I personally feel like it is hard to enjoy the different stages of the game because of how fast the game is progressing through the ages. This is mainly in competitive games as i imagine for a casual player this is not really an issue. In the current state of the game you can end up in the mythic age after 15-20 minutes and perhaps even faster if you rush it. After 20 minutes you can have over 100 villagers. I personally feel like slowing down the game by either increasing the cost of ageing up, increasing the villager build time or slowing down the gather rates of villagers would be nice. The goal would be to be able to enjoy the different stages and challenges that each pantheon has through out the ages. Especially having more time in the classical age and the heroic age. A lot of the time those ages feel skipped all together which i feel like is a shame.
The game is fine as it is.
I did like the villagers to gather at a slower rate to slow down the game.
The time to build villagers should be increased.
The age up cost to heroic age should be increased.
The age up cost to mythic age should be increased.
This is not an easy change, they already increased the villager train time from 14 to 15 seconds but changing things like that more throws off all of the balance of the game and would mean that everything has to be rebalanced and every campaign mission has to be manually redone.
That would be months worth of work and would mean delaying the game by like half a year.
After release such changes are practically impossible to implement because you would change something that people are already actively using.
So yeah I personally agree that making the game a bit slower would be a good idea but I also know it’s impossible.
Maybe it’s possible to add a slow mode later on. Increasing the train time of villagers to 20 seconds (like AoE4) or even 25 seconds (like AoE2) would dramatically slow down the game.
One simple idea would be to make a map were everyone starts with a Village Centre and there are no Settlements.
This way everyone only has -25% training speed for villagers which would be 20 Seconds per Villager.
I do think that Village Centres should be even slower than that because they are kinda too good right now. We’ll see if the developers change them at some point.
Things I have heard is trade is nerfed with it not bringing back as much gold for the same distances, fishing boats gather slower by default, wood is gathered slower by default, and villagers are trained 1 second slower. Also you don’t have hunting dogs to increase food gathering rates from hunts and the fishing techs cant be research until later then it was on legacy AoM.
Temples are more expensive to build and you can’t advance into Mythical age until you build a Fort like building in Age III are things that effect aging up compared to legacy AoM.
Increasing age up costs is a big no for me. Making economy units take longer to train is a big no for me. Making resources gather slower is a big no for me. I don’t want a slower game.
The pace of the current game is ideal for competitive, Aoe4 is a clear example with games lasting more than 30 minutes on average that tire players out and make the search for games longer (this is because players spend much longer in games than launching a new one), in addition to that it makes it super boring to watch games where most of the time is spent producing villagers and establishing the economy.
For me the original AOM has a perfect game pace, I hope the devs are not going to touch something so drastic.
I would like to add that if anyone want a slow game, they could just stick to AoE 4. Many of us already tired of that games and don’t want people who will only touch AOMR for awhile ruin it by bringing AoE 4 concept over
I think bigger issue is the resource cost since in AoM you get free myth unit and god power when you age up so you are very incentivised to do it compared to AoE franchise. For example think about going up with Artemis, getting Chimera and Earthquake. That already has value about 2000 resources. So aging up in AoM is free.
Not saying cost to age up should be drastically changed, but around 25% increase to food cost of aging up might have better competitive balance especially now that food available on the map has been increased.
They could also up the gold cost and even add a favour cost now we have unlimited favour AND more favour options to choose from. Adds a “what do you prioritise” element. Would make sense to - spending the favour you’ve gained for Artemis for her to grant you a chimera and earthquake in return for that favour
Favour costs would be hard to balance since favour is not equally easy to get for all civilisations in all stages of the game.
Norse would be forced to always fight in Classic Age which limits the amount of possible strategies and makes counter play relatively easy.
Some maps would become almost unplayable for Norse since some maps have geographic obstacles to overcome before being able to attack the enemy.
So it seems like it’s moving towards longer matches like AoE2/4? The new village center also has its usecases for defensive playstyles which again can basically only make the game duration equal or longer.
Wonders literally just win you the game in AoE4 though.
Also Wonders take really really long to construct in AoMR and are pretty expensive. We will only see them in very long games.
Depends on what much quicker means tbh. I would like to have games that can end within 10,20,30 minutes depending on skill and strategy. AoE4 nowadays is basically 20mins+ each game.
Nevertheless I will have a look at the content of aussie drongo, also at the game length of the matches he’s going to cast.
I would even take the opposite position: It’s great that everything is sped up a bit, because it makes the game more dynamic and I think it gives it better eSport potential.
Also it’s not like you always rush for the later ages. I’ve seen quite some game were people (good players) were still in Age 2 after 20 minutes.
From what I’ve seen it takes 4-5 minutes until the action starts, another 4-5 minutes for armies to get to a reasonable size and then, depending on how greedy the players were another 5-20 minutes until lategame kicks in. That feels like good pacing to me.
Defensive structures in most cases do not speed up the game. And the village center is such a defensive structure. Theoretically you could say that the faster you can increase your villager count, the faster you can produce armies and the faster you can get the action going. Practically people will find ways to use those village centers as keeps light in order to do as much passive damage as possible while expanding economically. But well, we will see how it turns out. 6-12 months after release, very good ladder player should have figured out how to use those structures in their most effective way.
The game’s pacing can sometimes feel like you’re speeding through the ages without really getting to enjoy or explore what each one has to offer. It’s like you barely get to set up in the Classical Age before you’re pushed into Heroic, and then it’s like, boom, you’re in Mythic already. For casual players, it’s probably not as noticeable, but in competitive play, it does feel like the focus is all about racing to the finish rather than enjoying the journey.I think your idea of slowing down the game makes a lot of sense, especially if you want to experience more of what each age has to offer. Increasing the cost of aging up could definitely make players think twice before rushing through the ages. It’d force you to really work with what you’ve got and maybe even strategize more around your current age rather than just prepping for the next one.