While the release date is lurking closer, we’re hitting the game hard with the balance hammer! But before we’re going down that rabbit hole, let’s take a look back at The Forgotten expansion, to see what we did right and what we did wrong.
Looking back
Balance changes always come with the necessary controversy. And no matter what you do, not 100% of the players will be satisfied by it. But we can try! Looking back at AoF, we wanted to make sure more of the existing civilizations and units would have a chance to shine. Huns are nerfed all across the board, Mongol Mangudai aren’t as completely OP anymore, Aztecs lost some of their early strength and Mayans see their Plumed Archers come at a higher price. Good starts but in some cases, we could’ve gone further. However, not all of those changes were as popular. Players prefer to see boosts to unpopular units, rather than seeing their beloved units being punished directly.
Which is also the road we’re taking from now on. We’re focusing on bringing extra strength to some of the civs that desperately lack it and we’ll keep the nerfing limited to places where we see no other realistic options.
The Forgotten vs The African Kingdoms
With a second expansion coming out, how do we combine this with the first one? What about people who just have The African Kingdoms, will they miss out on the earlier balance changes? A lot of questions to answer, but we picked the most player-friendly one. All balance changes will be the same in both expansions. This means, that regardless of the expansion you own, you’ll see all balance changes and also all new generic technologies and units. Speaking of which, there will be 3 new generic units, two of which will be revealed later in this dev blog.
This also means that with the release of The African Kingdoms, owners of The Forgotten will also see those new units pop up alongside the new balance changes.
So, which civs to balance? Overall, we’re quite happy with the state of the game now, some of the original civs will see changes, but most of the changes will come to the Forgotten civs. More specifically to “the 3 I’s”, Italians, Incas and Indians. We’re still deciding how exactly they’ll change, but expect some powerful Eagle Warriors streaming from the Andes. Last but not least, a lot of the Castle Age unique technologies will see their costs slashed.
Claiming the sea
Water warfare is a tricky business in Age of Empires II. Most water maps are decided by who has the most galleys the quickest. Even though we tried to boost Fire Ships and Demolition Ships in The Forgotten, it didn’t touch the base problem: there is no counter system in the Feudal Age. Because of that, flawless execution of a standard build order often meant more than having tactical insight and adapting to your enemy’s choices. Even though all are core elements of RTS games, we had the impression the balance was tipped too much to execution rather than tactical decisions. Time to go to the drawing board!
We figured that no matter how strong you make Fire Ships, they would have to counter large fleets of Galleys, which could’ve been massed easily for an entire age before you can get out your fire nozzles. So instead of making the Feudal Age a galley-fest, we decided to introduce 2 new ships to make a proper rock-paper-scissor system.
Welcoming to the stage, Fire Galleys and Demolition Rafts!
We’re still in the progress of balance testing and tweaking them properly, but so far, water maps have never been so fun and varied right off the bat. We can reveal however that the Fire Galley will be the first unit in the game with just 1 attack. And despite that, they rock your boat. Literally.
And to spice it up even more, one of the new civilizations will have a naval unique unit. Until recently its unit description in the game was “does funky stuff against galleys”, good thing we have an attentive testing team. Regardless, they still do funky stuff against galleys! 😉
LAN Party!
Last but not least, play-testing a game doesn’t go without players. Although, when it comes to balancing the basic bonuses, it oddly enough doesn’t come down to players, but to a lot of spreadsheets with calculations and statistics. However, playing a game is much more fun than statistically analyzing it, so it’s time for a LAN party! For the past few years, we gathered with a group of players just to have some fun AoE2 LAN parties, but with The African Kingdoms coming out soon, we figured it would be the perfect opportunity to turn it into a full-fledged playtest-party! The location this year was inspiringly medieval as we all gathered up in the wonderful city of Prague.
Concentration required in this team.
The opposing team is locked away in another room.
Seeing how the new African civs stack up against the old ones.
Live casting from ZeroEmpires as he’s playing a match in a mini 1v1 tournament.
A cuppa tea is necessary for our British players to be at the top of their game.
Group picture, thanks everyone for making it an awesome week!
In case you’re wondering how we’re holding a LAN party on Age of Empires II HD, this option was never really removed from the game. It just has been integrated with the rest of the multiplayer system. If you host a game and have your friends join locally, the connection will then turn local as well. The only requirement is that you need an internet connection to set up the game, but after that, the whole game goes and stays local, so you can enjoy pings of 1-2 ms 🙂
Voice Acting competition
Thanks to everyone who submitted their entry for the Voice Acting competition! We received a total of 56 entries and we’ll contact the winner next week. He or she will have their line featured in the game and a special thanks in the credits 🙂
The third civilization is the Ethiopians isn’t it? Malians, Berbers and Ethiopians. That’d be fantastic!
Are there going to be any non-African civilizations added as well like the Knights Templar/of Malta and the Portuguese?
https://www.forgottenempires.net/wp-content/uploads/aoak_hd_logo-1024×576.png
Which of those do you reckon the white bloke on the right is?
Hopefully king Alfonso I the Conqueror! 😀
As blueskirt said it seems very likely that the Portuguese will be added. Whether that is actually Afonso I or someone else, I don’t know. Looking at the plated armour, it would seem anachronic but I guess it doesn’t really matter, he can be just a generic king for all I care 🙂
The fleur de lis on the crown suggests someone from a french house, as Afonso Henriques’ (Alphonso I) father was. I have no idea why I always think of D.João II (John II) when I look at that badass, absolutely-no-treachery-allowed face… 😉
They probably don’t refer to any monarch in particular though; did MS ever confirm it was Montezuma or Cortez on the cover of AoC?
True, but then again three out of our four dynasties had French origin, the Avis line was descended from the Burgundian one (you can even see the fleur-de-lis on their banner), and even the Bragança line had lineage from the Avis – hence why they actually had a claim to the throne in the first place.
I honestly don’t care who it is, as long as the civ gets added :p
No idea about who it was on the AoC cover though.
On the box art posted by Leovigildo, the guy on the left wears a similar attire as some people wore in certain group photographs of Haile Selassie I, and considering the historical importance of the kingdom of Aksum, then the Abyssinian empire, and then the Ethiopian empire in the region, in term of trade, diplomacy and conflicts, the Abyssinian/Ethiopian, are pretty much expected to be one of the new civs introduced in the expansion even if they have not been officially confirmed yet. As for the guy on the right, he bears similarities with the king Afonso I of Portugal,… Read more »
I’m confused! How many civilizations are there going to be in the new expansion? Three, five, or more?
Argh! This dearth of information is killing me!
Conqueror bring 5 new civs, forgotten bring 5 too. If this not bring 5 civs people will be mad and furious.
Malta is very unlikely, it is just a Small island on the mediterranean and nt a big empire like the other civs.
Other Languages will be available?
Great Job !! Being Following you since TheForgotten Arrived !!
Cheers from Mexico !!
how about fixing the multi queue issue while you’re at it.
I don’t know who has noticed what I’m about to tell here, and i hope that this issue is not a purpose. Did you know that camels’ attack bonus does not work against Byzantine’s unique cavalry? Just now I entered the map editor and made a testing map, and the camel does 4 dmg to a cataphract (2 dmg absorbed). However camel does some extra dmg against knights (13dmg + 2 absorb -> 2.5x bonus). Works against light cav too with the same effect (2.5x). Kamayuk does 5 dmg to Cataphracs. Samurai does 16 dmg to it (8 dmg normally).… Read more »
The cataphract have +10 armor vs anti-cav units and this is not described in tech tree. Camels are supposed to do bonus damage vs cavalry and this bonus is canceled on cataphracts. I agree that this need to be described in the tech tree.
But pikemen’s bonus works against it well. What I told above, but made it confusing, the pikemen was the one who made 12 dmg/hit to the cataphract (2/1). If this anti-cav armor really exist, then not even pikemen would do the bonus against it, but it did. The Incan special unit, the kamayuk which is also supposed to be anti-cav units, does not get any bonus. Be it from a bug or purpose, it is OP.
Pikemen are supposed to do 22 dmg on cavalry, but does only 12 on cats. But I think you are wrong about Kamayuks, because in one game I remember playing Byz vs Incans, one single fully upgraded cataphract killed 3 elite kamayuks very easily.
Yes, one cat could ill easily 3 kamayuks, i dont even need to check it. Kamayuks deal 15 dmg to normal cav, that minus 10 is 5, so we have the OP armor working. Okay thanks, I get the numbers now. But still this is freaking OP, bc there’s no counter to them. Samurais bonus works, so maybe, If i can get 2 samurais for every OP horsemen, then I may have some chance. Teutonic knights have good armor, but even those get wrecked and also are too expensive. So, thank you for you answers, now I understand the situation.
it all i good but malians need to lose champion just give them two handed swordsmen they are too powerful thank you.