[Growing Trees/Multiplying Animals] Huge fan of the series but it always bothered me that the trees weren’t growing back,husbandary animals or wild animals weren’t multiplying.I hope in the next series this changes and regrowth of some of these early resources does exists. Husbandary (Sheep, cattle) farming should be a viable strategy till the end.Hunting could diminish with nearby buildings but it should be vialbe strategy if you have a untouched woods nearby.
[Granary Depo]There should be also storage areas where hoarded resources could be attacked somehow.It could lead to interesting rushes.Afterall in the early days attacking a granary is a dirty but effective move.
[Far Trade Post]About far trade routes.I think there should be some undestructable trade outposts representing far lands where our trade carts could trade with (maybe even with increased profit).It was important to control the route to silk road or spice road so these buildings would heavily reflect this.Afterall it’s important to control such strategic locations and spice must flow :).
Lastly always would appriciate some rain or snow cycles or fog on higher parts of the terrain making line of sight shrink a bit or make unit movement slow.
[A.I sub commander]Totally off topic but I would appriciate if we could give some troops to an AI commander to attack from the flank or defend the base.It wouldn’t be as effective as a human player but attacking from two sides has it’s merits.
All of these ideas are really good and would make the game more immersive. I do hope they do make things a bit more complex. Features like trade, natural resources were all very underdeveloped in the original games. I think its a good idea that if you leave some animals they should multiply after a while. Unless you kill them all. These can be food like deer and boar etc or predators like wolves. There is also so much you can do with trade. For example trade routes themselves could be drawn by the mouse so that they go in a specific route, instead of just a straight line which is completely stupid. If there is an enemy castle between market A and market B, you should be able to direct your trade carts to go around them rather than straight into the castle. Also the whole system of paying tribute should be re-worked. No more instant tribute. Tributes should need to be physically carried from one player to another and should take time. Would make things so much more interesting.
I think your ideas are good. Except the AI commander. AoE is a hard to master game and that is a good thing because you can always learn new things. An attack from both sides or defending your base while managing other stuff are examples for that. It’s not impossible but you have to learn it. And not only pros can do it, I would say its quite normal with 1200/1300 elo in 1vs1
Yay Husbandary Exists in some form (See Mongolian Civilization farming ). My hopes are up for granary depo and far trade routes
Actually, I remember Redalert had these spice storages where if you didn’t build more you couldn’t collect more. So if it was destroyed some of your resources perished. People are already complaining about the lack of innovation in the series so I hope developers are still open to basic new ideas.
Assuming trade exists in the game, I think being able to choose the route used is a great idea, and it’s potentially the easiest to implement of the ones you mention. Also, the idea of fixed trade outposts is really interesting, too. I have mixed feelings about the late game in AOE2, since depleting the gold on the map leads to only a few units being utilized at the end. That predictable end result can feel stale, so it would be nice if they found ways to let players generate all the resources throughout the game, even in 1v1s, without making map control irrelevant. Fixed trade outposts to compete over seems like one possible way to address this. On the other hand, I would worry that these outposts could place too much of a restriction on the way the player chooses to expand and play the game. Also, what I didn’t like about AOE3 was that you didn’t have to defend the entire trade routes, just the trade outposts. In that way, I think AOE2 had it better, since you could attack trade carts as they traveled along their route. Maybe AOE4 could allow one player to set up trade routes among his own settlements? Then, the trade carts would be vulnerable to attack upon leaving each settlement’s fortifications, and the player would still be able to choose where to develop and expand on the map. There could also be a minimum distance between town centers in order for revenue to be gained, so that the settlements can’t be feasibly included in the same set of walls (or, at least, it would be very difficult to do so). The only trouble with this idea is that, based on the footage we’ve seen, it seems likely that each player will only have a single base.
As a side note, they might allow all the civilizations to generate gold after it runs out on the map in unique ways. It’s already been mentioned that the English farms generate gold, and that the Chinese have a unique unit that can generate gold from buildings. Maybe mechanics like these are intended to replace the role that trade had in earlier titles? I’m not sure how I would feel about them taking trade out of the game entirely, though. It seems like such an important factor, historically.
The granary depo sounds like a great idea, too. Maybe, just like you have a population limit, each player could have a resource limit dependent upon the number of storage buildings you have? Then, destruction of these buildings would deplete your resources, if you had more resources than your reduced cap. I suspect that they are too far along in the development of the game to implement this idea, but it’s a really interesting one, nonetheless.
One idea, i belive should be implemented would be to allow trade between your cities.
If they allowed this, and specified a minimum distance between towns, it would encourage players to branch out in cluster, instead of building a massive wall in the middle of the map.
Of course for balance purposes this should earn you less gold per trip when compared with trade with another player.
The changing weather and line of sight is a good idea. I am hoping for some kind of day and night cycly as well. Raids at night would make it very atmospheric.
