A 20th Century resource game, that may or may not be AoE4

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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First, I’d like to start off with a disclaimer; I am not debating whether or not the next Age of Empires game will take place in the 20th century or not. I am merely proposing an idea that could be used for a game that would take place in the 20th Century.

Now, with that said, hopefully no body shows up here to argue against the idea of AoE 4 taking place in the 20th century…
So now the point of this thread is explain an idea (of mine) on how a game in the Age series style could possibly use a natural resource/villager based economy in a modern setting.

Inspiration of this idea came from another thread about what resources AoE 4 should use, https://forums.ageofempires.com/discussion/2923/what-resources-could-age-of-empires-iv-go-with#latest.

1. WORKERS: In the 20th century, people typically weren’t considered villagers, especially in modern developed countries.
So the idea of calling working class citizens “Villagers” or “Settlers” is rather outdated in most circumstances. Instead, working class citizens should be called “Workers”, appropriately enough…
and I believe that’s something many people living in modern developed countries would consider themselves to be.

2. WOOD: Deforestation is so 19th century. It’s time to think more long term and the key work here is ‘sustainable’.
Instead of workers chopping down a forest with axes and chainsaws in order to help their nation sustain a war effort, they will build and operate a LUMBER MILL.
A lumber mill can only be built on a piece of land if that land has a minimum number of tress on it.
Once built, it can be operated by a maximum of 20 workers, each worker producing a minimum number of wood units per minute; this per/min amount can be improved through lumber mill technologies.

3. FOOD: This resource can be acquired a number of ways. At first, you may want to build a RANCH; similar to how lumber mills must be built on top of a number or tress, ranches must be built on top of a herd of animals, such as a herd of cow, water buffalo, or caribou. Once built, you can research hen coups, pig pens, and the likes, depending on the type of herded animals. These require only 5 workers for maximum efficiency.

Now we move onto FARMS; these are not ranches and do not have animals and can be built anywhere. Essentially the typical mill with crops from the previous games, but using up a larger surface area, housing a few tractors and a barn, and able to operated by up to 20 workers.

And finally we move onto fish, trawlers, and FISH FARMS. Trawlers are work boats that can be used for fishing and off shore construction. Fishing directly from schools of fish will generate the fastest individual food income out of any unit, however it will quickly deplete the schools of fish. However, if you decide to invest in building some fish farms, the school of fish will never be depleted and your trawler will be able to fish a minimum of 10% of the schools fish population per minute; this percentage can be increased by researching fishing technologies at the docks.

4. METAL: This resource will be used for the production of vehicles, artillery, war ships, and bunkers (similar to castles and forts) and is acquired by building a QUARRY.
Quarries are large production buildings similar to farms; like farms they can be built anywhere and also require a lot of space, and like farms they require 20 workers to reach maximum efficiency.
However, metal can also be produced in MANUFACTURING PLANTS. These buildings can only be acquired via a card system similar to AoE 3 and are able to churn out four times the amount a single quarry ever could, however they do require 20 workers to reach maximum efficiency.

5. OIL: Used for the production of mid to late game units, oil can only be acquired by building a REFINERY, however refineries can only be built on top of an oil well and will most likely be fought over heavily. Oil can also be acquired by building an OIL RIG over an offshore oil well, this will require a trawler for it’s construction and will also probably be heavily fought over by naval forces.
Neither of these buildings actually need workers to operate and come with their own built in work force. Production is increased strictly through technologies.

6. GOLD: Finally, we have the age old currency of empires. Gold can no longer be mined, as all gold by this point in time has already been mined and is locked into the currency of countries as coin. To acquire gold, you will need either a MARKET or a DOCK, preferably both, and is acquired by either in-house trading or trading with other players.

Similar to AoE2, trade units can be built, these units will be the TRADE SHIP and the MARKET TRUCK and can be be built at their respective buildings.
The trade ship, just like in AoE2, will move back and forth between your docks and another players docks, bringing a varying amount gold back to you with every trip, depending on the distance traveled.

The market truck however, will be slightly different from AoE2’s trade carts. The market truck does not travel in between markets, instead it travels in between production buildings and it’s market.
With each trip the market truck makes to it’s market, it will bring a certain amount of the resource the production building produces, depending on the distance traveled. These resources carried do not count towards or against your stockpile.
And then, on it’s return trip to the production building, it will carry an equal amount of gold to the production building, which will be added to your stockpile as virtual taxes on surplus resources sold. The amount of gold carried earned from trade ships and market trucks can be increased through taxation technologies.

However, do keep in mind that if any of your trade units gets destroyed by enemy forces, those resources will be collected by your enemy.

A BANK is also another way of making gold, this however is quite simple and requires no elaborate system, just the building and it’s technologies.

This has been a presentation of my Age series style 20th century resource dependent economy.

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Things I forgot to mention.

All buildings that can be operated by workers become animated depending on the amount of workers currently operating them. For example… One worker on a farm will make the wind mill churn out crushed grain, ten workers will will make one of the tractors start moving around, and twenty workers will make a tractor carrying a grain bin move around.
Other ideas as examples include quarries having dump trucks and a working scoop crane, and the Manufacturing plant having forklifts and vehicles moving about.

The trade route system seen in AoE3 could also be implemented. Allowing for more resource income, including exp for a card system.

Also, if any one has any ideas that add to or modify these ideas I proposed, please don’t hesitate, because if AoE 4 does in fact come out in the 20th century, our input might make the difference between an AoE 4 we don’t like at all, and an AoE 4 that we might actually enjoy.

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OK, and how do I micro all these units for better results in real time, you know like getting the proper feel of an RTS, or do I just place 20 workers in said building or build a factory working on its own and thats it? Because you are describing Civilization/Anno/Sim City games.

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@IamDalv said:
OK, and how do I micro all these units for better results in real time, you know like getting the proper feel of an RTS, or do I just place 20 workers in said building or build a factory working on its own and thats it? Because you are describing Civilization/Anno/Sim City games.

In my idea, no, you don’t micro workers once they’re in working inside production buildings, similarly to how you didn’t micro settlers on Mills/Plantations in AoE3. You can however micro manage them if they’re not in these buildings.

And this whole time you’ll be able to micro manage military units all you want, so that proper rts feel will still be there.

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Why do you think AOE3 wasnt as successful as 2? Think about it.

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@IamDalv said:
Why do you think AOE3 wasnt as successful as 2? Think about it.

I’m not saying I disagree with all the OP’s ideas (some seem quite interesting), but it seems a lot of people these days forget what the “RT” part of “RTS” means. If I don’t have to make time/action/prioritization trade-offs I might as well be playing a turn-based game.

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In a modern or close to modern age game I’d probably favor food, fuel and ore as the three main resources.
(Possibly specifically oil as fuel, because it can also used as plastics, but including wood as a fuel source wouldn’t be bad either because it can also be used as wood.) Maybe you could have concrete or something (so basically just stone) as a resource for buildings/bunkers. Or uranium or something, if you want something with a rarer flavor. All big military installations in the game have a nuclear reactor. I’d like to try a three resource system, might work pretty well. But starting from the aoe series I would game mechanically prefer sort of merging wood and food rather than any other two so you still have a common resource, a rare resource and a limited resource for defenses.

Although your wood, food, ore, oil, coin (gold) 5 resource system could also work just fine. It’s just going to put a little bit more emphasis on economy probably.

EDIT: Of course, for an actual aoe4, regardless of time period, I’d use four resources in their traditional roles.

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I don’t have a strong opinion about the names of the resources, but I think four resources has always been the magic number.

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It may be caused by a millennium bug, but we’re living in the 21th century. o:)

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@“Pan Calvus” said:
In a modern or close to modern age game I’d probably favor food, fuel and ore as the three main resources.
(Possibly specifically oil as fuel, because it can also used as plastics, but including wood as a fuel source wouldn’t be bad either because it can also be used as wood.) Maybe you could have concrete or something (so basically just stone) as a resource for buildings/bunkers. Or uranium or something, if you want something with a rarer flavor. All big military installations in the game have a nuclear reactor. I’d like to try a three resource system, might work pretty well. But starting from the aoe series I would game mechanically prefer sort of merging wood and food rather than any other two so you still have a common resource, a rare resource and a limited resource for defenses.

Although your wood, food, ore, oil, coin (gold) 5 resource system could also work just fine. It’s just going to put a little bit more emphasis on economy probably.

EDIT: Of course, for an actual aoe4, regardless of time period, I’d use four resources in their traditional roles.

I kind of wanted to stay as close to the original AoE resources as possible, hence the use of wood, food, and coin (gold).
I figured buildings could primarily be built of wood. Food obviously for most units. Coin, obvious reasons.
And the reason for oil is, as you stated, not only fuel, but also for plastics.

I was thinking of somehow adding stone via a quarry, but I felt it was too many resources and wasn’t sure how stone could be used en mass.
So when I was thinking of the Bunker idea, and how it would be similar to castles in AoE2/Forts in AoE3; I also thought that it should be primarily be made of steel (Metal), not concrete (stone).

Also, metal would be the primary resource is the production of vehicles and artillery cannons.
So if someone wants a 4th to 5th era vehicle, they would also need to have oil in addition to metal and gold.
And most 3rd to 4th era siege units would actually use wood with less metal and gold cost, thus making wood more useful.

So, for some examples of the whole wood/metal/oil relationship…
You advance into the 3rd age and are now able to build an artillery foundry.
You can build field guns, which are outdated field cannons that cost 60 wood, 20 metal, 20 gold (100 resources total) with short range and moderate bonus damage to buildings/vehicles.
Or you can build a howitzer, which are more modern, long range cannons that cost 60 metal and 40 gold (100 resources total) and have a greater bonus against buildings and do splash damage.
^ So see there, you can still use wood for some siege units if you don’t have enough gold or metal at the same total resource cost.

And now a similar example with oil…
You advance into the 4th age and are now able to build Main Battle Tanks, which are heavier, tougher, and armed with a more powerful cannon than their 3rd age predecessor, how they cost more resources…
Early 3rd age tank (no name yet) cost 100 metal and 60 gold (160 total). No oil cost… for game balance reasons.
4th age Main battle tank on the other hand cost 120 metal, 80 gold, and 40 oil (240 total). They’re more expensive and you will have to fight to control an oil well, but it is also tougher and stronger.
^ So see there, if you have no oil, you can still build tanks and other vehicles, but they just won’t be as good (and as expensive) as oil driven machines.

Like AoE4, they would also be a 5th Age in which most units can be upgraded further, including infantry units; so that infantry units are better capable of taking down oil driven machines without needing oil themselves. These 5th age units will also start looking a lot more like the troops and machinery of the 1970’s and 80’s.

You can think of it like this…
Age 1, 1885-1900, little to no fighting, only basic infantry units.
Age 2, 1900-1915, more infantry units and some vehicles like transport trucks.
Age 3, 1915-1940, units, vehicles, and siege units resembling the first world war.
Age 4, 1940-1965, vehicles and siege units resemble 2nd world war and become more oil dependent.
Age 5, 1965-1990, units, vehicles, and siege units become better and more/less dependent on oil.

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Tanks make me feel sick.

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@“Orlando Hernan” said:
So when I was thinking of the Bunker idea, and how it would be similar to castles in AoE2/Forts in AoE3; I also thought that it should be primarily be made of steel (Metal), not concrete (stone).

I’m going to single this one out, because you have a lot of ideas, but I have an opinion on this one specifically.

I think the main brilliance of the aoe system, the one thing any competitors making a multi-resource RTS should really think about copying is the stone. Doesn’t have to be stone, you can call it metal, but it’s a resource used almost exclusively for defenses.

Why? Because it’s an incredibly natural way to make short and unfair matches longer and more fun while helping long and drawn out matches end already.

In the early game, stone allows for basically OP units. A 150 stone tower versus three 50 food axemen, tower wins. Because the tower is immobile, it’s hard to use offensively, so it’s an inherent bonus to defenders. The game is made, up to a point, balanced, a weaker player can defend against a stronger one. If you ever wondered why tower rushes are so annoying, this is it: your opponent found a way to use that unit that was overpowered on purpose to allow people to defend themselves as an offensive unit.

In the later game, when stone runs out, gold is still there. Gold is used for the most powerful attacking units, including the ones, introduced in the later game, that can easily deal with defenses (the stone thrower family in aoe1, trebuchets and bombard cannons in aoe2). Out of stone and with good counters to existing defenses available defenders lose their edge, the game becomes unbalanced. That’s a feature, not a bug.

This is probably the main reason aoe2 town centers cost stone. If they didn’t they’d be decent budget towers in the trash phase. Build town centers with all your excess villagers, stuff them full of skirmishers, don’t go near the enemy, end the game in a draw. That’s kind of anticlimatic for a two hour game, so developers want to avoid that.

(Gold running out before wood and food is a way to unbalance the game further, whoever has the lead in map control has more gold and should thus be able to finish the game, but that’s another story alltogether.)

.

So my advice here is, for your competing modern day RTS game: do not have strong units and defenses based on the same resource. You have five different resources there, yet you give the two most important functions to the same one. Realism should in my opinion take a solid back seat to game design here.

@“Andy P” said:
Tanks make me feel sick.

You don’t have to ride in them…

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@“Pan Calvus” said:

@“Orlando Hernan” said:
So when I was thinking of the Bunker idea, and how it would be similar to castles in AoE2/Forts in AoE3; I also thought that it should be primarily be made of steel (Metal), not concrete (stone).

I’m going to single this one out, because you have a lot of ideas, but I have an opinion on this one specifically.

I think the main brilliance of the aoe system, the one thing any competitors making a multi-resource RTS should really think about copying is the stone. Doesn’t have to be stone, you can call it metal, but it’s a resource used almost exclusively for defenses.

In the later game, when stone runs out, gold is still there. Gold is used for the most powerful attacking units, including the ones, introduced in the later game, that can easily deal with defenses (the stone thrower family in aoe1, trebuchets and bombard cannons in aoe2). Out of stone and with good counters to existing defenses available defenders lose their edge, the game becomes unbalanced. That’s a feature, not a bug.

So my advice here is, for your competing modern day RTS game: do not have strong units and defenses based on the same resource. You have five different resources there, yet you give the two most important functions to the same one. Realism should in my opinion take a solid back seat to game design here.

Thank you for your critical advice and productive feedback Pan Calvus, I appreciate it.

You bring up a good point here, so I have a question to see if you think it could work as a solution.
Limit the amount of Pillboxes/Towers players can make and limit bunkers to a card system like AoE3 did?
^
This way there’s no excessive amount of defensive structures just because someone has the resources for it and at the same time it’s not too difficult for a weaker player to build defensive structures.

Also, my idea behind oil was that it would be a rare resource not only to be fought over, but also as the resource that would allow better players to build the best units in the game and overwhelm the defenses of players hiding behind said defenses.

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It is a strange idea to continue age of empires after 12 years, but it doesn’t seem like many RTS games came out to redefine the idea of what a RTS game is, so maybe it doesn’t matter how different for the better or worse it is compared to Age of Empires 3 or 2 or 1. The first thing that comes to mind when talking about the 20th century is the century lacks the large idea of imperialism. Sure Germany was taking Poland with Russia, but that is categorized in its own area as a World War 2 genre. I think the World wars played a part in disrupting any further thought of Imperialism as they soaked up so many resources from many major nations. Countries around Germany and Russia actually became independent a few decades ago or after a major war such as WWI, WWII, or the cold war. Additionally I believe African countries broke from European control, I remember in History 151 the professor made a distinction about modern Ghana after European colonization and older Ghana, which was not one continuous empire. Empires such as those in the times of Rome, the
Islamic Caliphate, the Portuguese empire, or the British empire were gone in terms of political rule or winding down on their ideas of imperialism. It does not seem like the idea of the 20th or even the 21st century has imperialism as you would imagine aforementioned empires like Rome.

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Imperialism doesn’t seem like it was a major idea in the 20th century though.

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It actually was TastiesElk2341. I mean, it was kind of the basis for both World Wars in a lot of ways. (Granted, to say it was the only or even primary cause is a stretch, but a major factor none the less). Heck, for that matter, WW 2 can really effectively be called the END of Empire.

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but the results of the World wars ended with Germany losing a lot of territory. Plus I think that was also the century that many African colonies started to rebel and break away from European control. Also areas around Russia seemed to have reemerged after the Cold war such as Poland, although I may be remembering that incorrectly.

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Well that’s kind of my point. Both World Wars involved powers that were very much on Imperial agenda’s (Japan? The Reich? Even Briton to a large extent), and WW2 ended with the start of their (Empires) dissolution. Briton could no longer hold on to its increasingly restless colonies, Germany and Japan were both defeated and forced into reform, and even the powers that remained to exert influence started to do so more via proxies than direct colonization in the manner of those that came before. (Of course, that isn’t to say there were -no- examples). Anyhow, the point being that the idea of empire was still a driving force in the early 20th century, so its hardly like the world war eras are thematically that far out.

Now, with all that said, I will agree that I myself keep going back and forth on whether I would actually want to see AOE go there, mostly for fear of Relic focusing on military aspects at the complete expense of anything else. We are, after all, talking about a time period that was dominated by total war, with little room for anything else.

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Strange that this comment came out a few days after i posted it

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@TastiestElk2341 said:
Strange that this comment came out a few days after i posted it

Tell me about it. I had this happened and the thread was locked by @“Andy P” because he thought i am spamming purposefully. But it was just the edited comment which went for some “approval” No big deal.