While I also dipped my toes into New World and Heroes of the Storm, November ended up being a month almost entirely devoted to real time strategy for me. Aside from checking out the ZeroSpace demo, I also spent quite a lot of time on the Age of Empires franchise.

First, there was the release of the Arena of the Gods mode for Age of Mythology: Retold. As a reminder, this is the only new content for the remaster that isn’t paid DLC, and it was supposed to be a launch feature but got delayed.

It should have been delayed a lot more. The intention seems to have been to make something that combines the best of both skirmish and campaign play, but instead it’s the worst of both, with extra issues on top.

When we got the first preview, everyone took it to be a repeatable rogue-like style pseudo-campaign, but it’s actually exactly the same every time with no randomization or replay value at all. The “story” is paper-thin and a complete rehash of the original game’s story, and every mission is just a standard skirmish map with minor twists that rarely change how the game is played in any significant way.

The enemy AI is also woefully inadequate. It supposedly does get harder eventually, but the first dozen or so missions at least are incredibly easy, and the AI isn’t programmed to change its behaviour based on the “world twist” buffs, leading to lots of situations where you can just roll it effortlessly.

Oh, and you also can’t save mid-mission for some reason.

My expectations for Arena of the Gods were never that high, but I’m just shocked at the poor quality of it. I struggle to imagine how they could have done a worse job. I’d genuinely rather just play regular skirmishes because at least then you have full freedom to choose your civilization, opponent, and difficulty, and you can save your game if you get called away suddenly. I gave up out of sheer boredom before I even made it to the halfway point of the campaign.

Retold continues to be an incredible disappointment across the board. The Immortal Pillars expansion has now been delayed, and I can only hope the extra time pays off and they can finally deliver some quality content. So far Retold does not feel remotely worthy of the money I spent on it.

After that, my attention turned to Battle for Greece, the experimental new narrative-focused expansion for Age of Empires II.

I do think this one was a little over-hyped, especially by the community. There was so much talk about the quality of the story-telling being taken to another level, but it’s just like any other AoE2 campaign on that front. The voice acting is as hokey as ever, and the new cinematic mission intros are not meaningfully different from the old journal entries, still being mostly static images accompanied by a single narrator’s voice over.

I also think the animations themselves were pretty goofy, and it really took me out of the story. The exaggerated body proportions and limited motion kept making me think of the “virgin versus chad” memes.

The gameplay was a bit more interesting. Again, not quite as revolutionary as it was cracked up to be, but they did get a bit more creative with mission design, and there’s the naval revamp, which I think I liked. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it actually made me enjoy naval gameplay, but I did dislike it less. What was really fun was the super OP upgrades you got when playing as Themistocles, but I guess I grudgingly understand why those couldn’t be in every mission. I guess.

I did find consistency was an issue. The difficulty was all over the map, and I found some of the more “creative” missions could be more irritating than anything, especially those with limited economies. If you asked me to list my favourite AoE2 campaign missions, a lot would be from Battle for Greece, but the same would be true if you asked me to list my least favourite.

Still, it’s good to see them trying new things, and I mostly enjoyed it. I expect I’ll buy the Alexander the Great sequel they teased at the end.

Finally, the Sultans Ascend expansion for Age of Empires IV finally went on a deep enough discount that I decided to pull the trigger on it.

All the praise directed at Battle for Greece’s story-telling would have fit a lot better here. The animated cutscenes for the Sultans Ascend’s lone eight-mission campaign are absolutely gorgeous, and the narration is top notch. This was a real high water mark for story-telling in the Age of Empires franchise.

I did find the missions again suffered a bit from inconsistent difficulty and too many missions with limited economy or otherwise gimmicky design, but overall it’s a very strong campaign. I do, however, remain frustrated by its paltry size. Even at 30% off, I feel like I overpaid for what was ultimately an incredibly small amount of content.

I also tried the new civilizations, the Byzantines and the Japanese, which once again had me feeling that AoE4 is starting to repeat the mistakes of AoE3 by over-complicating its design.

The Byzantines in particular felt like they had enough unique gimmicks for at least two or three different civilizations. Between the aqueduct mechanic, olive oil and mercenaries, and a wealth of unique units that almost all have active abilities, it’s just too much. None of those are bad mechanics individually — aqueducts in particular are quite clever — but it’s too much for one civ. This level of asymmetry makes sense in a game with three or four factions, not a game with over ten factions.

The Japanese also felt intimidating at first due to have a roster comprised almost entirely of unique units, but it got a lot more manageable once I figured out most of them are effectively just buffed versions of standard units. I also enjoyed the bannerman mechanic and the choice of religion. It’s still a bit more complexity than I’d like in a single civilization, but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it, and I ended up liking the Japanese overall.

It’s kind of a moot point, though, as they have no campaign content, and the skirmish AI in AoE4 remains FUBAR even after all these years. When I tried the Byzantines, the enemy seemed to keep most of its army next to its town centre for the entire game, sending out only small groups to apparently wander the map at random. Never once did my base actually get attacked. I can’t believe they still haven’t gotten the skirmish AI working at even a basic level.

I didn’t even bother with the variant civilizations. I still think the whole idea is dumb from top to bottom, and I wish the resources spent on them had gone to more campaign content instead.

And that brings me to the question in my headline. Age of Empires II remains the most popular AoE game, but I do wonder how much of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point as it’s clear the other games are suffering from a lack of development resources.

I feel like we’re caught in a feedback loop where AoE2 gets the most resources, so it produces the most content, so people play it more, so it gets more resources… Meanwhile the other games get neglected because they never got the resources they needed to equal AoE2’s momentum.

AoE2 is a great game, but at the end of the day it’s still over twenty years old, and after playing so much of it, it is starting to feel a bit tired for me. These days I would much rather play AoE4 or AoM: Retold, but the content just isn’t there. When AoE2 offers me twenty-one campaign missions for $20 and AoE4 offers me eight missions for the same price, it’s kind of a no-brainer where I’m going to prioritize spending my money. I like AoE4 better, but I don’t like it more than twice as much.

I’m worried that the powers that be are looking at the metrics and getting the wrong message. I’m worried they’ll see that no one is playing Arena of the Gods and people mostly bought Sultans Ascend for the multiplayer content and conclude that there isn’t a desire for versus AI content outside of AoE2, but I think there very much is. I would happily sink dozens of hours into those games if content of sufficient quality and quantity was there.

But right now AoE2 is the only Age game that consistently serves my playstyle, so I’ve got no choice but to keep slinking back to it until the other titles get their act together.