What went wrong with Age Of Empires?

[Slimebeast]

Scoobes said:

Slimebeast said:

It was! AoM was much more complex and deeper than AoE 1&2, including the civs for the reasons you describe.

But Ensemble/MS were unable to explain that to AoE 2 players. From a tactical perspective the 16 AoE 2 civs were extremely similar, but people still adored them and were unwilling to change because it felt so good to have that many to choose from. I was one of them. I bought the game but I never made the transition to AoM and neither did my online buddies.

There were other reasons why it felt wrong to AOEII players. Armies were smaller for one thing due to Myth units and cavalry taking multiple places on your population limit. The civs also had a few balance issues.

Still loved the game and it certainly had a lot of depth to it. I liked that you could only build settlements at set points rather than rushing to AgeIII just so you could build extra Town Centres for more villagers. They essentially became strategic hot-spots

Yes, yes, many things felt wrong to AoE 2 players.

Not least the fantasy setting. I believe it would have fitted the Age series to go into fantasy at some point, but I feel the timing of AoM was bad. The series was still young and it felt so abrupt when it suddenly departed from real life history.

So even if AoM was the superior game in many respects, it started the decline for the Age series, due to a number of reasons.