So I am really hoping for a Mesopotamian Culture next and got an Idea.
Two different types of Basic Economy Units:
Craftsmen and Wildlings/Collectors, you start with 2 Craftsmen, 3 Wildlings and a scout unit.
Craftsman: Cost 75Food 2pop 30sec (Limit 50)
Can gather food from Farms, herdable animals and berries but CANNOT HUNT. Can also gather Gold from Mines
Can Build all Buildings. Cannot gather Wood.
Can build Farms in archaic Age (125 Wood each)
Has the work rate x1.5 of a Greek Villager in all but farms, which is higher (x1.8 maybe?). Carry capacity is the same. Toughness: 75HP (Between atlantean citizen and villager)
Wildling/Collector: Cost Free 0pop 20sec (Limit 50, separate from Craftsmen), Your TC automatically produces these alongside any other thing you manually queue in your TC.
Can gather Food from huntable animals, herdable animals and berries, but NOT FARMS. Can gather Wood from trees. Cannot build, but does not need dropoff sites (resources are deposited instantly as they gather). Cannot gather Gold.
In Archaic age they are Wildlings and can only be given a gather or move command every 15sec, you can’t easily control them, but TC spawns them close to their working position first hunt, second on wood, then hunt, then wood again (Odd on hunt, even on Wood). It is independent from your TC’s rally point.
After advancing to Classical age, they become Collectors instead and can respond like normal units, but have the same boons and restrictions as Wildlings otherwise than it’s controllability.
Has the work rate x0.5 of a Greek Villager. Toughness: 45HP (slightly less than average)
Your TCs has a toggle button, which is Auto Farm: any newly produced Craftsmen builds and works a farm, works as long as you have wood and space (so max 12 around your TC). All TCs also generates a small trickle of wood if they have no trees in their proximate surroundings.
Dropoff buildings: Mining Camp (Gold) and Granary/Brewery (Food).
You don’t need a lumber camp, since your wood gatherers automatically stockpiles the wood, you get your wood upgrades in your TC. Need more Wood? Well craftsmen can’t gather it, so if you need it that badly, you can wait producing them while researching Wood upgrades.
Your Mining Camp is standard 50wood. Your Granary (also 50wood) is mostly standard, the only difference is you can convert it into a Brewery which converts 20% of all food dropped off in it to favor (unsure about the appropriate conversion ratio), it can also be converted back into a Granary.
Maybe an Ashipu (doctor/priest/sorcerer) can be built from a temple and be tasked o a brewery to turn food into favour.
Archaic Age start:
Your first 2 Craftsmen spawns out of your TC to it’s rally point, task them to gold and have one of them build a Mining Camp (you start with 0 Gold so you need it for a temple) and send out your scout to explore, Your 3 wildlings spawns close to their hunt and start gathering food and doesn’t need direction to do so. Next Wildling spaws gathering wood (which you have fairly much of, but you will need more). Next Craftsman should build a farm, rest should go on gold. When you have enough Wood & Gold for a temple, build it with one of your goldmining craftsmen, afterward you can build farms.
When advancing you can move some craftsmen to your berries and make a brewery, if you’re planning on a favor based strategy.
Pros:
Easy to manage, your Collectors are basically automated. And Booming can practically be automated too, with auto farming. Since much of your early eco is easy to manage, you can focus more on scouting. Hard to raid your Craftsmen early.
Cons:
You can easily get low on wood if you send your collectors on hunting expiditions and don’t expand early. Since you have different workers for different resources you can be uniquely vulnerable to raids. Gathering Favor requires that you commit to farms, which will cost you a lot of wood.
There has been a process to make this draft of an Idea. I started to think of all the differen’t ways we could make different economy systems, I wanted to make one like Norse and Chinese, that has specialized worker units, since I wasn’t really satisfied with “Let’s just have a worker who has a Food+Gold drop site and a Wood dropsite(or no Wood dropsite at all)”. I also wanted to “solve” the problem of having different eco units spawning from a building with only one rally point. I was inspired a bit by Dominions, were there is a faction based on ancient Mesopotamia (Ur/Uruk), who can recruit more primitive soldiers outside their forts, that was what the idea of wildlings came from, while also partialy borrowing ottomans mechanic from AoE3.
The Idea of turning Wildings into Collectors was an Idea that came later, I kinda realized that nobody would wan’t to deal with intentionaly misbehaving worker units past the first age. An Idea was to “Civilize” the Wildlings by building breweries to coax them with booze to turn them into proper worker units, it sounded kinda incesitive but more importantly, tedious so I changed it. The idea of booze being Favor is unsurprisingly borrowed from Settlers IV, where all factions Mana (basically Favor) is gained by making alcohol.
I didn’t wan’t to specify if it would be Sumarian or Babylonian, but the vibe was built from the Sumarian proclemation of “We are Civilized, because we eat bread and drink beer” (paraphrased, couldn’t remember the source), hence why the “Civilized” can’t hunt, but can farm and vice versa for wildlings.
Maybe my idea is a bit overthought and only fits a Sumarian Civ and not a Babylonian one, and it’s easier to just have 1 worker unit, “Carpenters/Craftsmen” who can gather wood without a drop site, but need a dropsite for Food and Gold.