A good way to make civilizations look distinct from one another would be to introduce different crops depending on what they historically grew. It’s like an extension of the architecture style of the civilizations.
Obviously we all know that in China and the Delhi Sultanate Rice would be more common than wheat but other staple crops would include Barley in Egypt and Mesopotamia and France, Oats in England, Rye in Russia and Germany.
You could also introduce root crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams in the Imperial age as they would have begun cultivation outside of their place of origin to a limited extent.
Other ways to expand the variety in farms would be to have fruit orchards, vineyards or vegetable farms. You could reuse the model for the berry bushes and make them into farms.
Also cultivating crops for cooking oil such as rapeseed, sunflowers, olives and soybeans depending on the civilization.
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I agree. The wheat looks really nice and all, but it doesn’t make sense in some cases. More variation in crops would be nice to the eyes. Growing wheat next to traditional Chinese architecture doesn’t match the theme. It’s the same with most factions.
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Yeah plus this was a feature in age of empires 3 kind of like ragdolls. If you play as a Asian civ you grow rice on a paddy and if you play as an Indian civ you grow Maize. Europeans grew some sort of 2 dimensional vegetable that I don’t recognize.
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This would be a nice detail! I was thinking about this too. I think the square look has to remain the same though or you’d lose clarity - especially since farms basically function the same across all civs, apart from buffs/debuffs.
Farm square?
Hell no!
Tired of square things in aoe4!
Why not a rectangle?
A line?
A L shape?
Why do we need to play whit a frigid pixel game ?
All their art is destroyed and distorsion can be seen in everything.
They try to fit every thing into one pixel. o.o
Are we in the time of the first computer or are we in 2021?
A rectangle , a line and L shaped farm ? Lol no thanks
Do you know what pixel even means
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He wants to change AoE4 into a medieval simulator, just ignore him
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Not trying to make age of empire 4 a medieval simulator.
Only asking to have more variety to farm and to their form.
Maybe something else then only a quare farm 2x2?
Maybe 1×2 or 2x6?
Only trying to give a idea here.
Agree, different crops wont hurt readibility and just adds a nice amount of graphical variability to the game.
I disagree on the “abnormal” ratios in sizes … rectangles etc, but I fully support a return to a 3x3 sized farm rather than the 2x2.
Yes 2x2 is neater to place, but importantly, 3x3 takes up more room, and makes farms harder to defend from raids, and increases the size of your base should you want to include them in a wall. I think 3x3 farms a better size regarding the trade off of having infinite food.
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Good idea. A nice way to create some visual difference and distinction between the civs. In a way, same farms for everyone is a bit like seeing the same gold icons for everything in every civ
I know you are trying to give ideas. But if you gather all of your ideas up into one chunk, it is the making of a medieval simulator
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Why waste time and resources on insignificant details? Better to use them on things that actually matter…
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Sure it looks nice and happy to have small differences. AoEO for example:
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Like what? Artist can only make graphics not code.
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Limited resources means focus on essentials only. If there are no graphics scheduled for work, the graphics team won’t be twiddling their thumbs waiting. I do not work in the industry but I expect they would move onto another project, redundancy or completion of other instructions if an external hire.
If there will be modding, the appearance of items in game can be changed including farms. Simple enough.
I think what people intend to express is that the focus should be on hotkeys, UI, automatch and other key changes with 24 days to go. If the forums are actually being read regularly, there is just a sea of posts drawing attention away from the most important parts ahead of launch.
Most of these suggestions are just not going to happen and especially in this small window. This is my view for those who want to give the launch the best chances of success.
PS: It won’t be “IGN 0/10 farms all look the same”.
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You could just have all the crops planted in a pattern. Like in AOE2 they are growing rows of vegetables in a square shaped farm.
Adding in unique crops based on civ is like adding in unique architecture styles based on civ. Since you’re just changing the design of their buildings more or less.
In Company of Heroes 2 they recently introduced new designs for a variety of infantry squads so that they would be visually distinct from other infantry units in the game. That’s another relic property
Also if they don’t focus on details like this there’s no reason to put all the effort into everything else in the game.
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