Note that dome peoe have suggested basically redoing the entire game without home cities.
However, I don’t think the devs invest resources at all on this, it would be a waste of time and money, and would prevent is from actuslly getting new content. So if it were up to me, just adding a toggle button for removing home cities or buildings would be more than enough. Nothing more, no balancing and no waste of resources
You are still underestimating the workload here.
Tycoon mode does not require any additional balancing or design. You can still use the existing cards for it. It’s just a fun mode like the wonder race (also no battle) in AOE2.
If you want to make a no homecity mode, you first need to pick which cards to turn into techs, which to turn into inherent bonus, which to discard for every civ, and tweak at least 4 or 5 civs entirely. You very likely need a new building for it because no building has enough slots for the techs, or assign them to the different existing buildings. Otherwise it is not playable at all.
It’s not a simple thing as “spending minimal efforts balancing it”. You need enormous efforts to make it possible in the first place, and I envision it as a complete failure as the tycoon mode (one that requires minimal efforts).
This workload alone had better be put into a new civ
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Why cant it be like in AoE2/RoN where the UI has more than a page??
Okay that’s not so much of a problem.
But there are still a ton other issues as I’ve mentioned.
BTW if you throw a whole different panel of new “techs” at the players, then there’s really not much difference than a home city panel. It is easier to just make a pre-built deck mode or “no unit/resource cards allowed” mode for the same purpose.
There is not that amount of cards. Combat cards that are unique to a civ in barracks/stables.
Church ones available there by default. Economic ones can be activated by just aging up, to get a economy faster
Training schools after unlock the ones from church.
A factory purchable at mill and the other one at estate.
Natives get more space by turning Bbuttons in standar techs. Aztecs BB would turn into temple cards while WC aura would grant coin per kill, plaza tech would add wood.
The most complicated are Chines cause having a lot of units. They could get them from wonders
I agree with this. Most of the time the optimal way to play the game is send crates to FF and then spam unit shipments. And that’s a little tiresome when you just want to actually use a civ as intended and not just play them all the same.
A game mode with options to pick premade decks that aren’t primarily crates and shipments might actually be more fun and could let newer players skip past the daunting task of figuring out an optional deck before they even learn the game.
But all this discussion about removing decks is just trying to create an entirely different game.
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There are more things to consider by design than where to put them.
For example British have 6 combat cards, but most deck would not include all of them. Having access to all of them by default at all would change the civ drastically.
Same with eco cards. Most of the time only a few of them are included. If you have access to all of them, it can stack to a much bigger gather buff. And what is the purpose of market techs then.
Some units are only available by sending cards. Would you make settler wagons and spahi available by default, or make 10 techs to purchase them? Either way it requires some careful design.
Spanish and Germans need to be completely redesigned.
I’m not even mentioning mercenaries.
This is only talking about the more “standard” European civs. Other civs that rely more on cards are far more complicated.
One particular thing about the deck system is the “choice”. In AOE2/4 every civ has 3-5 bonuses. In AOE3 you have 10 unique bonuses and 20 shared bonuses and you eventually need to weigh over them and choose a small number. It’s different than making everything accessible by default. And we go back to the big laborious problem of what to keep.
And however you approach it, you eventually end up with something that is effectively a pre built or limited deck mode. But the latter requires far less effort.
I’d like to have some underused cards turning into techs though, but that’s different from removing the decks entirely.
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I don’t know why people want to remove home city and cards. And having a classic game mode won’t attract players from the other games. Fundamentally changing the game to attract new players is a bad idea that will not work. These mechanics are what make the game and make it good, it doesn’t need dumbed down and simpler game modes to get more players AoE 3 needs more publicity, put AoE 3 in Red Bull wololo , publicize it with the other games and port it to Xbox,
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