In the sense of not being broken/OP, sure, but even apart from my personal distaste for the idea, it still looks very likely to struggle for viability. For something like this that presents a somewhat complicated balance between under or overperforming, even very in-depth theorycrafting is very limited (and we’ve not gone so deep). There’s really no substitute for trying this out (via mod or whatever) to show its utility relative to the alternatives (or lack).
Sure, but some of us don’t need it to be particularly interesting or complicated. People have proposed things like morale systems or workers needing to rest, which I suppose you could say is more “interesting” than the current dynamic, but it’s also far more cumbersome.
Some people already find eco management + military management as being too difficult to manage (well) simultaneously, and the game is already seen by many new players as having a somewhat high learning curve in that regard.
For my purposes, wood can be thought of as unlimited on most closed maps. That is, if wood ever becomes an issue, both my opponent and I have played too passively and have failed several times to take advantage of aggressive momentum. When games reach that point, I view the relative unsustainability of resources as a mercy kill of an otherwise interminably long game. Not as a problem to be solved. Earlier I expressed my distaste for “wood games,” but not because I want there to be more wood, but to show how boring it can be to play in more-or-less stalemate conditions for hours until the limitations of the map have to step in and end the game where your decisive initiative couldn’t.
(cries in Malay)
I don’t think trees need to be renewable, but that strikes me as the least intrusive way of doing it if that’s what you want. I’ve at least done this a scenario, where the dead unit ID of trees is…more trees.
If this to be introduced as a mod or whatever, it is important for it not be overtuned than undertuned. Yes, it needs to be useful. But it is certainly better than feitoria and late game market in terms of gold production. So we can agree that this is pretty much the extent we can do with just theory crafting, and need to try it out to make more sense of it.
Wait, this is what the trade will actually address. You won’t have to play a long time if there’s trade. Trade means that map control is important, meaning you have to play more aggressive and secure your trade routes, while attacking your enemy’s. If you don’t do this, they’ll be able to field more gold units and you’ll lose the game quicker.
I’d say trash units are complementary to the gold units, and, in particular, the more map control you have the higher your ratio will be of gold units to trash units, while the less map control the more trash units to gold units. Both types of units have their uses.
The additon of regular trade in 1 vs 1 will absolutely make games shorter and more competitive/fun.
no they wouldn’t, because at the rate of your trade, it wouldn’t really be something you do until gold is mostly depleted from the map, if even then. it’s not going to shorten games, if anything it would make games longer as people use gold units longer and trash wars are delayed.
Personally, it’d be something I do as soon as I might afford it without risking the defensive/offensive failing so that the long term is accounted for within reason, preferably with some relics in tow if possible, so around early to mid imperial age depending on the situation. In the long run it shortens the longer games by giving players more ability to further attempt different strategies that they normally wouldn’t with the gold on low or nonexistant levels, and further lowers the ability for 10+ hour games to exist, thus shortening the longest games down to, perhaps, 5 hours, or maybe 3 or 4, or even down to a more mainstream 2.
If opponents are bumping heads for 5+ hours with decent gold generation it’s because the skill level is very similar and such matches are a pleasure to behold but will not be the norm. Gold generation allows players to keep attempting different approaches to take down the opponent, and that is why gold generation helps to solve endgame long-term game times while pushing the game to be more competitive in all stages of the game.
but you play drastically off meta, and it would actually probably be a waste, as 20 pop of gold miners would still generate gold faster then what this does.
but the game is designed around gold being a finite resource…that is why some civs are geared towards being really good while gold exists, but worse when it runs out, and vice versa.
be realistic. how often do you see even 3 hour games, let alone, 4, 5 or 10, especially in 1v1?
these types of games happen so minimally that you’re talking a FRACTION of the games played.
to be frank, with this addition, my endgame changes from what I’m used to, outlasting opponent res, to instead focusing on taking down an opponent that may not ease off the pressure due to a lack of res due to a few failed offensives running into aggressive defenses, which honestly is both a fear and a great want of mine; because instead of waiting for the opponent to falter fully, I’ll instead need to look for any weaknesses whatsoever which will increase my reading ability in most games. More importantly it will allow my opponent to almost always bring me their all in their offense, which I crave because I enjoy fighting an opponent when they are at their strongest.
on top of that, this is a endgame change, it won’t effect the current ‘meta’ of kill the opponent as soon as possible. like you said, it has no effect on the early/mid game because miners are more efficient then.
The game, keeping relics in mind, was balanced around infinite gold. the only resource being really ‘finite’ is stone and then even food and wood, and when getting really technical and infinite time, then all resources are infinite when bought with the infinite gold. you’re even technically able to trade with your opponent.
3 hour games from me? not often, but often enough I reach the 2 hour mark and near the 3 hour mark, but that’s me. I’m simply referring to other players that do reach the longer hours for one reason or another, I know they exist, and I’ve watched games of it happening, some on the pro level. in anycase, they are the exception instead of the norm, and would become even more rare with this change.
even assuming you get all 5 relics, that’s a whole 150 gold a minute. not much to be honest. certainly helps a LITTLE BIT, ### it isn’t going to change a whole lot. that’s enough for 1 stable to keep producing knights full time. 1 stable.
if he’s dumb enough to even let this go on. which he wouldn’t.
they are already so rare that when it does happen we hear about it for a long time. like the Lithuanians vs Turks game that went on for 6 hours. I can only think of 2 or 3 of them happening in the past 10 years. think about that for a second. that’s like a fraction of a percentage of games.
so yeah. I’m heavily against your change. the game is meant to run out of gold at some point, and let civs who aren’t as gold reliant have a chance to shine. and this change goes completely against that.
Leave the economy of the game as is. it doesn’t need to be touched.
I play against AI, and sometimes team up with AI to play against other AI. It’d be nice to be able to do trade routes between my own markets and own docks when my teammate is gone from the map (died, or lost sync) and has no markets/docks for me to trade with.
I’ve wished this for a long time, since when your teammate dies or loses sync due to no fault of our own, the trade routes eventually die off and I no longer get that income. I’d be okay with a slightly reduced rate of gold from the route, too.
I think it’d be fine for unranked, random map type games… especially when vs. AI. Not sure what the viability of this is for ranked games, and don’t personally care
Even under the buffed numbers you’re proposed, this kind of trade likely isn’t going to be viable until mid-lategame, when you’re floating a lot of food, and the faster gold sources present on the map are starting to dry up. Nothing about that implies shorter games, but it does imply a potential lifeline for players who have fallen behind on relics/neutral golds. As expressed before, the net effect of this will be for games to skew longer.
Also let’s acknowledge once again that this is a very non-standard idea of “map control,” when for purposes of self-trade all you need is a defensible spaghetti strip of land from near 1 corner to another. Your opponent could control 80% of the map, but as long as you can defend your 20%, you could have a profitable gold generation. The person with 80% of the map would still win more often than not, but the lifeline of extra gold means it will take longer to wipe out the other player, with more chances for an upset.
Once again, we’re at fundamentally different places with how we believe this bonus will play out. I’ve given my 2 cents (and then some), and as far as I’m concerned the discussion is all played out. I’d have to see this in action in order for me to abandon my contentions, although I suspect that doing so would only confirm them.
Yeah, the infinite gold available via relics and buying at the market. So why not leave it at that (rhetorical question).
Let’s also acknowledge that the game doesn’t work like this in almost all practical cases. Secondary gold and stone sources are always better than trading. Map control is already super important, and trading doesn’t change that. More importantly, in your statement “defensible spaghetti strip of land”, that word “defensible” is doing a lot of work for you. In the mechanic I proposed, merchants only trade with trade workshops which are extremely expensive to build and extremely fragile. So, you need to invest a lot into defending that one location, replace your merchants as they die, and wall off the rest of the path while your opponent can trade as much as you or more. They make more gold, you die.
You aren’t even correct in that this will inherently make games skew longer because as you’ve pointed out, this isn’t going to be useful until you reach late game. As of right now, most games end before that anyway.
It also isn’t a lifeline for people that don’t get neutral gold, simply because neutral gold is significantly more efficient. If you don’t get neutral gold, you’ll die before you ever get to set up a trade workshop and spend like 2000 food on making merchants.
You are making the case that people will use this as a clutch to save them, while simultaneously making the case that this isn’t a very efficient method to begin with. Again, this is only viable if you are more or less on an equal footing with your opponent in the area you can defend, and the resources you have. If you have floating reso##### earlier in the game, it would be better to sell it off in the market rather than to use it to set up a trade route.
Now, all that being said, I think that this sentiment is valid. We are at an impasse, and only testing it in the game will actually show how viable it is. However, I am not a modder. Hopefully, someone will make something like this at some point, and we can see how it works.