I think if you’re playing a single-player game vs. 2 or more AI, you should be able to market-trade with yourself. Drop down two (or more, of course) markets, create some trade carts, and trade away. Same with docks + trade cogs. Any and all civs should have this ability.
It’s quite unfair to play 1 vs. 2AI and watch them trade all game collecting a bunch of gold, while you sit by the sidelines having to mine gold and exchange resources ‘in’ the market to get gold; especially at higher difficulties (Moderate or higher)
Yes, eventually you can sneak trade carts to their market in, say, late game… but by then you’ve found a way to dominate the game anyways so it’s next-to-meaningless
Trading between 2 markets would probably be confusing if you have more then 2 of them.
In AoM you trade between markets and Town Centres so this confusion doesn’t exist. Something that many people suggested is making the Trade Workshop buildable and allowing you to trade between your own Markets and Trade Workshops.
There should be a ‘Neutral Market’ option in the Skirmish/Lobby menu. When active, a neutral market will always spawn on the map. Markets for land maps, docks for water maps and both for hybrid maps should be placed as close as possible to the corners of the map (or wherever it makes sense).
This allows you to choose whether to include the trait in 1vs1, 1vsX or FFA. The same applies to ranking, except when a map feature is involved.
Of course, all map scripts need to be adjusted. So the market spawn makes sense. The only problem is that community RM maps will not work with this feature.
Oh I like this idea. Similar to how King of the Hill can generate a monument on every map why not markets on every map. Just generate them in the 4 corners. Generate them as Docks if the corner is water.
Not confusing at all. Just keep the rules the same as it’s always been. If you make 2 markets and set gather point on the other, the carts know what to do (speaking of when you trade with teammate). Or if you make 5 or 10+ markets like I often end up doing in team games so I can mass produce carts to send to my teammate, just set gather point on teammate market for all and the carts do their magic. Not confusing at all and works quite well. The carts have an algorithm that figures everything out and intelligently re-paths based on changes in the field (walls, gates, paths opening, paths closing, other markets made available, etc). I think they often try to go farthest market to farthest market or something
I greatly dislike neutral markets embedded in the map. I hate it in AoE4. And don’t want trading to TCs either. Just let me make my own markets, one on either side of my town or farther out, and trade between them. Problem solved. Not hard. Mechanics that have existed for decades, so it’s intuitive to 99.98% of players and respectful of how markets have always worked in AoE2 – which should be the gold standard here. Not AoE4… not AoE3… not AoM… not AoE1. We’re talking about AoE2:DE, so let’s just mirror the AoE2 mechanics
The same technique can be ported over to docks, too. Their algorithm is equally robust and fine. We don’t need to start implementing non-traditional things like neutral markets dotting the map or other AoE3/AoE4-inspired perma-fixtures that you interact with on maps
They originally planned “off map” trade. Trade Cogs would disappear at the edge of the map and return after a while before returning to the dock. This allowed trading in 1v1.
Maybe that would be a good solution in general.
I just think trading between 2 cheap to build Markets/Docks seems kinda OP. They could make trading with yourself less profitable then trading with allies.
Becauuuse trading with 2 markets on a ‘team’ where you have only had to buy 1 market yourself is not OP? Sorry, I don’t follow your logic.
It would be more expensive for you than the individual enemy AIs to establish trade. You have to buy 2 markets, they only need to buy 1 each. So, no; it should not be less profitable for you.
I’ve played SP games for years without being able to do ANY trade. The AI have been able to practically manufacture gold out of thin air while I can only mine it or exchamge goods. Talk about OP…. the enemy TEAM is way OP
Playing alone vs. multiple AI is not a common way of playing the game so it’s unlikely that the devs would implement a feature for this one specific circumstance.
Allowing you to just trade with yourself basically just removes the gold scarcity from the game. Why do trash units need to exist when you can always easily get gold.
Even in AoM trading with yourself gives less gold then trading with allies. Though it’s not much less in AoMR.
I still have no idea about your logic. By your logic, all market/dock trading should be removed. Stop trying to play the dev gatekeeper role, generating excuses and fansplaining what the devs will or will not do. They can decide for themselves without your help and irrational logic
What I want to say is that you want a feature that most people don’t want to have. I assume you want it as an optional feature and not automatically always available but still.
I, and many others, think the game is worse when gold becomes super easily available in the late game. Adding the option to the game incentivise people to play the game in less optimal way. Most new people would likely enable this feature because it seems nice to have but it would ruin parts of what make the game fun.
So yes I think that optional features can make games worse. Unlike using cheat codes there is less of a red line that people don’t want to cross.
No, this would not be an option toggleable in the lobby. It would just ‘be’. For unranked, single-player games like my OP said. I said 1v2AI games, but I now think it should probably be in 1v1 unranked games, too. Any time there is a team consisting of 1 civ in unranked random map skirmish games, just let them trade with themselves. It’s not rocket science, and not all the sudden some scary OP proposition. And it’s only fair when you are playing against teams of enemies. At least 1v2, 1v2v2, 1v2v2v2. But like I said, I think it should also work in 1v2v1, 1v1, 1v2v2v1, etc. unranked games, too.
Generating gold in SP games is a slog. Meanwhile, the enemy civs happily trade with themselves the entire game, as you sit by the sidelines painstakingly mining every gold nugget or getting the tiniest of tiny trickle of gold from whatever relics you have
Don’t get me wrong. I love mining. It’s just imbalanced and not fair that you can’t trade with yourself. And in games vs. 2 or more AI it becomes quite a handicap that you can’t
This idea also came to my mind when you are olaying 2v2 unranked games and your teammate dies or out-of-sync-drops and has no market or loses it. At this point, why shouldn’t you be able to make 2 markets and trade with yourself.
I think a lot of people would absolutely hate this change. The game is not just played by ultra casuals and ranked players, there is a lot in between and a lot of different game modes.
Like unranked FFA matches would be totally different if you could trade with yourself by default.
Also losing the feature to be able to trade with yourself as soon as you have an ally would probably cause a lot of problems too. Like imagine how toxic people would become if their ally places the market wrong, or not at all, if they know they could place it better themselves if they didn’t have an ally.
I think i meant unranked offline private matches. I never play with randos, so it’s fine to leave that alone. Restrict it to vs AI games I really don’t care, as long as i can do it in my SP vs. 2+AI games, and 2v2+AI where my ally dies, where the AI double-team launch coordinated lethal strikes with endless streams of units on you with their market trades inflating their income. To me, the lack of single player trading seems like a flaw that should have been in the game since day 1
I’m tired of having to wall or tower off enemy AI from one of their markets without accidentally destroying it so i can use it for myself
If its just for singrlpalyer against the, then why not just go into scenario editor, spawn a market in the corner manually and then play. Downside is you see the map before playing.
Cool, I didn’t know they planned that. I even implemented something like that in one of my scenarios through triggers many years ago, but once the population started to rise too much, the trading cogs/carts stopped obeying for some unknown reason.
Because, no. Just want standard blank map where you build what you want, where you want, when you want and when you can afford on any and every map. Just like buildings have been done for 2.5 decades in the game