Edit: This is not a proposal to add Stone as a 5th resource. Please read the OP before commenting.
So Age of Mythology dropped Stone as a resource in favor of well… Favor. I’d like to propose that Stone mines be added back; not as a new resource, but to be merged with Wood into a general “Materials” resource (or whatever you want to call it). Just like how food has multiple sources, from berry bushes, to animals, to fish, to farms, then Materials can be gathered from trees and stone mines. Now this proposal isn’t without reason, as currently Wood is the only finite resource in the game: Food can be farmed infinitely, Gold can be traded infinitely, and Favor can be generated infinitely (at least up to a cap in the original game). But if trees run out on the map in a late game, your only option is the market. So I’d propose that Stone mines be infinite, but have a slower gather rate. You could also have them placed away from players throughout the map, to give players something to fight over in such late game situations where trees run out; or they get burned down with multiple forest fires, since god powers are reusable now. And with Retold, this would be the best opportunity to do this.
It’s not a bad idea, but unfortunately, unless the devs already thought of it, it’s probably too late to add. I can’t really see them adding it in an update.
I wouldn’t think that it’s too late, yet. There’s still a couple months left for development. The animations would all be the same as with gold miners, except that you’d need a slight adjustment to the gold being carried to a stone texture. Everything else shouldn’t be too much work to do. And it shouldn’t drastically affect balance, either.
Na, Ensemble Studios removed the stone because it was used very little in AoE 2, if the stone returned it would have to be to build the fortresses…
The reason why stone was removed from Age of Mythology was given on an AoMH forums thread, answering to why stone was removed:
“It isn’t just having to manage your villagers collecting 5 resources, it’s also having to remember that some units, buildings or techs cost Food and Wood, others cost Food and Gold, others cost Food and Favor, others cost Gold and Stone…it just got to be too much to remember, like having a telephone number that was 26 digits long. We didn’t remove Stone because it was realistic to do so. We wanted to remove a resource, and Stone made the most sense because there is almost always plenty to go around. Believe me, you’re going to have enough to do in AOM without worrying about “stone mines”.
We also did a similar thing in the Expanding Fronts mod (to which I’m a dev) for Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds by adding Carbon Gas Vents to deep waters, which can be mined infinitely. Carbon is that game’s version of wood, which can normally be extracted from trees or carbon rocks. Just like with AoE2, water maps can run out of trees easily in long games, so this was a solution to that. It provides a source for Carbon when trees run out and gives players something to fight over.
So that’s where this idea is coming from. But since this is Age of Mythology, I suppose they could also just have some giant tree that never runs out of wood or something. Although, I think my proposal would be a neat way to bring stone mines back.
Yes, I read that you want to make it called “materials” like in EE2, but isn’t it a bit redundant?..In AoM/AoE 3 the resources are always 3: Food, wood and Gold/Coin (Coin because AoE 3 has different types of mine beyond gold) and then the 4th special resource (Favor in AoM and Experience in AoE 3)…
Yes, in AoE 3 you have infinite coin with the whales and in RA3 the mines in the water…
I don’t think adding stone as a new resource will add anything new to AoM and it’s been fine without it for so long time. It’s also another way which AoM differs from AoE franchise.
It’s the nature of online interactions that people won’t read past your first sentence. You can’t bury your lede.
Your actual proposal is “add a slow but infinite map source of Wood”. Directly spelling that out in the title may encourage people to respond to your proposal more.
Just add a building that allows you to collect Wood at 50% of the natural rate.
That is a massive reduction so it would only be worth it as soon as wood runs out.
Have you ever run out of wood at the end of a game on a map that had almost none to begin with? Having no choice but to smash the button to buy wood in the market can get very annoying.
Not any more unusual than Egyptian, Greek, or Atlantean buildings being made of wood that are clearly all stone. The Wood resource could be called Materials, or something along those lines.
No, it literally says “An idea for adding stone to AoM Retold”. You didn’t bother to read what that idea was and jumped to conclusions. I don’t see the point in defending yourself and arguing about this. That’s generally when you should say “my bad” or just move on. It’s not a big deal.
I just dont think what you are describing is needed for the game. It’s doing fine just how it is.
Now if the developers feel the need to add it in any way and make it work, then okay but otherwise lets not change things just to change them.
Let’s say it’s a map where trees is already not abundant. And then a player uses forest fire to destroy one of your tree lines, then later they now get to reuse that god power and they do it again and again until you have no trees left.
