
rip grampa
I’m sorry for your loss
Best feature of Age, if you're a kid you can tell your parents you're not playing a game but you're learning about history.
Literally one of the BEST games of all time
The history information page in the menu is what got me initially interested in the middle ages and history in general. Today I'm a buff.
It's surprising how much of my knowledge of anything medieval came from the campaigns of this game, ha ha.
exactly lol
Me too
Same. I used to go there to play unique music associated with each civ. This game be played in schools as part history study. It makes history interesting.
Stop lying
You forgot to mention the narrator of the old series .. he was a true motivator man !
2023 and still one of the greatest RTS games of all time. The sheer volume of content constantly being added in a 20+ year old game and the community getting bigger is insane. I’ve played this game for a long time since release and still loving it to this day. Highly recommend anyone to play this classic game and the community is very welcoming of anyone new.
This game singlehandedly got 8 y/o me into medieval history and fantasy. Thank you 🙏♥
20 years and still going strong with the release of Definitive Edition. This game is truly on a league of its own
Everything is great about Age of Empires.
This video is extremely well made. You deserve more than 240~ subs man. Subscribed, good luck in the future!
Thank you very much.
My friends and I used to play each over via LAN back in the day. One match took forever, but we always had a blast the whole time
Wow I'm amazed with this video's quality! The script is well thought out and the points are clear. The visuals are well edited and much more interesting that just straight up game play. Also your voice is very clear and crisp! Very professional video!
I never knew the game itself was about standing the test of time.
So fitting that it's been standing, and now it's growing to new heights and bigger tournaments.
I played it ever since i got a PC in 2007, and ever since then It's been my favourite.
I don't play it as often, but it's always a joy to hop back into the game that, in some regards, shaped me as a person.
And now we have AOE 2 DE with a few bugs but they update it every month , the best player of the world are in close contact with MS even balancing wise they listen to them !
My first strategy game,i remember suffering like crazy on the first scenario of the Barbarossa campaign.
I also "blame" it for my interest on the Medieval period
Oh man that mission is brutal if you don't know what you're doing
I played AOE2 in elementary school when it was released and kept playing it for a few weeks almost every year until I went to university 7 years ago and since then the player numbers have been going up again and every time an update was released I tried it again. So this game has been a significant part of my live
Prove it
this video brings me tears. This what makes today's RTS missing out so many things and so forgettable, all those minor detail, transitional detail and music.
I bought this game in 1999, I found competitive multiplayer 2015. 2020 I am a top 1000 player. This game is a masterpiece
Huh.
I knew the name Bruce Shelley but I didn't realise he worked on both Civilization and Age of Empires.
This man is an ubernerd and I love him for it.
Quote (regarding the development of Railroad Tycoon): _"it was great to see Sid Meier figure out how to make a good game out of something as cool as railroading-not an easy task. The game had a fun economic model, cool trains running..."_
LOL. Trains are pretty cool though.
I love this channel's name, it proves how Gaming is Good to people.
such a great video! Great analysis of AoE and great description of the gameplay mechanics
👍
One of the most unique things about AoE2 is that it hardly ever got balance changes. Cause they werent needed!
AoE2 should be heavily studied to why that is, in order to make balanced games.
Symmetric tech trees are a big part of it. It can be hard to quantify how two units interact, so reusing units a lot helps a lot. It also helps that people have some understanding of ancient weapons and armies so units are easy to comprehend. AOE2 solves a lot of challenges of balance the easy way, by making it simple and intuitive. With all civs being simply similar most of the time and having historical accuracy to fall back on the devs then did an excellent job of building up the basic gameplay. Every civ is mostly the same so every civ can lure a boar, place defensive TCs, push with an early treb, or spam an overwhelming army towards a weakened opponent. If something is really OP you can see it in every indev matchup. I just wish they would add a "generic" civ into DE. How much worse would a generic civ be compared to all the others and their bonuses? I really really want to play as Generic! Time to learn how to use petards!
It had a lot of balance changes. But yeah, not so many and not as drastic as what we're used to.
These days there are a lot of updates and balance changes too confusing
@@emptyshirt actually, the "generic" option was always available. The "all techs" option makes every civ a generic one with no civ bonuses nor stand alone tech trees. Though you can only play it against another generic civs.
Not really true. If the game was so well balanced, why did we see 90%+ playrate for huns for literally years?
Oh, or how about the undefendable teuton TC rush they had to patch out?
The game was actually pretty poorly balanced, but it doesnt matter that much because
-There are a lot of civs. It doesnt matter if 10 of them are pretty weak, there are still enough strong ones.
-The difference between civs is pretty small, compared to other RTS.
-Random maps make the game a bit more shaky, therefor not "solvable", so the (small) civadvantages play an even smaller role.
Excellent video, looking forwards to more episodes!
Thank you! Just finished narrating the next episode, should be out within the week!
I liked that the video included footage from other games and not only talking over gameplay. Good job. I didn't finish the video but just feedback
Nice work! I found this video via reddit.
same
Thanks for checking us out! Glad you enjoyed the vid.
I love this! Thank you for researching a lot about this to show us! This is one of the best RTS Game of All Time in my opinion.
Just for 2 things:
1. Build Massive army
2. Select them press and hold Delete
Age of Empires played a critical role in my fascination of, and love for history as a child. I traveled across the Arabian desert with Salad ad-Din, conquered lands across Asia and Europe with Genghis Khan, reclaimed France with Joan d'Arc, and completed countless other campaigns and fictional scenarios..
All by the age of 10 :P
AoE II is a masterpiece.
Wololololololo
its wololo...wololo..wololo. (now you are on my team).
My biggest hope is that one day you'll do a "What's So Great About Wario Land 4?" I can't get enough of video essays, reviews and analyses on that game!
Interesting ideas and observations. What also makes it good is how crisp and responsive the game is (compared to similar games that is).
I really enjoy to play that game like my father play Sudoku and Freecell almost every day. It's a timeless classic game. But, to be honest, it has better graphics than much indie nowdays games.
When I was young my family didn't have a lot of money and we only had that 1000 in one game where you could play a bunch of cheap and small limited games, however we had another game called age of empires 2, a game that my sister got, well you betcha like my older sister I too became enfatched with Age of empires 2, it brings me emence happiness to see a game I grew up on, shine and continue to grow just as I have, and oh boi I do plan on buying AOE sometime again in the future
I'm almost 33 years old now and I pay it today, and do it regularly. I still remember being 10 years old playing this game for 5 hours straight and learning all the cheat codes 😄 Loved that blue car! "How do you turn this on", still remember the code 😅
Great video, I agree with your points!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Nice video! One tip though: I found the transitions with a black screen and then several seconds of silence quite out of place. Don't use a black screen as a transition, and keep playing the music, also shorten the transition to the next point in general.
Thanks for the tip!
Agreed
Suprised to find you here 11
The love of the fans is actually more than you would think. Before the realease of the forgotten, there was a fanmade version called forgotten empires, with the extra civilizations the forgotten would later include, and an insane AI improvement.
This is a very well made beautiful video. I was just thinking about why I loved this game so much in the past, and I wanted to get somebody else's thought on it.
I'm surprised you have so few views and subscribers.
After i finished the video, i was kinda curious how many subs and other conent you have.
And then i saw that you only have 246 subs? Wow This video looks like a video from a channel with ten-thousands of subscribers. Keep this work up man you are on the right way!
I would like to see a video of what so great about gaming of: Age of Empires III :)
We really appreciate the kind words. We'll definitely add AoE3 to the list!
Wow, you put quite some time in this one. Thanks :)
Thank you for noticing! Hope you liked it.
Ive been playing this game ever since it first came out, and im still playing at least one game every day. Never gets boring!😎
Loved the Video, hope you are still on it dude ;)
Thanks! And I definitely am. Currently editing the next episode, should be out soon!
before i even watch the video the answer I am going to state as a fact:
EVERYTHING.
My favorite game ever
“shh...
...hoh...”
It's the video game equivalent of chess. It will live forever.
so glad AOE2 DE exists
2:47 Savage
Ha ha. Not to say No Man's Sky didn't do certain things well, but we feel it's undeniable that it wasn't quite complete before release.
Yes. So. F#$%in. Good
Is there an updated version for the definitive edition?
An almost 20 year old game is an E- Sports staple. That should tell you everything you need to know abou this game
Checked few of your videos and gotta say these are very well done, which makes it kinda bothersome how little subs you have. Since you mentioned in outro mentioning games, here's few that could've potential to grasp more viewers (don't take my words for it though):
- Dark Souls
- Hotline Miami
- Resident Evil
- Silent Hill
- Yakuza
- Journey
- Night In The Woods
- Shovel Knight
- Papers Please
Best wishes with your future work on the channel.
Thank you for the suggestions mate! We'll add them to our list for future episodes. Glad you enjoyed the video.
ty
And on Saturday another really big AoE2 Tournament starts, with 50k$ Prizemoney. Game is still going strong!
after nearly 5 years from this video, Age 2 has very soon now 8 expansions^^
You should do a video about the might and magic series 6-8
I am excited for AOE 4!!
This deserved to win game of the year 2020 😂
I swear to God there was a Star wars version of this game. I may have been dreaming
Why the fuck you have so little subs? your content is very well done!
You deserve a lot more, keep it up man!
Thank you for the high praise!
would you recommend me playing AoE 2: DE or the 2013 version? i would like to play online and of course, enjoy a experience as similar as the experience with the 1999 game
If you want to have the 1999 experience, then you should probably play the 2013 "HD" version. It still looks great (the original graphics but crisper) and has multiple expansion packs. However, while I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet, the visuals on the definitive edition look incredible, and I definitely look forward to picking it up when I get the chance.
@@WhatsSoGreatAboutGaming thanks for the advice! love your content
@@tdialist I was worrying that DE will change the game too much but they actually did a great job preserving how it always felt to play, get DE if you can!
They released Definitive edition and MORE expansions - The Last Khans, Lords of the West, and Rise of the Dukes
The sidebars are not great in my opinion. Is it a monitor resolution issue?
If it wasnt for the Korean StarCraft E-tournaments, or command and conquer wasnt the grandaddy of rts, both of them overshadowing the rts world, AoE2 would be The rts game.
Command and conquer is not the "granddaddy" of rts
1:21 didn't knew there were two additional expansions besides The Forgotten.
Three now, and a fourth on the way.
@@YoungSavage New Expansion * Dawn of the Dukes* coming this summer ;)
*@What'sSoGreatAboutGaming,* I think 'Populous: The Beginning' is great. Preview montage: th-cam.com/video/zDBPz6UAXnY/w-d-xo.html
One thing that I find exceptionally cool is: as opposed to the game world being a square that just ends into black nothingness, like age of empires does, the boundaries are warped together into the topology of a torus, like how going off the edge of the screen in pacman or space invaders makes you come on to the opposite side. This gives the illusion of playing on a globe.
(Although, if you expect it to be a globe and you don't know that it's really a torus, you're going to be out maneuvered by what amounts to topology voodoo.)
Huh. We haven't heard of that game before. Looks interesting!
@@WhatsSoGreatAboutGaming u played it now? :) I highly recommended it aswell! Amazing and unique.
No everything improves with age:
When we were kids, we played Age of Empires
Today's kids play Clash of Clan
Best rts ever
What's up with your audio quality? Are you exporting your audio already in lossy (AAC or so) and then uploading it youtube like that? You might want to choose a lossless audio codec when exporting (just WAV/PCM or so) so the audio quality doesn't suffer too much when uploading.
I can hear compression artifacts in the music, the voice, everything. Not pleasant with headphones :/
Jackson here. I'm not great with the technicalities behind audio, but I can tell you a few of my specs. I'm exporting through Premiere (queuing through CC Media Encoder) using an uncompressed Codec into Linear PCM.
After looking through the un-rendered video in Premiere, the export on my computer, and the uploaded file to TH-cam, I do notice more of it once it's been uploaded, while the other two version I mostly only notice the echo in my voice (I was recording in an acoustically awful dorm room last month). We record narration through Audacity using a Blue Yeti mic.
As I said I'm not great with audio and typically rely on the default settings of Adobe programs. Do you have any suggestions for cleaning it up? Sorry that it's not enjoyable though headphones!
Audio is perfectly fine for me and I'm using headphones. What are you talking about?
Just because you're deaf to compression artifacts doesn't mean that they're not there ;)
Well, that's just strange then. So your process is recording it, saving it losslessly (wav/aif/flac/alac), then working with it in Premiere and your final render is using PCM audio? Any other rendering steps inbetween where you might accidentally choose a lossy audio codec (AAC, probably, if you're using Premiere and CC Media Encoder)?
Because it's not just the voice that has compression artifacts, it's also really noticable on the music. While youtube does use aac compression, usually it wouldn't introduce this many compression artifacts - a sort of high hissing and warbliness on the treble/high frequency sounds.
Can you check what the file you upload has as audio stream? If you don't know how, there's nice program called MediaInfo which is available for all operating systems which can tell you what video and audio codecs a video file uses.
withmorten2 f
Playing since 99
No mention of Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds ☹
474 subs - uh what
Not a single mention about Voobly or community hosted tournaments
2020 recomendation
When i saw this,i thoght he had atleast 100k subs.
The great thing about AOE is genuine and fair gameplay that utilises the players mental skills and not hardware configuration for hifi graphics.
This makes a player feel in Control of his game knowing that he will surely win if he makes a better strategy than the rivals.
gg
I don’t know if I will get a response on this but everyone seems to hate on Age of Empires III. I don’t know why. I like how it is. But seems Age II is more popular can anyone tell me why?
I love all aoe games! My fav is aoe2 tho mostly because how tactical it is, one small mistake could make u lose the battle and God knows how many times I was in a situation where a comeback seemed impossible but somehow mad it through and defeated the enemy, I play quite a bit of aoe3 too but never seem to get into these situations but I like how chill aoe3 gameplay is (for me, at least) so whenever I wanna play a not-super-compeitive game I play aoe3
And now there's AOE2 DE
I like eggs 👍
What about AOE 3? Thts great yeah?
not as popular, ask most RTS gamers, they will say Aoe2, or Aoe2 DE :)
Well, has anyone on this comment section heard the news? 😏
this is great content
i am looking at next big youtuber
i am your 502 subs
Thanks! Welcome to the club!
AoE2 is awesome but it has lots of things that can be improved. For instance, there are terrible unbalance among civilizations some leak some tecnologies and don't have anything that compensates that. In 20 years it should have appeared a better successor but it hasn't happened yet.
did this dude pay a bunch of people to say how great the video is I mean yeah it's a good video but no one is talking about the damn game
Made back when they knew how to make games!
Nice video, I like the intention but I feel like you haven't really played it and you don't really know its appeal to its players. Don't know why you focused so much on campaigns if, as you said, most of the playerbase barely played it.
I can promise you that I have put several dozens of hours into this game. But I’m afraid I never had much opportunity to play the multiplayer mode. The old PC I played the game on as a kid was not able to connect to the internet, and when I revisited the game for the purposes of this video I was playing through a wine-wrapper on my MacBook, so I couldn’t connect to PC players online then either.
I believe that my video does focus on many of the enjoyable aspects of the game though, as in the discussions of gameplay, structure, and aesthetics seen in the campaigns and stand alone missions are all the same as they appear in multiplayer, even if I’m not covering specific strategies in the competitive multiplayer fanbase. It’s not as though I spent the video being overly specific to the campaigns like “This is what’s great about Joan of Arc, or El Cid, etc.” In fact, from what I’ve seen in discussions online, many players almost treat AoE like The Sims, wherein they can just make their perfect world on a custom map, and then goof around however they please.
Keep in mind that achievements (on any platform) are skewed towards people who just boot up the game a time or two to tinker around in it, because in terms of percentage, it would seem that many players who completed the base games campaigns went on to complete nearly every campaign (or at least the same percentage of the player base is found across nearly each achievement, being around 3-4%). Meanwhile, only 0.2% have ever beaten a four-player online game, which I theorize would be much higher if the majority of the player base spent their time playing competitively.
Are there any other other parts of the game’s experience that I missed out on covering in the video? And of course I appreciate you watching and commenting!
@@WhatsSoGreatAboutGaming some of its mechanics are still very refined if you consider them in today's terms, let alone 99. Like the arrow system. Arrows aren't just for you to see, they can hit or miss. Which enable all the microing possible of armies. Also the game is very trade-off intensive. When you're getting an eco upgrade you gotta weight in carefully the long term benefits and how it will impact you right now, because you won't have it available immediately to make military units, etc. Also its interesting how they chose to go for a symmetric civs, different from its contemporary Starcraft. Which made balancing a lot easier while diff civs still feel VERY different to play.
Wow, I never knew that about the arrows. This game's detail is always surprising.
This aged very well. This game and its community have only gotten better and better.
Nintendo what
First!
This game and Warcraft 3 still are the only RTS games with solid gameplay and no gimmicks. True classics, simplicity at it's best.
But it's boring compared to WarCraft 3 back in the days (and not "Reforged" ofcourse)!
Jesus... This video is overly padded and drawn out.
Amazing game but it is trash compared to AOE3
Nope. All Age games are good.
stronghold crusader is better
It's different but not better or worse.