I personally would find it very refreshing if idle time for Town Centers was an option and a choice rather than a skill you need to train. If the players had a function on the TC they could turn on and off at their leisure whether they want to keep villager production or not, well that would be a feature I would very much like to be added. I wouldn’t want anything else to be automated, but since economy is so important in this game, I don’t know about everyone else, but I get no enjoyment whatsoever in even the success of having no idle time. It just feels like a chore with no upside. If this is a core design of the game where the player is tasked with managing his APM as efficiently as possible, I’d rather the task be with more elements to it rather than just remembering to click 2 hotkeys every minute.
It would not necessarily be better or worse, but would certainly be easier, which in itself is something subjective. For newer and “Low level” players It would be better, but for competitive play and more experienced player would propably be bad as less skill needed is rarely a good thing for that kind of play
If it is a new civ that has this trait, and the other civs have no influence, I think it would be more acceptable.
Like the Ottomans in AoE3, it will be a civ designed to be more friendly to newers and casual players.
I think it would be better, because the idea of a strategy game is to see who is better in military & economics, not who can click faster or who has a chronometer to see at what second he clicks to Feudal.
you are basically asking to destroy what’s called macro cycle, which separates players with good macro from those with bad macro, and also separates players with low APM from those with high APM. If those are not skills that are relevant in a real time strategy game, then idk what skills would even distinguish a bad player from a good one.
If you like the strategic aspect of videogames without the fast pace, there are turn-based games or board games that also involve strategy.
Also and I can’t stress this enough, in low elo nobody expects you to not idle your TC, in fact if you go down low enough nobody even expects build orders or to consistently produce villagers to begin with. So the critique is not that minimal idle TC is required (since we know that’s not true in lower elos), but the fact that you feel pressured to idle TC less at your elo. Or in other words, you feel that people at your elo are better than you at not idling TC. Leverage your other skills, or learn to macro I suppose.
I think Devs could make an option for autoqueing vills.
The option will then work basically as it one supernhuman clicked select all tcs and queue 5 vills every single frame.
Then it will be fine.
I think its fine the way it is tbh, i play on an xbox controller and there are other things I rather have, like a build farm button on TCs, or setting TC rally points to resource buildings should have any ne villls from that TC work that resource. I think if something makes things simpler its a good thing, i also think slower pace, diminishing return, unit veterancy are all good things that make the game more strategic. I think ensemble realized these things when they made Halo Wars but they kinda died with them. I also think the game would feel a lot better if when you started a game, the game would keep yor TC facing towars you like it does now but it would also put both players on the bottom of their screen with the enemies TC facing away from your own TC.
I think good macro is more the correct distribution of vils on resources, the right timing in unit transition, the wise spending of resources (techs and upgrades), the correct unit combo, map control, etc… All more impactful than idle TC imo…
You still could have high APM but more focus in microing units, instead of creat vils. Maybe you refer to multitasking, which is not necessarily the same than high APM.
There could be a new civ that does that vills are free and spawn automatically, like aoe3 Ottomans, but it take longer to create vills as a balance measure.
You can do well with your macro having a lower APM, so long as your actions are efficient and well thought. Some of this will come from experience and instincts, while some will build off of your wits. Hotkeys can be helpful, but there are players who like to click, yet are still formidable. The mundane is an aspect of the game, and one that tries players. Think of it as practicing music.
you are really arguing semantics, all you say is true, but queueing vills is also part of good macro. It’s one of the easier, less strategic tasks, nevertheless it’s macro. And yes RTS games require multitasking.
Just no
No more auto
The game is not that hard people
No this is a bad idea. There are other automatic things in the game which still allow better players to excel. E.g. Manual scouting is still better than auto scout and auto reseed of farms steals wood you need to make buildings to hit your timings. The only way I would accept it would be if it was for Dark and Feudal Age only and make it so that it spends your maximum resources available, meaning you could have tons of villagers queued at once and be unable to afford upgrades like fl.etching and double bit axe. That way people playing without it would still have the advantage. It would still be useful because you could toggle it on with a hotkey just before a fight to make sure you don’t have an idle TC during fights but it wouldn’t be advantageous to leave it on permanently.
P.s. The profanity filter on the forum is unreal. Can’t even write fl.etching? Seriously?
Btw i play on console and auto economy both sucks and is hella overpowered. It uselees early game or if your base is being raided, early game it villagers kill all the sheep at once, they wont lure boars and will send all the villagers to berries before buildiing a single farrm. If youre being raided and garrison a few vills to keep them from dying, auto economy will send vills to their deaths toward the resource you just garrisones vills from. However if you now you wont be raided you can do a almost perfect 3 TC boom with minnimal management, if youure done clearing a raid you can also redistribute yor 100+ vill economy with minimal effort. I often play without auto economy most of feudal at least until my berries run out. If im not being attackeed often i will have it on untill about i got around100 vills then i wil turn it off for the rest of the game or unless im fored to rebuild my 20 or more vills, perfectly place farms baby!
No it won’t. While just queuing villager during a plain boom might not be a skill, maintaining villager production while handling military is a skill. If you’re playing only michi, then probably you could feel like its a chore because in that case it is but not when you’re playing open maps. Even 2 mins of idle tc in the early game while you were microing archers or scouts will have a huge impact. Alternatively you can just patrol your army and continue to handle eco, in which case you might have lost feudal units for lesser value. Its a decision from you to do more damage with your army vs handle your own economy better. That’s a vital part of the game.
As once said a great AoE Philosopher: “Why don’t we just auto play?”
There also is the issue of thinking about turning it off. Otherwise you’ll keep making some far beyond the 100-120 you’d normally do and surprise, no more room for military units ! Unless deleting villagers so having wasted several thousands of food…
It’s not like auto reseeding farms that are supposed to last until the game ends.
If you don’t like the core gameplay loop of this game (building eco units, to build eco, to develop offensive/defensive options), I think you would be better served finding a new game with a core gameplay loop you enjoy more, than lobbying to change this game’s loop.
I’m still noob enough that I always have idle time and that gives me an easy objective to improve my skills towards every match. I think the game would be less engaging without queuing vils.
I don’t mind lowering the barrier to entry, with auto drop-off for rez under the TC (see other thread on this topic) but toggling vil production is just a bit too far for me.
my idea instead of auto-vils is to let players queue up units they don’t afford yet, if you don’t able to pay for it then you get the message “you must gather more food” or something… you already have this style of behavior in game with houses
its not every 25 seconds to create a villlager in real time, becuase normal speed is 1.7x so 25/1.7 = 14.7 seconds in real time
Just making the auto-queue (AQ) a little worse than manual queue (MQ). Like a little seconds more per vil would make everybody happy.
High Elo players still can go MQ and will have the advantage over any using AQ (and not feeling frustrated because now the game is easier).
Low and mid Elo try-hards still could go AQ in the beginning and still have the challenge of jumping to MQ.
Low and mid Elo whose just feel good in the lvl they are and want a soft game experience and focus in more fun aspects of the game (micro over repetitive eco tasks), but still want some challenge in the ranked, can stay with AQ.