RON compared with Age of empires 2?

[TNdaSZ]

It seems that the gameplay of AOE 2 is just a stage of history in RON(for example, medival-ish)
What's the point of playing AOE 2 while you can choose to play its equivalent period in ROE?
What does AOE 2 do better than ROE in that regard?
Hope to get some insightful opinions of that :)
Thank you!

[aflashman]

There are fewer ages in AoE2 but there are more features related specifically to those ages than the ages in Rise of Nations. AoE2 is much more micro oriented than RoN2. It is also far better documented than RoN. The amount of strategy guides, youtube tutorials and commented pro-games for AoE2 truly is vast. For an example of this check out ZeroEmpires youtube channel, especially the commented games featuring the Viper.

Take the collection of resources in AoE2 for example. In the Dark Age you don't simply build farms, if you are seeking to optimize food production. You have to first find the sheep, bring them back to the TC, then hunt the boar (hunting the boar is a mini-game in its own right), build a mill, collect the berries, and then build farms. And when you do finally build those farms you have to mindful of their placement. This actually takes a fair amount of skill, especially for a newb. If you fail to follow the steps in absolutely the most optimum way you will fall behind your enemy badly. It actually takes quite a bit of microing skill to pull-off this one small component of the game perfectly.

That is just a small example. There are fewer ages in AoE2 and it takes longer to progress through the Ages, but those Ages are far more detailed.

Btw these qualities that I think make AoE2 a great game also annoys some players. I have many friends who consider AoE2 to be too fiddly, and requiring of too much economic micromanagement. Thus while most of them spent a number of years playing AoE2 they switched to RoN and have never gone back. I like both games, personally.

[TNdaSZ]

Originally posted by afLaSHman:

There are fewer ages in AoE2 but there are more features related specifically to those ages than the ages in Rise of Nations. AoE2 is much more micro oriented than RoN2. It is also far better documented than RoN. The amount of strategy guides, youtube tutorials and commented pro-games for AoE2 truly is vast. For an example of this check out ZeroEmpires youtube channel, especially the commented games featuring the Viper.

Take the collection of resources in AoE2 for example. In the Dark Age you don't simply build farms, if you are seeking to optimize food production. You have to first find the sheep, bring them back to the TC, then hunt the boar, build a mill, collect the berries, and then build farms. And when you do finally build those farms you have to mindful of their placement. This actually takes a fair amount of skill, especially for a newb. If you fail to follow the steps in absolutely the most optimum way you will fall behind your enemy badly. It actually takes quite a bit of microing skill to pull this one small component of the game perfectly.

That is just a small example. There are fewer ages in AoE2 and it takes longer to progress through the Ages, but those Ages are far more detailed.

Btw these qualities that I think make AoE2 a great game also annoy some players. I have many friends who consider AoE2 to be too fiddly, and requiring of too much economic micromanagement. Thus while most of them spent a number of years playing AoE2 they switched to RoN and have never gone back. I like both games, personally.

I got you. So economy wise, AoE2 is too complicated for thoese who don't wanna spend much time on it right?

[aflashman]

Originally posted by TNdaSZ:

I got you. So economy wise, AoE2 is too complicated for thoese who don't wanna spend much time on it right?

For some players yes. In my opinion both RoN and AoE2 are brilliant games.

Of course if you want to leave the economy right out of it all together and just concentrate on the fighting play Company of Heroes (it is an awesome game).

[TNdaSZ]

Originally posted by afLaSHman:

Originally posted by TNdaSZ:

I got you. So economy wise, AoE2 is too complicated for thoese who don't wanna spend much time on it right?

For some players yes. In my opinion both RoN and AoE2 are brilliant games.

Of course if you want to leave the economy right out of it all together and just concentrate on the fighting play Company of Heroes.

Like you said, AoE2 is still a great game. I just don't like the economy part of it. How does AoE3 compare to AoE2 in that regard?
Is the econ in AOE3 more streamlined?

[TNdaSZ]

I still want to try to enjoy AOE series :)

[aflashman]

Originally posted by TNdaSZ:

Like you said, AoE2 is still a great game. I just don't like the economy part of it. How does AoE3 compare to AoE2 in that regard?
Is the econ in AOE3 more streamlined?

I haven't played much AoE3, and the little I did play was a long time ago so I can't remember how intense the economic micro was in AoE3. The little I have played I did not like it at all. I can't quite put my finger on it but the developers sucked the life out of AoE3. AoE2 today is far more popular than AoE3.

[TNdaSZ]

Originally posted by afLaSHman:

Originally posted by TNdaSZ:

Like you said, AoE2 is still a great game. I just don't like the economy part of it. How does AoE3 compare to AoE2 in that regard?
Is the econ in AOE3 more streamlined?

I haven't played much AoE3, and the little I did play was a long time ago so I can't remember how intense the economic micro was in AoE3. The little I have played I did not like it at all. I can't quite put my finger on it but the developers sucked the life out of AoE3. AoE2 today is far more popular than AoE3.

Alright I got it. Thanks for sharing the experience!

[aflashman]

I should add that sort of mini-game thing with optimizing food production is just a dark age thing. Before too long you will run out of sheep, berries and animals to hunt and just do farming for food.

After that you just build lots of farms (you can build as many farms as you want). Farms run out after a little, which is something you have to look out for. To avoid villagers standing around idle after the farms run out, you can queue extra farms at the mill. So long as you have new farms queued the farming villagers will automatically build new farms.

In Age of Empires 2 you constantly make villagers and constantly move them around as resources run out. It is not that hard really, especially if you use hotkeys. I always assign the idle villager hotkey to my scroll down mouse button, that way I can easily keep on top of the villagers and make sure they are productive. The other thing you must do is keep cycling through each TC and press the hotkey to make a new villager (I usually queue two new villagers for each TC at a time).

With RoN you don't have to spend so much time looking after the villagers. The equivalent in RoN is research - keep pressing the tab button and make sure you are constantly researching.

[TNdaSZ]

Originally posted by afLaSHman:

I should add that sort of mini-game thing with optimizing food production is just a dark age thing. Before too long you will run out of sheep, berries and animals to hunt and just do farming for food.

After that you just build lots of farms (you can build as many farms as you want). Farms run out after a little, which is something you have to look out for. To avoid villagers standing around idle after the farms run out, you can queue extra farms at the mill. So long as you have new farms queued the farming villagers will automatically build new farms.

In Age of Empires 2 you constantly make villagers and constantly move them around as resources run out. It is not that hard really, especially if you use hotkeys. I always assign the idle villager hotkey to my scroll down mouse button, that way I can easily keep on top of the villagers and make sure they are productive. The other thing you must do is keep cycling through each TC and press the hotkey to make a new villager (I usually queue two new villagers for each TC at a time).

With RoN you don't have to spend so much time looking after the villagers. The equivalent in RoN is research - keep pressing the tab button and make sure you are constantly researching.

Thanks for the tips! I didn't know I could assign farmers to automatically biuld new farms after they run out until you taught. That should come in real handy eh?
How am I supposed to do that? By making a farming farmer build farms in the same place where he is farming?

And also, I still got the feeling that AOE 2 is really heavy on micro- management of its econ, probably heavier than most of other RTS games . It's even to the level of that in Civ 5

[aflashman]

Originally posted by TNdaSZ:

Thanks for the tips! I didn't know I could assign farmers to automatically biuld new farms after they run out until you taught. That should come in real handy eh?
How am I supposed to do that? By making a farming farmer build farms in the same place where he is farming?

And also, I still got the feeling that AOE 2 is really heavy on micro- management of its econ, probably heavier than most of other RTS games . It's even to the level of that in Civ 5

To queue farms at the mill
1. Select mill (hotkey: CTRL+i)
2. Click the farm icon to add farm to the queue. Press SHIFT + farm icon to add five farms (alternatively the hotkeys are A or SHIFT+A).

This video will show you how to play the Dark Ages in AoE2. It is very important to get off to a great start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJvtDLSkoQ

My other advice would be to learn the hotkeys (this is near mandatory for all RTS games). Micromanagement is much easier if you know the hotkeys. In fact it becomes almost unconscious (like touch-typing).

I made a hotkey trainer a little while back in Excel with VBA (you need either Excel 2010 or later... it might work with 2007 but I haven't test it). This will help you to learn the hotkeys for both RoN and AoE2.

https://dl.orangedox.com/3lgXAPDuuEbU7t7WUF/Hotkey%20Trainer.xlsm

Sometime the trainer gives an error message when it is first opened. But you can ignore this. It should work anyway.

There is a description of the trainer here.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/287450/discussions/0/618453594751692496/