![]() ![]() The team wanted to “bring as much care and attention as we could to these things, because … our audience is these cultures. So, the English go from thatched roofs in the first age all the way to late medieval structures by the end of the game.” “Each civilization has its own musical theme,” says Boulle, “ increases in complexity and depth as you progress through the ages. So, when playing as the English, you start in the Dark Ages unable to understand your units, until you age up and they start speaking in Ye Olde English. All civilizations have unique theme music and their units speak “period-appropriate languages”. The “Age” in Age of Empires is not there for show: moving with your civilization from one age to the next is one of series' defining features.Ī special effort this time has been made to convey that growth with the music and art design. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Audio and art direction Naval units were also teased, so they are definitely included, but we’ll have to wait a little longer for some more details. “So scouts become super-important later in the game, because they're the things that detect if there's a giant murder squad waiting inside of the treeline to kill you.” “Scouts now can see into stealth forests,” Isgreen explains. Yes, you heard that right stealth is finally here! And this could give the underused and oft-neglected scout units a game-changing role. One of the most exciting reveals in the preview are stealth units and stealth forests. Now, we played with that formula quite a bit across the different civilizations, but we always wanted to make sure that those three categories were represented in a way that people could totally understand because it is kind of the staple of what makes Age of Empires, ‘Age of Empires’” “We wanted to make sure that there was always the triangle between Pikemen, ranged units, and mounted units that you've pretty much had in all the Age of Empires games. “There still will be generic units,” says Isgreen. Though great effort has been put into making civilizations more unique, generic units also remain. Your units can scale walls and defend from them too. It appears the team has heard you loud and clear and siege combat is indeed included. One of the most often requested additions fans have wanted to see in Age of Empires 4 are better siege options. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Units and combat They have a very unique mechanic about moving around stone deposits, and how they use stone and leverage stone in order to wage war.” “The thing that we really wanted to push is the civilization diversity,” says Isgreen, “and you saw some of that in the video, with the Mongols being able to pack up all their buildings and move their entire civ somewhere else on the map. You get a small taster of the type of asymmetry in the civs from the short snippets of the Mongols that you see in the preview. A lot of work has been done to make each Age 4’s civs’ more unique in playstyle and feel.Īs Duffy says, “the different mechanics the civs have – whether it's unique units or their age-up mechanics, the special bonuses they get for city building, the 'influence system', as we call it, where you can get bonuses driven from your landmark choice – open up a whole bunch of new play and gameplay opportunities in the game.” This more “asymmetrical” design has its plusses (different races are like different games) and minuses (balance). Traditionally, civs in Age of Empires have played much like each other, in contrast to some other real time strategy games (RTS), whose races can play quite differently from one another. There will be eight civs at launch, with the Mongols, Delhi, Chinese, and English, being revealed so far. ![]() (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Civilizations ![]()
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