Army Size (POPULATION problem)

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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Note: ( That’s not spam, simply I don’t want to add another comment to my previous post that will be lost among the responses ) Continuing conversation from AoM Retold POPULATION PROBLEM

  • OPEN LETTER TO DEVS (one month before the game releases):

" I have always said that AoM Retold has the potential to surpass AoE4 and even rival AoE2 if things are done right. The developers’ performance so far can be considered almost impeccable: the game looks good, interesting new features have been added, etc. However, the population issue still needs to be addressed

Population is one of the most important aspects in an RTS as it determines the quality of the battles we will see and is one of the key factors when evaluating a game of this genre.

I’ll make one thing clear: if AoM is released as it is now in terms of battle numbers, IT doesn´t going to be A FAILURE . The original game was already fun, and this version with its improvements will continue to be enjoyable. Many people are going to buy it. However, the size of battles will remain being a weak point into the game compared to other RTS games like Starcraft II, AoE4 , and future RTS games . And once the novelty wears off, this point is always going to harm AoM when it comes to competing with them (even if the rest of the game is a 10/10). So, it would be a shame because given the tremendous work done on this version, it would be a pity to leave this easily solvable weak point unaddressed

"Sincerely,

A humble player"

*Being able to raise armies of this size without needing to use powers would be ideal (similar to other AoEs)

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  • POPULATION TOPIC: AoM Retold have POPULATION PROBLEMS IN LATE GAME.

-I haven´t spoken directly with you (devs) but I suppose why you didn´t want to add more houses. If you add more houses in early, this could leave the settlements useless… I UNDERSTAND THAT.
-I UNDERSTAND TOO why you don´t want to make caravans to count into villager limit, this could make the player not to have enought production in late game (because you need more than 100 between villagers and caravans) .

So I am going to use this last topic to propose different possible solutions to the mid-late size army problem in AoM Retold

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-Summary of the problems

  1. Soldiers cost more population than in other AoE games.
  2. In LATE AoM Retold require more population destined to production than any other AoE (and famous RTSs like Starcraft)
  3. Defensive buildings are too weak in comparison with other RTS (AoE and Starcraft) and to make matters worse the towers have been over-nerfed.* This favors an extremely offensive playstyle that forces the player to always be fighting and doesn’t allow for the formation of complete armies and visually striking battles.

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  • POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

  1. Adding an update in age 4 that gives you the possibility to build more houses. So, if we add houses in fourth age throught an update, that would not affect the fight for settlements in early-mid game.

  2. Increase house limit from the begining of the game but with a new feature that above X houses (10 for example) make each new house more expensive than the previous ( making profitable to control settlements above a certain number of houses )

  3. CARAVANS COSTING NO POPULATION. So, your population destined to production won´t be more than 100. You may do a limit of 10 caravans, and a update that increase this limit in 10 and can stack X times (4-7) (and probably making each update more expensive). ((Making caravans count into villager limit (as some of us proposed in the past) may be not good since it could not be enought to maintain a good economy in late)).

  4. Defensive buildings must be improved. I have seen a lot of games and many times people dont´care to fight under enemy Town Centers or under “castles” (towers are practically useless after the last nerf ). In a normal RTS game, players usually try to avoid fighting under the enemy defenses unless they have a superior army. That implies the formation of armies before attacking. In AoM Retold, defenses are so weak that there is hardly any penalty for attacking the opponent in their base, which often leads to constant attacks without grouping forces , so we don´t see complete armies and battles.

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*Just revert the nerf (it would be better to limit more the number of towers) and give us more population to fight against them. The original problem with towers in AoM was partly due to low population

  1. (EDIT 1): Skadidesu Proposal
  2. Hoping your ideas…

NOTE: "If you make me any interesting proposals in the comments, I will edit this list and add it here in the initial comment. Anyway, I hope that this matter changes because it would be a shame if the game fell short in this aspect after having done the rest so well."

2 Likes
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Town Centers already got much weaker I’d say. No need to nerf it further.
Turtling is more viable than ever

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Have I said to make them weaker? where???

They have overnerfed the towers and the Town centers have been nerfed too.

1 Like
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How is turtling more viable if towers and town centers are weaker?

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I’m talking about the Pop part of the TC

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Do you mean hiding villagers inside the TC?

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Adding additional sources of pop space

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Population is perfectly fine, no need to change it at all from what I have seen the game is in a very healthy spot. If for you the quality of battles depends on army size you already named several other RTS that fulfill that niche.

AoM does not need to be anothe RTS with a neat asthethic, for me at least AoM needs to be AoM, although I do say it would be nice to have some kind of limitation to Caravans as per your suggestion, for while I do believe the game to be in a good spot population wise, that doesn’t mean that late game battles should be allowed to become much smaller population wise than they are now.

1 Like
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The population usually has problems in lates where the size of the battles is (at best) half that of a normal AoE. And I can also give an example of Starcraft II, the closest thing to a mainstream RTS that there has been and in which I was a competitive player in the past.

Can I ask you a question? Would it really bother you if, for example, we had 20 more units in the late game, or are you just trying to defend AoM? Because a change like that would place the late game army in AoM at 50-60 units, it still wouldn’t be a game with huge battles.

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To answer your question, no that is not what would bother mne. But there is a caveat to this which is I dont want maxed out armies to become too massive. Because it creates the risk of massive deathballs and sure that 20 pop might not reach to that breaking point, but it will for sure inch us closer.

As an example you give me another 30 pop, I am going to pump out another 10 chariots. Limiting Population generally also means that people have to be more purposeful in their compositions, I have to think about how many priests I mix into my army for example or run the risk of having my mass of chariots be countered by myth units.

Right now having your army wiped out you can stil reasonably rebuild an army with better counters, allowing for more back and forth. Past a certain size this will just not be feesible.

That is not to say that I do not wish to have game determinative epic battles, which is why I think the current population cap strikes a good balance, particularly for newer players who are all to often overwhelmed by unit micro in rts.

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The main issue I see by RTS, they are designed in mind for the 1% of people who play online,
have old PCs and bad internet connection.

Sure 20 years ago it was ok to have low population in a game, but just think how much people and technology did develop over the time.

And why should it be an issue at all for a modern game? Just make for custom games optional 300, 400 population and let people have fun.

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With respect there’s no much point in having customisable pop limits in the lobby as there is no pop cap. You can theoretically go to 1000 pop if you get enough settlements, in theory.

The pop “issue” (I’m not taking a stance here) is one of either reducing unit pop space further or increasing the housing limit to give more pop. A lobby setting to manipulate population would have to fall under one of those settings, e.g all units cost 1 pop or unlimited houses, type thing

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Maybe we agree more than you think. I don’t want super massive battles, and I’m not asking for something experimental whose consequences we don’t know. With 40 more pop in the late game and “non-pop-caravans,” AoM would still have fewer units than AoE4, AoE3, and Starcraft 2 (I mention them because they are the ones I have seen the most).

I think you are mistaken here; composition always plays an important role. I never noticed this problem in any RTS style AoE game.

The problem here is if your army is annihilated. If your complete army is annihilated without causing significant losses to the enemy in return, you deserve to lose. Retreat exists for this reason and a masterful move like trapping the entire enemy army and destroying ir for free deserves to be rewarded.

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I’m going to tell you something that you don’t usually hear. If a game is WELL DESIGNED for competitive play with fun mechanics, it is also fun for casual play. An example I can give you of this is Starcraft 2 (yes, I know I talk about this game a lot, but it needs to be mentioned because it’s the only mainstream RTS there has been).

I came to Starcraft 2 back in the day through casual mode, and I found the best campaign I have EVER seen in an RTS. And the fun skirmishes against the AI led me to get into multiplayer

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I’ve seen games fail because of that exact pitfall where they focus on the competitive multiplayer aspect and added skirmish and story campaign as an afterthought. Felt like a glorified tutorial. Pretty much dead on release.
When someone first tries a game, he goes into story campaign and skirmish first, and then maybe tries multiplayer at some point.
Games made for the PvP crowd do not translate automatically into great single player/casual experiences.

2 Likes
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I have 2 Suggestions.

Bigger Rework

  • Houses are infinite
  • 200 Population limit (Lobby setting)
  • Villager limit is 100 (Citizens count double)
  • Every Economic unit counts towards the limit (Caravans and Fishing ships)
  • Every Town Centre increased the population limit by 25
  • Every Town Centre increased the Villager limit by 5
  • Town Centres and Village Centres only provide 10 population themselves

This system would make more sense.
Town Centres provide too much population compared to Age of Empires (there they only provide 4-10) while all the houses are just build in one spot early on.
Now you need to build additional houses for every new Town Centre you conquer.
Also increases the Villager limit a little so you can scale up your economy.

Smaller rework

  • 20 Limit for houses (10 Manors) (Lobby setting)
  • Villager limit is 100 (Citizens count double)
  • Every Economic unit counts towards the limit (Caravans and Fishing ships)
  • Every Town Centre increased the Villager limit by 5

Works in a similar way but changes less about the game.

In both cases you start with 105 villager limit and will likely have around 115 in most matches.
That is less then the 100 Villagers plus 50 Caravans you have now but I think it’s enough.
AoM villagers are really efficient compared to other AoE games. Only AoE3 has slightly better villagers but they also cost 2x as much.

In a 12 player FFA game it becomes more valuable to conquer more players territories so you can increase your villager limit.
After conquering 3 other players you are at a villager limit of 160 and therefore surpassing the current limit.

This general villager limit also gives you more flexibility to choose what kinda economic units you want instead of having a fixed 100 Villager + 50 Caravans setup in every match.

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Thanks for your Idea.

The problem I see here is (after speaking with some players on Discord), in the early-mid game you do not have enough economy to reach 200 pop. So if you establish a 20 house limit (200 pop.), the fight for settlements could be reduced or eliminated in the early-mid game.

That’s why I proposed 2 possibilities:

  1. An update that gives you 4 more houses in the 4th age, so in the early-mid game you still have 16 houses.
  2. A new system that makes houses more expensive above a certain number, so you would still find it profitable to control settlements to obtain population above a certain number of houses.

Would an average 115 limit between villagers and caravans be enough? I see many matches with more than 15 caravans and 100 villagers. And even if this limit were increased, the problem would remain with your caravans taking population from your army.

I think would be easier:

  1. Caravans no-pop.
  2. You start with a limit of 10 caravans.
  3. An update that increases this limit by 10 and can stack 4 times. Imagine the price (200 for the first, 250 for the second, 300 for the third, 350 for the fourth).
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With the same logic that you argue that Caravans you could say that villagers should cost no pop.

Well with the same logic you could make the population Limit 150 and add 50 via a technology in the 4th Age.

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Yes, but villagers have an earlier and more significant involvement in the game than caravans. Besides, they are a much larger population than the caravans, which start to appear in the mid-late game.

Doing this with the villagers would eliminate most of the population management in the early-mid game

(EDIT 1): The suggestion of no-pop caravans addresses the population problem they cause in the late game

Yes, it could be done that way too, and I would prefer it over the current system. But I suppose that an additional house in the early-mid game slightly improves the units numbers in the early game

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But if Caravans cost no population there is no trade off. You always want to build all of them after you eventually researched all technologies.

There are currently situations where you might want to reduce your villager population to get a larger army but if there is no population in Caravans you just always want to keep them.

Also it would be strange that just 1 unit out of all the units doesn’t cost population.