So i was looking at relic and saw that they made a game called: impossible creatures. Which is a game inwhich you as a player can develop your own creatures. This was based on procedurally generation or something like that.
Nowadays tons of games are providing some kind of sandbox experiences with a tremendous amount of possibilities. Giving players stuff like: spellcrafting, fully customising your character with your own gear etc.
What if aoe 4 would give the possibility to customize your units, which would be comparable to age of empires online with the 4 pieces of gear you add to your units but inside the game itself.
Ofcourse your nation of choice would be the backbone of the game you are going to play. But you could choose for yourself what the stats are of the units by choosing pieces of gear to change the stats. Ofcourse all of this without grinding or pay to win systems(so help us the gods of RTS and pvp).
Let’s show a standard example:
bowmen
Costs 50 wood 40 gold
100hp
10 dps
range 15
walking speed 4.0
armor vs ranged: 0,4
armor vs melee: 0,0
snare resistance: 0,2
you would then choose 4 pieces of gear in total:
- Weapon
- Armor
- girdle
- legs/feet
1.As a weapon you choose between:
1.1 +20% damage
1.2 +10% damage +2 range+10% walking speed
1.3 +0% damage +4 range
1.4 +0% damage +20% reduction of oponents walking speed.
And much, much more choices
- As armor you choose between:
2.1 +20% hitpoints
2.2 + 30% resistance vs ranged
2.3 + 30% resistance vs melee
2.4+ 15% resistance vs ranged, + 15% resistance vs melee.
2.5 Unit has +10% hitpoints but costs 10% less.
2.6 Unit has +0% hitpoints but costs 25% less.
And much, much more choices
- Girdle
3.1 Make this unit 25% cheaper, but reduce hitpoints by 30%
3.2 Make this unit train 30% faster, but make it cost 10% more
3.3 The unit has 15% more damage and 15% more hitpoints, but costs +35% more resources.
3.4 The unit gets a 2.0 damage multiplier against villagers but costs 20% more
3.5 The unit trains 40% slower, but costs 15% less.
And much, much more choices
- Legs/feet
4.1 The unit walks 15% faster, but costs 10% more.
4.2 The unit walks 15% slower, but costs 10% less.
4.3 The unit reduces snares by 50% and has 10% increased walking speed, but costs 10% more and takes 10% longer to build
4.4 The unit has -5% walking speed and costs 10% less.
And much, much more choices
In this way aoe4 would do it the right way compared to age of empires online, inwhich you had to grind for weeks to be able to get legendary weapons. In this case you would just choose your items to customise your units before you play.
Ofcourse ingame you are able to change your gear inside the “kings armory” which is slightly unique to every civ and expensive enough to make you pay for your choices before the game. And there is also a standard armory with standard upgrades of armor and damage (melee&ranged).
In theory buildings could also have “gear” that determines costs, hitpoints, armor, training speed, research speed etc.
A lot of people would say that there is certainly going to be an overpowered way of choosing gear. But if Relic want’s to balance it, they just have to know how often a certain piece of gear is being used and nerf/buff it accordingly. The beta should be used for this. There is also some responsibility to use math and playtesting to know if hit and run tactics, or cost reduction builds are going to be overpowered compared to “pay more for stats builds” etc.