What about a resouce and call it happiness
Similar to favor in aom.
For example,monghols gain happiness with fight(similar to norse faction in aom)
Or arabs gain happiness with building mosques and with praying(similar to greeks in aom)
etc.
And use happiness for some very strong unique units or hero abilities
Despite being a bit silly it is an interesting concept to have something to measure the peopleâs âpatriotismâ.
I think âmoraleâ would be better. Happiness sounds too much dysney.
It would be a complicated mechanic to create/balance though.
I think this pigeon holes a civ too much. part of whats great about 2 is that adaptability. If someones going for something and you make the counter play. If your civ depends on doing certain things in order to a resource needed it stifles this immensely and games can be decided so easily.
âshoot hes doing this and I need to counter butâŠi need more happiness which means i need my resources to build more mosquesâŠâ or well i donât want do monks but if i donât happiness suffers so im always going to build them.
or even on the flip⊠mongols being able to easily generate happiness because they just have to raid or be fighting and can do an early rush and snowball because of their happiness going up and letting them spend it on strong units or abilities.
The deck cards featured increased villager production speed.
No, thank you. Iâve never really cared for the Happiness in Sid Meier Civilization games, the culture/favor in Age of Mythology, or similar elements in other games⊠and it would just remind me of those games and less of AoE. I prefer more tangible resources and elements (like stone, berries, trees), rather than mining or appeasing the psychology of villagers/people, or gaining an advantage through conquests and, thus, ârallying,â in video games.
Morale, however, played a crucial part in the battles of medieval and even ancient civilizations.
They are almost as tangible and important as food, wood, gold etc.
For example, a hero unit around town could inspire soldiers to figth a little better and villagers to work a little faster. Temples and churches could also contribute to that in some way, since religion and faith make people have more conviction and in turn affects their performance.(specially at that time in history)
Building a wonder would now also have another purpose, boosting morale.
Destroying the enemy wonder could also improve morale.
Itâs a very interesting mechanic that hasnât been explored yet.
But Iâm looking to play a video game, not a medieval simulator 
I have posted before that I wish Wonders werenât pointless in AoE2. So, what you say from a Wonders perspective might be cool. If I have to spend an insane amount of tangible resources Iâve gathered (stone, gold, wood, food, marble, gems, etc.) to build a Wonder first, and reap some econ or military edge, then sure. But I hope I wouldnât have to assign villagers to pray next to the wonder. Thatâs where I draw the line 
Or if thereâs an element of âYour civ is unhappy and demands that you build a wonder!â ⊠yeah, no thanks on that either. Another line drawn.
To be fair AoM did that but it also removed the stone resource in order to balance that.
I didnât like that. I far prefer it when my villagers have to gather a tangible resource and carry it back with their arms or on their person to a collection point. Passive income and passive resources that occur just because you have villagers assigned to a building, or a train comes by, or a shipment comes in, makes the game too passive and lazy for me.
Thatâs one reason why I donât really like AoE3. You just assign a villager to a tree and he magically teleports lumber to you. In AoM, you assign a bunch of villagers and then just passively reap favor for the remainder of the match. That game mechanic is boring to me.
If a specific civ generates âhapinessâ/morale by doing x. Then that will lock players into having to play the civ that way, which to me is a ârestraintâ, and not a gain.
If all civs gained âmoraleâ passively whilst being not-attacked & not under siege, then that would be slightly different.
With all civs having the same 5+ features to spend the morale on.
And potentially 1 equally OK but limited to very specific-absurd-unique-feature each.
Well, itâs abouth mythology and the Gods interfering, it is supposed to be like that because in all the history about mythologies the gods interfere in some way when they see they are being worshipped(favor). So in that sense it is more realistic in according to the history that the game wants to represent. Itâs ok, you donât need to like it but it is a bit of nitpicking.
Oh and you can play the entire AoM game without ever getting concerned about favour, just ignore it and built troops only :).
I loved AoM and the favour also added a different mechanic for each civ: Greek prays, Egy build monnuments, Norse fights and Atlanteas have to build extra TCâs.
Yes I also didnât like the AoE3 style of villagers âabsorbingâ resources. Building drop-off camps forces you to be a bit more careful of where to put them. In AoE3 you just put the villagers where you want and if it doesnât work, no big deal, just move them somewhere elese.
In that I agree with you. Just building the wonder is fine.
Not entirely true. It depends on how you implement this mechanic, and how important it is. If itâs something as simple as building a temple then it wouldnât ârestrictâ the way you play. If its a bit more complicated than that then it could end up becoming a nuisance, for sure.
Thatâs the only reason I accepted it and dealt with it in AoM⊠it made some sense. I really hope I donât have to do that in a standard Age of Empires type of game, though. The term ânitpickingâ is subjective and unproductive. Iâm sure there are gameplay elements in an AoE game or some other game that you donât like that I could just as easily say is nitpicking or trivial. I like your use of the word, âabsorbing,â though 
Fair enough.
Funny thought: Building a wonder could improve morale so much that soldiers get cocky and start to underestimate the enemy and make mistakes in battle, making you lose more battles, lol.
Not happiness, but morale would fit fine imo, and we have seen in the trailer that mongol attackers seemed to increase their morale with that kind of Âżcaptain? unit just before attacking.
I dislike Captain, General, or Hero units being used to increase morale as a game mechanic. I just want to send a bunch of units to fight the enemy. If they do good as a group, Iâd be somewhat okay with a short morale boost (rally) for them⊠though I donât necessarily need or want this. I just hate having to worry about finding my one little unit with a star icon on him or glowing aura around him and put him into the group, and then give him special and preferential micro-treatment to keep him safe or make sure heâs nearby. (I say âhim,â but mean âhim/herâ⊠just didnât want to repeat that four times.) Or, in the case of AoE3, having to go find our magic general star guy after heâs fallen and give him a lending hand to rise up to his feet once again.
Itâs one thing to micro an Onager, Treb, or some other unit I want to protect⊠I donât mind that. Quite another thing for a Captain/General/Hero, where theyâre giving me some magical aura of morale or bubble of protection 
Really dislike that. This isnât Diablo or some other RPG.
And speaking of rallies⊠if theyâre implemented â defenses should be able to rally just as easily or more if they fend off an enemy attack on their base or wherever. Show defenses some love.
It has absolutely no reason for being a âmagical auraâ unit that increases morale. You have it in history, armies always have a general, a captain, a leader (or more then one) to follow, that keep the troop unite. It definitely doesnât need to be some kind of hero, it could be bannermen or something like that, too⊠but morale is one of the few âunnecesary extrasâ that really fit properly in a strategy game where war has a main role imo.
I donât want a supersoldier figure you will need to specially take care of, but you can see it in the trailer: thereâs some unit making the rest of soldiers battle-cry before the attack. Maybe its only for the cinematic, and I donât consider it really necessary in an AoE, but would fit well.
If a rally mechanic is in, itâd be cool if the units could just do it on their own, without a special unit needing to be created, specified, or purposely present by deliberate means of the player. Instead, maybe one random unit in the group that the computer automatically chooses at the right moment can take the temporary symbolic lead for the group and briefly raise a flag or sound a battle horn⊠and then quickly tuck it away and fight like the rest of them, without any worry that we have to save or protect that particular unit. This would be purely decoration and a formality to let the player know there is some leader, for all intents and purposes, of the group and theyâre rallying.
Kindâve becomes tricky and a can of worms when you try to decide when, where, and how frequently the âleadâ unit animation should happen. Would suck if it happened like clockwork for every battle, ad nauseum.
In general, for me, a Captain or General type of unit is better left for Total War franchise, imo. You know, battlefield simulators. I like to think of AoE a little more casual than a medieval battlefield simulator
That aesthetic detail sounds nice, too. As I said before, I donât consider a morale mechanic necessary for an AoE game, but surely preferable and more fitting than a happiness one. We are still not sure of how deep will AoE IV be in its battling approach, or if it will have some kind of XP system, or whatever.
But I can imagine some sort of system in which you can select a general to spawn in your base when you advance to the next age (like in AoM and AoE III you selected gods/governors, but with a real general that will appear on the field instead). Maybe instead of morale, some kind of special passive skill, like one that increases cav speed by 15%, or one that slightly increases infantry attack, or archers fire rate⊠of course I donât want to RPGize AoE, but there could be some additions that can fit well in an AoE game while not being very game-changing.
That said, I will be completely fine if AoE IV has nothing like this, too.
I think a sensible way to incorporate this would be to use monks to boost moral of troops in battle by giving them stat buffs, maybe attack speed or damage output, or ability to block and dodge attacks or something instead of giving them the ability to âhealâ units. The whole monks healing units thing was always a bit silly, and monks boosting morale would be a lot more closer to reality as well.