It’s pretty gross and unfair that some players had early access to AoM Retold months in advance while other pros didn’t, but that the players with extra access are still allowed to compete in the Red Bull Wololo tournament qualifiers. Either they should have made it available to anyone in the top ~50 of any RTS game who wanted to join, or they should have excluded members of the Players’ Council who had early access from being eligible. He knows he never would have gotten close to qualifying even if it was an even playing field thanks to their years of experience in the old game, but the fact that it wasn’t even was a big morale dampener.
He really thinks the counter system is cool with a lot of depth, but it’s very difficult to intuit with for example some small melee units not being countered by ranged units like they would be in aoe4. It takes a lot more learning rather than being able to intuit.
The Wololo map & civ drafting system was really good.
Seeding the qualifiers based on ladder Elo, with the exception of the top 4 who got directly seeded and were able to practise strategies in private without needing to worry about ladder was “weird”.
God powers shouldn’t be usable straight away upon age-up, to allow opponent time to see what you aged up with and have time to react to it. He says a “top-3 player” agreed with him about this in his chat, and also points to how in aoe4 you can get counterplay by scouting which landmark they’re building, while in aom there’s no way to see they’re aging up or which god they’re going through.
The uniqueness of myth units is one of his favourite things about the game, with their different special abilities.
Some of the human unit counters are awkward, like Poseidon mirrors don’t have a viable option of anti-cav as hoplites aren’t good enough, so both players have to go into full cavalry. He contrasts that to an Odin–Loki matchup where Odin goes raiding cav and Loki can build hirdmen.
Water is weird. He likes the lack of demos, but finds the strength of water myth units too much. And the impact of water on eco is awkward too, since giving up on water after a short battle to go 2 TC can often put you ahead in eco over a player who committed fully to water and won there. But he’s not yet sure if that’s bad or something you have to get used to.
Doesn’t like the lack of trash units, especially for how it affects lower league players.
He loves titans and their ability to help close out a game without being viable as an end in their own right.
He points out the huge swinginess of some god powers like Fimblewinter in team games.
A long section about autoqueue and general RTS theory of multitasking and splitting attention. I actually think he may have finally convinced me over to his side on this point.
AoE3 exists too btw
He’s not yet sure whether he’ll be returning to AoE4 full time or going heavier into AoM, and is taking a break from playing seriously to think about it.