AOE3 Forums

"I want low HC lvl games"... It wasnt meant to be played that way.

"I wasted my time leveling"... It wasnt meant to be played that way either.

GG, all HC 100 now

How can I do it?

Am I supposed to get online using the ESO account? Or is it in an update?

I just don't manage to have this done. 

 The "arcade kids"? If anything, that metaphor would seem quite flawed, since an arcade game requires a form of progression. Furthermore, arcade games tend to be things like fighting and racing games.

 AoEIII, by contrast, is a strategy game. One important set of making strategies in AoEIII is making decks. With a larger range of cards comes a larger range of potential strategies. Which means that having to level up to get cards essentially limits players' ability to make new strategies. That's *not* good for a strategy game. It might be good for a newbie gradually learning the ropes, but it certainly isn't good for experienced, old school RTS players.

A more accurate metaphor than "arcade kids" would be that ES has had us playing chess without full sets of chess pieces and we've had to "level up" to earn pieces other than pawns. Hooray, level 60, now I can finally use a queen! That... wouldn't make for good chess.

 Simply put, the levelling system has been more of a hindrance to enjoying the game in itself than anything else. It's added a form of metagame that might be fun to some, as is seen here, but which has no actual impact on the game in itself. It's a poor merger of different gameplay concepts -- RPGish leveling simply doesn't fit well with strategy games in the way it's been implemented by ES.

 Time and patience? It takes time and patience to learn and master a game. Setting up a metagame that's about collecting game elements rather than playing the game actually distracts from properly learning a game at a high level of skill, since the game elements can change over time. A good example of this is that balance changes to be less favorable to Colonial fighting as more powerful Fortress Age cards are unlocked.

And "kids"? The entire mentality of collecting cards is pure kiddyness. It's like that Pokèmon game -- "gotta catch 'em all!"

Arcade kids have an attention span of 60 seconds or less.  They want action now.  They are the reason Game Genie was invented on the old console systems.   They are annoyed and frustrated about having to spend any amount of time "learning the ropes".

 By the way, "collecting cards" was not the point of home city leveling.  There was a whole secondary strategic function created, since every new level meant you had to carefully choose which card you selected.  Of course this eventually went out the window when well treaded strats became widely circulated, and people specifically picked cards at certain levels, but that will happen in any "level up" type game eventually, its unavoidable.   This whole aspect has been completely removed for everyone but the newest of players now who do not have any cities high enough to allow them to manufacture a bunch of high leveled cities with all of the cards, or enough to have all the worthwhile ones.

I dont know why ES only took it this far, why not completely remove the home city level altogether.  Then we can have all the cards automatically.  Hell, lets just remove supremecy games too, then we can all play death match with all the cards, woohooooo!   Arcade Kids Forever!!!!

The thing i enjoyed was playing with new civ for the first time, so exciting..how do we use them, learning testing them getting good with them, enjoying them >>> has just ben whiped out.

make a civ at lvl 100...as people said before, no clue of cards everything, takes away the excitment of learning how to use them, not relying on the best cards straight away

For those who like the card system and are afraid of playing someone with a level 100 HC with a civ he uses for the first time...

Well, this situation occurs in just every other RTS. 

 
Playing WCIII for instance, when you met a very good player with a lot of experience and he played with undeads, you had no clues that all his experience came from playing humans and that he was maybe playing his first game as undead.  You always had this risk in just every RTS.

  I admit that this risk was gone with the AOE3 card system, but the gain is very small considering the loss.  Now, most people will start playing more than one or two civs.  It may well be the first step towards having the random civ back. 

KingNightmare:

At least keep an option of starting off with a level 1 HC if you wish.

This make sense.

And I ask again : why not taking profit of the new rules to have "random civs" making a comeback.  This option was very popular in AOK.