- In age of empire classic game, villagers couldn’t walk on farm;
- There was not the possibility to create a queue farms like in AoE II in mills;
- In AoE II, you can right click farms to rebuild them;
@TopScorpion7578 said:
- In age of empire classic game, villagers couldn’t walk on farm;
- There was not the possibility to create a queue farms like in AoE II in mills;
- In AoE II, you can right click farms to rebuild them;
I think so, it’s an issue that they should solve as soon as possible
Haha I hope 
I hope they will fix gameplay in order to create modern game :). They definitely will improve path seeking algo and I hope all of building will be traversable where they should be.
Yeah path seeking was also a problem 
I tried to side with the ‘purists’ and say that farms should stay the same, not have queues etc…
But man, replanting them is so awful. I have been playing RoR with the Upatch for a few days. It’s not the actual replanting. It’s the fact that if anything is in the way (including the villager that is selected) you have to move it before planting the farm. It’s also the fact that if you build around the TCs, new villagers get smooshed between farms. And that the villagers don’t even remain idle because they go to another farm and (apparently) work on it despite not being able to gather food. So when you hear the farm exhaustion noise you have to visually scan your base, find a farm with two farmers. Try to figure out where he came from and hope there is nothing in the way when you try to replant. Multiply that by 40 and you get the idea.
“But Raw, if you add farm queues or infinite food farms, then AoEHD will be the big dumb baby version. You might as well add a button that automatically makes 100 chariot archers or why not just make a button that automatically wins the game for you”.
I highly recommend that people who feel that emotional about farming in games buy Farming Simulator 2017 on steam because that fascination with tedious farm labor belongs somewhere else imho.
Honestly, I think they should have AoEO farms. High wood cost, slow gather rate, but infinite and change the farm upgrades at the market to improve the gather rate.
EDIT: On a side note, if you haven’t purchased Stardew Valley yet just go and do it…that is a farming game I can actually, wholeheartedly recommend.
This is a controversial one so I don’t envy FE for having to make a choice here. They will loose either way I think. My thoughts:
- Right-click to reseed should be in IMO, there’s no need to make decisions harder to execute than necessary.
- Farm Queues I’m a bit more unsure of; it’s essentially a newbie trap that can trick players into wasting more wood than they really need to - making them develop bad habits that can make the jump to more active play a bit harder than necessary. On the other hand it can be convenient too, especially lategame. Ultimately I’m fine either way on this one.
- Solid Farms vs Walkable Farms. This has been a big debate and IMO both sides have merits to their arguments. Again I’m fine either way, on one condition: the graphics of the farms must reflect gameplay reality; so if farms are solid they should look solid (think a thick patch of apple-trees or something), if they are walkable they should look walkable.
Beyond that, and I have said this elsewhere, I would REALLY love to see farms get more lush and orderly for every farm upgrade you get. From a dirty patch of Stone Age weeds to a irrigated and flourishing Iron Age superfarm. Maybe a niche and unimportant request but it would fit so well with the theme of the game.
@Raw1812 said:
I tried to side with the ‘purists’ and say that farms should stay the same, not have queues etc…But man, replanting them is so awful. I have been playing RoR with the Upatch for a few days. It’s not the actual replanting. It’s the fact that if anything is in the way (including the villager that is selected) you have to move it before planting the farm. It’s also the fact that if you build around the TCs, new villagers get smooshed between farms. And that the villagers don’t even remain idle because they go to another farm and (apparently) work on it despite not being able to gather food. So when you hear the farm exhaustion noise you have to visually scan your base, find a farm with two farmers. Try to figure out where he came from and hope there is nothing in the way when you try to replant. Multiply that by 40 and you get the idea.
Glad to see someone else here agrees :). The farms drive me up the wall, with how annoying and tedious and time-consuming they are.
“But Raw, if you add farm queues or infinite food farms, then AoEHD will be the big dumb baby version. You might as well add a button that automatically makes 100 chariot archers or why not just make a button that automatically wins the game for you”.
Hahhahah, yeah. I just can’t ever find myself agreeing with some of the purists. Personally, I want, at the very least, right-clickable farms. Please don’t make them solid - if they were walkable it would solve so many issues. Queues I’m similarly on the fence about, but I think they should be included for the sake of at least having the option. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
@Raw1812 said:
Honestly, I think they should have AoEO farms. High wood cost, slow gather rate, but infinite and change the farm upgrades at the market to improve the gather rate.
I’m not an AoE1 farming purist, but I don’t agree with this at all. Remember that AoE is not Starcraft. In fact I would argue that it has been successful precisely because it is not like Starcraft. The game is about more than just fast paced mp battles.
People of all ages and skill levels enjoy AoE, and one of the reasons for that is that from the start it has had one foot in the city management genre. More advanced economic systems and fiddeling around with stuff like farms is the reason why AoE1/2 had such mainstream appeal. Everybody from gamerkid14 to grandma could enjoy it. In fact, while all AoE games have been really good games they certanly lost much of that mainstream appeal when they left the managment aspects behind in favor of more classic rts base building, from AoE3 onwards that is. Infinite farms is not a good idea IMO, not for this or for hypothetical future releases in the franchise.
@GepardenKalle said:
This is a controversial one so I don’t envy FE for having to make a choice here. They will loose either way I think. My thoughts:
- Right-click to reseed should be in IMO, there’s no need to make decisions harder to execute than necessary.
- Farm Queues I’m a bit more unsure of; it’s essentially a newbie trap that can trick players into wasting more wood than they really need to - making them develop bad habits that can make the jump to more active play a bit harder than necessary. On the other hand it can be convenient too, especially lategame. Ultimately I’m fine either way on this one.
- Solid Farms vs Walkable Farms. This has been a big debate and IMO both sides have merits to their arguments. Again I’m fine either way, on one condition: the graphics of the farms must reflect gameplay reality; so if farms are solid they should look solid (think a thick patch of apple-trees or something), if they are walkable they should look walkable.
Beyond that, and I have said this elsewhere, I would REALLY love to see farms get more lush and orderly for every farm upgrade you get. From a dirty patch of Stone Age weeds to a irrigated and flourishing Iron Age superfarm. Maybe a niche and unimportant request but it would fit so well with the theme of the game.
HOLY SH*T, the idea with the farms is unbeliaveble good. I would really like to see that, but only with the diferents ages, my main argument to not make a Farm upgrade his look with the technologies is that, it would be way too easy to get information of the economy that you have. I think the game should be as similar as the old AoE. If not, we get the danger of not playing the same game. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP9F-AZezCU _____ Day 9 explains this issue with starcraft ! )
Hmm, I’m with a faster way to find out which farm got exhausted, but about the solid farm topic, I think that should remain the same, it’s part of the aoe1 strats, like, farm block xD … remember, aoe1 is not aoe2 … it’s okay to improve the quality of gameplay but there are limits, if you are looking too much to match aoe2 aspects then I think you should consider play aoe 2 instead.
side note : and of course, and quicky way to restore depleted farms too, I see no harm on improving that.
maybe with 2nd click could be enough.
@GepardenKalle said:
@Raw1812 said:
Honestly, I think they should have AoEO farms. High wood cost, slow gather rate, but infinite and change the farm upgrades at the market to improve the gather rate.More advanced economic systems and fiddeling around with stuff like farms is the reason why AoE1/2 had such mainstream appeal. Everybody from gamerkid14 to grandma could enjoy it. In fact, while all AoE games have been really good games they certanly lost much of that mainstream appeal when they left the managment aspects behind in favor of more classic rts base building, from AoE3 onwards that is. Infinite farms is not a good idea IMO, not for this or for hypothetical future releases in the franchise.
Some solid points here, but I feel that there is no practical difference farm queues and infinite farms except for the wood investment. Because even if you totally forget about your farm queue, the second a farm exhausts you go home and queue 50 farms at once.
The real economic decision was when to build farms and where to build them and having enough wood at the transition from berries and hunting to farms. And you still have to Simcity everything else. You have to manage wood-lines, you have to protect your miners from raids, you have to have vision and wall off. I don’t think people enjoy AoE specifically because of the farm replanting mechanics, or feel some nostalgia for it, or honestly feel it makes the game too casual if you make farm queues or infinite farms. Replanting farms with the current RoR vanilla mechanics is simply annoying. You might as well obligate the player to manually move his villagers from berry bush to store house every time he collects 10 berries if you are in favor of micro-intensive macro.
And I would never suggest AoE3 mechanics. Were my hunters simply eating the deer out in the fields? No, it was immersion breaking and not the AoE eco mechanics we knew.
To be honest, though, the point is how to make AoEDE for a new audience and a purist fan-base at the same time. And I prefer to side with those that want to grow the fan-base with modern mechanics.
but I feel that there is no practical difference farm queues and infinite farms except for the wood investment.
This is an huge difference. Ao2 macro has nothing to do with aoe3.
@Amphiprion said:
but I feel that there is no practical difference farm queues and infinite farms except for the wood investment.
This is an huge difference. Ao2 macro has nothing to do with aoe3.
But the difference isn’t the infinite part. The difference is the 10 vill limit on a single structure as opposed to placing individual farms, and the fact that vills didn’t have to drop off their resources.
I am referring to the differences between AoEO infinite farms and AoC farms.
On a side note…the purists who want entirely vanilla farm mechanics…do you also want entirely vanilla unit pathing? It can be argued that it makes the game more challenging. Sure, it is annoying to watch your boat being incapable of going around a peninsula without getting stuck on the shore, or watching half of your rax units get stuck on a forest on their way to the enemy base, but it was part of AoE1 and managing units is essential to the challenge and the strategy.
What is the difference between outdated annoying farm replanting mechanics and terrible unit pathing?
I am referring to the differences between AoEO infinite farms and AoC farms.
AoM macro is really different of aoe2. Is not important to make 1 farm with 10 vilis or 10 little farm. The difference is more because infinit ressource.
@Raw1812 said:
Some solid points here, but I feel that there is no practical difference farm queues and infinite farms except for the wood investment. Because even if you totally forget about your farm queue, the second a farm exhausts you go home and queue 50 farms at once.
Wood investement makes all the difference. Because balancing wood income vs investement in farms is a huge part of that managment joy that is core to the massappeal of the first AoE games. Particularly since your access to wood and your need for wood will vary throughout the game. Also note that, even with farm queues, looking after your farms is incredibly important in aoe2, because queueing is a very expensive upront investement and not something you can afford until the lategame. The infinite “get food trickle and forget about it” farms of AoM/AoE3/AoEO dosen’t even come close to the managing delights of farms in AoE2 - particularly not for causals who are more interested in fiddling with their town than forgetting about their economy to micro fast paced battles.
To be honest, though, the point is how to make AoEDE for a new audience and a purist fan-base at the same time. And I prefer to side with those that want to grow the fan-base with modern mechanics.
Define ‘modern mechanics’, because AOEO had “modern mechanics” and it diddn’t grow at all. My point here is not that ‘modern mechanics’ are bad, my point is that it can mean a lot of different things. You can easily have a game about replanting farms that still have ‘modern mechanics’ all the way through. It’s not about the concept but about the execution that makes it feel modern.
or honestly feel it makes the game too casual if you make farm queues or infinite farms.
It’s the opposite. Infinite farms makes the game too competitive. The simpler the game is the more competitive it becomes, just look at chess (or SC2 and it’s simple economy). Casuals love micromanagment of stuff like farms and we need stuff like that to give the game it’s charm that makes it something more than just a multiplayer arena game. There’s a reason nobody plays singleplayer skrimish in SC2 for any extended period of time.
AoEO didn’t grow for a lot of reasons but the farm mechanics wasn’t one of them. And no one ever said they should change the farms back to a farm queue system or the RoR system.
You’re right that decisions about resource investment and when and how to manage wood and farms is important to AoE. You’re also right that ‘modern’ mechanics can mean a lot of different things. They are adding an attack button for example, they considered that a necessary ‘modern’ mechanic.
But the issue is something must be done about the farms. RoR vanilla farms are simply unacceptable in their current state in 2017. This is the current method:
- Hear farm exhaustion sound.
- Select base on mini map as snap-to ctrl groups (for example, 1 for tc) aren’t in RoR.
- Visually scan base to find a farm with two farmers (because they go to another farm which registers the villager as active, despite the fact that two villagers cannot collect from 1 farm).
- Select one of the villagers from the farm with two.
- Find an open space and hope nothing is in the way as you can’t place foundations if any unit (even the selected villager) is in the way.
- B+F and click and hope the villager’s terrible pathfinding can get it there without getting stuck on the side of your tc or something else partly in the way.
Multiply by 40 in a large game.
I don’t think this is what you mean when you say this is what gives AoE ‘its main stream appeal’.
Yes, the sim city part is fun, building things, making your town pretty etc. but adding a queue or infinite farms doesn’t take away the appeal imho.
EDIT: You will need about 10 priests a-Wololoing to convince me they should stay how they are 
@Raw1812 said:
But the issue is something must be done about the farms. RoR vanilla farms are simply unacceptable in their current state in 2017.
I agree. But that dosen’t mean we have to remove farm gameplay completely and replace it with a infinite resource building. We can either go for the AoE2 system (which is proven to work and people love it). Or we can make the AoE1 system better and more fluid (by adding right-click to reseed, improve villager pathfinding, etc etc)
Yes, the sim city part is fun, building things, making your town pretty etc. but adding a queue or infinite farms doesn’t take away the appeal imho.
It’s not about making things pretty, it’s about micromanagment. That’s what keeps “causals” engaged. There’s a reason they love games like Stardew Valley, Rimworld or Banished (All of which deliberately makes you manage stuff and does not let you just forget about your income providers). Adding infinite farms means you are removing gameplay for people who do not care about superfast multiplayr battles, you are giving them less stuff to do - that is not a good thing.
@GepardenKalle said:
@Raw1812 said:
But the issue is something must be done about the farms. RoR vanilla farms are simply unacceptable in their current state in 2017.I agree. But that dosen’t mean we have to remove farm gameplay completely and replace it with a infinite resource building. We can either go for the AoE2 system (which is proven to work and people love it). Or we can make the AoE1 system better and more fluid (by adding right-click to reseed, improve villager pathfinding, etc etc)
Yes, the sim city part is fun, building things, making your town pretty etc. but adding a queue or infinite farms doesn’t take away the appeal imho.
It’s not about making things pretty, it’s about micromanagment. That’s what keeps “causals” engaged. There’s a reason they love games like Stardew Valley, Rimworld or Banished (All of which deliberately makes you manage stuff and does not let you just forget about your income providers). Adding infinite farms means you are removing gameplay for people who do not care about superfast multiplayr battles, you are giving them less stuff to do - that is not a good thing.
I’m not married to infinite farms, but I did play a Upatch mod with infinite farms and it felt really good
I’m just saying that something has to be done. My two cents are for infinite farms but I know I am a radical. A happy compromise would be a farm queue or in the very least left-clickable farms to rebuild+villagers remaining idle at their farm waiting for reassignment.
I just can’t get on board with the religious fervor of the purists who demand all vanilla mechanics :lol:
Yes, casuals need something to do…but imagine Stardew valley if you could never upgrade your tools…you just keep your crummy hoe and crummy watering can from day 1 all the way into year 3. That is my equivalent of keeping RoR farms.
There are infinite farms on Upatch?