As shown in this video, in the 2024 April PUP of AoE2DE, you only need to select “Build Farm” and shift-click on a Mill / Town Center / Polish Folwark to auto-place them.
For AoE2, this will be a somewhat controversial feature, since Ensemble designers originally went out of their way to make its 3x3 Farms hard to place around 2x2 Mills and 4x4 TCs, turning into a special skill the player needs time to learn.
OTOH, most will agree that placing AoE3DE’s Hausa and Ethiopia Granary/Field combo is nothing but tedium that needs simplification.
After AoE2DE, will the same QoL improvement come to the AoE3 side?
this would solve so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so much complaints (made 33x to represent the ammount of clicks you need to place 33 farms, assuming you know hotkeys). No seriously, its a nice little hack that still requires people to have 2 or more braincells to plan granary placements. Hope we see it!
It would be an improvement, but only an infinitesimally small improvement. Even with this Granaries/Fields are still horrible.
Problems:
Take waaaay too long to build
Take up too much room
Require many clicks to place
Prone to overbuilding
Hard to keep track of (no central building to mouse over that says x/10 gatherers)
Are hard to select for changing over
Can’t start on coin (without some tedious use of hotkeys)
Block pathing to hunts
Must be babysat so hunts aren’t shot away
Have very expensive upgrades
This kind of shift clicking to build only partially addresses 1/10th of the major issues with them. They will still be tedious as hell even with this function.
Great job listing the problems for African farms. Those are the reason why i don’t like to use African civs. So many clicks and wasted spaces for 3 vils/field.
