It had a huge online multiplayer community a few years ago who would disagree. It had a decent economy and wide enough selection of civilizations and military to go with them. It was real good multiplayer if you were any good... which you're not/weren't.
Nice attempt. Some nations in that game were just worthless and some were good. AoE doesn't come anywhere near the MP communities of basically any other well-known multiplayer strategy game that is out there.
Starcraft was the biggest RTS multiplayer online... it is still huge even though it's more than a decade old. I can use any civilization you give me and still beat 7 of you... I could probably let you guys have a 5-10 minute head start too. I put down 3 WFers versus me one time in under 45 minutes.
Do you use that procedure you told me about in multiplayer? You know, to get optimum economy and units.
Yep, it's the best for single or multiplayer. There are people who sat down and crunched all the numbers a long time ago to determine the best strategies. www.mrfixitonline.com is a good place to go read them if you really want to know how to get better. They tell you how many villagers to produce and when and what resource to put them on, when to build an army and what units combo best together. About 8 or 9 years ago when I competed online almost daily I learned everything from that site. You can even get old recorded games of the best players in the world to see how they do it. These days I'm not that good by online standards, but I'm way better than anyone who never used the MSN Zone on a regular basis a long time ago. I don't really care about the game like I used to, naturally.
Yeah, you probably can beat me at a game that I haven't played in 5 years. I understand you are good at it and you like it so you don't want to hear anyone knocking it. It just isn't a bar that should be used to measure multiplayer ability.
Balance, advantages given to skill, game length, transparency. I should say that my old old old favorite multiplayer game (pvp in diablo 2) was in horrible violation of most of these rules. I was good at it though and I enjoyed it, but really I wouldn't call it a good COMPETITIVE multiplayer game by any means. If you are looking for specific game examples that I believe are much better competitive RTS games: Any game from WC or C&C series, SC, CoH, DoW series.
Speaking of, I haven't played a new real time strategy in years. I was a big fan of CoC, WC, and Dark Reign and the like. Is the genre still healthy, what are some newer titles I might like?
I like the long games with AoK, WC and SC were too fast for me. I guess that's preference. AoK has perfect balance. Any civ can beat any civ... Now it didn't have perfect balance until they patched it several times, but it definately does now. 8 player online play was great because in 4v4 the advantages of different civs could be worked together strategically. I think AoK is definately more of a thinking man's game than WC or any of the other speed based games.
With one win-all build procedure that you described, I wouldn't agree. Dynamic gameplay is important (to me). Forcing enemies to adapt and react is key in my book.
There isn't just one win all strat, you have to be able to adapt. I can't explain it because you clearly don't understand the game.
I didn't say strat. I said build procedure. I'm sure you understand AoK more than I do since you still play it after 7 years. Anyway, it's always interesting to see the folks who think that a slow game is necessarily more of a thinking game... it just allows slow thinkers to compete better.
There isn't just one build order either, there are several different ways depending on what your goals are and what you think your opponent will try. It's more like chess where as I suspect you're a checkers player.
Actually I'm a very good chess player and I used to play tournaments when I was back in school. Although in those tournaments you had to use timers so you couldn't sit and think for 10 minutes about each move. And AoK has less depth than basically any popular RTS series outside of C&C. More economic depth than some, but otherwise less. Having largely similar units ensures this. A longer game does not in any way mean that the game requires more thought.
I've played both types of games. Ones where you have to react and build, and ones where you can take your time and strategize. I've also played fighting games, where a win or a loss are determined by mere split seconds. All three require intense thinking, although they probably use different parts of the brain. RTS games are intense on the brain because it's a test of endurance and learning how to micromanage every aspect of your army. The longer turn-based strategy games are equally intense, because there is usually more to think about in terms of resources, strategies that can be used against you, etc., and you are doing it for a longer period of time.
Civ 3 is the ultimate test of your intestinal fortitude: to see how long you can play against 7 other players without falling asleep.
