A thing I have noticed that for AoE2, there is no build limit, yet in AoE3, there is always a limit to how much you can build. I really like building cities with multiple defensive towers and structures, and it’s surprising that there’s a limit to how many buildings you can build in AoE3. I think that’s one reason I really like that game.
Also, I’ve noticed something peculiar about the AI in the game. If you play a custom skirmish scenario, an enemy AI will suddenly give up once you harass them with your units enough, even if they haven’t lost many structures. Why is that?
In AoE II, you are kinda limited by the amount of defensive structures that are viable to build because stone is a scarce resource on the map.
The AI will resign if it is far behind and losing stuff, though it won’t do so if you type ‘105’ to it (there was a bug where this didn’t work anymore, I don’t know if they have fixed it).
You like building limitations like was done in AoE3? I can’t tell from how you worded things,as you said you “really like that game” (AoE3??) after saying you like building a bunch of towers/structures.
To me, it seems odd and I can’t fathom anyone wanting build limits, so I wanted clarification. If you prefer AoE3’s way with limitations, I wonder why?
Try hitting “104” and see if that stops them. You may need to do it via “AI Commands” in the chat window access via the trumpet icon; and make sure “Everyone” is the audience for your “104” chat first.
Note: I actually don’t know what the exact method needs to be, but I asked devs over in a different thread here.
Here are a few main threads about this topic, with recent activity because it seems “104” isn’t working 100% reliably these days… and it’s had a checkered past in terms of success rate:
Somewhat limited, but kind of not really because at the Market you can keep buying stone with gold forever.
I’ve played games vs. AI where I’ve bought so much stone the cost of it was off-the-charts expensive. IIRC, it visually caps the price for stone in the Market UI icon at “9999”. (At least it did in AoE2:HD. I haven’t tried to buy so much of any one resource in DE yet.)
Or maybe it was “99,999”?. Either way, you can make it really expensive and keep buying it, although the price reaches a max at some point, at least visually (I’m not sure if it was actually getting more expensive than 9,999 or not. Visually in the icon, though, there was a max. There is a max value that gets displayed for the collected resources at the top of the screen, too; at least in HD )
With this, I’ve made tons of castles, tons of wonders, tons of walls, and tons of towers in any one match.
For AoE2:DE, “104” is the command to use, not “105”.
104 tells AIs not to resign
105 tells AIs it is okay to resign
AoE2:HD had different commands for this. I think it was “100” and “101”, respectively; but don’t quote me.
But it keeps being more expansive, so in practice you are limited. Rather than being limited by a hard limit that outright prevents you from building more defensive structures, though, you are being limited by a soft limit that simply makes defensive structures less viable the more you want to build them. Personally, I prefer the design philosophy being used in Age of Empires II in this regards by a wide margin. You are not limited or forced to do anything, so you could build a dozen Castles against the AI if you really committed, while the practical outcome for balance is the same. Based on an earlier part of your post, it seems we agree that the design philosophy of Age of Empires II is the better one.
Yes of course. Thanks for correcting. I knew that, but somehow wrote the wrong thing.
If you have the time and energy, though, you should be fine. Play on a giant map, control the enemy, make a ton of farms, chop tons of wood, have 100 trade carts going map corner to corner, and/or trade cogs doing the same, and your gold surplus to buy stone is amazing, even though you’re selling food and wood at “14” price.
There is no soft limit because you can always generate more gold.
If gold supply somehow runs out (has never happened to me) or you’ve somehow made the stone cost too astronomical to buy more (never happened to me), it’s probably time to just finish the game anyways because you’ve probably just been having fun exploiting the map for an hour or more (which I’ve done many times)
Ahh, got it. Since we are in an AoE2 thread, referring to ‘that’ game after talking about AoE3 build limits seemed like a nod to ‘that other game (AoE3)’. Thanks for clarifying
(I’m not sure if it was actually getting more expensive than 9,999 or not. Visually in the icon, though, there was a max. There is a max value that gets displayed for the collected resources at the top of the screen, too; at least in HD