It has been about 10 days since the last blog report, time for another one I’d say!
Website
It has also been 10 days since the launch of the website. And even such a seemingly trivial feature didn’t go without quarrels. The site made it to the frontpage of Reddit /r/gaming and our webhost didn’t like that amount of traffic. So we were sadly shut down for half of the time we had our little place in the internet spotlights. Then again, we’re happy to have spread the word to at least 40000 people during our first few days online đ
Maps
We have been testing some new maps as well. Not sure which will make it to the final version yet, but we have a nice array of extra choices! Golden Pit, Acropolis, Hillmania, Teamhills. I must say I very much fancy Acropolis.
Balance & Small features
We seem to come close to an end of balancing things. The new British UT (previously City Rights, giving TC +2 range and +50% HP) will be replaced by a technology to boost their Trebuchets (small blast radius). Which also addresses the main British weakness in late games. Namely their lack of a powerful response against heavy siege. Siege onagers, bombard cannons and even scorpions will now have a very hard time dodging the bullets of this stone-hurling monstrosity. On top of that, we did a lot of small bugfixes, Siege engineers, Chemistry and some civ bonuses didn’t work in all situations and this went largely unnoticed in the 13 years of AoK/AoC. Thank you all for reporting them.
Graphics
The palisade gate finally has construction graphics! So far we used construction graphics of the normal gate, which was just silly ofcourse.
Installer
An installer comes with many trivial things you would not expect at first. We want to add multi-lingual support to the installer, but adding support for languages with exotic characters is proving to be very challenging. The installer also communicates with the server, to check if you have the latest version and to update if necessary. But sending data over the internet must obviously be encrypted! All small thingy-bits that take time đ
Your voice!
Since the core of the game seems to come in clear, the list of necessary resources is also visibly shorter. Perhaps you can help us out on one of those? We’re currently still looking for some voice sets. Most civs in Age of Empires II have a unique voice set for villagers, soldiers, monks and kings. Currently we’re still looking to make unique sets for: Indians, Incas and Slavs. We have example voice files for all of those civs, but none of them are final, nor complete. Do you think you can help us out, feel free to drop a message below.
Hey I heard you’re increasing the blast radius of demo ships.Then how about increasing the range provided by Greek fire to +2 range so the Byz fire ships can destroy demo ships without getting blasted?
Demo ships are supposed to counter fireships, so that won’t be reversed đ
First of all: I love what you’re doing! Me and my friends will have a release party as soon as forgotten empires comes out. A suggestion: What do you think of making it possible to engage individual targets with the castle. It is normally firing at the first unit in range. But therefore the opponent can distract it quite easily. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to choose what you’re attacking? So you can pick out the siege weapons first. It would increase the defense capability of castles slightly by providing a new component of tactics… Best wishes from… Read more »
Thank you for the support!
About the suggestion: not sure if I understood it entirely, because the function to choose which target your castle has to attack is already in AoC. You basically right-click on a unit and the castle will attack it, if in range. If you were referring to an option where you can choose an automated attack order (example: always first siege), it’s highly unlikely that we would make such a system: microing is an important part of the AoE series.
Nice Map
Could yo put in a feature for onagers and siege onagers to specifically attack trees?Otherwise,on maps like black forest, they destroy trees automatically and this can burn a hole into our walls and allow the enemy to get through.
je pense que vous pourriez ajouter la possibilité de construire des ponts il serait long a construire et coûterais cher en pierre et serait incassable.
on pourrai construire le dĂ©but de ponts uniquement au endroit ou on peut construire des ports et finirai ou on peut construire aussi un port on construirai bloc pars bloc comme dans lâĂ©diteur et il serai impossible d’en construire sur la terre.
Suggestions: bloodlines tech should lower HP enhancement. First, Franks has no advantage during castle age; second, barrack units are too weak in this condition. Changes should be done to Teutonic Knight…it’s not a popular unit. Again I strongly suggest that the population of TC should change to 10. Many rookie players give up on playing AOC for it’s too hard to learn FC process. Ideas from Lockoff(a player from China) 1. Slavoc team bonus: it should be weaken, considering that Celts will get too strong if they are on the same team. 2. Itatlian team bonus: allowing allies to have… Read more »
TK has received a little boost.
10 pop TC would only make the game marginally easier.
Lockoff’s ideas:
1| Yes, this will probably be changed, just not sure to what.
2| That’s not the purpose of a team bonus, it doesn’t always benefit yourself most. For example, Chinese have a farmbonus but don’t have fully upgraded farms.
3| I agree it’s unrealistic, but balance/gameplay wise, it’s the best option.
for tc population suggestion:
most players stop playing AOC because they encounter great difficulties in upping to feudal and castle ages.
Hopefully the new AOC could be designed more easily for newbies without messing up with the balance.
Many new players choose Huns because it is easy for starters.
Small change like this will motivate players to try new civilizations.
Also this would let players make less mistakes and have better strats as the game goes on.
If disagree, I request a poll on the forum that can let others help decide on this
We’ll make it accessible to new players, but in a different way đ
Sorry for this, but just in case.
I think that the Mongols shouldnât have houses. Why? Because, under historical contents, they were a nomadic civilization much like the Huns. Therefore, itâs kind of weird for them to have houses when they rarely stayed in one area for long, and NEVER built permanent cities. I just see that as something that needs to be done. So that the game is more historically accurate if you
Will. Just a suggestion.
Do you need help to translate installer finnish?
Also i am curious; how do you manage to take that overall view of map. Do you use some kind of tool. PLEASE INFORM!