Age of Empires ???

[MEZZANINE]

At it's peak the game had enough active players to support Empires, player numbers have dropped that cant be disputed, but

Is the Age if Empires really coming to and end ?

If so is it low player numbers bringing the end of empires, or updates / styles of play ?

Will it mean the end of the game ?


Obviously my thoughts on this have been prompted by recent DDE events, but I would like this kept to constructive comments & observations, no he said she said bickering or personal stuff.


Look at the empires of recent SGW history ( feel free to add ones I miss out )

OE - With the exception of the server war they fight as separate alliances and even after downsizing managed to keep individual alliance identities.


DDE - Also had to downsize due to game active player numbers. All member alliances seem interlinked to the point of being one, some individual wars but more often all fight as one, highly centralised which worked well when bringing overwhelming force to bare, but the more people you have under one commander, the more likely you are to have disagreements.


TLE - Gave up on the empire idea, disbanded and condensed back into the one alliance they started with, but far stronger than before by taking the best parts from empire & independent alliance styles of play.


TAF - Have maintained size by absorbing other alliances, do fight individual wars although unlike OE the member alliances are more clearly ranked so they can fight wars at different levels of gameplay and account strength on even basis.


Yggdrasil - Far too loosely built, expanded to fast and collapsed in the server war.


Titans - Has tried to maintain member alliance numbers so downsizing meant very few players in each alliance, and very quiet/peaceful recently.

HVE - Mostly peaceful, dedicated to helping new players and when they fight they try to do it by arrangement and with teams of volunteers.





My personal opinion, empires are not dead and wont be any time soon but they will never again have the power they had at their peak, the some empire styles will last longer than others. The game is dying slowly as the end of the StarGate franchise means far fewer new players, the $$$ market, bad updates, boredom/apathy and RL take players from the game. The game will run until it is no longer profitable and since the running costs are low this could be 3 or 4 years, at current rates of decline I think active player numbers will halve in 2 years. That could be extended by good updates if admin has the will and sense to implement them.

[minisaiyan]

hve still going nicely. but i see what you mean

[Juliette]

Age of Empires is over.
If more empires would decide to trim their dead weight, it would be obvious to all.

[~Drunken Master~]

Loyalty is a major factor to consider, I have seen many players post that they are leaving the game just to leave the alliance and boom, 3 or so weeks later they come back to join a different alliance.

Sure player numbers have dropped but for the past 2 years or so it has been around 200 or so on at any one time.

Also u must consider players who get bought by other empires or alliances to move over because they see the grass greener on the other side of the fence.

I also see 174 new accounts have been started from 1 month ago so in essence new blood is coming to this game but at a slower pace.

[jedi~tank]

I would agree and this is something we in DDE have addressed and began planning for before the end of SW2. Using what 2 players did in DDE recently however is not an inclination of some of the things you have stated here or are contained in other threads.

The bottom line is simple, lack of players in the game, would force a group to downsize in order to maintain a certain level of quality. What you have at present is 1 alliance/empire is a collection of $$ spenders, another a collection of pre existing and long standing alliances and a 3rd similar.

The amount of players in the game determines whether or not the age of empires is gone.

210 Players On!- this says almost game over.

And with what happened with DxM, which will soon be corrected does not effect wether DDE remains and empire or not, neither do outside influences nor the amount of garbage being spouted as is custom in this forum, rather the number of players (repeat) in the game as this is the only determining factor.

[Ashu]

Age of Empires is over.
If more empires would decide to trim their dead weight, it would be obvious to all.

Also, for JT:

I'm not sure if the amount of players in the game, rather than a more effective way to organise them rather than in empires.

[jedi~tank]

Age of Empires is over.
If more empires would decide to trim their dead weight, it would be obvious to all.

Also, for JT:

I'm not sure if the amount of players in the game, rather than a more effective way to organise them rather than in empires.

As long as our core group is as large as it is DDE will remain, when the numbers say it needs to change then and only then will it change, and again what those guys pulled with DxM is not an indication of anything aside from their own personal issues, so in our view all of that garbage can be taken out. So eat it up because its good reading when you get bored.

JT out

[Reschef]

Î thought this thread would be about the RTS series Age of Empires which all are great games, especially AoE2

anyway.

Goa'uld Empire - An Empire formed by nearly only inexperienced players. on their height, their main alliance had a friendly war against the DDE main alliance and proofed their skill and dedication succesfully. But as it was a single race Empire it was hard to gain new (active) players so with the time it shrinked from 5-6 alliances to 2 (Horus WarLords and Horus Guard). After a brief time in this state, Ricos Roughnecks and Horus WarLords merged and the Empire was disbanded.

@ other former GE members, feel free to correct / add more information

So yea I guess the age of several big Empires pretty much ended ... for now. I guess it will rather come down to coalitions / treaties of otherwise independent alliances. But I wouldn't say the age of empires ended in generall. I believe there will always be empires, but yes probably less then now.

[xDaku]

I think the position they had within the game goes down, not necessarily the empires themselves.

[Ashu]

Age of Empires is over.
If more empires would decide to trim their dead weight, it would be obvious to all.

Also, for JT:

I'm not sure if the amount of players in the game, rather than a more effective way to organise them rather than in empires.

As long as our core group is as large as it is DDE will remain, when the numbers say it needs to change then and only then will it change, and again what those guys pulled with DxM is not an indication of anything aside from their own personal issues, so in our view all of that garbage can be taken out. So eat it up because its good reading when you get bored.

JT out

I meant no disrespect with my post, and I don't assume to know anything about your situation with DxM, that's between you and them. What i was saying, that empires are no longer such a good method of organising is in the spirit of coordinated teams within an alliance and the guerilla warfare that has made it almost impossible to keep an individual player "down".

[ƒëmmë ƒatalë]

Empires have come and gone before replaced by new ones ...HVE would probably be the one bucking the general downward trend suffered by most at moment.

[GeneralChaos]

I said it a few weeks ago, and ill say it again,

ALL games have a life span, this one has ran its life span and has had its highs, and now its slowing down, its still clearly profitable for Jason to keep it going, else it would be gone.

The people who will notice it more are the really active ones ( the ones who log in everyday for hours at a time ) others will notice it sooner or later, i believe that some updates Jason could do, would delay the games demise, but honestly, if you haven't started looking for other games, you could be upset alot faster than you think.

The game has lost its appeal, and it did this along time ago when Jason failed to recognize the problem behind 1 set of players being able to do max damage with no defense and little covert, had he addressed that issue when it was raised over 2 years ago, people would not have gotten bored etc etc,

Adding to that, i would say most of the game base member age group 5 or 6 years ago was alot of students, who have since, graduated or moved on to university etc, and the natural wastage in the game that comes with that, means that the player base goes down.

The game says there are 210 logged in, but honesty the top 1500 have to be semi active to stay in GnR.

For all the good things Jason has done for the game, he did miss some major issues, that either he couldn't find a balance for, or he allowed key individuals to dictate what should happen.

But hey, no matter what has happened, all the hate talk, all the enemies, all the friends, all the wars, its been fun, and at the end of the day thats what its all about and if anyone ever took any offence to anything that was wrote on these forums, they should have left along time ago.

I just come for the DRAMA now

Have a good weekend all

[Lithium]

empires are dead game nowadays , i can truly say that if they were not to exist at all this game would be more colorful with many strong alliances.

[minisaiyan]

though that may be a part of it GC, the main reason would probably be the type of game this is.

New players always start at the same point, the begining, we cannot do anything about that without making it unfair on those who spent time and cash on the game to get where they are. Now that the game has developed so far and taken the natural course of huge growth, the gap between bigger and new players grows untill the game dies.

I doubt any new player would want to start a game, possibly unsure of what they are doing, 500million army, 22 ascensions and 37 covert levels behind the top players. so these players dont stay long, meaning the only people playing are long time players with a few others coming in who have people helping them get off their feet. but still more leaving than joining.

Unfortunately nobody can do anything to resolve this, it is a fact we must accept, but must do things to try and prolong the life.

Things such as eventually breaking up empires when the time is right would be one of these things.

[MaxSterling]

DDE - Also had to downsize due to game active player numbers. All member alliances seem interlinked to the point of being one, some individual wars but more often all fight as one, highly centralised which worked well when bringing overwhelming force to bare, but the more people you have under one commander, the more likely you are to have disagreements.

The downsizing really didn't need to be done. DDE could have easily kept all of the alliances together to maintain all of the voting power. In the end, it was decided that it was to our advantage to condense all active players together for better coverage for the alliance functions. The number of active players really had no impact on that decision. We could have just as easily kept all of the semi-active players and let them build their token defenses for everyone to waste their ATs on.

The reason for DDE being so centralized is due to every enemy targeting officers or immediately going for the weaker alliances within the empire. It only made sense to have officers within the empire to keep an eye on them and teach them how to deal with what would happen. TDD has tried on numerous occasions to not involve any of the other alliances within the empire, yet everyone seems to be hell bent on involving them. In most cases, the only members in TDD anything could be done to were the inactives... so they had to go and pick on the other alliances. If anyone is to blame for the way DDE is, it's everyone who fought against us.

Which brings up the subject of leadership. When every enemy constantly targets your entire empire during a war, you need a pitbull at the top... the father figure that watches over the entire empire. The problem with that is it tends to burn someone out a lot quicker. In my opinion, JT is the only one within the empire that could possibly fit that role. He's tried to relieve himself of some of the responsibility by quickly promoting other like-minded players like myself, Kjarkur, and kaboomer... but like I said, it wears on the player.

That kind of mentality to run that type of empire will definitely bruise a lot of egos. I, myself, have been smacked down quite a few times in the process. The thing to remember is that when one person is protecting the empire and looking out for them, they become the alpha dog and the alpha dog frequently needs to snap back at the other members to let them know their place. One cannot truly know the weight thrust upon your shoulders when put into that situation. Despite having people in a high council, ultimately you gotta make decisions on what's best for your baby (the empire) and not everyone is going to agree with them. There's always someone who's gonna get stepped on. Criticize JT all you want, but for the way DDE was more or less forced to play... he was the type of person that needed to be at the top.

As for the topic about empires... as long as players in wars target officers and training alliances, there will always be a place for empires. The admin's insistence on creating Houses with bonuses forces the existence of empires or coalitions to keep a hold on bonuses.

This game has more or less come to an end. The people still playing are grasping at hope that something will be done to improve the game or because this is their entire social life. Admin is now at the point of kissing the asses of a few people in hopes of squeezing out the last few dollars he can get out of them. When he listens to people that want to make the main server more "noob friendly" by crippling people out of their reach, but then makes changes on the ascended server to make themselves untouchable by "noobs"... you know it's pretty much screwed up. He's not putting any thought into his decisions at that point and updates are made to just appease the few.