Some very good points, especially regarding the resources. Food is a very awkward resource, and it's only purpose in the game at the moment seems to be to slow down the Slav and Viking factions, who can churn out cheap units fast, but have a higher upkeep so can easily be starved out if they abuse their number advantage. So I agree with a lot of this video, and I'll leave you my like! That being said though, I really adore this game, and I can't help but defend it a little. I've been hearing a lot of complaints that the game isn't exciting enough, or that there's nothing to do during a fight but watch two blobs of units kill each other, especially as they can't be moved in melee. I get where these arguments are coming from, and I don't expect everyone going in to the game for the first time to fully understand how to play. Mainly, a lot of people do just that, gather their units in a blob and send everything at the enemy, counting only on countering the enemy unit type to win the fight. But as someone who's played this for a very long time, and against some very talented opponents, I can tell you with certainty that fights in this game are anything but dull. Good opponents will never commit more units than they have to to a fight, so it becomes this exciting game of trying to outmaneuvre your opponent, flank him while guarding your own flanks at the same time, and all while trying NOT to engage with every single one of your units, as that completely prevents you from responding to your opponents next move without retreating. It's an intense back and forth, where stances play a huge part, and require as much attention as an intense firefight in CoH. I can't blame people for not having these experiences, and I get where their complaints are coming from. But I do want to encourage anyone interested in the game to stay with it for a little longer, experiment, and you might be surprised how much more challenging, intense and exciting a match can turn out to be. A quick note about the villages. You can raise the alarm at a village at any point, which halts resource collection and raises the health and defense of a village significantly. Villages can be extremely powerful defensive points, and usually force your opponent to bring catapults into play if he wants to take them over. (I'm only saying this because you haven't mentioned the alarm function in the video) As for consoles, the devs were pretty clear from the get go that they're gonna make it portable to consoles. You can play with a controller on a PC right now, it changes on the fly. I was afraid at first that being built with consoles in mind would impair the PC version, but, while there are things in the game that are obviously there just for the sake of consoles, the PC experience has remained practically unhindered in my opinion. That all being said, I am incredibly biased about the game :D, as it's pretty much everything I ever wanted out of it. Thank you for covering it, and giving us your opinions on the game! I hope the few existing quirks won't turn a lot of people away from it, and with the devs listening to the feedback of our (very small) community, there's a good chance a lot of these quirks will be ironed out with time.
I can agree with u on a lot of points. When i first started playin' A.L, It felt off with the gamin' system. Therr were some points where it felt like it was related to Halo Wars. Only difference is that u have 10 troops in A.L and u have more squads in Halo wars. For the longest time I have been so excited for the PS4 version to come out and felt so much more happy gettin' it. I think its so worth buyin'. I already completed all 4 campaigns in the span of 5 weeks. Best game I ever played in my life
Great overview, I agree the game was sadly not quite there. Had cool systems and ideas but didn't execute them properly. I didn't play since beta but one of my main major gripes was that for a game where engagements are decided almost entirely on how you initially set them up, there isn't proper scouting options to give players the tools to set things up in deliberate, meaningful ways. Engagements would suddenly happen and a lot of it was "luck" based on who happened to be in the better spot when you would clash. Coh2 doesn't have scouting but it doesn't need it because of how much you change encounters on the fly. My other big problem was it could be rather campy and too all-or-nothing. It lacked the large numbers of points of interest that Company of Heroes has with ~15 resource points on a map. (But also other things like key garrisons, chokes, cover.) Instead, in Ancesters you typically had your main base, 1 "safe" village right next to your base and then 1-2 central bases. So you were only ever really fighting over those 1-2 central bases and not having as much of a dynamic fight around the map in the way Coh and Dow2 does so well. It felt like they wanted to emulate the RTS design of Coh and some others but without actually understanding what it is that makes them work so well. Still, nice to see an attempt at emulating an RTS format other than C&C or AoE. Cool to see another non StarCraft and non Age of Empires channel though. :D
So the food income. In Slavs and Vikings idk why it is but when your trainin' troops ur food income soon ends up negative. To prevent that, or change it durin' mid-game, you go to ur blacksmith and you research (i dont remember what its called so (Insert Here), what that does is it increases the wood, food and iron income by 10. Research it completely and you should end up with +10 or +20 food income
Campaign on this game AMAZING and only it was worth the money for me but I am really disappointed in the multiplayer part because it could have been so much better.
man, youre dishing em out lately. i like :) regarding Ancestors, im right with ya. its just too simple, needed more unit types for sure, and while i like asymmetric factions, i think they did it wrong; i played it on release and it was plagued by very poor earlygame balance, as every faction starts out with only 1 unit type- so if you started opposite side to someone who counters you, youre screwed. the saxons didnt even have a melee unit in tier1. i think that was a big thing that threw ppl off, and together with the fact many news outlets simply ignored this game to punish the studio for their distasteful past releases, was enough to basically kill the game -its trodding somewhere between 200-600 players at a time. im sure the dumb "units can only retreat from a melee, but not maneuver" mechanic didnt help either, but ofc the few remaining players on the forum will defend it as the holy grail of rts gaming until the last bullet. hopefully xbox can revive it, and hopefully DC makes a successor game with lessons learned. imagine this concept, but refined an improved upon, during Julius Caesars time, or in the thirty years war. Dayum. Good health to you bud, i hope your channel gets more viewers, its quality content. Maybe when AoE4 takes off steam. and lastly, a question/suggestion: wth happened to ActofAggression? Why did it fail so hard?
Some very good points, especially regarding the resources. Food is a very awkward resource, and it's only purpose in the game at the moment seems to be to slow down the Slav and Viking factions, who can churn out cheap units fast, but have a higher upkeep so can easily be starved out if they abuse their number advantage. So I agree with a lot of this video, and I'll leave you my like!
That being said though, I really adore this game, and I can't help but defend it a little. I've been hearing a lot of complaints that the game isn't exciting enough, or that there's nothing to do during a fight but watch two blobs of units kill each other, especially as they can't be moved in melee. I get where these arguments are coming from, and I don't expect everyone going in to the game for the first time to fully understand how to play. Mainly, a lot of people do just that, gather their units in a blob and send everything at the enemy, counting only on countering the enemy unit type to win the fight. But as someone who's played this for a very long time, and against some very talented opponents, I can tell you with certainty that fights in this game are anything but dull. Good opponents will never commit more units than they have to to a fight, so it becomes this exciting game of trying to outmaneuvre your opponent, flank him while guarding your own flanks at the same time, and all while trying NOT to engage with every single one of your units, as that completely prevents you from responding to your opponents next move without retreating. It's an intense back and forth, where stances play a huge part, and require as much attention as an intense firefight in CoH. I can't blame people for not having these experiences, and I get where their complaints are coming from. But I do want to encourage anyone interested in the game to stay with it for a little longer, experiment, and you might be surprised how much more challenging, intense and exciting a match can turn out to be.
A quick note about the villages. You can raise the alarm at a village at any point, which halts resource collection and raises the health and defense of a village significantly. Villages can be extremely powerful defensive points, and usually force your opponent to bring catapults into play if he wants to take them over. (I'm only saying this because you haven't mentioned the alarm function in the video)
As for consoles, the devs were pretty clear from the get go that they're gonna make it portable to consoles. You can play with a controller on a PC right now, it changes on the fly. I was afraid at first that being built with consoles in mind would impair the PC version, but, while there are things in the game that are obviously there just for the sake of consoles, the PC experience has remained practically unhindered in my opinion.
That all being said, I am incredibly biased about the game :D, as it's pretty much everything I ever wanted out of it. Thank you for covering it, and giving us your opinions on the game! I hope the few existing quirks won't turn a lot of people away from it, and with the devs listening to the feedback of our (very small) community, there's a good chance a lot of these quirks will be ironed out with time.
I can agree with u on a lot of points. When i first started playin' A.L, It felt off with the gamin' system. Therr were some points where it felt like it was related to Halo Wars. Only difference is that u have 10 troops in A.L and u have more squads in Halo wars. For the longest time I have been so excited for the PS4 version to come out and felt so much more happy gettin' it. I think its so worth buyin'. I already completed all 4 campaigns in the span of 5 weeks. Best game I ever played in my life
Great overview, I agree the game was sadly not quite there. Had cool systems and ideas but didn't execute them properly.
I didn't play since beta but one of my main major gripes was that for a game where engagements are decided almost entirely on how you initially set them up, there isn't proper scouting options to give players the tools to set things up in deliberate, meaningful ways. Engagements would suddenly happen and a lot of it was "luck" based on who happened to be in the better spot when you would clash. Coh2 doesn't have scouting but it doesn't need it because of how much you change encounters on the fly.
My other big problem was it could be rather campy and too all-or-nothing. It lacked the large numbers of points of interest that Company of Heroes has with ~15 resource points on a map. (But also other things like key garrisons, chokes, cover.) Instead, in Ancesters you typically had your main base, 1 "safe" village right next to your base and then 1-2 central bases. So you were only ever really fighting over those 1-2 central bases and not having as much of a dynamic fight around the map in the way Coh and Dow2 does so well.
It felt like they wanted to emulate the RTS design of Coh and some others but without actually understanding what it is that makes them work so well. Still, nice to see an attempt at emulating an RTS format other than C&C or AoE.
Cool to see another non StarCraft and non Age of Empires channel though. :D
So the food income. In Slavs and Vikings idk why it is but when your trainin' troops ur food income soon ends up negative. To prevent that, or change it durin' mid-game, you go to ur blacksmith and you research (i dont remember what its called so (Insert Here), what that does is it increases the wood, food and iron income by 10. Research it completely and you should end up with +10 or +20 food income
Campaign on this game AMAZING and only it was worth the money for me but I am really disappointed in the multiplayer part because it could have been so much better.
man, youre dishing em out lately. i like :)
regarding Ancestors, im right with ya. its just too simple, needed more unit types for sure, and while i like asymmetric factions, i think they did it wrong; i played it on release and it was plagued by very poor earlygame balance, as every faction starts out with only 1 unit type- so if you started opposite side to someone who counters you, youre screwed. the saxons didnt even have a melee unit in tier1.
i think that was a big thing that threw ppl off, and together with the fact many news outlets simply ignored this game to punish the studio for their distasteful past releases, was enough to basically kill the game -its trodding somewhere between 200-600 players at a time. im sure the dumb "units can only retreat from a melee, but not maneuver" mechanic didnt help either, but ofc the few remaining players on the forum will defend it as the holy grail of rts gaming until the last bullet. hopefully xbox can revive it, and hopefully DC makes a successor game with lessons learned.
imagine this concept, but refined an improved upon, during Julius Caesars time, or in the thirty years war.
Dayum.
Good health to you bud, i hope your channel gets more viewers, its quality content. Maybe when AoE4 takes off steam.
and lastly, a question/suggestion: wth happened to ActofAggression? Why did it fail so hard?
I remember seeing this game around, very interesting insight into the game. Might not be my thing, but great video! Keep 'em up!
Also I think there will be a saladins campaign for the Ps4(it may be a update since it just came out for PS4)
Nope, wish there was though
you are getting better and better a content creation nd commentary , happy to follow you and see you develop .
What are you PC specs? Thanks for the vid 😉
Thoughts on
Empire: Dawn of the Modern World
good speech mate
It seems very similar to halo wars.
In my opinion halo wars was much better gameplay.
Rock, paper, scissors. No unit creation. Hard to handle lots of troops in large battles. Not an awful game but not the greatest by far.
Did not like it myself. Too repeatitive to my liking, and way too hard for me. Not for me.
Too bad nobody plays it online. The game is dead as fuck and it’s only been out on console since August2019.