I find it really hard to believe that AoE2 "ultras" exist. It's a pretty small community with mainly older players, just like StarCraft. Many people still play SC:BW and SC2, there are still tournaments and hardcore fans that cheer for their favourite players.
> I personally don't think micro, as it exists in StarCraft, is interesting or even worthy. It only made that game harder in ways that were not fun.
That's you're opinion. I think the exact opposite. If those games didn't have the micro opportunities they did, they would have died long ago and would have been forgotten in history like most other RTS games out there.
I find RTS games without micro extremely boring. I
Micro makes it exciting because it's not immediately obvious who will a win a fight. You can choose to gamble and be slightly greedier in your economy and rely on winning a fight that you should lose. It also forces you to constantly choose between where your focus should be. Do you focus on the fight or your economy? And when there are multiple fronts to a fight it gets even crazier. I think those things are core to the RTS gerne.
> Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like from a technical engineering point of view?
I mean you are comparing games from different eras. But I think AoE2 is extremely worthy from a technical engineering point of view. You have so many ranged units shooting many projectiles, each with it's own collision detection back in '99. It's nothing short of a work of art.
AoE2 doesn't have much in terms of simulated ballistics (and units pushed around by impacts !) though, compared to Total Annihilation (and derived) games.
> I personally don't think micro, as it exists in StarCraft, is interesting or even worthy. It only made that game harder in ways that were not fun.
That's you're opinion. I think the exact opposite. If those games didn't have the micro opportunities they did, they would have died long ago and would have been forgotten in history like most other RTS games out there.
I find RTS games without micro extremely boring. I Micro makes it exciting because it's not immediately obvious who will a win a fight. You can choose to gamble and be slightly greedier in your economy and rely on winning a fight that you should lose. It also forces you to constantly choose between where your focus should be. Do you focus on the fight or your economy? And when there are multiple fronts to a fight it gets even crazier. I think those things are core to the RTS gerne.
> Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like from a technical engineering point of view?
I mean you are comparing games from different eras. But I think AoE2 is extremely worthy from a technical engineering point of view. You have so many ranged units shooting many projectiles, each with it's own collision detection back in '99. It's nothing short of a work of art.