I hope Age of Mythology: Retold will consider adding expanded animal husbandry/herding gameplay.
Currently, our only herding option is sheep. Sheep are acquired exclusively through early-game scouting on the map, with no dedicated buildings to produce or manage them. The gameplay surrounding them feels very limited, revolving almost entirely around the single husbandry technology.
Adding a more developed herding system could bring significant benefits:
Civilization Differentiation: It provides a great avenue for creating unique mechanics and differences between civilizations, especially new ones.
Balance Depth: It opens up new possibilities for balancing and adjusting gameplay in future updates.
Richer Ecosystems & Tactics: A wider variety of herdable animals would make the game’s ecosystems feel more alive and provide more strategic resources. This, in turn, would naturally lead to more diverse tactics and strategies.
Expanding beyond just sheep would add much-needed depth and variety to this aspect of the game.
To be honest, feels like an unnecessary over-complication that would deviate from the flow of the rest of the game. At best the only realistic way to expand on what we have a reproduction system for animals so their functionally infinite like farms but even then such a system shouldn’t require to much micro-managing.
Not complicated. Just add an animal training option in the food drop sites or Town Center.
But is it really necessary? I don’t know. Age of Empires 3 has a herding mechanic, and it is rarely used except in certain very specific cases (civilisation bonuses or 45+ minute treaties). Balancing would actually be the real work.
That said, I’m not opposed to adding a new feature, however minor it may be. That makes content for the game.
I wouldn’t mind more variants of domestic animals to give different maps more flavor, but I don’t think an additional herding system is a good idea. It messes with the established early game where people are trying to execute their build orders (if playing competitively) and adding more wrinkles to that can throw that off.
Though we do currently have goats, pigs, and cattle, and not sheep. Also, it’s technically possible to get more pigs if you pick the right minor god as the Greeks.