It’s The Lord of the Rings it’s all those kind of fantasies of having units on walls and then there’s a lot of gameplay that emerges out of that decision. We wanted to get walkable walls in and that was kind of the primary motivation there, because you go visit these castles and inevitably, you’re up on the ramparts and walking between the battlements and that’s what you see in all the movies set in the Middle Ages. Quinn Duffy - game director, Relic Entertainment: Yeah, we did want to add a little more siege elements to the game. I was wondering if you could expand on what that means in the context of how Age of Empires IV plays? Q: During the reveal event, there was an emphasis placed on siege combat, which in a way feels like a new direction for the series. It’s maintaining the celebratory view of history the franchise is known for. We made sure that we kept the buildings in a sort of a what I would consider the coffee-table book-tourist-town-style that’s very colourful there’s flowers, it’s still historical, but it’s not old and rundown. We also allow for painterly type detail for the buildings and things like that. It gives them an opportunity to kind of feel a bit safe,” - Quinn Duffyįor example, we reduced the amount of detail for small items like soldiers and units and stuff like that for better readability from your camera. “Players love to build these big towns and cities surrounded with concentric walls and put keeps and all kinds of things. We really used those accent colours to build the look and feel of the game.
And taking those colours, those palettes and applying them to the team colors, as opposed to the entire environment. There’s a lot more attention paid to the building aspects of the game. You can really see the investment into the amount of detail in the buildings and the evolution of your towns from Age of Empires to Age Empires IV. We wanted to open it up so that it was easier to read the battlefield, it’s a lot more fun to build. For me, it was really about bringing in a broader audience. We had to really give it a little more sophistication and more depth in terms of colour. Most importantly, it slowed the advance and withdrawal of raiders across the frontier, giving the imperial armies a chance to intercept.Relic Age of Empires IV art director Zach Schlappi. It did serve to provide warning of Mongol attack. The frontier of China was so long that the Great Wall could not be defended sufficiently to be a shield. Originally constructed in ancient times, it was extended and rebuilt in places by several dynasties.
The other famous stone wall of the Middle Ages was the Great Wall of China. They were partly responsible for deflecting barbarian tribes from the north and east toward Rome, even though Constantinople may have been a more attractive prize. These walls withstood intermittent assault over a period of a thousand years. One famous set of stone walls from the Middle Ages were those guarding the land approaches to Constantinople. Stone walls were expensive and time-consuming to build but worth the cost when guarding valuable locations. To capture a walled town or castle might require a long siege or a battering by powerful siege engines. A well-built stone wall offered protection against raiders because it could be broken down only by a determined effort. Larger and more advanced civilizations upgraded their defenses to stone walls when they could. The Stone Wall can be upgraded to Fortified Wall at the University. It is a good idea to build walls a fair distance away from important buildings. Although highly useful during the Feudal Age and Castle Age (to an extent), in the Imperial Age Trebuchets are capable of firing over them. Several opponents in Age of Empires II use Stone Wall in their defenses however it is usually upgraded to Fortified Wall by the time you get round to attacking them. When they are built around the outside of a town, it makes the town very difficult to attack, as any attacking units would have to destroy the wall before attacking any of the other buildings and it offers a warning to the town that their opponents are attacking. They are available upon upgrading to the Feudal Age from the Town Center. Almost every civilization can build it, with the only exception being the Goths (who can only build Palisade Wall, and cannot even construct gates). Stone Walls are a type of strong defensive structure found in Age of Empires II.