I don’t think this is that much of a concern. You can mitigate this in three ways. The first, lower the gold income when you trade with yourself that you sacrifice pop efficiency if you want a result anywhere close to mining it. Second, make it so that the income is exponentially more dependent on the distance. This means that you earn pretty much nothing unless you have decent map control. Three, make trade workshops expensive and vulnerable.
No, that is not where the balance issue is. The huge problem with balance is with defensive civs and highly mobile civs. If you are a defensive civ like the koreans or japanese, you have a huge advantage in protecting your trade carts. But this is okay in terms of balance, because these civs are closer to the bottom anyway.
Highly mobile civs will get a huge advantage with this, however. Hussars will be even more broken, and civs which lack mobility will suffer a lot. Even though I like this proposal, I would be against it for this one reason.
You are saying that there is no balance point, either it will be too low, or it will be too high. I am saying there is, if you make small adjustments. Example being relics. AoE2 is, in fact, a game all about balance points. This is no exception. The problem is finding it.
Also, there is a mod that lets you do this, and I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that it is more or less fine. But take that as you will.
boosts tower rushing, i don’t think that’s what the devs want
you need to have a castle up to build petards. if you already have your own castle castle drops are rare and usually accompanied by enough army to kill petards
hmm, not sure this would help much, usually a castle drop has some archers or other units with it that can kill a monk standing next to a castle
this might work, but would also completely remove quickwalling
The only thing I would do is make trading only available with gaia markets placed by RNG likeothers respurces and relics. This you should take control map to gain access to trading posts
Gaia marketplace points is a negative aspect to gameplay in general, much better for marketplace points to remain completely custom such as in team games, and 1vs1 would do well to follow suite. Aoe4 I look at as incredibly flawed due to the Gaia market system.
Ever hear of trash wars? (units that don’t cost gold) Since a thing would not exist anymore. Gold heavy civilisations would become ridiculously powerful with infinite gold. And civs with great trash units would become much weaker.
Suddenly Persians (and other gold heavy civs) would be very strong.
If they made self-trade as a global mechanic, I would probably stop playing 1v1s altogether, at least on closed or semi-closed maps. The occasional 4+ hour “wood games” on closed maps are bad enough, we don’t need to make them 10 hour games via self trade. Plus it’s just a weird concept; the idea of trade in AoE2 is justified based on the allure of exotic goods from another culture, not a charcoal and wine exchange program with Jim from across town.
Also, what problem does this solve (besides catering to the whims of a minority)? Like many of OP’s suggestions it seems to come solely out of a desire to remake the game in the image of a (turtley) niche playstyle. There are already maps (michi/bf/maps with literal gaia markets) and civ options (Portuguese/Burgundians/Vietnamese) that allow the player to boom and bank up gold (as well as infinite res settings for unranked). I’ll reiterate my continued plugs for using mods and the scenario editor if you want to see your uncommon vision come to life. Mayyyybe something where this is available could be its own setting, like Empire Wars, but as a default setting? No thanks.
Plenty of things are cool within that context, but are not good fits for becoming global settings.
There are huge asymmetries in TBs as well that would need to be modified. Bohemian and Spanish “TBs” would give those civs overwhelming advantages. Techs like Paper Money and Vineyards, and units like the Magyar Huszar would be completely marginalized. Trash would need to be retooled, as would the overall balance of many civs, as others have pointed out. All for a minor upside for a few people, and at the expense of everyone else.
While long trash wars can be a bit of a drag, IMO it’s better than all the alternatives by a mile. If I have to choose between rewarding aggression and rewarding turtling, I’m going to choose aggression. The limited nature of key resources on standard settings is good design.
The point we are making is rhat some civs are designed to have stronger early games, but be weaker when gold is becoming an issue, whereas other civs are excell when gold is running low…
Your market change messes with that balance, and not in a good way.
My theory he wants to spam heavy gold costing (2 times the gold of a champion, and much more food) units like Teutonic Knights without much of an issue. Which are very strong units but only in very niche situations (trade is essential for long term production) they need key support units like longbowman from an ally or something.
This is something I’ve never understood: why should everything in the game be changed just to implement one of your ideas? If the result of your proposals are always something broken or useless (like in this case, where trade is either too efficient or never worth it), why should the whole game be changed in order to implement them?
Trash wars encourage turtling up. If you have enough relics, you are encouraged to wait it out and kill off your opponent’s gold units. The longer it takes, the more advantageous it is for you. On the contrary, self-trading will encourage aggression. Self trading, if implemented well, means that you will need long trade routes which will always have vulnerabilities and therefore, will always need protection. On the other hand, your opponent is encouraged to attack the trade line.
Currently, you can get into scenarios where the relics are split 2/3 or equally in certain closed maps. In such cases, the relics are kept safely in a monastery somewhere. This is much harder to raid.
Trash wars have nothing to do with turtling (and are a better situation than high infinite gold IMO). And who takes map control to grab 5+ relics to then turtle up in their base outside of Low Elo Legends? As opposed to taking the neutral resources or using map control for aggression with a forward castle or siege? If self-trade is made viable, there’s far less reward for aggression and map control (referring to the middle of the map, versus holding 2 empty corners, which otherwise nobody would care about). As far as raidability and whatnot, on any semi-closed map it would probably be worth self-trade even with a suboptimal route of only several screens.
Big if, and would require loads of rebalancing. You’re welcome to like it, but in my opinion it’s one of the single most destructive changes that could be made to the quality and identity of the game. Feel free to make a mod or something and see if it catches on.
It’s par for the course. No need to understand it beyond recognizing that OP has a vision for the game that is very different (if not fundamentally incompatible) with what it currently is, and with what most people would want.
Good point, while we’re at it, let’s add Titans and God Powers to AoE2.
As a Stellaris player, I know you’re referring to the Titans of AoM (which are also epic, despite most of the choices being illogical), but I can’t help thinking of a massive warship with a super laser on it.