AOE 2 vs AOM vs AOE 3

[BeefcakeNukem]

Which Age of Empires game, do you think, is the best?

Here are my findings:

AOE 2 has plenty of strategical options, exploration and expansion, lots o army combinations for every civ, but they are almost identical, the skill ceiling is very high and the first half of every game is a bit slow.

AOM is almost like AOE 2 but the maps feel a bit smaller and the expansion is more driven by the map design. Also the civs feel more specialized than in AOE 2, thus, the decision of how to play is partially based on which civ you play. The combat though is a bit chore in my opinion, it always evolves in endlessly repeating clashes, maybe because of the rock-paper-scissors mechanics.

AOE 3 is a biggest departure in terms of the game flow in my opinion, maps feel much more confined, with less stress on exploration, expansion and even economy management, but it is still enough to entertain, the combat feels more like in AOE 2 and the overhauled upgrade system seems cool, it adds some variety without much imbalance and the late game is pretty hillarious.

Which one do you find to be the best?

[Thats How We do action in Uganda]

aom and aoe3 are trash, waste of time and money, even AOE1 is way better.

[CatSup]

AoE2

[Whakahoatanga]

Depends on what you're looking for.

If you love fewer, more asymmetric civs pick AOE3 or AOM.

If you like complex economy, pick AOE2 or AOM.

If you like building pretty cities without rushing too much, pick AOE2 and play on easier difficulties against the AI.

They all have their merits. I personally like AOE2 the most, though there's definitely nothing wrong with prefering AOE3 or AOM.

[Maroliver]

AOE2 is the best. AOM was kind of silly with the god powers and AOE3 is silly with the decks of cards, etc.

[WingedKagouti]

AoM if you want a noticable distinction between what units each civilization has.

AoE2 if you want a large online playerbase.

[Frenky]

I never played AoM, but I played AoE 2 for around 500 hours and AoE 3 for about 200 hours (including all editions) and I'd say AoE 2 if you like simple yet complex game that immerses you into building and empire or AoE 3 if you like complex yet simple game that has a very fast pace and constant battles

[leg]

I had 2000 ELO on both AoE2 and AoM at one point, AoE3 is the one I never played and I recently played it (it's simpler and a bit more sped up than the other ones w/ shipments, but equally not that hard). But I recently played AoE3 and with native civs I've been pretty good, it isn't hard to make a build order and understand it within a short time, sort of like an easier one in all regards.

For me I dislike AoE2 most now simply because of the 'long' and unthoughtful time to conduct simple actions. Some old games take way too long to determine a winner and AoE2 has been largely the same balance forever (other than 'civs' that change 1 or 2 things and add a late-game unique unit). It takes double time even to do like a faster game on AoE2.

AoM is probably the 'best' medium of the two as it had balances, totally different civs
that function slightly differently, shortens the game times substantially, yet retaining most of the original aspects of RTS and countering from AoE2 and main RTS. I really liked AoM the best even though I now rarely play either of them. Understanding and getting skilled in AoM was funnest I think out of the other games which I regard as casual.

AoE3 I recently tried with AoE3DE for the first time. It's easily 'a game', I like it as it's more fast paced than AoE2. A lot of players there are a lot less skilled than the top players in AoM however and they think many well-rounded defensive civs are the 'meta', building walls, booming, as well as 'building a forward base' is like their idea of a top play. So thus it's easy to pick a native civ or simply devise a rush and win even not being optimal. being new I got to like 15-1 type of streaks because the players are easy to slap but the ranking is broken and I'm not rly setting a goal to get to top. Even after all this time 'strategy' is still loosely established, many follow basic guides on it and think it's the best way, but the specialized civs many regard as worse can win quite substantially, while most players seem to want to sit back and boom with colonial civs before fighting all the time (taking out literally all advantage, upgrades, counters, and other variety)

AoE2 is 'ok' but I also dislike DE for purely being a mod. There were many old mods/things that I'm sure more people liked and were already ported to HD. They should have just added DE as a DLC for HD, instead of community splitting where now 2/3 of the players are on DE and 1/3 of them on HD. I feel the devs messed up re-releasing this so many times and also dividing it.. There shouldn't be just some visual/audio mod like DE and just re-selling it as a new game that is incompatible with all the other ones. Bad choice. Even if I don't care and haven't played AoE2 at all for years mainly it still isn't good to do that.

I feel it also has a lot of bad players who think the nostalgia of AoE2 (like with Doom and other titles I rarely play) make them think they are "oldschool" to play it but they never criticize how experimental it was. But many of them still suck after all those years, and the fact over 20 years of guides and top play have shown them what to do, they still suffer the same problems. Still all ensemble games are unique.

I simply don't like AoE2 most because it's technically 'slowest/easiest' of all of them, oldest (more people know non-thinking steps what to do to be good at it), and so winning on AoE2 is even more time investment. Mods/scenarios/other things are good on all of the games as long as they're fun and I've played plenty of singlepalyer campaigns/mods thru the years. Even if it's the most popular one for many I dislike playing the repetitive standard game on it rather than mods and other things.

That's sort of my ranking though. AoE2 = repetitive, AoM = a great blend, AoE3 = a bit too simple, but all of them are good. I dislike RTS games where everyone already knows what to do though as well, and AoE2 isn't so repetitive with mods.

Some fairly good RTS have come out but people just don't want to try or stick around the multiplayer, they instead like older games that are already figured out instead of a new challenge. That's mainly the reason I'm trying the DE version to just play vs players for fun, while not caring much about it anymore anyway.

[FlipperTime]

BeefcakeNukem eredeti hozzászólása:

Which Age of Empires game, do you think, is the best?

I find AoE II DE the best game of the three, but I have good expectations on AoM, particularly on a DE version.

AoE III I liked it a lot before the DE version. I'm quite mad at the devs for changing my favorite civ's depiction (the fire pits in particular, for the Aztecs). Now I feel like the game is more about progressiveness than about... being a game. That's a deal breaker for me, to be honest: I feel uncomfortable playing it.

[Quarantined_villager]

FelipeVidalOtero eredeti hozzászólása:

BeefcakeNukem eredeti hozzászólása:

Which Age of Empires game, do you think, is the best?

I find AoE II DE the best game of the three, but I have good expectations on AoM, particularly on a DE version.

AoE III I liked it a lot before the DE version. I'm quite mad at the devs for changing my favorite civ's depiction (the fire pits in particular, for the Aztecs). Now I feel like the game is more about progressiveness than about... being a game. That's a deal breaker for me, to be honest: I feel uncomfortable playing it.

Use mods to change the names back, easy

[robert de wiro]

aoe2

[XLightningStormL]

AoM Player here, whilst there is a heavy lean towards the Rock-Paper-Scissors in combat, it's actually a a misconception led on by the simplified unit descriptions (or tool tips) let's take basic infantry units: Ulfs, Hops, and Spears, it's said they're good against cavalry. Here's the catch, they're only really good enmasse, contrast to true counters like Slingers, Katapeltes, Prodromos, etc.

There are a few other issues, stone goes bye-bye (which cripples defense, since it either ends up being nerfed, due to gold costs), the list of technologies is pretty simple as well, and the tight population limits (10 pop houses at 10 limit, generally 3 tcs per player x 15 (20 with fortified tc) with non-eco units being 2 pop+) though they can kinda be justified by being on a 3d engine, wanting to be as playable on as many systems as possible, as well as the game being a lot quicker to play and start up vs AoE2/AoE1.

Still a great game, shame about the Extended Edition re-release being rubbish for so long.

[Grey Lavi]

Age of Mythologie *g*
automatic loop for Units:)