Allow players to trade between two of their own markets - and ideas for nerfing forward castles(castledrops)+trade workshop becomes a trade point(suggested by @LilimTheCupid, the tradeworkshop, mind))

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
44

I should have made this clear, but I don’t think you can implement large changes such as this in one update/patch. It would have to a separate game mode/addition as a DLC/something else.

Now, that being said, it’s not a big if. Here’s a rule of thumb, you should be able to get gold maybe a third to a seventh as fast as vils do. But trade carts now cost a lot and might not make back their cost. So, make a new unit, say, merchant, which costs something like 100 food and 20 gold. With this configuration, you aren’t going to make nearly as much as gold as you will by just mining it. But you also don’t run out of gold (without relics), and have to use the market to trade.

I think that one of the biggest downsides of AoE2, personally, is how the resources just run out and that’s that. I have seen pro matches where all the gold and stone (and in some cases, wood) has run out, and it’s just a slogfest of the 3 same units. Or even worse, you are fighting something like malay or persians, and it’s gg for you.

It’s not realistic, and it’s not fun. Devs recognize this, because both AoE3 and AoE4 has ways to generate resources indefinitely. This doesn’t take away the value of finite resources. You are much better off collecting from those, because they are drastically more efficient.

45

actually wood is a clear bottleneck in 3, idea being, you can technically generate infinite amount, but its coming in really slowly, relying on infinite generation is smt you want to avoid for as long as possible, and that goes for food and gold as well, but less so than wood that fully depends on factories still standing, and as a bonus, units in 3 cost about double their aoe2 counterparts, so ye, slow infinite gather won’t save you as you might think it will, using trade posts for extra wood trickle is also a way, but yk, no one will just let you take all trade posts

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46

I agree. It doesn’t fundamentally change the game. It is not to save anyone, either. It just makes it so that you don’t run into full on stalemates. For example, I once played a migration 4v4 game where we had full water control, but our opponents had full land control of the central area. Then, wood ran out. It became a 3 hour slog fest, and the wood price was in the thousands by then. These supplementary sources are just there to accelerate the game and not make the players fully dependent on the market.

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48

I agree. Although from the OP’s post it looks like a suggestion to change the base game to this, which I’m not a fan of, and I don’t recall anyone else making the distinction of it being a different mode up to now. It’s probably a mode I’d never play, but if enough people want something, there’s a chance for it to exist in some form.

I guess I can understand why someone would think that, although I’m very much a fan of the current arrangement and scarcity of resources. If I want gold to be a non-issue, I’ll play TGs or as Portuguese or something. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m resistant to ideas that seem to make AoE2 more like AoE3 (which I found way too gimmicky) or 4 unless they provide a huge upside (from my POV anyway).

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49

Okay, wait. This is a misrepresentation. In the suggested change, gold is not a non-issue. If you’ve played team games in open maps, you know how hard it is to keep your carts safe. The suggested change isn’t a catch-all one where you suddenly get an endless amount of gold. It is a risky and strategic process which is only possible with a lot of map control and sacrificing a lot of your pop space.

I agree with you that AoE3 isn’t very good. I don’t want AoE2 to become like that, either. But, the proposed change isn’t from AoE3, it is from age of mythology. Also, I don’t think that the gimmicky feeling is coming from this one change. For me, the card system, the pre-made trade outposts, and the unit balance were significantly bigger issues than getting a trickle of resources in return for being more vulnerable. In AOE3, you weren’t even that vulnerable when collecting an unlimited amount of gold. I think that this comparison is unfair and it doesn’t make sense.

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50

Sure, I was being a little hyperbolic. (The existing features I referred to are also not literal “non-issues” in the sense of providing tons of free gold without any kind of tradeoff or counterplay). To be more precise, I would have rephrased it along the lines of “If I wanted games with unlimited and potentially high[er than could be provided with a few relics] gold access”). As far as balance, I’m not really worried about how it would play out on Arabia, where raiding would be strong relative to this mechanic. I’ve mentioned my concern is particularly for closed maps. My gut feeling is that if this mechanic was even situationally viable on Arabia, it would be annoyingly strong on closed maps. Bottom line though is tha# ## doesn’t really solve any problems I’m interested in, so probably best to leave it at that.

My bad, my knowledge of AoE3 is pretty limited. I mentioned it because of this specifically though:

To express my disagreement with the implication that adding more infinite res generation mechanics to AoE2 is a good idea because it is present in 3 and 4. Some people think this would be good for AoE2, I’m not one of them (except potentially at the civ level as limited bonuses for new civs, or new maps that can provide some of these features without having to rebalance civs).

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52

If you don’t mind, let’s delve a little deeper. Let’s say that this is a new mode like empire wars or 9 vil start.

Let’s say that in a map like arena, the highest you can generate by trading within your walls is like 1.5 gold per minute per merchant. This means roughly 20 merchants is equal to one relic. Each merchant costs 100 food and 20 gold.
The maximum you can make in a 1v1 size map by placing markets on extreme ends would be at the rate of 4 merchants equal to 1 relic. Since you can’t have that in most cases, the best you can expect is something between 7-15 merchants equal to one relic.

Which civs do you think will the most rebalancing? How will this change the game?

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53

It likely won’t, because it will be ineffective at the proposed rate such that few people will choose to use it (noob trap). People who are advocating for this change will want it to be a viable proposition relative to the other options. If the mechanic was ever added, but was too weak, players would complain until it was buffed to a sufficient level.

Let’s look at the proposal:

Taking a somewhat generous view of this with a number skewed somewhat towards the optimal end of the range (10 merchants equal to 1 relic), that gives an investment of 1000 Food, 200 gold, and 10 pop space for the equivalent gold generation of 1 relic (30/min). Putting aside the opportunity cost of 20 villagers’ worth of food, 200 gold, and 10 pop space of units that can only do 1 thing, let’s get a reasonable baseline by looking at the existing gold-generating mechanics in the game:

Relics: Assuming you go for self-trade in lieu of competing hard for relics, and your opponent gets 4-5 over you, you have to train 40-50 merchants just to break even with the gold generation provided by his relics (or 20-25 even under nearly completely optimized conditions of 5 merchants corresponding to 1 relic). Lacking this population space for the rest of your eco or military will leave you at a major disadvantage. And more importantly:

Market Trade: Assuming bottomed out market prices, a civ without guilds gets 14 gold/100 food/wood. A civ with guilds gets 17. A single Imperial lumberjack with upgrades takes about 2:46 to gather 100 wood. Let’s round up to 3 min to account for bumping and supoptimal lumbercamp refreshment. That still provides 200 wood in about 6 villager minutes, or 6 villagers on wood can generate about 200 wood in 1 minute. A civ with guilds can then trade this for 34 gold, even at bottomed out market prices (and obviously much before before then). These 6 villagers are generating more gold than the 10 merchants referred to before, at a lower creation cost, and with the benefit of much greater flexibility (and with lesser raidability). Even a civ without guilds gets 28 gold from these 6 villagers, again, almost as much as 10 merchants under the previous assumptions. For both groups of civs, this is better gold generation than 7 merchants (under your stated situation of 7 merchants being the best that could reasonably be expected, and providing the gold gen of 1 relic).

This also doesn’t factor in civs that get more favorable trades per unit time (Saracens due to market bonus, Slavs/Celts due to faster res gathering), or civs with other relevant gold bonuses (Aztecs/Hindustanis getting more from relics, Burgundians/Vietnamese getting added gold from their UTs, or the Portuguese with the Feitoria, which provides 20 merchants’ worth of gold on top of food, wood, stone, lower cost, and much decreased raidability.)

So yes, under this ideation, self-trade wouldn’t be “broken,” but it’s also not strong enough to be useful except (barely) at the very extreme end of the suggested range, with perhaps 3-4 merchants generating the gold of 1 relic. Which just isn’t good design, and will so rarely be worth using that it’s not worth implementing. Maybe we recognize the strength of the much simpler, more intuitive (and more powerful than is being recognized) form of “self-trade” that has existed all along via buying gold at the market.

I think the existing gold-generation mechanics are not being respected nearly enough, and in order to make “self-trade” viable, you’d have to bump those numbers up quite a bit (which then opens the pandora’s box of how to make it balanced). At the end of the day, this idea just seems like an overly convoluted way of reinventing the wheel (pun intended) for an already robust and balanced (infinite, but limited rate) gold generation system. At the risk of being pretty unfair, as you might say, it strikes me as being similar to the idea that, because chocolate cake is enjoyable, one should eat chocolate cake for breakfast every day. Mod or separate game mode? Be my guest; apart from that it seems like a very poor fit for the game (in 1v1s) as it currently exists.

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54

ok when you put it this way it starts to get more interesting to think about, as long as infinite generation like this is really slow, like relics as you pointed out

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55

The topic keeps getting longer and longer.

56

Perhaps similar to feitorias in terms of generation(per 20 pop) but only for gold and maintains a weakness in that the trade route may be raided(and if a small condensed trade route, less rewarding but still viable) where as feitorias have the ability of generating the resources for a concentrated defense while giving stone. Longer the trade route the larger the reward yet higher the risk, but again I would suggest a reduction for self trade in terms of reward vs enemy market and ally market trades.
I believe that ports having infinite potential shouldn’t be a standalone thing, it should instead be that ports have their version of unlimited potential alongside a version available to all civs given self trading made available within reason.

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57

Why would people even use trade in this case? It wouldnt even be worth it.

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58

^ part where it’s never worth it

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59

Because you’re thinking in just how much gold feitorias generate, I’m referring to switching the other resources to additional gold in terms of feitoria generation when in terms of carts or merchant self trading per 20 pop on, perhaps, a small trade route, or midsized one.

60

I would propose a toggle switch and/or certain new map types, where, when activated, the generator places one or more (based on map size/player count) neutral (indestructible?) markets on the map.

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61

I would like to avoid these markets that are indestructible and stuck in one spot, unable to be moved or adjusted. which is why I’m pushing for self trade with markets of one’s self with or without perhaps another trade building such as tradeworkshops. gaia markets is something I very much dislike about aoe4, not in the sense that one can trade with it, but in the sense that it is stuck in one spot and is non-flexible.

62

This is just extremely bad for competitive 1v1. Concepts like resource/map control, relic fights become pointless. This should never be mainstream in my opinion. You can have a few more maps like marketplace and maybe a top level tournament with gaia markets. But definitely not a feature of the game.

  1. Clearly you’ve not been around pre-DE where it was the era of forward tower rushes with spear-skirm. It was cancerous.
  2. I think this is fine, but its not going to nerf forward castles. You still need to be put a castle right opposite the forward castle, make 5 petards and take out the castle. And the opponent can do the same to yours. So instead of the current 8 or 9 petards its going to drop to 5 or maybe 6 petards.
  3. Awful. Imagine converting castle, tc, walls. There’s no possibility of defense against strong monk rushes.

Only good suggestion that actually tilts the balance away from forward castle rushes without making the game unplayable. Not that its needed but maybe it will be ok to increase the build time by 10-15%.

I understand that it can be frustrating to face civs like Poles or Turks or Spanish while they do this but understand that except for Arena, forward castle drops are a risk that opponent takes and is working only when the other player goes for a greedy boom.

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63

The need of Map control, thus resource control is just the same if not increased moreso with self trade in 1vs1.
But if you lose map control and even relic control, you might still stand a chance while using a smaller trade route. And at times, a smaller trade route may be what is strategically needed. Against Portuguese something like this is absolutely needed for the long run in 1vs1. It makes the game more competitive, not less. Unlike in aoe4 where if you lose the trade route you lose all trade, this method of self trade actually gives you room to turn the game when you lose your trade route by giving you the option of trading elsewhere.

Also, I’d increase castle build time by 50-100%

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64

Not really. You build a small base, a couple of markets at both ends and you can keep up gold units. If you lose map control and relic control you shouldn’t be able to stand a chance. Its your risk of being overly greedy and that shouldn’t pay off. That’s the whole point of decision making involved in the game.

65

We agree that this shouldn’t be in the game at this point, this is just brainstorming.

Your comment was extremely insightful, and made me think about how to balance it better, so thanks for that. I used the resource generation by Feitoria to balance this better.

A Feitoria generates 1.6 food, 0.7 wood, 1.0 gold, and 0.3 stone per second, and takes up 20 pop space. However, it is an extremely safe option. You can just place it somewhere, and you are good. So, this new method should be more effective than a feitoria because it does have a lot of risk. By considering bottomed out market prices for wood and food, but high price for stone (200), you get around 120 gold per minute from a Feitoria, using the market.

This means self-trade should generate around the same rate, or slightly higher. Additionally, gold is rare in the end-game. But we want people to set up and use trade routes. So, merchants should cost 100 food and 20 wood. They also don’t take as long to make. Say, 30 secs. However, their end point is a trade workshop, which will cost 200 stone and 300 gold. They should also be somewhat fragile. This will mean that you can’t afford a ton of these buildings, and once your opponent knows the end point, they can take it out.

And now, the gold production rate. Within the limited walls of Arena, my earlier proposal is fine, I think. However, the maximum you can generate on a tiny map is 12 gold per minute per merchant. This is with no obstructions, and the buildings on the extreme ends. This is rarely possible. So, in practice, you’d get 4-10 gold per minute. This is somewhere between 3 and 7 merchants being equal to one relic. It can be better than feitoria if you can get enough map control, but it is not strictly better than Feitoria.

I think that it’s more or less balanced at this point. Feel free to disagree.

Hold on, market has two problems. One, it is not interesting. It’s just clicking a button after a point. Two, it is not actually infinite, even theoretically. That’s because the amount of wood on a map is strictly limited. If you don’t have wood, you can’t make farms. So, no food. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, the only ways to have an infinite supply in a 1v1 is either trade with your opponent, or have a feitoria, or the most common way, have relics.

My entire problem would be solved if trees grew back. Or there is a way to plant more trees. I just want one resource to be renewable, in an interesting way.

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