Opinion on SC2 vs AoE4

Personally, I’ve tried about 20 games of AoE4 since its launch. I enjoy it.

The reason I bring this up is because SC2 is extremely mechanically driven, making the intelligence portion mean less than I would prefer.

In your guys opinion, does AoE4 do better for people who want to focus less on mechanics and more on intelligence, where APM matters less. I still enjoy learning mechanics and doing my best with that, but so far I like that the game runs at a speed where 300 APM doesn’t ensure I would beat a player with 100 APM just because of mechanics.

I feel as though AoE4 focuses more on counter units, unit positioning, more resource management, etc…but at a lower APM requirement than SC2 to excel, making intelligence and decision making more significant.

What are you guys opinions?

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In both games being fast in important but speed is not as critical in AOE4. Games are mostly decided by macro and strategical and tactical decision making and less by micro and reaction speed.

That said Macro is much more complex in AOE4 and since maps are different each game you need to be much more intelligent with how you adapt to the map compared to SC2.

But high APM is still an advantage since you can macro better while managing multiple armies if you have higher APM. Serral is ranked 25 in AOE4 and lots of SC2 player have a high ranking. MarineLord currently is ranked nr1.

Basically, most RTS skills are transferable between SC2 and AOE4 it is just that decision making, and macro have a higher impact in AOE4 compared to micro and reaction speed. But a good SC2 player will be a good AOE4 player.

What I love about Age of Empires 4 is that, apart from being really fun to play, there are no sudden death scenarios. You can not instantly die to mine drops, DTs or disruptor shots. Games are decided by your overall performance not just a single micro mistake.

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I don’t like the AoE4 UI.
That keeps me away from it, aside from Death Stranding, of course.

:man_cartwheeling:

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AOE4 1VS1
First 10 min: farming
10~15 min: fighting
15~40 min: loser just hold up like a turtle and finally give up.
In a 40 min game, only 5 min is fighting.
Incredible boring to play and watch.

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That is just plain wrong. Just ram rush in feudal and you can kill off greedy opponent in 10 minutes. Plus farming before castle age is really bad macro, except maybe if you are English. Or you can go for a castle timing attack at 15 minutes.

40 minute turtle only happens if both players have bronze level skill.

2 Likes

I can’t say anything about the game except that from the viewer perspective its pretty awful:the games are long,the battles are long which is nice,however,they look pretty boring because units are fairly similar looking and they just clash into each others with terrible animations and the game overall feels like swarmhost vs swarmhost games,in this case rallying tons of units towards a contested point.

Not saying the game is good or bad,probably its interesting as a player,but as an e-sport viewer I don’t see any appeal,yes, any broadcasted online game can be an e sport but that game lacks impact.

7 Likes

Not enough explosions. SC2>AoE4

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That’s what I was assuming, so it’s good more people have this viewpoint as well. I enjoy the aspect of intelligence playing a larger role than just mechanics. That makes AoE4 a good RTS for myself. I don’t feel like spending hours upon hours creating muscle memory to stim split units like marines.

It could be improved. Grid hotkeys is something I’m not a fan of.

I get your point that it’s a much slower RTS than SC2, but I also rather prefer that right now. Of course, I 'm not sure its as slow as you state, since I tend have many army engagements and harassment throughout the game, and rushes and what-not do exist early.

I don’t disagree. As a viewer, it has less bursts of excitement that SC2 encompasses. However, playing feels alright. When I play the game, it doesn’t feel slow, but it does feel slower than SC2. You still do things every second and you really don’t run out of things to do (any extra APM could go to harassment, etc.).

Disruptors did wonders for SC2.

Yes,it is not techically slow,but as concept,starcraft franchise is about speed and action,while AOE is certainly slower by design,it would be like comparing car races,starcraft is F1, fast cars,precission,details…other races are different with other type of stuff,not necessarily being worse or better, but I think in terms of esport starcrat is way way ahead respect aoe. Gameplay wise aoe team modes are probably way better than sc one.

In the end it all comes down to personal tastes, in my opinion faster is better, and starcraft looks like a more polished game,better visuals,better animations,better unit control.AOE feels a bit bland and the medieval setting does not help at all,no explosions,no lasers,and not even gore or ragdoll effects,part of the SC1/2 appeal is the visual/sound part, bw did it way better in my opinion,but overall the point is having very visual fights,with characteristic sounds,blood,explosions with nice sounds,almost like if you are playing an arcade game. AOE4 voices are ok,and thats it,there is nothing more.

2 Likes

More and more players I see streaming AOE4: Drogo, marinelord, Beastyq, grubby , Kelazur

Wc3 for me had the right balance between mechanics and strategy, this game is mostly the strategy type, less on unit moves, just macro and attack.

Aoe4 not bad but im less into historical games… Ive only done the one where Alexander the Great is Greek. as a fact fact fact

Yeah I think many SC2 pro and streamers will transition to AOE4. Lots have already done so but I think this is only the beginning.

I played about 25 games so far and prefer sc2 and aoe3 atm, there’s just so little unit variety…

Yep, but it’s a new rts and people have to think to figure the game out. It will probably focus more on mechanics as time passes and the viability of different strats gets figured out, but I’m not sure I find mangonnels and springalds micro to be fun or visually pleasing, it’s like tvt tank/viking wars.

It’s still a good game tho.

My favorite parts of AoE4:
Spawning with no gold or stone, while the opponent has 3 patches of gold, stone, and berries behind a 60% forest wall. Always great knowing I can just leave. It’s only 2021, we definitely don’t have the ability to guarantee resource amounts in spawn area during random gen. The technology just isn’t there /s

Noticing that the majority of the tooltips are just…wrong. Like they literally present incorrect data about the tech. This means that the interns that made AoE4 don’t know how to use ToString.

2 Likes

All good points. I just think there is some feeling of “really” when you lose a game to someone who is far less strategic, etc. but because they are faster with reaction times.

Being good as SC2 consistently, means playing it quite an insane amount of hours, which would be ok if those hours were spread out, but to keep the muscle memory in tact, you have play all the time.

So while I think SC2 is action packed, I just distaste losing due to mechanics non-stop. I’d rather lose for more diverse reasons, like strategies, intelligence, etc.

Maybe over time AoE4 can become more interesting, more competition based, etc. It’s made gigantic strides from its past AoE games. At least, that would be interesting.

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I don’t now if they are transitioning. I have a feeling the vast majority will resume SC2 as their main game UNLESS AoE4 has very good ranked games and ladder down the road that turn in to stellar tournament potentials.

I agree that AoE4 starting with uneven resources causes balance issues. However, ranked ladder hasn’t even come out yet. It could be possible that by the time real ranked games and ladder comes out, some of those issues will be fixed.

I sincerely hope you’re right, because that alone would interest me in giving it attention.

They hardly will transition, there is no thing like the tournaments done for SC2, I think. A 3-4 hour game? on average is not a very watchable thing. There’s a reason why both wc3 and sc2 average 15-20 mins per game.

Maybe they got tired of sc2 imbalance too and they prefer less effort on sc2

Probably waiting for Frostgiant as I am. Wc3 so ded only small community still plays it, sc2 is on its doom train too

AoE4 games seem to be 25-45 minutes long among the top tier right now, but that’s just watching them on twitch.

wc3 is fun, but for some reason they didn’t want to incorporate good enough ladders (only community ladder) or tournaments. idk why.

For the same reason they abandon sc2. They dont care anymore because strategies dont earn them. WoW is on decline too. Blizz reached their peak now going down a steep slope

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It will depend mostly on that,tournaments and money.If there is no money no one will transition unless their income do not depend on tournament money like streamers. A low profile pro could try both games considering they do not earn many money from sc2 since the tournaments are stacked andbthey have nothing to lose while trying a new game.

For the moment we know that there will be a 2022-2023 ESL season but we don’t know the budget a d details,but probsbly will have more money than AOE scene,aoe 2 at least it didn’t look it had a big budget.