You can already guess those lines and visualize those in your head. Now you dont have to visualize those in your head, but you can see them in the game. That isnt really a big difference to me.
I get it. Guessing ranges is a skill you think belongs to this game. I personally donāt find it that an important aspect of what makes this game fun/challenging, so I donāt mind it becoming a default option.
Now the Small Trees mod on the other handā¦ I will fight to the death to prevent this from becoming a default option in the game! It makes the game so ugly! 
2 Likes
This is exactly how I feel. But as so many people is recieving this with good eyes Iām not going to complain.
trueee. Just because of that I refuse to use the small trees. Even when I aim for a competitive approach to this game.
1 Like
Feel free to complain! While, like I said, I personally donāt value range-guessing as such an important/fun part of this game, that is of course a matter of taste. There have been all kinds of improvements to this game that have also taken away the requirement of some sort of skill: auto explore has been mentioned before, but also with regards to villager management.
Itās hard to say when these improvements/aides will go too far, and it will be a different point for different people. I remember the old Command & Conquer games had a āscatterā command for example, that made your units automatically scatter a bit (to avoid aoe/splash damage). Iām pretty sure most people would oppose adding that to AoE, but Iām sure others would welcome it as theyād prefer AoE to have less ātedious microā.
2 Likes
What do you think about the new building range indicator?
- I think itās great because it helps me save my scout and safely unpack my mass trebuchet army.
- I donāt want it because it is cheating to do all the stuff mentioned above that easily.
0 voters
Finally it will come to the game as an official option, excited!
1 Like
Well, hold on, this is doing something different to the Mandala mod. The Mandala mod just gives a visual indication of the standard ranges, it doesnāt tell you what the actual range is, you need game knowledge on top of what it shows you. If they are adding functionality to show you the actual range of buildings, that is going beyond the Mandala mod, and doing something that as far as Iām aware would be impossible to provide via a purely visual mod. That doesnāt make it a bad thing, but itās a higher level of assistance, so itās a slightly different debate whether itās āokayā or not vs the Mandala mod.
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Iāve now inserted a poll in to the original post for you and other people that thought there should be a poll.
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Of course. Mandala simply cannot be implemented to be adaptive to upgrades and terrain, because that would be a data mod rather than visual mod (requiring an upgradable āmandalaā unit to be attached to each defensive building). Itās a thing only the official can do.
Yes, but again itās some knowledge within a click. And the indicator saves you a click, and tile counting.
I am firmly against this. Even at high levels, tower placement isnāt perfect in rushes because thereās so many things to manage - checking range and counting tiles is a conscious decision you make. āDo I take the time to do this or rely on intuition?ā It leads to more dynamic gameplay.
Funny thing, if we had this feature from the beginning I wouldnāt care in the slightest, but Iāve seen the games that develop from this firsthand in casted/streamed pro games and itās definitely more fun without an indicator like this when games are developing. The intuition makes it fun, and interesting. It isnāt a basic economy management feature, like villager counts or an idle button. Itās an advanced assistance feature. It also isnāt like Autoscout - which is terrible at first - itās always an assistance.
It isnāt game-breaking, but as Woels put it: it feels cheap. This should never show your enemiesā range, and itās debatable (although I am strongly against this as well) whether it should show range on unbuilt buildings (which, so far, it seems like it doesnāt?).
My opinion is if it visually shows the range of your own constructed buildings, thatās fine - it helps you learn where to place buildings by reinforcing your understanding of range visually. It encourages the player to grow in their intuition by physically showing them instead of showing them a number, but without doing so in competitively important scenarios.
6 Likes
??? whatās that kind of poll?
I donāt want to use it, but I think itās a great decision from the devs to add it to the core game.
I donāt mind if my enemies use it, if they think they need it.
You make a lot of great points. This is exactly why I feel it detracts from the game. I hate how they remove more and more considerations in the name of convenience.
4 Likes
I am implying that I want to use it by saying that.
I am saying I mind because my enemies might have it enabled and use it against me.
Well not all people are completely selfish. Sometimes you see that something is good for a game but you dislike it. Sometimes itās the opposite.
I canāt participate in that poll because the poll doesnāt include my opinion at that theme.
I like the devs decision besides I will never use it, as I donāt need it myself.
3 Likes
And I see already many people voting in that poll against adding it to the core game because they have already installed range indicator modsā¦
How more disingenuous can you get? Claiming that people disagree with you on something for the game, not based on the health of the game, but because theyāll be giving up an unearned advantage?
Iām not sorry. Thatās low. Sure, itās better that everyone has it as opposed to some having it, but I am firmly of the opinion that nobody should have it at all. That has nothing to do with what mods I do/donāt have.
4 Likes
I just have experience with certain type of people. Itās a common behaviour.
I donāt claim it is necessarly the case for people already voted, I just say that this kind of vote will exactly trigger people of that mindset.
The vote needs to be set up in a way that it is clear that you can be pro the addition of the range indicator without using it and only against it, if you want all indicator mods to be forbidden.
I wish there was an I donāt care too much option, so I voted yes, because I canāt say Iām firmly against it. Sounds like a helpful feature for noobs. As for myself, neutral, Iāve played the game long enough to be able to mostly judge how far something will shoot, so it wonāt really make a difference to me.
1 Like
This feature is changing pretty much nothing for experienced players, because they already know intuitively the range of stuff. For newcomers to the game, it is a precious learning tool to smoothen the already steep learning curve. This is kind of feature is often already built in games, where you you usually press a key to show the range of units. I really do not get how minor stuff like this gets so much criticism, whereas almost nobody ever complained about actual game changing mechanics like khmer farms, armor piercing units etc.
Those two quotes just tell us everything we need to know about the topic. The two quotes brilliantly show how much the current game is viewed as perfect, and any change will ādestroyā it. This goes as far as simply forgetting we have not one, but even two different scatter commands and yet claiming that the majority of players would oppose such a change - which is obviously untrue because again, two different scatter commands ARE in the game and nobody bats an eye.
1 Like