AOE3 Forums

You do realize that you could play perfectly "balanced" games if you just played the same civ at the same HC level with the same cards (or better a deck with no cards) as your opponent? In this way, AOE III would be a lot more like chess or Stratego – pure skill – and just as boring for many too.

Having different civs with different advantages and weaknesses is part of what makes the game fun. Also, if you go back and read both the patch info and patch requests you will see that as soon as a patch is out many people call for the opposite of what was previously asked for. For instance, the Japanese civ shrines were just boosted and now people are calling for them to be nerfed.

There is a lot of spice to the game if people would jsut explore it and stop using the same old civs, decks, and strats as everyone else. If you want to really have fun just play unrated where you can experiment and just play and not be so serious as everyone seems to be in rated games where they "gotta keep up that rank.".

One thing that I would like to see is an in-game stalemate option. Too many people either open a browser or use a freeze hack to lag out a game or "pull the plug" and hope for an out of sync (or even hack an out of sync – I was once in a game where someone, whom I later pested and reported even though he was on my team, gave a detailed explanation as how he was OOS'ing the game). A stalemate option that would render no PR for either team could be issued if the majority of players on both teams agreed on it. Say, in a 1v1 it would have to be both, in a 2v2 at least two on one side and one on the other, and in a 3v3 at least 2 on both sides, etc.

Also, there still are a few bugs. For instance, yesterday I got kicked back to ESO instead of going into a game, which has happened before a couple of times. As you can see by the link, my teammates quit too (in fact I immediately played another game with one of them). However, the game system still registered me as being in the original game, even while I was playing another.

Another thing that ES also might consider to enhance gameplay would be to install a simple chat translation program, at least for some of the major languages and for words commonly used in the game. It’s a lesson in frustration to try to play with someone who doesn’t speak a word of your language or you theirs. Of course there is the enhanced chat but for some reason no matter what I change in the game options I never can seem to get it to work.

There’s another thing that could be added – a chat spell checker. And the stalemate option would only be when the majority of both teams agreed to "declare peace" rather than to continue the game, which wouldn’t occur of one side thought it was winning and didn’t select the option.

Speaking of "declaring peace" I’d really like to see a return to the old AOE 2 system where you could change alliances, be neutral except for enemy combatants, and even tribute to an enemy as it would make for some really interesting games. For instance you could have a tribute system where the amount of peacetime depended on how much was tributed and whether the tribute was accepted. Of course some things would have to be worked out but I think that it would be more realistic and thus fun.

Another thing that would make things more realistic would be to go back to the ability to capture enemy bases rather than just raze them. Also, it would be more realistic, more fun, and lead to better gameplay over all to limit the numbers of all unit-producing buildings, not just war huts and blockhouses, etc. and to have the main units produceable only at your home base and limit barracks in other areas only to producing mercenaries.

And, as I've stated previously, the all or none spy and blockade options are two other potential areas for greatly enhanced gameplay.

One thing that ES could do patch-wise is to do something about the three Amerindian civs, which are greatly underused, now that TAD has come out. One thing that might be an option is to have a "hold out" victory. That is if a civ could withstand another’s attack for a certain period of time it would then win. This would give more defensive civs a fighting chance at winning and result in some interesting strategies, especially if the running area of walls was limited too (In the real world, the Great Wall and Hadrian’s walls excepted, there were not walls all over the map).