But that wouldn’t add more strategy to the game and basically just make it more like AoE2. I’ve proposed it already but why not make garrison/arrows an upgrade option for TC (maybe bar starting TC) so that scouting needs to be more important and strategic depth is added to the game? What are the cons? People who want to boom can still do so but need to scout and know what they are doing. No need to get rid of it completely but make it way more strategical imo.
I mean, AoE 2 isn’t the only game where additional TCs become available in the 3rd Age 
In AoE 1 you need to build a Government Center in addition before unlocking TCs and in AoE 3 you even get Age up options for the Fortress Age that ship a free TC. Not sure about Age of Mythology but I think it behaves similar.
That’s how the Cuman civ bonus in AoE 2 is balanced out as they can build a 2nd TC in Feudal but that TC takes longer to build.
I agree with what you say about the problem of aging up without 2nd TC.
From my point of view, the rock-paper-scissors of this game can be focused on 2 options: Rush>Naked Boom>Turtle>Rush… or the other option is Tech (Age up agro)>Turtle/Boom>Rush >Tech.
If we removed the ability to do 2 or more TCs we would have to reduce the cost of aging.
In my opinion, the issue lies with resources. There are too many infinitely regenerating resources, and even the ones that run out give you way too much. The economy in AoE4 is ridiculously scaled up, with too many multilpiers and effects.
It is hard to deal real damage in AoE4, and the longer the game goes on for, the less meaningful damage is. It makes the game feel exhausting on top of lasting longer than other games; which I think is a bad combo. I personally think the game should last longer than AoE2 or Starcraft–but, for that to work, the experience needs to be less miserable.
The fundamental issue with how economy is set up in AoE4 makes so that damage becomes exponentially more meaningless the longer the game goes on for, by so much. Early TCs contribute to this, although I’m not saying moving them up to Castle is the solution.
Unless you’re sitting on the opponent’s only gold nodes, they will likely only lose by death by a thousand cuts. It is too easy to maintain the semblance of an economy that allows a player to bounce back up, and this is one of the reasons that makes killing villagers feel like the only real ways of being aggressive.
We don’t have to copy AoE2, but I will say that the fragility of farms in that game infinitely surpasses what we have in AoE4, where building farms is hardly problematic, and they become set for the remainder of the game.
If the developers wanted to fix this without overhauling the entire game, create situations where one can properly damage economy without only going for villagers. Reduce farm health by 75% and increase their cost, make trees destroyables by Siege or other means, remove drop off landmarks and create new ways that allows players to intercept economies.
Though, personally, I think overhauling economy is a better choice, even if it is more difficult. Does anyone actually enjoy sitting there upgrading the millions of tech just so you can produce 5% faster in a 35 minute game?
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If steps were taken to reduce the resources of the map (especially gold and stone from player bases) and there were more incentives to dominate said map + add micro to units, games would last slightly less than AoE2 by logic.
That would make the game slow, I prefer the game to be more offensive, repairing the landmarks with stone and wood or that the sacred places are paused
Which is fine. If it happens by consequence in fixing something that I consider to be a major issue, then that is just the natural repercussion which is well worth considering what it would fix. Going out of your way to focus on shortening the game length by reducing the gameplay’s quality is another matter entirely.
My suggestion would mostly bring more significance to the gameplay loop. Mistakes being more costly, successful attacks being more hurtful. This should be good, as it would more vividly define gameplay in a way that isn’t as relentlessly frustrating and in a way that punishes the current ease of turtling until you bounce back.
I think defensive gameplay is important, and I disagree with the OP about going after it directly. Instead, I think what allows players to shrug off attacks to be the core issue. It becomes too much of a back-and-forwards like volleyball. If a player loses a hand during a game, that should heavily influence rest of that volleyball match.
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3 hours of gameplay
With less booming, the game would actually become more aggresive as players can’t reproduce killed villagers as easily
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It has logic but I don’t want a slow game, also having more villagers allows you to quickly climb castles since some civilizations have castle units in feudal age while others do not
The game wouldn’t be slower, it would become faster. Less booming means less playing safe and more offensive play
Aging up shouldn’t be made artificially hard. The right approach is making Dark and Feudal more enticing.
If I only have crappy, weak spearmen or archers in Dark and Feudal which barely do any significant damage and my enemy is rushing towards Castle, then sure as hell I’m also going to stop the aggression and focus on booming. Then the game becomes a turtle-fest.
Making it more expensive to age up will only make those games even longer since players are still racing towards the resource thresholds but now it’s gonna take longer.
Dark and Feudal should offer you more units and therefore more strategic room. This is one of the fake limitations carried over from AoE 1 and 2 that I despise the most. Drongo always says in his casts: “oh, that’s a slow Feudal age up”. Why should your aim be to to basically skip a whole age as quickly as possible? That’s poor game design.
Because competitive play is not casual play, and design has to walk the line between the two.
Personal (but justified) bugbear: I don’t like the word “artificial” when it comes to games design and balance. I find it incredibly overused, especially when describing typical pacing tools available to balance devs in strategy games.
If tweaking the pacing via adjusting the cost of something is “artificial”, then so is 75% or more of balance tuning. It becomes a meaninglessness adjective. Build times are a tool. Build costs are a tool. There are many others.
But “make Feudal more attractive” comes at the cost of “making later Ages less attractive”. It’s not a choice that exists in a vacuum. The question should be: can a player win in Feudal. If not, why not.
Actually, apart from Dark Age that only offers Militia, every Age in AoE 2 has something that makes it viable. In AoE 1 however, most games are already decided in Tool Age.
This has been my impression as well. Without garrison abilities and shooting TC’s and missing arrows it pays off to harass from the very first moment on. AoE1 is very similar to EE1 which makes absolutely sense since both had the same lead game designer Rick Goodman.
But my point still remains. Why come up with a whole age if the intention is to get out of it? For pros the age up click happens at the ~2-3 min mark. For every game I watch, I know I can skip to about 5 minutes and I wouldn’t miss much. That’s a problem. Maybe do a Dark Age Landmark that you start with, so there’s some unknown variable at the beginning of every game, or add more units or make garrisoning a tech you have to research, or a combination of all those things.
I mean, it’s a game, it’s all artificial. I get your point but I call these changes artificial when no other routes are considered, adjusting resources is the easy way out. Sometimes that’s fine if you want to tweak how often a powerful unit is being used but absolutely nobody is going to say “oh, aging up to Feudal now costs 500F 300G, so now I’m gonna go crazy with my 3 spearmen and my 2 scouts that at most tickle villagers and die in 2 seconds if near a TC”. What is going to cause is that you’re going to add 1 or 2 more minutes to an age where absolutely nothing happens.
I’m sure Relic and FE and Microsoft have pretty good creative devs who can come up with ideas to make aging up still attractive. Gunpowder can be restricted to latter ages. Blacksmith upgrades too, but unit variety should not IMO.
And how about a slightly cheaper Castle and Imperial Age? (with the consequent balance).
I love you 
Please make this happen.
Because fast tech should always be a viable strategy.
I agree it shouldn’t be the strategy. But (as much as others may claim to know otherwise), the game is designed for casual players (as well as high level players). Civilisation V wasn’t designed for tech slingshotting, but it still became one of the dominant strategies (that was also a necessity on higher AI difficulties to beat the resource cheats).
Top players finding and min-maxing a path of least resistance is exactly what top players do. It’s how a meta forms.
It’s a problem if it’s happening all the time. There’s also a different argument in fun to play != fun to watch but that’s a different thread entirely.
Is nothing going to happen though? The whole thing about competitive play is it hinges on the risk of an opening. Delaying a fast tech so that it can still be viable, but not dominant, opens up Feudal counterplay for that time.
This will have a varied effect across different maps and MUs. It will not be a net benefit. This is good, imo. I think it’s got more legs than adjusting Feudal unit viability, which is a much bigger topic. You can’t just say “make Spears stronger” for example.
Just because something is “easier” doesn’t mean it’s a “way out”. Likewise, I don’t think delaying the Age up means the devs shouldn’t investigate more in-depth changes. Balance changes shouldn’t come all the time, but that should land more often than they are.
This cuts both ways though. We don’t know what iterations these things go through. We don’t know what they’ve considered, why the pacing is what it is. I’m sure the devs can do all sorts of things. In that I completely agree.
What we argue about here, is not can, but should. Opinion obviously.
I think it’s fine to delay the Age up a bit, if the problem is that fast tech is too dominant. It’s not something that trickles down. It doesn’t really affect lesser-skilled players, because they’re not going to be min-maxing that window (anywhere near as effectively). Balance should (imo) be a living thing. It should keep changing to react to the emergent meta (and we should get faster turnaround on these kinds of patches, like I mentioned already).
imagine you could skip first 10 minutes in dota… oh wait, you can.
You will always have time to skip unless it’s Empire Wars.
But actually, i love EW in aoe4, sadly they afraid to add it into ladder.
Hope, some will organise EW tournament, after which devs will add it into the ladder before stormgate.
PS 12 vils to start also would be great.
I did not understand the wish to limit number of options at the start. If 5 out of 6 vils have to go to food. What are options? None.