[DJ-Matt]

I dug out one of my working NESes and fired up my OG FF1 cart just to see how far I made it last go-round. Fortunately the HPs were at least in the double digits.

Cheater that I am, next time I play FF1 it'll be on an emu with state save capability

[Professor Fox]

[2Wycked]

So I bought the Steam version the other day. . .



Been playing Deathmatches as the Spanish. Salt marshes so I can dominate the AI with my superior navy. Wicked shit.

Any custom campaigns ya'll would recommend?

[Hannibal]

I highly recommend getting the new DLC African Kingdoms.

In my opinion, the Forgotten Empires campaigns are utter shit. Too much horseshit storyline that takes away from the gameplay. Too much worthless clicking on stupid stuff with weird, gimmicky mechanics to hamfist a story.

If I'm not building houses, spawning villagers, massing a military, or sending rally points to the enemy's economic centers and spamming Hussars, I'm not having fun.

Clicking back and forth between characters to hear (or was it read?) their lame dialogue? Get the fuck out of here.

If I remember correctly, one of the lesser lieutenants in a campaign literally said "What the hell?" as they were ambushed. I don't like using the word "literally", but there it is. Hey shithead, spend three minutes googling and look up some old Germanic phrase, or just have him say "It's an ambush!".

I know it's just a game, but I don't want to have to suspend my disbelief. It's a jarring example of incongruence when you compare that to even the old Saladin campaign where every character suspiciously sounded like the narrator for the William Wallace learning campaign. In spite of the fact that probably one guy was doing all the voices, they could have been swashbuckling saber rattlers.

For example, you have to "send a message" from one Gothic leader to another. I haven't loaded it up in a while, I think it is the Alaric campaign.

Anyhow, it takes like fifteen or twenty minutes of stumbling through the fog of war, dodging arrows and shit (your light cavalry only has like 15 HP for some reason) and then you finally get to deliver this message, which basically says to attack. At least in the original Age of Empires II campaigns, they never jerked you around with pointless quests, rather it would be a wagon you had to defend (and they gave you actual force to defend it with), and when you delivered it you'd get a ton of resources or bombard cannons or some shit.

Yeah, thanks, new AOEII crew for making such a monumental effort to create an epic story. There's a lot more than that, but I absolutely loved the Goths (Vikings were a close second, but their infantry just did not pack the same punch) so I played the Goth campaign legit. Huge disappointment.

I might be exaggerating here, they could have revamped it in that time.

They learned their mistakes in the African Kingdom campaigns, which were stellar by comparison. They could have easily fit into the original game, great adaptation without sacrificing the core gameplay.

In AK, my new favorite civilization was the Malians for their stupid powerful infantry (+1 pierce armor per age, crazy!) and generous wood bonus (-15% wood for all buildings). It's a decent economic bonus, though not as breaking as No Houses or -33% wood required for farms, still decent.

Team University researches 80% faster, as well. The faster Chemistry research alone can easily make or break a game.

The Ethiopians were also very strong.

So recommendation in general is, get the African Kingdoms DLC and play those campaigns.

If you like the Spanish, the Portuguese are also a gunpowder civ. They get to build "Feitoria" as well, which are relatively cheap buildings in the Imperial age that regenerate resources like a relic.

As far as your only source of income, they're not amazing, but when gold runs out and the game drags on, they can be used to hilarious effect to Bombard Tower troll your opponent to oblivion.

[Sweet Jones]

The developers that worked on Forgotten/African Kingdoms are just lazy in general. The game is littered with bugs, lags like crazy, and has never approached the level of bug-free gameplay of the patched original game (which is still played over at voobly). On the odd occasion they do try to fix a bug, they leave another in its place. The game has never recovered from patch 4.0, and now that we're up to like 4.6 or something, it is still nowhere near as smooth an experience as it was at patch 3.9, which was itself bugged as fuck. It's a blatant money grab.

If you want to play multiplayer online, go to voobly. You can download a compatibility patch to play the HD edition through voobly.

Personally out of the new civs I like Ethiopians most. Halb + siege onager is one of my favourite combinations, and they get free pike/halb upgrades and a unique tech for their siege. Their eco bonus is also very helpful, can lead to a very strong early castle age eco for spamming knights or going for a crazy boom.

[UroboricForms]

I grew up playing Age of Empires II and the Conquerors expansion. Those were great times. I played the first AoE and Rise of Rome also, but I came into the series with Age of Kings and naturally preferred the more refined gameplay and engine. Really good soundtrack too! The Attilla campaign from Conquerors is probably my favourite of the lot.

Damn, nostalgia. I had a lot of time for Age of Mythology too, which was flawed, but enough of the fundamentals were there to make it about as enjoyable when it came to spending hours playing Deathmatch against the AI and/or friends. Good campaign too. I didn't play Age of Empires III until several years after it was released and frankly, it was disappointing.

I was really into the Total War series back in those days too. Shogun, Medieval and their expansions were the shit. I enjoyed Rome, and I got as far as Medieval II, but the series began to lose its charm for me around then. Now they're made so many other games I can't keep up! Those first ones will always be the best.

[Rush87]

I'll be honest. I loved AOE but I was more of a city builder game kinda guy. I wasn't so much into the war much as I wanted to make a symmetrical, functional, self sufficient city lol.

[Wreckingball]

AoE I and II, all Warcraft, Dune 2 and Dune 2000, Starcraft, all C&Cs (the last one kind of sucked big time)
All great games. Any recommendations for good and new RTS games?

[Valentine]

Nice, didn't realise there was so many other AoE fans.

That machine gun car was dope.

During my teens I used to love playing this with friends.

There would always be three of us playing and lots of backstabbing and temporary truces before raiding each other's towns raining down arrows.

Good times.

After Age of Mythology I got into Command and Conquer for a while which was pretty good.

Kids these days are mostly into League of Legends and StarCraft from what I've heard.

[paullyFIRE]

AOE LOGIC:



AOE2 + the C&C Generals series are my childhood favourites.

Thanks for the dose of nostalgia.

[General Stalin]

(05-04-2016 09:53 AM)Wreckingball Wrote:  

AoE I and II, all Warcraft, Dune 2 and Dune 2000, Starcraft, all C&Cs (the last one kind of sucked big time)
All great games. Any recommendations for good and new RTS games?

RTS is really a dying breed. Most recent one I played and enjoyed was Planetary Annihilation. Also, not "newer" at all but a very great RTS is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (and all 3 expansions). If you're an old school Westwood(RIP) fan and like the Dune series, you ever play Emperor: Battle for Dune? One of my favorite RTS games.

All the ones you listed are pretty good, except I think the C&C Generals series sucked. Red Alert and Tiberium reboots were good. Tiberian Sun/Firestorm and Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge are pure gold.

RTS was my shit. Hell, signing up for a Battle.net account is where my username originated from. AoE I & II are timeless classics. I used to play as the Babylonians a lot. A similar game which was also really fun was Rise of Nations. A lot like AoE where you started primitive and advanced your army through different ages of technology, but instead of peaking at the Iron age you could advance all the way up to a post modern age with nuclear weapons and the whole 9.

[NilNisiOptimum]

Stalin, did you see the announcement of Dawn of War 3 yesterday? Nothing more than "yes we're making it", but it got me excited.

As for strategy titles in general, AOE always took a back seat to Civ 2 (and later 4) for me. There's just something too irresistible about Ghandi deploying nukes. Or with the addition of Great People in 4, seeing the phrase "Moses has been born in Chicago".

[Irenicus]

[General Stalin]

(05-04-2016 11:13 AM)NilNisiOptimum Wrote:  

Stalin, did you see the announcement of Dawn of War 3 yesterday? Nothing more than "yes we're making it", but it got me excited.

As for strategy titles in general, AOE always took a back seat to Civ 2 (and later 4) for me. There's just something too irresistible about Ghandi deploying nukes. Or with the addition of Great People in 4, seeing the phrase "Moses has been born in Chicago".

I thought DoW 2 was dog shit so development of DoW 3 doesn't exactly excite me. I've never seen a more drastic reshaping of RTS mechanics from 1st installment to 2nd installment ever. DoW 2 isn't even an RTS, it's like a squad-management battle simulator.

I never played any of the Civ games, though I know people who do play them are obsessed. Most people I know don't play Civ, but the couple that do, it's basically the only games they are into. I suppose I ought to check it out one of these days.

[zigZag]

For me Life is feudal is definitely the game to replace AOE with. If you have the time to invest. It's like a first person version of AOE... Don't start playing it if you don't have the time to invest!

[Irenicus]

(05-04-2016 12:35 AM)2Wycked Wrote:  

So I bought the Steam version the other day. . .



Been playing Deathmatches as the Spanish. Salt marshes so I can dominate the AI with my superior navy. Wicked shit.

Any custom campaigns ya'll would recommend?

http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/sh...leid=10402

And all the mods from this creator.

It works on HD (the newest campaign does not), but, if you can get hold of AOE2+ Exp, alongside the most recent patch (I found it on Pirate Bay), everything will go smoothly.

[Grodin]

Strategy games are the only kind of game that holds my interest, since I was a teen. Before that I used to play all kinds of games.

Spent many years playing AOE, warcraft, c&c, lords of the realm, crusader kings II. My favorite is CIV 4, I have wasted so many hours playing that game, too many... at the moment I've uninstalled all games in my house

One game that I love that I never see mentioned anywhere - Romance of the Three Kingdoms II on the SNES. Simplistic graphics and even simple gameplay compared to other strategy games - but I liked the personnel management aspect. As well as the multiplayer ability and the character creater - conquer China as Cao Cao, Liu Bei, King Kong or Lon Dong your choice.

[armenia4ever]

Me and GoldStarHawk have actually been playing AOE2HD - the remake that they released on steam. Haven't been able to play in about two months, but it does bring back some memories.

Not too graphic intensive, though I think its about 20$ on Steam. Hit us up if you are down to play some time.