Flying huntable animal

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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If you would like to imagine a scenario where villagers in Age of Empires II could shoot flying birds and gather food from them, I will create a fictional concept for you:

Imagine an update to Age of Empires II where villagers gain the ability to shoot down golden hawks, eagle, duck, quail, pheasant, turkey, goose flying above their Town Center or berry bushes. In this scenario, when a villager successfully hits a bird, they collect 30 units of food from it. This new feature would provide an additional method for villagers to gather food and add an element of skill and precision to their hunting tasks.

p.s. - the Deer holds 140 food - I’ve seen the golden hawks or eagles occasionally fly above my Town Center or berries and they look tasty.

p.s.s. - the paved road terrain concept is brilliant, i would have expect this to be released in Return of Tome… perhaps even if it was ONLY in campaign.

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In an alternative scenario set in the future, specifically the year 2030, players eagerly anticipate the integration of this captivating concept into Age of Empires II.

However, despite the potential brilliance of this concept, it appears that the game developers have not yet realized its full potential. Just like they are sleeping on a civ that can train sheep or goat for slaughter.

:exploding_head: :joy:

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If the Tibetans ever get added to AoE2, which is doubtful, I imagine they would be able to train Yaks as a food source.

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A flying huntable animal is an interesting idea, but making the existing birds huntable for food would be too RNG-based. They’re usually placed randomly on maps (I’m not aware of any random map script, official or custom, where this isn’t the case) and fly randomly. Thus it would be completely random whether you get food from them or not. So flying huntables should be separate units that stay in roughly in a small area.

Also, I’m not sure anyone really eats/ate birds of prey, parrots or storks. It would make more sense to have something more commonly eaten, e.g. pigeons. I guess they would stay on the ground most of the time and only fly when a unit comes near.

If I recall correctly, in AoE1, you could shoot down hawks, although they didn’t provide any food.

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This will be added for a future civi,not like this is a brand new mechanic.

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There could be some problems if the bird dies while flying over trees, buildings, water, etc. :smile:

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For water you need a fishing ship. For tress you need to chok down the trees first

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Depending on where the bird crashes, it would rot before you can cut enough trees.

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When you look at the amount of meat on a bird light enough to fly compared to a deer or a boar, hunting them is more a hobby for nobility rather than a proper food source. Why bother hunting for maybe 5-10 food ?

A boar (350f) is around 100 kg, a deer (140f) is around 60 kg. A pheasant is around 1 kg.

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The mass itself isn’t a perfect indicator, as birds have hollow bones to be light enough to fly, but yeah… not the best source of food.

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Indeed, I’m fairly confident there is much more meat on an elephant than on a boar.

There is also the difficulty of shooting down birds with arrows, it’s not as easy as with a shotgun loaded with birdshot. Godefroy de Bouillon famously hit 3 when in Jerusalem but it’s implied it was a one-in-a-million shot.

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Jeeze, you’re one of those guys huh. A mood crusher! Enough of your non-sense old sport.

  • A wild turkey could be 10 to 25+ pounds
  • A crane is also upwards of 25+ pounds
  • The Great Bustard… a beautiful bird upwards of 40+ pounds

Maybe, in a “huntable pack” scenario, you can target a group of birds to shoot down since they fly in formation and flocks. BIG BRAIN thinking out here!

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Simple solution you cant gather the bird meat when in that situation.

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Not sure whether a wild turkey can feed a family of four

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Sure you can if you have meat as a part of the diet.

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Use metric or I call the Spanish Inquisition :wink:

Alright these are maximum values while I looked at the average for males, still anything above 25f would feel strange for big wild flying birds.

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So basically you use flying huntables whenever you want to forbid scout luring.

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Already on the train of ridiculous mechanics, I’d prefer the ability to tame birds and gain its LoS than to hunt them…

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Having LOS on sheeps is already borderline fantasy (at least it’s short and they get stolen if any unit is too close, so their practical use is minimal) so using birds as modern drones… it would feel like the few Game of Thrones characters who can possess animals

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Of course it can. It happens every Thanksgiving. Sometimes more than four people are fed.

Of course, they aren’t exclusively eating the turkey, as there’s plenty of other food available (stuffing and sweet potatoes are my personal favorites), but the point is, turkeys are more than big enough to feed large numbers of people once or multiple people multiple days.

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