Perhaps the age advances cost more or take longer at Houses.
AoE3 Asian civilizations can train villagers as advancing. I think there should be a way to present this interesting bonus in a balanced way.
aoe3 is a drastically different game though.
yeah because aoe3 style mechanics have done SO WELL in age 2 haven’t they?
Just because it’s a mechanic in AoE3 doesn’t mean it’s not a workable mechanic for other games, not to mention the design of TC training villagers and advancing ages is basically the same.
Although the AoE3 mechanic I mentioned makes the age advances take a longer time, it can speed up by letting up to 8 villagers temporarily not gather resources. I think that only keeping it for a longer advancing time is already a move to cater to AoE2.
But the economy is very much different across the games.
here is the problem - if its too short of an increase its still busted. if its too long of an increase their is no sense using it. it would be an absolute balance nightmare.
I think +50% of the time might be acceptable. But anyway, it just means that something else is needed to balance it. When advancing, villagers are more expensive or trained longer etc.
It’s a kind of brainstorming, and it’s fun to think about.
and that is why such a mechanic is not a good idea. I’m okay with trying to come up with something interesting but if said interesting thing needs a bunch of drawbacks to balance it, is it really a good idea?
- Longer advance time.
- Villagers are more expensive or take longer time during advancing.
2 is not a bunch in my opinion, and even one of them might be enough to balance it.
As long as it could be balanced, it should not be a bad idea, especially in such a hypothetical thread. This doesn’t mean that such an idea is easy to adopt, but it is likely to inspire other variants.
Royal House sounds insanely strong. It grants about 3x the stronger half of the Malay bonus. It could be incorporated into a design when paired with a strong enough debuff, but pairs of really strong bonuses and very strong debuffs don’t tend to lead to fun design. See the Cuman TC bonus.
Maybe if you had to sacrifice 6 sheep to research age-ups in a TC? 
WRT General/Khan/Daimyo, I’m not a fan of unit caps, but whatever.
Cherry Blossoms sounds like an insanely strong farm replacement. It could be very pretty though.
Fur Trade and Tomahawk are fine.
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Ever since Aoe4, I was also thinking if we can implement building landmark/ a unique building to advance. I think they are harder to balance. You will save a lot of TC time to get Villager lead and to compensate that you need a very slow advance time.
I don’t get how your so-called “sacrifice” works. And how if the map has no sheep or the sheep are lamed?
My initial thought was to assume Royal House would take 50% more time. You can train X villagers more, but will be behind the opponent’s age by about X/2 villagers’ training time.
If villagers train slower (take longer) during ages advance, gain less than X villagers, but still lag by X/2 time. If villagers train slower (take longer) during ages advance but it doesn’t take more time to advance, just gain less than X but less more than the former. If this mechanic requires villagers to build a specific building (landmark?) rather than simply advance at other buildings such as Houses, it will also be less effective.
Of course I can’t guarantee it’s easy to balance or still interesting when balanced, but I think it’s an interesting brainstorm. I’m bringing it up because it’s a proven concept that works in RTS, even though there are some differences across games.
Or, we can let the traditional way keep at TC. Let the player decide which way he/she wanna use to advance the age every time.
I’m not sure it’s a replacement for Farm or not, but a forager is much less efficient than a farmer.
Perhaps the shepherd could sell the fur too, but not for as much gold as the hunter.
Doesnt matter if its lets efficient because
- its more food for less (and no upgrades required)
- multiple workers can work on each forage bush.
Think about it. A feudal farm, assuming hc is researched, provides 250 food for 60 wood. And 1 worker can harvest that.
Your orchard is 60 wood max for 1125 food and lots of people can harvest it.
Are they individually slower then each farm? Yes. But even 4 farms is much much more expensive
We don’t yet know the Orchard’s build time and which age it is accessible in.
Its cost can even be adjusted to be higher or to be changed to other type of resources, as the focus is on giving villagers the opportunity to build GAIA’s resources, like the ideas that Afforestation (5x5 forest, 25 trees) I had shared, and the Prospector (2x2 mines, 4 gold or 4 stone) I am thinking about.
personally i’m of the opinion that these type of bonuses should never exist in aoe2.
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This is an interesting bonus, honestly. I agree with some of the earlier comments, 60 is too cheap for being able to essentially build 9 forage bushes for fairly cheap. I’d change the bonus to this, personally:
Cherry Blossoms: Can build 2x2 (4 unique berry bushes) for 120 wood. Gathering rate affected by farm techs (-10% at start, +0% HC, +10% Plow, +20% CR).
This way, you’re accounting for the fact that you’re building a resource multiple people can harvest from by nerfing the initial gather rates and strengthen them by increments throughout the game. Regular berries won’t be affected however.
I think this would do great for an early rushing civ concept, and I’m kind of surprised the official civs haven’t taken this concept already…
This is really worth considering. Yet another fun brainstorm.
Look at the title of the thread, “just for fun”.
think Afforestation may be especially valuable. Spend 500 wood (maybe) and some build time so that wood is no longer a finite resource, which could help in the very very late game.
and you don’t see how this could be problematic? especially on maps like islands? look at the malay fishing bonus that got nerfed as an excellent example.
It is precisely what I particularly want to do on the islands. It take (perhaps a long) time to build, and it would still take time to gather. This is closer to Feitoria than the Malay bonus.
and those have been nerfed TWICE now in DE purely because of Islands…just saying.
This mod has very unique mechanics that new civs (or even current ones) can use
I like that you have two option for UT by age and the way the UT toggle and the Ox cart for gather resources
Could work if takes much time than reasearching in TC maybe.
This triggers me an idea. What if from Castle age you can upgrade just one TC to new Unique building, the Palace.
The palace have more HP, more range and attack, let you research UTs on it and train this “General” unit while maintain the all TC features.
This General as you said, can only exist one at a time, have really good stats and, here is the gimmicky part, occupy 5 pop and generate gold only if it is garrisoned in the Palace, so you have a choice if usit as a “ military” asset or an economic booster.
Interesting, but should to be tweaked I think. I don’t care discuss about the numbers, but I like the idea.
Interesting too. Could lead to unique build orders.
Question… you can choose when thrown the weapon once the bar is full charged? Or it just happen like Coustilliers charge attack?