Auto-queue villagers in idle town centers?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
63

If you want the right comparison between food and wood, you can also think about auto-reseed this way :

Take a lumberjack for example. One tree has usually 100-150 wood right?
When the lumberjack is done cutting that 100-150 wood tree, does he go idle or does he automatically go to the next tree?
He automatically goes to the next tree. So we already have auto-lumberjack or auto-tree whatever you wanna call it.
Now imagine if he went idle after each tree and you had to manually make each lumberjack go on to the next tree? Simple : Idle villager -> right click on the next tree. Higher skill-cap. You can learn to do this with habit. Lots of extra uninteresting actions? Yes.

Well, auto-reseed is like having that same auto feature but with a farmer and the food ressource, as we already have with lumberjacks and the wood ressource.

Once you decided to create a farm with that villager, initially, it meant that you wanted one more villager on food. That choice doesn’t change when the farm runs out, just like the choice of having 1 more lumberjack on wood doesn’t change when the first tree runs out.

That’s the reason why auto-reseed actually makes sense. It allows you to have a villager dedicated for food non-stop without having to interact with him again, just like you have a villager dedicated to wood non-stop without having to interact with him again.

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64

I don’t really get your style of reasoning, arguing about semantics and making arguments by comparison. Another method would be actually trying to understand what the other person says and staying on topic.

You turn it in the way that fits you, but we could turn it in the other way as well. People who are attached to manual re-seeding are those who spent many games/hours trying to master it, and they don’t want to feel they have wasted their time doing so, even though the automated feature is actually a decent improvement in gameplay.

It’s not what fits me, it’s the reality.

Yes that is a part of it, however I will not claim that I have mastered it. Many times in lategame I will have 5 farms idle, but in my opinion that is part of the game. A punishment for not paying attention.

Stating that it is a decent improvement in gameplay is your opinion. Easier sure, but It doesn’t feel like an improvement to me. I don’t like that it’s “set and forget”, farms are unique being an infinite resource so comparisons to finite resources don’t really hold up.

There is nothing interesting about re-seeding a farm. It’s just a mechanical action that you HAVE to do no matter what (most of the time), and that doesn’t involve a choice in terms of strategy or macrogestion. That’s why automating it makes sense, because if not, the human player becomes the robot.

Again just your opinion on how it should be balanced. I do find it interesting. I won’t disagree that it doesn’t make sense, however I just think it’s not an improvement. I would never come up with implementing these auto features, but also won’t disagree with these features as long as they are behind a lobby/mm toggle.

@TougherTrack508

It seems curious that you want other people to have a worse game experience, just so that you can feel that you’re ‘good’ at AOE.

I consider auto reseed not an improvement to the game, we just have a different pov. However as long as your opponent agrees I think you should have access to these auto features.

65

Well, would you be fine with having to manually put each lumberjack on a new tree once theyr done cutting the first one, then?

Isn’t this the point of a discussion? Sharing each other’s opinion.
What you post is your own opinion as well, but I don’t feel obligated to point it out every time.
You don’t counter an argument by stating the obvious fact that this argument is the poster’s opinion.

“The fact that you think auto-reseed is not an improvement is only your opinion.” → imagine if I used that argument.

And using comparison with other RTS games or other things in the same game is actually useful when discussing features. Discarding it entirely because it’s a “reasonment by comparison” doesn’t make sense. Do you know that many current features of AoE 2 were actually borrowed/inspired from other RTS games?

66

Your arguments by comparison don’t make sense because it goes by the premise that because wood eco works like that, farm eco should also behave like that. It ignores that different elements having their own identity can be good gamedesign.

If you state as a fact that there is nothing interesting about farm reseeding, then I will say that that is your opinion. Or I could make a silly comparison that houses are also not interesting to build neither is replacing lumbercamps… But that would not be fair since things can be different and variety can enrich the game.

Comparisons with older games to strengthen your point makes no sense because that’s not relevant.

There is no point to this subjective discussion because we both have our opinions and they originate from opposite preferences.

A remaining point of discussion is that these features are not optional, but forced in the game and not using them can and will cause a disadvantage. Like multiple things in DE I feel that they want to decide how I play the game. It gives me PTSD thinking about how they not included any way to have controll over maps when ranking. This is not about saying this is right or wrong, but understanding that a large community will have varied opinions so it’s good to implement a flexible system.

67

This is a key point. No-one seems to understand this. I’ve been trying to get it across for a while.

Any automation feature that is a) consistently beneficial, b) has no (or very situational) downsides, and c) does not require player input is a bad feature. It removes skill from the game without real reason. Subjectively speaking, any strategic or AI-driven decision making feature is a bad feature. This is with the cavaet that some automation features are required to prevent the entire game from becoming on-screen economy micro. Unit logic, for example - not having to pick every individual target, not having to chop every individual tree. These intuitive features are different from automation features.

But there is still majority user input. You set the location once, but you have to provide input for 2/3 of the process - choice of resource allocation and amount of villagers created to send to that point. Add in auto-villager production and now your economy is mostly automated.

This is done out of necessity, and is an intuitive feature not an automation feature. It’s also quite extreme, as microing your trees while playing late-game would be nigh-impossible even for the best players. It also destroys the meaning of the “Idle Villagers” counter and removes the intuitive information that it provides the player. Farms are far different due to the large time interval, and there’s no way to reconcile the two systems because of it.

I do agree with you on auto-farm reseed, though. It is not consistently beneficial, and there are downsides to having it on all the time. You need to manage farms to play properly. Having it on all the time is a bad idea if you’re going for a siege push, for example, because you need every bit of wood you can get.

Auto scout is different, and I don’t think it’s a good feature to have in the game due to it’s AI-driven nature. It does not require player input, and scouting is very much a strategic operation. Also, scouting is typically quite an intensive activity mentally during the middle of the game. Many players aren’t able to manage mid-game scouting properly because it’s difficult. It is a point of differentiation for players’ skill levels. Automating it removes that factor. Even more so for villager production - this is an order of magnitude more important than scouting, and would have a large effect on gameplay even at the high level.

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68

Please do not do this. If you want to play without worrying about economy, just play death match. The game has been this way for 20 years and people like it.

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69

Except I have backed up that claim with actual arguments (as to why I think it’s not interesting to manually re-seed farms). So I’m waiting for your arguments as to why you think building houses or replacing lumber camps are not interesting actions.

So I will repeat myself since it seems you only read the stuff that puts you off and miss the important arguments.

To me, manually re-seeding farms in mid-late game is uninteresting because :

  1. there is no strategical choice involved. You do it because you HAVE to do it, otherwise your farmers don’t work. You already made the strategical choice for these villagers to be farmers (AKA food gatherers) when you initially built the farms with them. That choice doesn’t change when your farm runs out of food. So the fact that you have to come back and basically say to that villager “Continue farming!” is superfluous. You already wanted that villager to be a farmer (food gatherer) to begin with.

  2. in that sense, all the extra actions that you have to do when manually re-seeding farms are just purely mechanical robotic actions with no strategical choice involved. Therefore automation makes sense.

  3. And that’s exactly why comparing it with Wood gatherers (AKA lumberjacks) actually makes sense.
    Lumberjack = wood gatherer
    Farmer = food gatherer
    Miner = gold or stone gatherer
    When you decide for a villager to be a lumberjack, it means you want him to gather wood until you decide that he should do something else. It would add a lot of pointless extra actions to have to order the lumberjack to go to the next tree manually everytime one tree runs out, don’t you agree?
    Similarly, when you decide for a villager to be a farmer, you want him to gather food until you decide that he should do something else.
    And to be realistic and honest for a minute here : most of the time when you create a farm with a villager in mid game, you’ll want him to actually be a farmer until the end of the game. That’s the reason why people put auto-reseed on in the first place.

PS : the only argument I have read so far that is pro- manual reseed is this one :

“Manual reseed is needed because we have spent so much time learning to do these pointless extra actions that it’s not fair that newcomers who just start learning the game benefit from auto-reseed!. They have to suffer and get gud, just like we had to.”
Yes, manual re-seeding brings extra actions that requires more multi-tasking and therefore can help people who have mastered it have an edge over those who haven’t mastered it. But just the argument that it gives an edge to people who know how to do it VS people who don’t, is not a strong argument, in my humble opinion.

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We have opposite opinions coming from different preferences. It doesn’t make sense to argue about it because I like A and you like B.

I think it makes sense when you say that a farmer is meant to stay a farmer, however I appreciate that this is not a “set and forget” thing. I believe we should stay close to “continuous output should require continuous input”. I enjoy the heavy micro aspect not because I’m perfect at it but because it’s an awesome feeling, the idea of managing everything. These auto features create exceptions to the “rule”. When you forget to manage your eco, you are going to be punished. In my mind this is a great mechanic.

But yeah there is no point to argue about. For you it’s robotical and without strategy, I would say that not everything has to purely be a strategical decision.

For you farms may be automated in a way that villagers move from tree to tree, I would prefer to maintain the unique properties of farm eco.

Now lucky for you most players will agree with you, so you win. Unfortunately there is no option left to play without it. If both players enjoy or dislike the features, it’s easy. Only when there is a conflict of preference one of them will have to concede. Even if the priority goes to enabling auto features, it’s better than giving no option at all. So after not agreeing with these features, they now get forced into my gameplay.

I still can’t really believe that they implemented these auto features, and in such a way. Sometimes I comfort myself by pretending this is an alternate reality where it went wrong LUL. I hope that when one of the devs get married I’ll get a phonecall because I have some strong opinions on the cake, music and table arrangements.

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71

OK that’s the first time I’ve seen an explanation of why someone dislikes auto- features, which goes beyond “I like noobs to be ****ed over”

You could still play without auto farm-reseeding though, you’d just get a lower ELO.

72

I completely agree with this statement. However, we are not talking about automating all the macro management of the eco here. We are only talking about, and specifically talking about, farm re-seeding.
There is so much other stuff to do in AoE II for macro-management, than re-seeding farms. So, just removing those specific manual actions do not remove the whole macro management. It just removes one small part of it, and arguably, in many people’s opinion, one that’s not particularly interesting.

I actually argued as well, in this topic, that I thought auto-villagers and auto-military were bad ideas. Specifically for the reasons you mentioned above. Macro and micro are both important part of a RTS game, and not just the micro or the “strategy” (this word can be quite vague so I put it in quotes).

However, not every macro management actions are created equal, in my opinion. Choosing to which ressources you want to direct each villager, when to add new farms, new lumberjacks, new mines, choosing when you want to add town centers, when to create more villagers, when to create each military unit that you need. Those are all macro-management actions that are necessary in a RTS game, in my opinion, and that shouldn’t be automated.
Re-seeding farm is also a macro management action but, in my opinion, it’s not on the same level, not actually crucial to the gameplay, and having it automated doesn’t remove the other part of macro management in AoE.

That’s not realistically something that can happen though. They can’t make every change they do in the game something optional. The developpers have to make choices, and once they’ve decided that adding a feature or removing one, or making one particular balance change, is needed to make the game better, it has to be the case for everyone and every game, for consistancy’s sake.

73

To clarify, I did mean to say farm eco there.

I hear your points.

That’s not realistically something that can happen though. They can’t make every change they do in the game something optional. The developpers have to make choices, and once they’ve decided that adding a feature or removing one, or making one particular balance change, is needed to make the game better, it has to be the case for everyone and every game, for consistancy’s sake.

Ofcourse it is possible, don’t compare balance changes with auto features. For example there was a SQ/MQ toggle in the past. Those devs included the option for the community to decide what they prefer. Some would act cautious when altering a 20 year old game, instead of this reckless behavior from forgotten empires.

I simply do not accept that they should have the authority to tell a whole community how the game has to be played. They are biased towards pleasing the casual majority by making the game more “accessable”, adding unneeded features that look good on the box at the cost of great gamedesign. Farm reseeding in itself would not be a great issue, but when you put all forced auto features and deliberate limitations of the MM system together with the lack of classic mode, those ridiculous collapse animations that block units or the lack of a fully featured lobby, it really makes me wonder how the fck do these people have the balls to sit at E3 and tell me that everything will be maintained and behind a toggle while in fact they projected their own vision and gave the community no options. And with the options they gave us, they made sure to default the worst possible settings. Many of these are simply damaging to the gameplay.

74

I just one want big button at the bottom of my screen that does everything for me in the name of “beginner”, I mean the pro’s don’t have to use it but I can use it so that makes it okay right? /s

You give people an inch and they take a mile. Happens every time.

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75

They can do this for single player and campaigns, like the sheep scout and those things

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76

This is a bit of a strawman argument, in that the OP isn’t asking for “everything” to be done for them.

I think this thread has been interesting, and it has helped me develop my thoughts on what makes a game such as AoE II DE good:

  1. The game must at all times allow a competitive advantage to be gained by a better player compared to a weaker player. The nature of this doesn’t necessarily need to be higher APM, it can be better high level decision making, but there needs to be some way for better players to perform better than weaker players, as a game is pointless if everyone can perform at the same standard.

  2. So if we accept that the game must differentiate, it becomes a question of what are the “best” ways to differentiate. I think there is a reasonable argument that the game should allow the player to implement their high level decisions via a convenient UI such that they don’t feel frustrated by the time taken to implement their decisions via the UI being the bottleneck and the primary source of differentiation between players.

Even the people who argue that some of the UI changes such as shift queuing have made the game worse don’t seem to be arguing at the same time for less automation. For example, take wood cutting to an extreme, and suppose that you have to click on a wood cutter once for each chop on a tree, and then when you have manually executed enough chops to collect their carrying capacity, you have to manually move them to the lumber camp, then when they are adjacent to it you have to tell them to drop the wood off, then you have to tell them to move to adjacent to a tree again, and once adjacent to it, you can start manually telling them to perform the individual chops again. Sure, this would make the activity of collecting wood consume a lot of APM, it would achieve differentiation between players, and honestly, probably the exact same players would still be the best in the world, but I think it would be a less enjoyable game to play because the vast majority of the effort of playing would be consumed by performing micomanagement at a very low level.

Another example would be miltary unit formations. The game could allow only a single unit to be acted on at a time. If you want to fight a battle with 10 units, you have to click and instruct them one at a time. You have to manually split them to avoid a mangonel shot, or manually move them in a spread out formation. Again, it would differentiate between players, and probably the exact same players would be the best, but I think most people would find it annoying and want more automation.

So, I think arguing against automation in general is pretty pointless, and the question is more one of what is the best level of automation to make the game most enjoyable, while maintaining differentiation. The same players will still be better and worse, but with the right level of automation, it can be more enjoyable for everyone while maintaining differentiation.

That’s not to say that I am in favour of the specific change proposed in the OP, as I am concerned that it will not meet the requirement of maintaining differentiation in the early game. But I think there probably is some scope for automation of tasks performed later in the game when there is so much interaction between players that everyone would still be performing actions as fast as they can. For example, it’s reasonably common to want to select 8 villagers and make them build a mill then 8 farms around it. Suppose this could be done with a single command. Would this break the game? I’d argue that it wouldn’t, as it’s mainly only something that is done at a stage in the game where there is so much to do that it would just free people up to do other things instead. They’d still be busy all the time, but just doing other, arguably more interesting, things.

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78

So again the foundation of the game is simultaneously managing your economy and military as fast as you can.

People have loved the transitions and the tension between these decisions. 10000s of hours were no doubt played by Greg Street and Co in multiplayer games constructing how the game was to be played.

Yes there is some automation (with changes to date) and sometimes that can be good (and sometimes people still won’t like it). Agreed you cannot make everyone happy.

But now apparently there should be no issue with slapping automatic farms down or letting the TC alleviate you of the many decisions the game was designed around (believe it or not some of the most decisive competitive actions in the game, especially if you fail to time them properly). However those in favour of auto play do not appear interested in putting the time in to rise up the learning curve and succeed.

The reason the game is balanced against high level players is because they understand and enact how the game can be played and what is possible, which should be something to strive towards if you are interested in this genre (or mods, coop games or singleplayer is clearly for you). Again nothing wrong with that but do not touch the competitive part of the game which clearly is not being appreciated in most of these arguments.

I mean I am laughing about this but I pray to buddy luff chunk and the wololo that the fundamentals of the competitive game are not changed on the whim of casual proposals.

Suggestion - You can have these auto queue features if the cost of the action is doubled and build time increased by 25% when using the feature. Also the trophy at the TC should turn into a Cap with a D on it. You are still going to lose anyway if you don’t put in the time to become better, might as well lose in style.

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79

It’s already easier to manage TCs because of the icons in the left corner and new hotkey features which a lot of people ignore, you just have to glance over to the left and if you don’t have the right number of Villagers producing for every TC just shift-H and C or whatever hotkey you have, you don’t even have to look away from the battle just glance to the left and select all TCs which doesn’t move your view.

Before DE you had to go back to each TC individually to make sure they all had Villagers queued. Having auto TC will be going backwards because you will have to cycle to each TC to start/stop Villager production, and most people would be forced to use it or be at a disadvantage, just like auto-scouting in mid-game. I’d prefer if they made it possible to cancel queues from the top left of the screen somehow without going to the building, that would actually make it easier to manage without making it automated.

For Auto-TC to work at all it would need another hotkey to toggle all TCs on/off or it’d actually make it more cumbersome to create Villagers. It would definitely be harder to manage TCs for me without that because I would have to go to each TC and press the Auto Villager button to idle them when I need food to produce more military to win a battle and/or do damage to the enemy eco, and instead of just pressing shift-H and C whenever I want Villagers I would have to move my screen to each TC to turn it on or off, or queue them up manually, then turn them on to auto again which is way more work, all the while if I’m NOT using the auto-feature and instead queuing up a bunch of Villagers, I’m at a disadvantage because my enemy will have more food because they’re using the Auto-queue.

Forgetting to produce Villagers can actually be a good thing if you’re using all your food to do damage and kill enemy Villagers. It doesn’t matter if all your TCs are idle if you’re able to overpower and kill your enemy which is one reason why Hoang is such a strong player because he focuses on doing more damage to the enemy eco than he sacrifices by idling TC. If you can idle your TCs for a while and get a significant advantage or Villager lead because of it, it’s like they were never idle to begin with. If you’re under attack what does producing Villagers do when they’re dying faster than they’re being created or you’re losing all your army and are going to lose everything anyway?

Having auto-TCs doesn’t feel right at all for this game and would remove a core aspect of its gameplay, I don’t remember any other strategy game I’ve ever played having an auto-queue for units. I feel like players have enough control over Villager production already in DE, that auto-TC is completely unnecessary. It might help new players during Dark Age but all you have to do is spam your Villager create hotkeys constantly, it’s not like you have much to micro in Dark Age anyway, it would be ■■■■■■■ boring if I just had to sit there the whole time doing nothing during Dark Age. Microing every age is one of the fun things and one reason why people still play this game. I would only want Auto-TCs if I was going to play a few games casually and then never play this game again.

Another problem is if they make TCs automatic everything else will be made automatic, because there’s no sense having Auto-TCs without Auto military buildings, and these things are just memory based so you have to be able to keep track of them which is part of the fun of RTS, if people no longer need to do that they will be getting housed constantly anyway despite having Auto-TCS, at which point we might as well add auto-house building to prevent people from being housed, and auto everything else people forget to do during a game, it will just end up feeling like having a second AI player helping you control units the whole game. Every aspect of this game is memory based, like using all your resources, getting the right amounts of resources, remembering where your units are, etc. Managing your eco is half the fun on RM.

With auto-everything RM will just become like DM where you only need to micro military, although I’ve only played it a couple times so I don’t know. I hate DM and will never play it because half the fun of this game is managing my eco and microing everything else at the same time, it makes me feel like I’m actually controlling everything and doing ■■■■. I don’t want the game to do that automatically for me, but at least give us a toggle all TCs hotkey if it does get added.

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81

I did not flag your post as spam. You didn’t hurt my feelings. I find your arguments irrational and you seem to be getting somewhat emotional about the topic. I’m simply looking at the subject at a non-emotional level in terms of what game mechanics would make the game most enjoyable to play and watch (viewer numbers are so high for some tournaments now that I think the viewing experience is something the devs should give reasonable priority to).

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82

Yes I have a problem with being censored by cry babies. Can’t hurt peoples feelings now can we? Censor all the things. And we’ll brush it under the rug and make it look like one big happy community right?

would make the game most enjoyable to play and watch

viewer numbers are so high for some tournaments now that I think the viewing experience is something the devs should give reasonable priority to

So, you admit right here, that the viewer numbers are so high, but yet the devs should give priority to that? What does that have anything to do with auto queue vils? If the viewer numbers are already so high, why would you add something completely irrelevant to tournament play, to something that doesn’t need more help? Wouldn’t that be very counter intuitive? auto queue vils is for rookies, unexperienced players. It does not help them become more experienced and it doesn’t do ANYTHING to make it as you put it, more enjoyable to play and watch. Idle TC IS PART OF THE GAME. It’s that simple. This is such a ridiculous topic I have no more to say about it, really. It’s a terrible idea, nobody wants it, viewship is already great, we don’t need to mess with it. Stop messing with it.

83

If you had actually read my posts, you would have seen that I am against auto queuing villagers. I agree with the conclusion, but not the reasons that you gave for reaching that conclusion. A simplistic “all the current automation is perfect, but any other automation would make the game worse” argument is just intellectual laziness. If you want to understand my reasoning further, just read the post that you couldn’t be bothered to read.

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84

lol no
that would take an obscene amount of gameplay and skill away from the game
instead of changing the game that has been structured this way for 20+ years just because some low elo players struggle with making vils all the time, those players should do what literally everyone else before them did and learn to play the game
Find it difficult to focus on economy and military at the same time?
Then practice until it isn’t. It isn’t that hard once you have like any dedicated experience