Game is right now unplayable (due to trade glitch)

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
21

So you build a bunch of “trader production” markets next to neutral market, and 1 market across the map from it.

Your first waypoint from your “production” markets is your own market across the map. That sets the “home market” for the trader to that market (and hence the gold income/distance calculation). You then shift+click the neutral market (next to your bunch of markets that will produce the traders). So the trader pops out, assigns himself to your 1 far away market, then picks up a full load from neutral market next to him and is on his way. So he skips one leg of the trip.

Basically it is only the first trip for each trader that is affected, but it lets you get a much faster return on your investment when you need it most.

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22

And not only this, in case of mali, when they reach 2 towers, the trader has been paid, and no matter if he gets killed.

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23

Scout, secure, and apply pressure.

Going for Trade econ has its risk, even in team games. It dosn’t take much pressure to sabotage it completely.

There are certain map that favors this tactic such as Altai, even those can be done something about.

I really don’t see a issue with this “bug” in all honesty.
Only issue is the Malians with their towers can be put in such a position that traders dosn’t need to make a run.
But that can be easily solved with a longer CD (Thus forcing a longer distance between tollposts).

Any Civ can apply descent pressure in teamgames. Just go feudal Horsemen + archer. Those going trade have such a heavy wood sided econ they won’t be to effective at making spearmen. Also plant a tower near their neutral trade early enough in the game and you force them to respond to it, usually ruining the build order completely.
Giving you a good lead allowing you to a hard push in castle while they try to catch up.

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24

Just experienced this again in 4v4 team game. Malian had 176k gold in 30 min. Absolutely ridiculous this isn’t fixed by now. Game is unplayable with cheaters.

25

I have a solution.
Every time a trader changes the home market and the target trade market.
In the first trade cycle.
Will move to the furthest one.(home market and trade market)
Or force trader move to the new home market then trade.
Afterwards return to the normal way of trading.

26

There is certain maps where doing this is near impossible, and in team games, where the player doesn’t even need to do army, because there will always be a french player in your team who can just protect the traders with royal knights, then Mali can have 20k gold in minutes and start to feed the team.

@PeacefulCap2829 I think the proper solution would be make the trader collect an amount of gold based on the distance walked from the last market. In that case no matters if you do the trick and change the origin market, because distance walked would be minimum.

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27

I must admit that your suggestion is more reasonable.
But the game now trades gold based on the distance between two markets, no matter where the trader is.
Lack of “dynamic change”.

28

Yes, that would be the reason is not fixed yet, game just calculates gold based in distances between markets, and probably they haven’t any mechanic to store distances walked.

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29

I don’t think this is a good solution.

It could create a situation where two relatively close markets with a palisade maze between them actually produce a lot of gold. It also uncaps the maximum gold that could be gotten on a big map, you could in theory get much higher amounts than currently.

I think they maybe just need to be forced to go touch their home market before getting gold if it gets reassigned. This does create more inconvenience though with reassigning traders that are already currently on a route.

30

there is no trade glitch. you try trading like that against good players and very often they’d put massive pressure on you before you even get your trade going.

however, the real issue in this game is, it becomes a game of “who gets to get trade going, whose trade is shutdown” or who wall whose trade successfully. it makes quite a boring game playing in this manner.

what i just said is probably more relevant to season 3. with changes in season 4, it should be slightly better, shutting down trade should be easier too.

i think abba/mongol trade is more OP than mali. the only difference is you dont make 100 traders with abba/mongol but with mali, u have fewer vills and more traders because mali is really a gold civ.

mongol and abba consume a lot more food than mali while with mali your traders usually provide you a ration of food.

31

Yep but not everyone is a good player, and if for 80% of the base players there’s a problem with certain mechanic, in fact it is a problem. The “git gud” reply not always apply…

32

my solution for this is to make trade setup cheaper, instead of 60/60 perhaps 30/20, and make it far less rewarding, perhaps half the gold return, maybe even more.

this way, losing trade early wouldn’t be too painful and late game gold isn’t too excessive and so you’re forced to mix in some cheap units. gold return per trip would be roughly the same as mining gold. right now people just ignore gold mines and go for trade lol.

33

I think trade rewarding right now is okay, the problem is the trade system is not thought to be done the way is being done right now.

In a scenario where traders have to go from point A to point B and return, it is well rewarding, but obviously if you abuse the design fail of this mechanic doing a trick to just go to point B to A full load, and you add to this the tower rewardings of Mali, then it’s overwhelmingly unbalanced.

I think they just need to fix this, maybe as an user said, when home market is changed, they need to get to this market before getting to the destiny.

Because this you are proposing will not stop this abuse, will just lower in same proportions gold income for everyone, the abusers and the not abusers.

34

i think direct point A to B is an even play field, you can do the same.

this probably wasn’t an intended design, but i do think its a good thing to have. having A->b->return is much too late and the cost of losing the reward is just far too much.

there was someone famous for playing around tower tax. such that he’d sneak build his market in some diagonal corner just to get initial profits.

well we played him a few times and spanked him real hard.

theres no abuse here. if you wanna stay in your base, get to 200 pop and then attack while they trade boom, you just need to change your game alright?

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35

actually you are right maybe trade should be a late game thing when the golds on the map runs out

36

True. Thats the short term option, but they should naturally fix this exploit in the future, though :rofl:

37

I don’t think as you, because the example you are saying of “you simply need to change the way you play”, can be applied also to tower rushing (and they in fact nerfed tower rushing), or to a civ being OP.

Imagine french is OP and someone comes here complaining about that, and you simply say “why you complaining? Just pick french”.

Also, we are talking not about a game mechanic, about something that has been thought like this.

This is obviously a game design fail, where they wanted to implement a way of calculate gold in traders, and they thought “hey, what if we just calculate gold based in distance between both markets?”

In theory is good, but they didn’t advice that this can lead to someone just skipping the initial travel doing the trick.

And for last thing, the gold traders carry is calculated based in distance from A to B, and return (I suspect in a straight line), and this cost a certain amount of time. They are balancing traders and gold income based in that “theoretical” time traders spend from A to B and return, not just B to A, skipping one of the travels.

Suppose you are getting 200 gold for a 2 min trip (1 min go and 1 min return), then you are getting 100 gold/min with this trader, now if you skip initial travel, you are literally doubling the income to 200 gold/min, in the first travel. Now just be Mali, put 2 towers, and spam traders as hell.

Two minutes can mark the difference in a game, these 2 minutes that guy is skipping, makes everyone not being able to deny the trade at time.

(Sorry for the long post)

38

im telling you its an even playfield because both teams do the same. all civs can do this.

is mali trade that OP? i initially did this until they nerfed the trade where i’d just lose my base if someone traded from 5min. in the end, farimba fast castle is mostly the correct way to play mali. by 10mins, i will have 30-40 musofadis to destroy another malis entire trade and then his base. if you trade like that, will u have 30-40 sized army by 10mins as mali?

i have plenty of experience with mali trade, i do know how OP it can get if u get it going. in the old patch, i could get 200 pop by 13min and imperial.

39

We are talking about exploiting the trade, not if Mali trade is OP.

This is an exploit, a fail of design, that need to be fixed. There’s not much more to be discussed in that way.

40

and i dont see it to be a problem when both sides can do it.