Instead of simply assigning villagers to a structure where they kneel and pray the rest of the game, could the game maybe incorporate pilgrimages? You make a holy site somewhere on the map… could be near your TC, or far away. The farther away the units trek to pray, the more favor that is earned on that trip. (Maybe some Favor earned when they reach the holy site, and some Favor when they return, as well.) I don’t know if the unit used for the treks should be villagers, or some other unit you’d have to build.
At least that way it might seem like a funner gameplay mechanic, with more inherent risk and reward, and a need to protect the units (akin to the trade carts mechanic in AoE2)
Unless AoM already does that somewhere or with some of the Gods? It’s been too long since I played AoM. I just remember assigning villagers to my Town Center or some building very close and that was it… watch the Favor pile up. Not much fun from a gameplay interaction or resource management standpoint.
That same principle is applied to the gathering of all resources. It’s not fun and not inherently risky…but it is risky. Praying at your temple carries the same level of risk as mining gold or hunting deer. Your pilgrimage idea just swaps out one passive favour gatherings technique for another. If you want a more active method of gathering favour, I would recommend playing Norse as they gain favour through fighting - more you fight, more favour you gain. But regarding your pilgrimage, if you use villagers, firstly you’re still assigning villagers to gather favour which counters an earlier complaint. And second, much like trade caravans, a player will inevitably leave them running passively in the background until it’s raided, at which point they will intervene. How is that any different from assigning villagers to pray at a temple and only interacting with them when they are attacked?
Trade lines are easier to attack because they have to span a larger distance which makes them harder to attack.
Favour generation that works like trading would be even more vulnerable since villagers are not as fast as traders.
The difference is not that big though.
Bot neither is the difference between any building that passively generates favour. Monuments, Town Centres and Gardens are very similar in that way.
Tbf im not saying it’s a wholly ridiculous idea, I think with the right tweaks for how much favour is generated etc it could be an interesting option for a new civ because, let’s face it, we have two (three if you count Chinese) who generate favour passively through buildings. A new civ would need a new option even if only for varieties sake. I don’t think it’s a half bad idea as an option. My opposition centred around changing the existing Greek mechanism for something that inherently does the same thing, perhaps there is a little less risk when it comes to praying at a temple, but it’s still assigning villagers to a “resource” to gather it. The Greek system works for the Greeks and is a cornerstone of their mechanics.
I’m afraid we will see boring or copied ways of collection Favour on a lot of the future pantheons because there aren’t that many ways to collect favour that are fitting to a religion and also balanced.
We’ll see if they changed the Chinese way of generating favour and what the one confirmed new pantheon will bring us.
Hopefully not 2 new buildings that just passively trickle it.
There will always be options, it will depend on how creative the developers are, I will give you an example if they introduced the Aztecs there could be a favor generation mechanism through human or animal sacrifices where you can obtain an amount of favor according to what you sacrifice and therefore you lose that unit.
I though about it in a past thread. It could be like AoE3 native posts, minor God temples where you gain acces to a myth unit and some upgrade while it gives you a trickle of favor
For AoM:R, I’d prefer actively constructing the buildings yourself, rather than getting pre-built buildings on the map for you. As that is more active participation by the players, and has less chance of having the weird issues AoE3 does where you can’t build walls or anything next to the buildings. (It’s a big postage stamp of land inaccessible to you, iirc). Plus, it is a permanent bright spot fixture on the map that both players see the entire game. You know where they are, you fight for the perma locations, etc. Boring to me. I don’t like permanent fixtures like that. AoE4’s perma-landmarks or whatever bother me even. Don’t like playing capture the flag or king of the mountain with permanent locations
A perpetual, passive trickle of Favor isn’t my thing either. Is what I’m trying to avoid. I hate the trains in AoE3, the coin buildings in AoE3. A passive accrual of resource based on simple acquisition of a building or by simply planting villys at the base of a building for the rest of the game is what I’m hoping to avoid. I far prefer active collecting of resources. A pilgrimage is my attempt to make it more active, and steer it away from AoE3 passive mechanics.
My opinion is pretty much the opposite.
I love permanent features because everything else is gone eventually.
In a long AoE2 match the whole map is eventually barren.
That’s boring. You just fight over nothing at that point.
If you play that many matches where you’ve gathered every possible resource, I think you could probably stand to play on larger maps… and/or with fewer players on the map… and/or win or lose before that time reaches.
I’m surprised you frequently play maps so long that nothing remains and nobody has won yet. That’s quite the stalemate! The fight should be over conquering your enemy if you’ve gone that long. Surely, one player could use their market to buy enough troops to wipe the other out by that point…?
Many people like playing on large maps, with no rush, with many players, with AI and so on.
On Arabia 1v1 you will rarely run out of resources on the map but a 4v4 Dark Forest will play pretty different.
It’s not rare to see the map just be empty land and forest with no stone and gold left.
At that point you just fight over who has more empty plane until one team has none.
Could be true, I only play 2v2, 1v1, or 1v2, mainly… sometimes (more rarely) 2v3 types of games… so can’t speak from much experience w/ 7 or 8 players. It’s been a long while, and am pretty sure my team dedtroyed the enemy well before all resources were gone.
I just know AoE2 has gigantic/huge map options, which are quite large. If 8-player games often devour all resources like locusts on gigantic maps, then I hear ya.
However, I think a far more engaging and nice mechanic to solve your problem of maps getting picked dry of everything would be for forests and berry bushes to very slowly regrow or randomly spawn, a handful of new mines slowly, randomly appear, animals to ocassionally walk into the map and roam around, fish reappearing, and what not. All of it would be very slow to happen… like watching paint dry type of slow. I’d love that and pilgrimages to player-created buildings far more than permanent landmarks that generate passive income.
I agree that it would be cool to have some kind of dynamic system that makes “point of interest” change over time but I think that’s really hard to design, especially on random maps.
Also would be somewhat strange and make balance hard.
Would you go stop farming if some berries started growing randomly on the map?
Would it ruin balance if stone mines would suddenly spawn?
Wouldn’t it be strange if a Sacred Site/Ruin/Settlement would despawn after a while to be replaced with a new one somewhere else?
I don’t like the concept of trade in AoE2. It feels more wrong to have the ability to freely choose your market position because that always leads to unnatural market placement.
It feels like you are setting up a highway track at the edge of the map and not trading with your allies.
Having fixed trading locations feels more natural because in real life you can only trade between 2 relevant places not between to lonely markets at the edge of your city/empire.
Anything that can be player build will lead to it being placed will lead to strategic placement instead of natural/realistic placement.
So I guess it’s down to if you see AoE/AoM as a pure competition or also as a representation of history/mythology.