StarCraft II for Age of Empires Players: Part II (Game Design & Analysis)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ย. 2016
- Hey folks,
Here's part two of my comparative analysis between the Age series and StarCraft II. Enjoy!
Special thank you to iNcontroL ( / egincontrol + / incontroltv ) for allowing me to use some footage from his VODs in this video.
References:
-- www.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-myth...
-- www.eurogamer.net/articles/201...
-- artho.com/age/aoefish.html (interview with Ian Fischer)
-- www.amazon.com/dp/0782127711 (Age of Empires Scenario Design Toolkit)
-- www.eurogamer.net/articles/bli... (Mike Morhaime interview)
-- venturebeat.com/2016/02/25/how... (Bruce Shelly interview)
-- www.amazon.com/dp/1556229127 (Side Meier Interview)
-- us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/to... (game speed community update)
-- aoe3.heavengames.com/interview... (pre-aoe3 interview with ES)
-- github.com/Blizzard/s2protocol (official sc2 replay parser)
-- www.agecommunity.com/press.asp... (Age of Empires III two million copies sold)
-- us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/5202... (talking balance with David Kim)
-- www.shacknews.com/article/6017... (Battle.net interview)
-- www.agecommunity.com/aoeinterv... (various Ensemble interviews)
-- www.eurogamer.net/articles/201... (StarCraft II sales)
-- wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2... (38 balance patches for SC2)
-- • Day[9] Daily #309 - Th... (Day9 Daily - single decisive engagement)
-- www.pcgamer.com/starcraft-2-he... (no LAN mode)
-- www.teamliquid.net/forum/starc... (Dusten Browder micromanagement design philosophy)
-- / we_are_dustin_browder_... (Dusten Browder on MOBAs)
-- interviews.slashdot.org/story... (interview with Alan Dabiri) - เกม
I'm in love with this series. As a fellow RTS nerd its so interesting to hear your analysis of the different games in a genre i love. Keep going this is awesome!
Thank you! I really appreciate it :-)
Great video again! I think u should've mentioned attention and time as a resource for the age series as well rather than saying it was an exclusive sc resource. Players frequently try to attack at 2 areas at the same time and split their armys which is more uncommon in sc and requires significant attention. For time, the amount of time it takes to research something is set, such as the time it takes to go up to the next age, or upgrade armor or heavy cavalry. Also I learned from age pro player streamers how to play age of empires 2 before actually "playing" the game just like u mention can be done for sc. Most of the time there is at least a few age 2 pro player streaming and commentators are quite knowledgeable about the game as well. Hope to see more from this series!
I have to second this. I can't speak for later Age entries but in AoE2 one player having different armies move and fight simultaneously at 4 or 5 different points in the map is pretty common. Map control and attack avenues are incredibly important (as it is in sc2 as well, but in a very different more spread out way) so games rarely turn into to big blobs fighting but rather multiple skirmishes with one or two more prominent focal points.
Thank you! Yes, the script originally talked about this area but I ended up cutting it, since time and attention were streamlined and toned down in the later entries. I probably should have included a specific blurb about AoE2 to make it clearer.
Yes!! My biggest problem about your video is how you badly represent AoE2 complexity and community due to the rest of the games being watered down, and fucking dead competitively. Aoe2 "esport" is still alive, and the meta hah been evolving as the best players have gotten better. Great video still!!!
@@samenrud666 Yeah, AoE2 had almost everything SC2 had that was good, and more.
I kinda disagree with the statements about time. AoE always had time, building can be built faster with more builder, but it scales down and there are diminishing returns (especially since your builders are working tiles). Moreover teching up with single town centre means you aren't building more workers, also if you try an early knight rush...the differences with sc2 there were pretty overblown.
Attention is definitely important in AoE2. It isn't as fast as Starcraft - but there is a lot happening at once. Trying to build farms and houses while attacking with one army, defending with another, garrisoning a TC, balancing your economy, and making sure you have techs and enough production buildings.
Even in dark age, luring boars while pushing deer is pretty difficult. If the enemy interrupts either the best case is the deer walks back to where it started.
Really good couple of videos. I never got to thinking about these two games in such a way as you've explained here.
This is great. If there is a part 3 coming I can't wait!
Nice: well thought out. I love hearing abstracted concepts about games and contrasts between said games.
started watching, expecting to only watch a couple of minutes... ended up watching the whole thing.. well done!! awesome and informative video
Thank you! I really appreciate it. :-)
I am glad that I randomly stumbled across these videos of yours! I find them to be interesting and informative. Thank you for posting them! I'll be checking out your other videos, and like what I've seen of them thus far.
I have plans to start a video series of my own covering Starcraft Brood War. ^__^
Loved this! You need to make more videos in this style, keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. :-)
Watching this series in the present day is a trip with AoE2:DE's revival dragging RTS back into relevance to the point where I am now learning this game after leaving Brood War behind over a decade ago.
I found it interesting that you came to the conclusion of army composition vs. micro that you did. For me, Age of Empires has always been defined by proper army composition. Micro is possible, but it is incredibly sluggish and tends to be dominated by cavalry or expensive units as the value in saving/killing some random units usually isn't there. The pikemen vs. hussar example is an interesting one as the real counter here is in cost: pikemen cost food/wood and are massed easily while hussar cost gold. This is why Age tech trees are so expansive - you can get high tech splash damage units like high templar or mangonels or cannons, you can get beefy unstoppable units like knights or ultralisks or archons, but in Age exclusively can you get cheap trash whose sole purpose is to counter those other units if placed in the right situation (Starcraft does have filler units like zerglings, marines, etc., but they're less counter units and more generic DPS or damage sponges). In equal numbers, the expensive units always win, but Age is built around creating those compositional advantages to snowball into economic or military ones.
In contrast, Starcraft (my primary reference here is Brood War) is far more fluid with its counter system. A zealot is roughly even against 4 zerglings in terms of cost and combat efficiency, but the zerglings lose nothing if they get a full surround while the zealot can kill 2-3 lings if fighting in a small chokepoint. Starcraft also plays around with its tech system to focus on paradigm shifts rather than just making units stronger. +1 attack doesn't just make zealots 10% more cost effective - it gives them the ability to 2-shot zerglings, so the calculus of what is a reasonable engagement radically shifts. This means that fights between the same army compositions change based on tech upgrades and micro rather than the unit selection itself - hydras lose to zealots until the hydras get speed/range and then the zealots win again with legs/charge until the hydras arrive in massive enough numbers. This is why timing feels so important in Starcraft - if you hit while your army composition has an advantage, you can win an important fight and start to snowball. Age of Empires can have this, too, with the age-up system, myth powers, home city shipments, and with some units like catapults/priests/chariot archers appearing only in later ages, but those paradigm shifts are often of limited scope or quantity per game while the rest of the game focuses on compositional and economic efficiency. For a concrete example, +1 air carapace allows a control group of mutalisk (with proper micro) to stop most marine pushes of near any size across the map until the terran can tech up into extra attack or into even one valkyrie or science vessel with irradiate. In contrast, 3 spearmen will not stop 6 knights even if fully upgraded into halberdier, and 3 minotaur don't really want to engage into 6 hersir, regardless of either side's upgrades or abilities.
In summation, I think this all touches on your first video of fixed vs. random map generation. Competitive Age could have always switched to fixed maps, but has largely stuck to random as it is more interesting to identify randomly vulnerable resources and force your opponent into suboptimal compositions and thereby win the game (I'm pretty sure gold starves are a huge meta focus in all Age games, though I'm still learning here). That said, Age's flexible tech tree allows for some counterplay. Vulnerable resources in Starcraft would be a death sentence - you often can't switch to a tech/unit that costs less gas, you would just be behind. Using fixed map generation also allows Starcraft players to identify one of the many inflection points in the tech tree to target and play for, making pre-planned build orders and timings much more important and much less flexible than in Age, where such inflection points are far more transient and frequently less interesting.
Holy shit dude, this is awesome. You should make more of these types of videos, and you'll gain an immediate subscriber.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! I plan to produce a new video each month. I'll work hard on them, I hope you enjoy.
It's interesting you talk about Starcraft 2 remaining focused on a centralised hardcore demographic, since there's been a bit of a schism between Starcraft: Broodwar diehards and Starcraft 2 fans. SC2 introduced a number of interface improvements that reduced the raw mechanical button and mouse clicking requirement present in SC:BW, like automining (rallying workers to resources and having them mine automatically), multiple building selection, infinite sized control groups, Select All Units, smart casting,, and for some people that tarnishes SC2 in a fundamental and irreconcilable way (like idra for example).
Yes, I think this is an interesting area to think about. I tried to talk about it a bit in the micromanagement section concerning Dusten Browder's comments. Right now my thinking is that these are distinct design philosophies - one focused on clean execution of basic tasks, like in Brood War, the second that streamlines basic tasks but adds steeper ability requirements to compensate, like in SCII. I'm still thinking through whether one is objectively better than the other or whether they are just different philosophies that each have their place depending on the vision of the designer. Personally I prefer the BW approach, but perhaps that is just because that's what I grew up on, all the old RTS games were like that.
brownbear Not everything was a deliberate design decision. For example, pathing in SCBW is, dare I say, pathological, even for the era (C&C:TS, which released within a year from SC, had waay better pathing. I mean, it was still BAD, but you could be confident that your units would eventually reach their destination). That wasn't a design choice: Blizzard just didn't have time to get it right before release.
excellent series here. would love to hear you talk more on these kinds of topics.
Thank you! I really appreciate it :-)
Yo this video is amazing! I play starcraft at a pretty high level and I still learned about it from this video because of your lens on it
Thank you! I really appreciate it :-)
13:20 excellent point! Have had this problem in *many* games I played competitivly!
Subtitulos en español por favor
Interesting to hear the things you say about the Age series often applying to Brood War. I think it would be interesting if you covered Brood War as well as Starcraft 2, especially seeing as the Brood War scene is on the rise in recent times, similarly to AoE2.
Thank you, I will definitely be taking a look when Brood War HD comes out.
this was a great video! good job once again. I really like the Age of Empires Graphics because they're so easy to see and parse. Starcraft 2 is so dark and muddy in comparison
Nice pace, good analyses, great videos. You should definitely make more stuff like this. Would love to see other games if you played them, like C&C's, Supreme Commanders, Rise of Nations/Legends or any RTS you spent time on. :D
Thank you so much! I'll be making more RTS-content in the future, though more comparative analyses specifically are unlikely this year. :-)
amazing work friendo,
Thank you! I really appreciate it. :-)
Great perspective on the genera. A lot of the discussion about how units in AoE need a lot of babying to be effective reminds me of Brood War. By smoothing out unit auto attack and general pathing, less attention (and skill) is needed to manage large armies. I see both sides of the issue, its an interesting thought.
Thank you! Yeah, it's a really interesting thing to think about, whether one design approach is better than the other or whether they both have their place depending on the intent of the designer.
I feel like the decision was good, cause micromanaging an army to stop them from behaving in dumb ways is not satisfying, using abilities to win a fight is.
I personally think it is way more satisfying to win a BW game than an SC2 game.
you are so skilled to make this type of videos, you are amazing
Thank you, that means a lot! I really appreciate it :-)
awesome video great explaining and reasoning
love your point on incrimental rewards and I'd love to see a video on it
Thank you! It's what I'm working on next and I'll be sure to do my best on it. :-)
another great piece of analysis, keep it up! :)
Thank you, I really appreciate it! :-)
loving these videos. Looking forward to more. :)
Thank you! I will work hard on future videos and be sure to do my best. :-)
Ah, there was a tiny window where you could've spoken about the HERC unit when discussing the difficulty of adding melee units. The HERC was added in the LotV Alpha build, as a unit that could grapple and pull itself to any unit, and then have heavy splash damage in a melee range. The unit was removed because it was rather early tech, and overlapped with the Hellbat quite heavily. After internal testing, the unit was removed before the closed beta went live.
Very good to know, thank you!
nice video. Could you do one now with Aoe2DE since it is not possible to compare HD to DE anymore
now that aoe2 DE is out you might want to check it out there are some major improvements to new player experience as well as some engine performance tweaks
8:55 lets take a second to appreciate that sick blink micro lol
As a guy who loves Age of Mythology and has been going deep into the Co op mode for SC2, you pretty hit a lot of good points in these videos.
There's just one problem you overlooked in terms of making SC2 open-source: it has a rampant hacking problem that Blizzard hasn't been able to address.
It's one of the reasons why this game hasn't gone free to play and why map packs are openly available. I don't blame you for not knowing about it because it's not talked about enough in the community, but you can see how it's affected the game and why it is mostly an online property.
Also if you're gonna do a follow-up video on what the genre needs, maybe you should look at Grey Goo and Act of Aggression. Those are games that tried to bring RTS back but didn't seem to cause a stir of any kind despite some high profile coverage.
blizzard has infact fixed the maphacking issue by putting in regular tiny patches for like single bugfixes, with each one slightly changing the way the game api works. You can see this because even after the tiniest bugfix you cant watch earlier replays as easly and not at all in a party. This means all maphacks for that patch become invalid immediately and need to be adjusted... to then become invalid again soon.
thank you very much. i also really like your blog. which led me here
Thank you! Much appreciated. :-)
Nice vids, maybe you could talk about the Supreme commander/planetary annihilation RTS subgenre too and compare them to SC
both videos are very interesting, keep it up :)
Thank you! I really appreciate it. :-)
Thank you for you videos, yogibear. You're awesome
Thank you! I really appreciate it :-)
amazing vid !
Thank you! I really appreciate it. :-)
If you want microing of movement and stuff... man, you'll LOVE Brood War.
Please do a C&C3 and SC2 comparison video :)
What means 'land mode'?
Excellent analysis, love your videos, I'm a games designer and would love to get in touch some time.
This makes me want to play StarCraft
Great video yogi! I was hoping you tackle a cheese comparison between sc2 and aoe2. In starcraft 2 chesse even at high league games can be pulled off, whereas in age of empires 2 it is simply impossible to pull a single cheese strategy at medium/higher levels; especially if the players are of same level.
Also the races balance can be frustrating in starcraft 2, one race example is the Protoss that gets a buff in air units, and then in the lotv extension they have introduced the adepts that teleport by themselves and can be easily massed and win you games so much easier after saturating the 2nd base. In age of empires 2, all races get access to the same units except for the unique units, and if a civilisation does not get some type of units, they are compensated with other similarly strong units or bonus, and a good example of that is turks, they don't get trash units, but they do have free upgrades of light cav, hussar once you reach castle/imperial age, and they get camels to cover the lack of halbs.
Nevertheless, I prefer to play starcraft 2 because of the amazing multiplayer engine, good ping and game continues if you drop for few seconds. Unlike age of empires 2 that gets the worst multiplayer ever, in fact the game itself lags and doesn't feel as the classic expension: the conquerors. Btw you should check out Voobly.com, there you can find the top players of age of empires 2 and use their recorded games which you can download from their profiles.
To conclude, Age of empires 2 is more enjoyable and fun than starcraft 2.
It was very fun watching this series. Please keep it up!! Thank you
Thank you! I think this is a really good point and one I'd like to cover in the future. The efficacy of all-in builds has definitely been much less of a factor in the Age series than in StarCraft, with the exception of Loki and Kronos rushes in Age of Mythology / Titans.
sc2 has all the incremental rewards that it needs. visual stuff like portraits. everything else would be stupid for a rts in mp
at about 3:30 you talk about how in the Age games teching up is usually stronger than early harass and how its oppossite in SC2. I completely disagree with that statement. though you have way better static defence options in AoE2 Flush (feudal rush) strategies absolutely kill fast castle or fast imp strategies.
At 7:00 you say that in the Age games there are more "soft counters" like a onager to a skirmisher? or a knight to a onager? or a pikeman to a knight? This is as hard as an counter unit can get. Massive attack bonuses against certain unit types,
Maybe this is because I mainly play AoE2 until this day. I think the Age games, especially AoE 1&2 differenciate so much from Mythology and AoE3. You could make this video from the perspective of any age game and it would probably sound much different
I like how you pointed out about RTS "binary" mechanics. Or you win or you lose. Thats probably why they seem to be in decline, as in FPS if you score some kills you still have some sense of achievement and with increase of gaming populace where most are casual is becoming a problem. AoE3 card and leveling system didn't really fix this problem and unnecessarily complicated the game.
Nice work and nice video man. It's really interesting and constructive. I really hope this give food for thought to 'balance whiner' and people looking at anything to complain about Starcraft. Well that's my own opinion but it's a great seed to plant in people heads.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! Hopefully it gives folks some food for thought and a new perspective on the genre.
By the way, just about everything said here does not apply to AoE2.
Professional RTS analyst: randomly generated content makes for bad competitive RTS
Me: Oh boy, I can't wait for the next Masters of Megarandom tournament!
Really like these videos, i wish you used some pros play footage for aoe2 tho :p .
Thank you! Maybe next time. :-)
hi
incremental rewards ruined shooters, I don't want it to ruin rts too. I regularly 1v1 my friend and he crushes me about 19/20 games, I don't feel like I need anything else, the game is fun as is. and its fun to loose
u forgot AoEO
This video was really entertaining but gotta, say that I disagree in some ways, this video for mee, was a little biased to starcraft over aoe I dont know but a felt it in that way
If there is one thing I kinda disagree, it is when you talk about simplicity - or maybe, I do not have the same idea about what makes a game "simple" . To me , Starcraft (especially II) IS a simple game. You can understand it in 5 minutes. Hell, hop on a vocal server with a seasonal player, you'll learn everything you have to know in 10 minutes. It is mechanically hard, but the gameplay is dead simple. Way, way simplifier than AoE, or most if any RTS (that I never been able to get into). You know what they say - 5 minutes to understand, a life-time to master.
To me - this is something that can be seen in the UI. Ever noticed how streamlined SC2 UI is? Ever noticed how few stats there is? Compare that with AoE (or any games), where there's numbers everywhere. SC2 keeps it simple. I do think it's a design philosophy (that I fully agree with), that if that one stat is a 6 instead of a 5, it doesn't matter to 90+% of players.
One day, I'll write a 10-page essay about SC2 UI :-)
Anyway, great vid, as always!
Well, in 5 mins you can learn the fundamentals, but really learning how the game works with all important interactions takes years. I am a diamond currently, just because of the very basic mechanics and a few more advanced things like a clean bo etc. But to really understand the game, you need to know all timings, which I know about 0, All tricks and otherwise important stuff. To make this clear, my master 3 friend recently got coached by a gm and he made soo many mistakes, he told me, that he did not even know that you could make so many mistakes in one game. You basically need to know sooo much to get to gm, your mechanics do not need to be extremely good, 180 epm+ is enough , which even i have as diamond, but i lack other stuff hard.
Thank you! I really appreciate it. I have definitely noticed how clean the StarCraft II UI is. Very user-friendly; people who care about the fine-grained details can go find them if need be.
There are actually 5 resources in StarCraft II: Minerals, Gas, Supply, Time and Attention. This video ignores Supply as a resource.
Open sourcing StarCraft II would be so wonderful. But dream on: that's never going to happen. It's not how Blizzard does things.
But as to the benefits of open sourcing the StarCraft II engine: this would not hurt sales because it would work the exact same way as the Doom source code releases. Sure, you can download it for free and be able to play something. The engine would be free. But you'd still need to purchase the game's content from Blizzard, just as you need to actually buy commercial Doom in order to play the non-shareware episodes of Doom today. The open source release of Doom's code has not hurt the Doom franchise: it has only helped it, and it could help StarCraft the same way ... if it wasn't owned by "The technology just isn't there yet" Blizzard who will never do this.
supply , time an att.... is part of aoe to.
There is one problem with what you are proposing with SC2. And it's a problem that doesn't get talked about enough either:
SC2 has a rampant hacking problem that they have not been able to address.
It's one of the big reasons why it hasn't gone free to play, because what's a minor inconvenience would become an epidemic. Seems like they have beefed things up considering how well they've handled the Overwatch hackers and they have allowed the modding scene to be openly available for free but I doubt they are gonna go to the level of Bethesda with their games.
Not their fault or ours that a few bad eggs ruined it for everyone.
Nathan Cassidy, no, actually, making the title open source would make it harder to cheat, not easier. Any exploits would be fixed by the community overnight. This has, as I understand it, been the history of other games that have gone open source.
Benjamin McLean
I'm not a programmer so I have only a basic understanding of most programs, so you could be right. I do know more about hacking than most though as it's not intentionally malicious.
But even an outsider like me can tell you that problems like hackers are going to cause Blizzard to NOT make changes like LAN or open source because a few bad eggs decided to destroy the community's trustworthiness because they thought could get away with being a cheating bastard.
Cheating has nothing whatsoever to do with the lack of LAN support. Blizzard disabled LAN support in StarCraft II because they wanted to have more power to enforce their licensing requirements to Internet cafes that offer StarCraft II. In other words, because they were being corporatist bastards.
There are at least three reasons for not open sourcing a title from a business perspective, and none of them have to do with cheating:
1. It makes it much easier to pirate the game content. However, this shouldn't be an issue for StarCraft II because there are pirated versions all over torrents anyway.
2. It's quite possible that StarCraft II's source code used third party components which can't be open sourced because of licensing restrictions and are not easily replaced. This is especially bad if somebody screwed up and used code they weren't supposed to and the company doesn't want that fact coming to light.
3. Laziness and/or cheapness of not wanting to dedicate the staff resources to preparing an open source release and doing their part to maintain the developer community. It does require some time/money investment up-front to make it happen. You at least have to do a code review to stop reason 2 from biting you in the ass, and that can be a tedious, time/money consuming process.
If they open up the code, maphackers will be least of our issues. Blizzard will never do that, and should never do that.
broodwar is the greatest game of all time.
Can I marry you?
Aoe 3 was trash. It actually upset me as a kid when I was so excited for it and I bought it on the first day it was out. It was so so bad in every single way. Aom has trash qualities about it but most of it is fun. Aoe 2 is the perfect game lol. Aoe 1 has never been played by me but people say its better than 2. SC 2 has never been played either and I am sure Id like it but Ive never bought it, maybe one day.
But Aoe 3 is so bad every single thing about it. I don't think there is one good thing about it without mods. Even its cheat codes where boring.
Sc2 is free now, if you're interested
Hellbats are not melee units
you don't really hit and run with hellbats...
tartopoulet what is your point?
they have only 2 of range, but to maximise their damage, they need to be in contact to reach enemy back lanes.
tartopoulet They need to be within 2 range to deal damage, not melee range. No matter how you spin this they are still not melee units.
In fact, yep... they can attack behind a wall so... yep, not really melee...
Damn it is too theoretical.
The thing is, blizzard doesnt have any expertise. So open source would ruin them.
At the start i was expecting a direct comparison between AoE2 and Starcraft 2 from someone who use to play AoE2 in a competitive way and is now starting Starcraft 2 in the same way.
Instead, you gave out the vision of someone who played Age of Empires 2 casually and is now giving a look back from a competitive Starcraft 2 perspective.
I'm sorry but this video is incredibly bias, and generally speaking, pretty ignorant.
P.S.: Don't mix AoE3 with AoE2, there is a reason why one is widely successful, and the other barely made an impact...
Dota and LOL are for babies, Starcraft are for teenagers and Age of Empires are for adults.
You probably haven´t played brood war :P
No, Brood War is definitely for teens. Everything is about the speed at which you can mash buttons to overcome the horrible unit selection limit with a 200 supply cap. AoK had the same unit cap but five times the unit selection limit and had independent building hotkeys so you didn't need your limited supply of configurable hotkeys to manage your economy. Age was more suited to more thoughtful and less twitchy players.
Comparing AoE2 and SC1 (inc ex packs) specifically, there's simply a wider variety of viable strategies in AoE2 with far more complex unit interactions than in SC _especially_ in mid-teir play.
Sure, the rush to the castle age is common, but that time is filled with processing new information from scouting and planning ahead, so that you're hitting the ground running with a plan you've built mid-game when you get there.
Just his analysis about needing to either win his attack or get base x up by time y is really telling to that fact.
I've had far more games in SC decided by weight of numbers and execution of rote strategies (which, frankly, is boring) than real strategic decision-making compared to AoE2, and that never stops because in AoE2, there's far more time spent in long-term strategic planning, even when the number of things being done per second is lower.
Long games often require several strategy changes that are based on opponent's actions, not a fixed time, and take significant planning and setup before execution.
Right away, AoE2 gets you into putting half your attention 5 minutes or more ahead making plans on the fly, and the fast pased action and limited strategic range of SC is not conducive to that. That's why I'm almost certain you'd find far more overlap between AoE2 players and turn-based strategy players.
It's not even and elitist vs casual thing but that AoE2 is targeted at the vast amount of players who, due to RL &/or interest in more than one game, fall somewhere in between.
And all of this is why AoE2 is (if you'll excuse the pun) king.
Mandatum?
u forgot AoEO
u forgot AoEO