I’ll start off with farms first, since this is 2017 and the min req for AOE:DE is so high compared to Original AoE:1 (While its mostly nothing compared to today’s gaming PCs) we know for a fact that higher pop cap will be introduced, if not by the devs then as a mod (like in AoE 2 eg:http://www.voobly.com/gamemods/mod/4/1000-Pop-Limit) and more pop means more food, so no Auto-Reseeding will be a headache, I want the game to be fun but not simple (NO CLASH OF CLANS) It still needs to feel like a Strategy game, some argue that adding the option to reseed will make AoE all about Macromanagement and take the fun away of the original, what (from my point of view) they don’t understand is that there is no 1 or 0 choice of Micro/Macro-management, the devs can create a humble balance of both like they did in Aoe 2:AoC expansion, yes this is a remake of AoE 1 not AoE 2 but If I had to take some good points from some totally other game, I would. However since they are not entirely wrong, some compensation can be made:
Add Reseeding as a tech
Also even after reseeding is researched, the “normal” farms should still be available to be built (And they should cost less and last longer) This will introduce several gameplay changes such as players opting to build non-autoreseeding farms in peace time when they can manually micro, and if the battle gets intense and calls for heavy micro for extended periods of time then they will opt for the expensive auto farms which last for a short while.
In my opinion Reseeding Tech should not be auto unlocked, there should be some pre-requisite tech such as Irrigation to unlock it (BTW if irrigation is researched can the devs please show streams of water around the farms? Not related but thought I would mention this as it will look totally COOL) If you guys are interested/want more info for clarification feel free to ask.
Now coming to POP CAP, as mentioned before, since the PCs have gotten faster, the POP cap should depend on map size. No I didn’t mean what I just said, what I actually want to say is that: Make POP Infinite, and Charge Overhead everytime the CAP is increased making it near impossible to go past a certain limit, that is why I mentioned it should depend on the map size as there will be fixed number of tiles per map and you cannot construct infinite number of houses on them (only a limited number) so for every house (or for every 5 houses, let the devs decide the formula) you build the overhead increases, the overhead will relatively larger on small map sizes and it will be a bit relaxed on big maps. (I suddenly feel glad Huns were not there in AoE1 They’ll be too OP)
And lastly for storage cap, how about infinite cap managed by warehouses? Add 1k to each resource cap and charge overhead for every warehouse built (overhead should be large so no one is able to spam them also they should take around 6-8 tiles and have low starting HP without any research) (Oh and they should be researchable :P) I would also like advanced features such as dumping x amount of resources or only accepting a specific resource such as only wood nothing else till I open other things but I guess that will be asking for too much in a remake (since this is not AoE 4)
My opinion on the Population cap would be to a) obviously have the option of making it bigger game by game (since our computers can do that now) but b) leaving it the same as the original game for the default game type.
Eg. when someone goes to queue up for 1v1 online, the default settings given to the game creator I would imagine to be the same as the original game, including pop cap.
Maybe if there ends up being a “ranked” 1v1 queue then only after a fair amount of testing would the devs know what they envision being fair or most fun for the competitive environment this would create. While players have personal preferences, a lot of people tend to end up playing the same type of thing in games after a while (my experience being stacks of people jumping into 2fort on TF2, stacks of people just playing Summoner’s Rift in LOL before even realizing there’s other maps) so If there WAS a “ranked” 1v1 queue then either devs will see what people gravitate toward after a while of multiplayer OR they’d start by saying “in ranked it’s a medium map, large islands, 100 pop, etc” or having some settings randomized but a decided upon pop cap. Then they could start multiple queues for different map sizes and type or changing the ranked type to something else based on community feedback, as has happened in other games and I think would be a nice way to go about it.
Whatever happens though, I’m sure the devs will look at other games and the original when making decisions like “what’s the pop cap gonna be?” and see what they can emulate, what they can improve on and how they can modernize this beautiful game. They have such a strong starting point with online games like Starcraft 2 and LWG paving the way and the relatively developed (and evolving) metagame of the original Age of Empires.
@“Two Letter Sho” said:
My opinion on the Population cap would be to a) obviously have the option of making it bigger game by game (since our computers can do that now) but b) leaving it the same as the original game for the default game type.
Eg. when someone goes to queue up for 1v1 online, the default settings given to the game creator I would imagine to be the same as the original game, including pop cap.
Maybe if there ends up being a “ranked” 1v1 queue then only after a fair amount of testing would the devs know what they envision being fair or most fun for the competitive environment this would create. While players have personal preferences, a lot of people tend to end up playing the same type of thing in games after a while (my experience being stacks of people jumping into 2fort on TF2, stacks of people just playing Summoner’s Rift in LOL before even realizing there’s other maps) so If there WAS a “ranked” 1v1 queue then either devs will see what people gravitate toward after a while of multiplayer OR they’d start by saying “in ranked it’s a medium map, large islands, 100 pop, etc” or having some settings randomized but a decided upon pop cap. Then they could start multiple queues for different map sizes and type or changing the ranked type to something else based on community feedback, as has happened in other games and I think would be a nice way to go about it.
Whatever happens though, I’m sure the devs will look at other games and the original when making decisions like “what’s the pop cap gonna be?” and see what they can emulate, what they can improve on and how they can modernize this beautiful game. They have such a strong starting point with online games like Starcraft 2 and LWG paving the way and the relatively developed (and evolving) metagame of the original Age of Empires.
Nice, thanks for your thought. What do you think about my Farm and Storage suggestions though?
Nice, thanks for your thought. What do you think about my Farm and Storage suggestions though?
Quickly, I’d say that farms in AOE 1 are fine without reseeding and storing a large amount of resources is essentially wasting resources until you spend them. If you aren’t using your resources (and you have enough for what you want) then you didn’t need to collect them, etc (general RTS meta rules).
I have read recently and believe that it has more or less been confirmed that the game with be the same gameplay wise (anything that wasn’t in the original won’t be added - I could be wrong but that’s how I’m interpreting it) so I, after this, am going to simply wait for the release to find out whether there’ll be gameplay updates, unless I’m asked to beta test
However, to further from our points, if pop cap is increased then yes, that does mean more food but it also means more of other resources and I don’t believe that reseeding is the cure-all to the “problems” higher pop cap will raise. Perhaps being able to build a “reseeding farm” that has a lower base amount of food but replaces itself (at the same wood cost) would be an option that some people would use however, no matter how you implement it, doing something like this (making it researchable, less efficient, whatever) only makes it appealing to newer players but is inherently worse for your economy and therefore a) not going to be used by people taking it seriously and b) a bad habit to get into (not checking your farming workers). For THOSE reasons is why I said we don’t need reseeding at the start of this post.
EDIT: just to clarify, I don’t know if the original had a resource cap or didn’t but if there was one it didn’t matter for the reason of wasting resources and if there wasn’t one then I think that’s fine, hoarding resources is a waste.
AoE had 50pop limit on single game, but most game online were played with 200pop, and a few with 255pop limit.
While i have nothing fundamentaly against change regarding farm, i believe it worked great the way it is now, though sometimes unfair if you had too much hills (since aoe Farm cannot be built on hills).
They’ll be too OP)
