so i believe the RTS community and aoe2 community especially missunderstands the idea and purpose of these 2 tools
the way i view these is as follows:
they’re essentialy equal to a car with automatic gear switching vs manual gear switching, some would argue there’s skill being lost but i disagree
the core skill in RTS has always been multitasking and it has always been a genre based on real time decision making, neither auto queue or vill priority menu take any of this away, after all, the player still makes all the core decisions, the difference is simply the player choosing to sacrifice the max precision of fully manual approach for the sake of focusing on the big picture
do these tools raise the skill floor? not really, core skill is making correct calls at correct time, neither of these raise the floor, they simply take care of areas less skilled players wouldn’t focus on as much either way because they lack the ability to read the game to that degree
these systems also do not make you a better player, from experience with aom retold i can say the following, initially i played notably worse with these on, left only autoqueue but even then, i was still significantly better performing without either, so good old manual way, i say this to highlight that for a skilled player, these tools add nothing they wouldn’t already be doing better, for me the manual way allows level of awareness the use of above tools simply wouldn’t allow
however, not everyone is as mechanically refined as a 20 year aoe veteran and for those people these 2 tools offer a way to strategize and decide in real time with less pressure, important to note, neither of these “play the game” on their own, player still steers the priority menu, still manually enables auto queues where they deem fit, decisions are still there, early eco still keeps majority of usual micro, like luring boars and even deer for super fast up times, the only micro you save is repeatedly clicking train villager button (no one complained about shift queuing units or command queues, some people on here really need to fire up age of kings just to experience the pure clickfest aoe2 used to be)
tldr, these tools don’t make you a better player, they simply offer a more streamlined but much less precise and less overwhelming way of playing, letting the otherwise gatekept players actually experience the macro in a way that will never be on par with actually skilled macro but at least they get a taste without being immedietly bodied right at the start
for all ranked enthusiasts, these new players even with these tools will not suddenly match you in skill, the skill gap will remain virtually unchanged as APM =/= skill, instead making correct decisions at the correct time = skill
as for good old manual approach, its my preferance as well, but there’s nothing wrong with an alternative being there to not be thrown in the gutter right away, instead autoqueue and villager priority help people build the decision making and once those tools start holding them back (and i assure you, they hold you back a lot once you figure the game out), they can then figure out all the things fully manual execution enables, after all, auto queue thats running unchecked can be a disaster, just like training a bunch of units you didn’t mean to train, its not a press once then win button
edit: just for disclosure, i play aom retold with both of these turned off, as they aren’t smt i’d need to keep up with the game, other games in the series (so far anyway) either only offer villager priority on console (so no autoqueue) or not at all but i believe having both in all titles wouldn’t change anything for existing skilled players