Comments

Microsoft (the publisher of the original game) shut down the servers not the devs at GPG.

 

The civ design did not kill the game. The darn monetization killed the game. Have you not seen Trajan’s talk?

The guy who designed the Romans designed Persia, Celts, Babylonians, and the Norse. I’m not sure why you don’t want us to follow the original designs to create the Romans. I would be surprised to learn anyone even knows what those designs are.

 

they did that because nobody was spending money on the game and people were really mad at drip-feeding the content. The game was literally months behind their schedule. They released 2 civs that are basically leftover art slapped together (babylonians and norse). Not to mention that those civs were just made stupidly powerful so people would actually play/buy them. The final blow was alliances system and EP rework thich made game 100% free and killed any revenue. If you had 1 civ level 40 you'd basically get new premium civ by the time you're done leveling another. They also focused very hard on PvP aspect of the game which community didn't give a damn about since it was not accesible or refined. We made hundreds of post of feedback and nobody even read that. Some bugs last until Celeste fixed them.

To put it short, I don't trust old devs. They failed us. I give them no credibility and I would discourage team from doing so.

 

I was heavily involved in the entire run of AoE:O and the monetization while being huge part was not the entire problem. You see, if product is good people will spend money no matter what. And here lies the issue. Game failed to captivate new players while older players just abused everything to maximum.

As for the guy who designed the civs- you basically have Persia, Celts, Persia 2.0 and Celts 2.0. I'd argue that he made 2 civs and just couldn't fit all ideas into one. Or had to do with what he had and just reused a lot of art and ideas.

I think releasing Romans is huge milestone for entirity of AoE:O and Celeste and it will either be following what was started 7 years ago with copy pasta or embarking on new route in 2019.

 

I have no idea what your expectations were for the Babylonians and the Norse. We are attempting to create a civ that both is unique and fits in. It sounds like you may not like that philosophy and would prefer we break the mold. I believe the Romans will be plenty unique without us going crazy. Again, we have not revealed hardly anything.

 

It looks beautiful , outstanding job for an independent fan project but at the same time , it looks weird.

It looks weird when put alongside the barracks from the other Civs and kinda out of place . . mostly cause all the other barracks have such an square and simple foundation while this one is full of curves , I get why since is a tent instead of a proper building but even when put alongside the other roman buildings it looks weird , they having such an square art-style the Castellum really stands out with all those curves.

The Praesidium looks gorgeous as well but I don't know X'D it gets that square tower on the top while the foundation still looks all curvy and improvised. It would have a little more sense for that wall outside the tent to get straighten after upgrading the Castellum into a Prasidium IMHO , and yes I know I'm just being picky with that but outside that little detail it just looks awesome.

Regarding the Legionaries I'm glad they are getting into the game but letting them have 2 extra upgrades instead of just 1 haves no sense even after reading the explanation and feels completely unnecessary IMHO.

They will still viable in the later ages even without that Bellum Romanum. Why not leaving them with just the Champion upgrade and instead putting that charge stuff into the equivalent of the Academy/Zigurat of the Romans to maintain game design consistency with the other Civs just like the Persian and Babylonians have done with unit specific upgrades ?

And why choosing a Charge attack like the Babylonian Lancers and Wood Riders ? that will not make them stand out from the rest of infantry , it haves sense with the little background you give about the Bellum Romanum but It would have more sense to use their Iconic Testudo formation as an upgrade to make them stand out from the other infantry in the game .

Or maybe a passive ability that reference Roman formations and efficiency for example :
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"When having 30 legionaries standing together or more they gain extra attack and speed" ​

Passively without any technology research , just the same way Immortals can attack from a distance without investing in any technology.

Having a passive ability like that would also discourage players from rushing with just legionaries and encourage the use of larger armies instead of sending legionaries one by one , and would also make it easier to represent other kind of formations like the Testudo formation in the game without having to make extra animations , for example : ​

"Having 50 legionaries in the same group increase their Pierce and Crush armor but reduces their speed"
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That would had more sense IMHO to make them feel unique instead of giving the "Elite" status , If you want to give them upgrades 2 ages in a row you already have an example of that in the the game , the Sparabaras get their Champion upgrade at age 2 , and they get another significant upgrade at age 3 in the form of Shield Wall at the War Academy to archive the same effect you search of staying relevant into later ages.

I know that my suggestion of passive formations into the game is not that difficult to implement but it would take a lot of time to make it feel fluid into the gameplay , so my more realistic suggestion is that you take out that "elite" upgrade out of the legionaries and put it in the comparative of the WarAcademic/Zigurat of the Romans to keep consistency in game design.

And I know is to much to ask but can you please not go the "charge attack" upgrade ? and instead something more related with legionaries and just legionaries , cause Bellum Romanum affected everyone in the roman armies , from Cavalry to Legionaries , Veles etc . . . the Testudo was more Iconic from that unit instead of changing mindlessly to the enemy once they are in range like wood riders . .

Thank you for reading , the Castellum was awesome but I really have my doubts on the legionaries but I will play them regardless XD good job !.

PD : BTW what happened with the "Marian Reformations" tech and the Veles ? weren't they supposed to be the age 2 infantry unit ? , they were the bunch of the roman army , the legionaries were the core but they were not alone and they were not the majority of the Roman Army x'D

PD2: I hope I didn't offend the team with my suggestions , but really the "elite" stuff is unnecessary , and inconsistent with all the other civs , it will not be the first infantry to get 2 significant upgrades 2 ages in a row so . . it haves no sense , unless ya change the Sparabaras into Elite Sparabaras but that would be kinda dumb , so I suggest you to stay only with Champion Legionaries and put that extra upgrade somewere else n - n U sorry I hope that doesn't offend the team.

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There’s lots of interesting ideas in this thread that we considered ourselves. Unfortunately, many are unrealistically complex. We considered formations. But this game does not have formations built into it. We would have to create an entire different UI to do so, and it would be an incredible amount of work and would be super unbalanced.

It was weird they built the Greeks without the phalanx formation, too. But here we are.

We considered ways to bring the pilum in. Stay tuned.

It’s fun though. We announce something new like distinguishing the Legionary with two upgrades and people tell us that it doesn’t match the other civs. So then they ask us for different ideas that don’t match the other civs.

 

As I thought you are constrained by the core mechanics, I think we will have a great new Civ, but you cannot please everyone, guys games are built within architectures ... you cannot just magic code ...
Pilum .. ?? now that sounds good ..

 

Yeah for sure. It’s funny going from players to developers. Ideas are free and everyone has plenty of them. Take Roman Roads. When brainstorming Rome, anyone would come up with the idea. But then what? How do roads translate to an AoEO match? Even if you assume the engine will magically let us landscape in the middle of a match, what the hell is a road going to be, a building? We are seriously going to use up one of only 5 available building slots on roads? And then they are going to crisscross all over the map? Would your enemy be able to use them? If not, then it’s preposterous. And if so, it’s a completely silly mechanic. And this is something people want at the expense of other parts of the civ that actually work right and make sense? We can’t just add everything we want. If we add something, we must subtract something else. Otherwise the Romans would be insane. All told, there’s just going to be things we don’t do with the Romans that someone will get bent out of shape and lecture us about. Oh well. All we can do is our best and then give it all away for free. Haha. The internet is magical.

 

Well, I for one am deeply impressed that you reached a stage, where you can even consider adding a new Civ to the game... I take my hat off to you, Celeste Team. Kudos!

 

Awesome, great work!!

 

Does this mean we should refrain from posting our feedback until you release Romans and then just drop everything? If you're going to dismiss any negative feedback based on "you didn't see what I saw" you might as well stop posting those blogs. Why bother?

 

Exactly, if you are a Geek like me , then you understand coding, engines etc. Some people have no grasp of how what came before (engine) has a deep influence of what you can introduce., what you can tweak and some things are not possible. e.g. better pathing for markets , seriously Celts and Gyps .. but it's a 'feature' when you know it then you deal with it LoL ...

 

err NO, it means you read the answers and accept that some ideas are not possible (even with 1000's of dev's as it means a re-write), move on and use your creativity positively to suggest things that can actually be implemented .. what is the value of posts that say "My way or the highway" ? or asking for the moon ?? or re-pathing gyp marketplace ??

your choice bro peace and lurrve

 

I am a geek, but I guess not in the same way as you. I don't understand coding and engines. But the other guys do. I just talk more than them here. I know we have been looking very hard at how to push the engine and bring brand new things to the game. Because of the time it takes to create brand new features (like, for instance, allow players to create a road on top of the existing map landscape) we need to be super choosy about where we spend our time. It seems like roads would not only require us to overcome all sorts of technical hurdles. But even then, implementing the feature into a civ would require a dedicated building and possibly a dedicated unit and dedicated techs seems. When creating a civ, buildings, units, and techs are always in scarce supply. So having Roman Roads would require us to dedicate a lot of those scarce things to a feature that would ultimately just improve units' movement speed. The irony is that we already can increase movement speed without any of this stuff. Again, this is all stuff we considered when we designed the civ.

 

Excellent work again guys, looks fantastic as always.

Gaiacheck, I think you are jumping the gun a little, this is literally the first unit revealed. You cannot make such assumptions without knowing more about the rest of the plans for the civ and the restrictions that this team is working with. I mean the fact that we are seeing a new civ being added to this game is quite frankly stunning.

I can see that so far this has all been well thought out and I'm impressed with the quality of the work. As always though, you will never be able to please everyone.

 

Again I am impressed with the decision making process you document. I have always wanted to have insight into game development and in this case, I have it. I look forward to the weekly blog. Thank you again.

 

You guys do great work. With all the talk Microsoft’s been putting out about Age of Empires recently, I’m concerned about the possibility of a C&D order. I pray that doesn’t happen. Thank you for reviving my favorite game.

I love these design blogs. One of my favorite things about this game has always been imagining up what future civs might look like (I’m particularly hoping to see China one day). Reading your breakdown of the process used for designing civs just gets me so excited by then possibilities.

I dig the mini-fort take on the barracks, that’s going to be a ton of fun to play with. I’m lukewarm on legionnaires having a charge attack, as I feel it infringes on some of the uniqueness of the Celts. Of course, in the context of the full Roman faction, it could be perfect. Just gotta wait and see.

 

So Gaiacheck, would you want to turn the game into aomo, with flying units, chained attack units and such that rely moreso on myth? Or how else would you propose to try and introduce something "unique"? There is a suggestions section or here may be appropriate briefly.

I do really like the Romans so far, I think it looks good. Realistically, without a community brainstorm on "new mechanics" and how to actually fit it into the theme of the game, the team is quite limited to doing things like relying on mixing up mechanics across different unit types, and looking at structure design. This is for both the balance and thematic reasons and as Andy has said, the fact that legionaries scale better into lategame is going to mean that the civ will be a lot like Persian in that their other infantry options will be fairly limited, and there will be other drawbacks the civ has in MUs from other parts of their tech for sure.

 

There is a lot of unique units that could be implemented for the Romans , but as you said wasting the 5 available buildings would be a waste , and about roads . . Roman Roads could be translated into the game as an unique technology , like the Persians have the Royal Roads upgrade on their market or as bonus speed for units at X units around the TC.

But no problem of course you can't do wherever you want with the Romans , Civs are meant to be balanced having them stand out and shine in different aspects from each other , like Persians are a with range units , Norse with infantry , Babs with siege and cavalry , the Romans need their own focus without outshining every civ in all aspects , that's common sense.

The only problem I personally have so far is that 3 upgrades for the Legionaries it doesn't really make them stand out that much and the elite status seams kinda forced , If I remember correctly the Romans were gonna get some "chieftain" like units that while being nearby the Legionaries he would give them bonus speed and bonus damage , that in my opinion would have made them stand out more , having synergy with officials to represent the formations and that way having the "Testudo" as an upgrade for such aura so instead of getting bonus speed the legionaries would get bonus defense.

I'm not insulting your work , I'm not giving feedback to offend you , we just have different takes in how they could be done , wherever or not I like that "elite" name in that specific unit I will still give them a shot , I still love the game and I'm very glad someone is taking the time to expand it , keep doing an excellent job and don't get discouraged for the negative feedback , is true you could have taken another approach but you are limited by the resources and the game itself , don't get discouraged. good luck I'm hyped to see all the other unique units that the Romans have !