I was watching Shroud play Age 2 and realised how frustrating it can be for newer players to re-seed farm again and again. So, making auto farm reseeding can be an option to fix that.
Or maybe ask the players when they first launch the game how familiar are they with Age?!:
1) Newbie: Make all the auto things that are necessary, On by default. (Let them know what is on and off)
2) Intermediate: Use the current settings. (Let them know what they will be.)
3) Veteran: Use the settings which are used by top players. (Let them know what they will be.)
This will allow them to quickly configure most of the settings that are required. And, allow them to customise everything later on.
I think, that players will probably quite quickly find automatic reseed button in mill and toggle it on. You think, that they don’t discover that button so they keep on manually reseeding even when they don’t need to?
As a deliberated decision, not using auto reseed can grant you a better manegement of your resources, making so you don’t run short on wood in a moment that it would be unfavourable.
But there also players that are just too used to the other way and don’t bother using it.
I for one, am NOT for auto-reseeding farms on as default. I know its one additional step to do, but personally, it gives me more control over my resources. Like in the first parts of the game, I don’t do auto-reseed, as I want to allot my resourced more on research and other upgrades needed where wood is essential. Once I am able to fully manage my wood production to a level where I can safely allot auto-reseeding, is where I turn that option on.
In any event the auto reseed is superior atleast than queueing farms at the mill since then you’ll just be floating your wood and having it conpletely unusable. So I almost always turn it on immediately so I don’t need to touch them again.
As on the topic itself, I’d say all the new players will at some point create a mill, since other than khmer you need it to create farms to begin with and also upgrade them, so most probably a person’s interest will get drawn to the other buttons too and they’ll eventually check put the tooltips as to what it is that they do. So I don’t feel like it needs to be enabled at the start of the game.
We enjoy complex management , I love exresising my memory and multitasking abbilities by forcing myself to do everything manually, scouting, economy management as well as military commanding and city defence . If everything becomes automatic …what is the point of playing ?
I usually don’t turn on auto-seed until mid to late Castle Age.
When a farm expires, I have to make a decision on whether I want to keep that farmer going, or switch them to a different resource based on my current needs.
Do I need more food for units I’m producing? Techs? Next age upgrade? then I will probably re-seed.
Am I attacking my opponent and need more wood to produce units? Do I want to start building siege? Am I going to need a Monastery/University anytime soon? If so, depending on my food/wood income at the time, I may want to switch them to chopping wood instead of eating the cost of renewing the farm.
Until you start floating a lot of wood (which shouldn’t be until mid to late castle age, sometimes later) you need to be very conscious of your wood/food balance, and auto-reseed will take that away and potentially cause you to not have enough wood for a critically timed building or upgrade that could swing the game in your favor.
Auto scout: On / Off by default
Auto farm: On / Off by default
Auto fish trap: On / Off by default
Every one can toggle those options one by one as they wish.
I consider my as noob. I would toggle all options off by default. I wont use those option as default. Somewhere in castle age i will turn on these options.
