My highlights:

• Siege nerfed across the board (but not siege-like units like war elephants & destroyers)
• Ra monument empowerment now empowers other monuments in zone (again)
• Kuafu train time increase
• Huge Bushido nerf
• Fixed World Tooltip positioning to no longer flicker to the top left corner of the screen. You can now hover relics and reliably read the tooltip! [emphasis not mine!]
• Improved behavior when bumping into units by not prematurely swapping attack targets. When bumping into enemy units, and there is a recently commanded attack target nearby, the player’s target will still be preferred over the bumped unit.
• Town Center placement can no longer be used to check under the fog of war if a Settlement is already occupied.

And the camera thing! Which is not useful for players, and barely useful for casters, but is a really fun thing to have all the same.

That's funny, because I would actually put AoE3 at A-tier. It doesn't quite reach the height of AoE2 and AoM for me, but for me that has more to do with the original game than the remaster. The remaster delivers on everything it should. Modern multiplayer support, improved graphics, better QOL, a bunch of great new civs, and addressing the problems with the Home City system.

Yeah, I'm really disappointed we never got the Poles, and that they ended support for the game in the form of bugfixes and balance patches so soon. But there's no reasonable way to say it's worse than what AoE1:DE was. It never received any new content, and was left in a nearly unplayable state.

Putting AoE3 at B tier is generous, but otherwise a solid list that I agree with.

Yeah Uglie did an absolutely top-notch job with this thumbnail.

I normally don't like "funny" youtube thumbnails (or the standard emotional reaction picture), but this was pretty funny.

1. Units don't attack the specific unit you told them to. From noobs' perspective, this isn't necessarily bad, because noobs will often instruct their entire army to attack one enemy unit when what they actually want is to engage the army. But even mid-Elo players know how to use attack move, and when we right-click a specific unit, it's because we want to focus that unit down. The game simply does not let you do that.
2. Jittering when spam-clicking.
3. Weird regathering. A big problem in all the aoe games, but it seems especially bad here.
4. Units getting stuck.
5. Replays go out of sync. It makes it so hard to learn from your past games. It makes things way worse for the pro and caster scenes. You just...can't rewatch a whole game.
6. Relic tooltips flicker. Since the release of the game.
7. It's hard to click on a specific tree that you want.
8. Some weird camera movement? This might be the first one I can say I definitely have not experienced myself.
9. Mods and custom scenarios can't be easily found and joined in the lobby browser. I remember I used to love custom scenarios back in the ESO days. You'd browse through the lobby browser, see a game that sounded cool, and jump in. I spent many hours in Kronos Escape and Helm's Deep, which I found in this way.

It's hard to disagree with what Nakamura says here. All of these, with the possible exception of 2 and 8, these all have a serious effect on normal gamers' gaming experience. Whether you're Nakamura, Boit, or Kvoth, or just a regular 1000 Elo joe, these matter. I still love the game and thoroughly enjoy it, but the amount of times I've been frustrated by one of these is pretty damn high.

Your previous comment mentioned that you would learn a build order from somewhere and be frustrated at it becoming unviable in the next patch. That's what I was addressing.

congrats, by reading that you are not on their side

I agree If you are already watching pro content anyway then no sweat but it feels like prep work to play the game lol. that's why I only play comp stomp. 😄

I was literally just looking for this a couple days ago

wolololol ayayayayaya

Both are!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuOArEfqGo

Total banger

Then there is a balance patch and all the builds you once knew are different and you have to play different

I definitely found that to be the case in AoE4, and to a lesser extent in AoM, but never in AoE2. I think partly it has to do with how mature the game and its balance are. When they get to a stage where fewer big changes are being introduced at once, older builds are probably still viable.

I think it can also be easy to get caught up watching the pros' "Patch X Civ Y build order" videos, thinking you have to watch and follow the latest patch's BO, when really this BO is often just an extra option on top of BOs that worked in the previous patch and still can work. But the pros gotta put out that content to appease the algorithm.

Or getting cheesed. Rank was never fun for me. It was too much methodical actions and memorization. Then there is a balance patch and all the builds you once knew are different and you have to play different.

The more I play the lazier I get. I guess its a sign I'm getting better because im doing the bare minimum and trying to get away with as much greed as possible. But then when i vs someone who is good I get punished so hard it looks like I'm brand new. Gotta shake myself off and try to actually play the game.

That's the thing, I usually try and win in castle age with knights and skirms. If the game goes into imp I definitely try to make the switch, mostly because of the fast creation time. It's a great civ to practice getting relics with in any case!

I haven't played much AoE2 in quite a while, but I do love playing Lith. Prefer leitis to knights, if I can get them.

A well-designed matchmaking system should leave you with a 50% winrate. That's how Elo and Elo-like ranking systems are designed to work.

If your Elo is climbing over time, that's (probably) good progression. If your Elo stays stagnant with a 50% winrate, that's you not getting good. With the caveat that how "good" a particular Elo is can change over time, since the starting Elo is by definition the average. If existing players are learning to be better, or worse players are quitting the game, or better new players are joining, remaining at the same Elo might mean you're actually improving; you're just improving at the same rate as the average player. And conversely if more casuals join or hardcore players quit, the average should go down.

This video is incredibly helpful. Because the thing he says not to do is precisely what I would have done in that situation. "Don't tunnel vision" is a big thing I need to work on in my games.

Playing hearts of iron feels like this

Scrolling through from All to say I also felt this the other day checking my Rocket League stats. Thousands of matches played, 51% win rate. If I get better, I play against harder opponents. Seems to be the nature of the beast

I feel seen, but then again I'll still keep queueing up. Lithuanian knights go brrrrrr

Yeah some gameplay concepts or (even less likely) code were what I was thinking of. But you're right, AoM was the first game in the Bang engine.

Interestingly, work on the Bang engine actually began right after aoe1, according to contemporary and more recent interviews. So it's more possible than I initially thought that some significant elements could have been carried forward from Sorceress to AoM.

I thought AoM was made to test the 3d engine after AoE2? Maybe some gameplay concepts or code were saved, but I imagine the assets would have to be completely different