Having never played AoE or any of the series, and having never played the SWGB demo, can someone tell me what other RTS these games might play like?
I have a hint of what I am about to get into when the game is released so I am wondering what they might be like.
Thanks.
Toothless-OMO
Well, i'd love to be able to tell you that it is like Red Alert 2, but i can't, coz its not.
AOK really was an rts that was quite different from most others. For instance, in RA2 you simply have 1 source of money, but in AOK, you must collect 4 different resources in order to fund your army. Another thing is that in AOK you have "workers" build everything for you and clooect all of then resources. In that event i guess it could be compared to Warcraft II (maybe StarCraft, i don't know because i've never played it).
If you've ever played StarCraft you should have a pretty good general idea of how to defend you base against rushes/drops, IMO.
aok and swgb are more similar to warcraft than they are to starcraft. even then, i wouldn't call aok a warcraft clone, b/c tactics are somewhat different. for example, you can't use buildings in aok to serve as defense like you can with farms in warcraft. also, there are no unique units in warcraft, units for humans had identical counterparts in the orcs.
starcraft is a totally diff. species where all the units were different from one another. even the basic level 1 units were different (marines can fire on land and air, hydralisks can do both but add the ability of burrowing - burrying yourself underground, and zealots can only attack ground b/c they use psyonic blades but zealots have twice the HP of marines and hydralisks b/c protoss have shield generators that are similar in function to those found in swgb.
aok and swgb borrow ideas from other rts games, but in their own rite they are different. i noticed that aok, to at me at least, is the most strategic and somewhat difficult rts game out there. there are so many things about it that you can't leave alone or else an opponent will take advantage of that. now with the advent of air units, jedi knights, and mechs, there's even more to consider, which should make this game fun!
Warcraft 2 comes closest to what you have here, but even then it looks incredibly outdated.
So far, I've played Dune 2 (the daddy...), Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Age Of Empires 1, 2, Rise Of Rome and Conquerors, Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer, a LOT of Red Alert, Red Alert 2, M.A.X. 2, Force Commander, Z: Steel Soldiers, erm... Star Wars GB.
**Dire Straits tune starts**
"I want my RTS..."
You can also compare AoE to Cossacks and Empire Earth ... those two games are based around the AoE formula.
What AoE made different from other rts games was for me resource managment, while not making management as big as in settlers. And ofcourse the ability to research all kind of things.