Ox Carts for Denmark

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

AoMR is on the way with Ox Carts as a signature feature of the Viking civilization. Sharing this unique unit with their upcoming AoE3 counterpart the Danes, would be a great homage to the Vikings, and provide an interesting twist for their economy.

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Danish Ox Carts featured in WoL as a unit that buffed and protected villagers or could be used to construct economic buildings. For this suggestion, I’d like to take a similar but slightly different approach.

Function

Ox Carts could give the Danes a unique economy by blending elements of villagers, wagons, livestock, and even Lombards and Architects. They could serve as construction wagons that can “fatten” by gathering resources and then build various buildings according to their fatness. They would essentially be temporary villagers that convert resources into buildings.

Ox Carts could be trained from the Danish Town Center at a cost of 100 wood, population of 1, and build limit of ~10. They would start off with 100 fatness which would be enough to immediately build a 100 wood cost building such as a House or Market. Just like Settlers they could be tasked to gather resources, but instead of adding what they gather to the resource stockpile, what they gather would increase their fatness and allow them to construct more costly buildings.

The main benefit to Ox Carts would be the ability to turn gathering from any resource into things that cost wood which is the slowest gathering resource. So they could be tasked to hunt and fatten much more quickly than a Settler would be able to gather an equivalent amount of wood. They could also be tasked to buildings like Mills or even Livestock Pens to gather the equivalent of wood without needing trees.

To give Ox Carts a greater utility in the late game a card could let them transform into crates in addition to buildings. That would let you use them to turn Mill gathering into wood or coin as needed. It could also be used to drop off crates right in the base of an ally to sling them resources. By default, Ox Carts could have a maximum fatness of 600 (most expensive building), and have this doubled to 1200 by the card that lets them turn into crates.

There would also be a couple of drawbacks to Ox Carts such as the risk of over gathering and wasting fatness. If you’ve gathered up to 240 fatness and decide to build a 200 wood building like a Barracks, then you’ve wasted 40 resources. The only way to recoup that would be continuing to gather for a more expensive building that you may or may not need. Another issue is that tying up Town Center production time to build them would not be economical for low cost buildings like Houses. To offset this, Ox Carts should have an additional perk of having slightly higher yields from natural resources (maybe ~10% more?). Additionally, Ox Carts should not be able to gather from crates. Gathering from crates would either be detrimental (gathering up your starting crates when all you wanted to build is a House) or potentially overpowered (effectively turning a 700 food shipment into a second 700 wood shipment).

Availability

Denmark could start off with an Ox Cart in exchange for fewer or even no wood crates. This could be used immediately for a House or Market, or tasked to gather to get a more expensive building like a Trade Post. Instead of a 3 Settler shipment, Denmark could have a 2 Settler and 2 Ox Cart shipment. They could also be obtained by various other cards such as a team Ox Cart shipment or in place of wagon shipments. And obviously more could be trained from the Town Center.

Ox Carts could also be available to a potential Australian revolution since bullock carts were used very extensively there.

History

The Ox Cart is a great fit for Vikings who have the mythological cow Auðumbla and colonized regions full of muskoxen. But is there a connection to Denmark other than a link to the Vikings civ? The answer is yes… kind of. Back in Europe, Ox Carts would have seen occasional use, but not to a degree that would make Denmark stand out. However, in colonial regions that saw a large influx of Danish and Norwegian settlers such as Minnesota, Ox Carts do have a strong connection. The Red River Trails ran right through areas with the heaviest settlement of Danes and Norwegians and consisted primarily of Ox Carts. The region also spawned the legendary tales of Babe the blue ox.

The Danish also have a strong connection with Holstein cattle which are the typical type of dairy cows. This could be featured by giving them Cows that can trickle resources to simulate a dairy industry. If they already have a bonus to do with cattle, Ox Carts would fit right in with that.

Ox Cart in Norway 1898

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Ox Cart art by Danish painter P. C. Skovgaard
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Red River Trail Ox Cart
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220px-Red_River_cart_in_Saint_Cloud,_Minnesota

8 Likes
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If they don’t belong in the time period and are really just a reference, then I’m against it, but if they actually fit the time period, I say go for it

7 Likes
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I might have not read carefully enough, but can 1 ox cart built more than one building?
Also, it seems too much building oriented. The purpose of an ox cart doesn’t appear to be the one of a covered wagon, based on the pictures attached. Maybe they could fit another purpose than just build/convert into buildings.

1 Like
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Your concept sounds kinda inconvenient to use.
Maybe useful if you know the exact timing for when you need to build what building but in must situations they would be inconvenient.
If you want to build a building you usually want it immediately and not as soon as your cart is fat enough.
If you just build a few carts and let them fatten they will often too fat for the building you want to build and you don’t want to waste resources either.

Maybe they should simply just provide a collection rate bonus to nearby settlers.

3 Likes
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No, they’d get consumed when used to build. They are first and foremost a wagon. The role of wagons in the game has always been to build. Real life covered wagons also had little to do with building.

6

You likely wouldn’t build many until later in the game. The main bonus you’d get is a very flexible alternative to standard wagons.

Once you send a card to let them transform into crates then they effectively become temporary Lombards which would be quite useful.

7

I personally don’t really like the idea of it only really being good late game. Also, Lombards are kinda awkward and a lot of people complain about them. These as described are later game, higher micro Lombards. I might try something more like this:

Ox Carts fill up based off the gathering of nearby settlers (resources settlers gather go into your bank and the nearby Ox Cart effectively duplicates 5% if that makes, basically meaning your gathering 105%.). basically more yield.

Ox Carts build buildings using the resources in the cart instead of transforming into a building. The resources in the back are whatever the building requires with all res stored counting as 1 (ie, all resources in a cart are interchangeable.). This also allows them to recharge. basically cheaper buildings.

For some extra difference from Architects (as both sorta work to build free buildings) I’d give Ox Carts 500hp, 4.5 speed and no ability to garrison inside buildings. Build limit of 5 and a aura range of 25. Individual settlers could only add res to one cart at a time, forcing you to expand a bit to make use of more carts.

If a cart dies, the player who killed it gets 30% of its contents, 1/3 in food, wood, and coin. Carts can hold 3000 res. weakness to being raided as they could die and give the enemy resources.

I’d probably give them shadow tech for more hp with each age up.

8

They would still be good in the early game as I’ve presented. However, training them in the early game might be not so good since you’d be giving up on training a Settler for a temporary economic unit. Whether or not they are worth it early on really depends on what the train time is. If it is significantly lower than a Settler (say 10 seconds instead of 20), then it could be worth it to train a few early on.

Giving them the ability to transform into crates sooner would also make them more useful early on. I’m just hesitant on that because it could be hard to balance. But maybe I’m wrong and it would be fine to let them transform sooner.

Late game Lombards are also way more tedious than these guys would ever be. All you’d have to queue up a few to a Mill and let them do their thing until they’re fully fat and go idle. Then you transform them into crates and queue up some more. Increasing their maximum fatness to more than 1000 like I suggested would make all this even simpler.

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The simplest thing to do would be to just make oxcarts trainable trek wagons… maybe that also boost villager work rates nearby (like wignacourt constructions)?

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That’s just a watered down version of WoL Ox Carts. It’s simple, but it doesn’t really do anything to make Danes play any differently from every other euro civ which is the whole point of the suggestion.

11

it is an interesting suggestion (and I strongly appreciate mentioning carts being useful for an Australian rev :eyes:) it’s just also very complex lol. I do like it though.

There’s the eternal problem with euro civ uniqueness when in reality most of the civs were pretty much the same in terms of military and economic organisation in the time period.

I really like your suggestion for uniqueness.

12

I would suggest a slightly changed idea:

  • They can always transform into crates (Wood, Food, Coin and XP)
  • They are capped at 600 resources
  • Once they are fully fattened they are shown as idle villagers
  • They can build any building that costs 600 or less resources
  • If they build a building the left over resources are turned into a crate
  • They do no collect resources, instead they get 10% of any natural resources that are collected nearby (So farms and estates are excluded)
  • Like before they cost 100 Wood and start with 100 resources
  • One free Ox Cart for every Age Up

Making them collect resources directly would be strange. It would be a very big villager.
In AoM they are used to drop of resources, since that mechanic doesn’t exist in AoE3 the closest thing is them having collect free resources from settlers working nearby.

I excluded Farms and Estates or else they would just be clumped up between them all the time in late game. That would be kinda boring.

13

I don’t see how most of this would be an improvement over what I’ve suggested.

Assuming you start out with an Ox Cart and/or get them from age 1 shipments (and I think they should) this would be too strong since you could immediately turn them into food crates to age up very quickly. I also don’t think they should be able to turn into books at all.

Maybe turning into crates via an age 2 card would be fine, but by default is too much to balance.

This is way too low. You’re going to have to micromanage them all the time at this amount. A good compromise could be to let 600 be their base maximum, and to make the card that lets them turn into crates allows them to get up to ~1200. That would make it so you can’t go over the cost of the most expensive building without the option to cash it in for crates.

I agree, that’s how I intend them to be.

What kind of crate? Where do they get placed and what if there isn’t enough room on the ground? I think there’s too many issues with this approach.

This makes them essentially useless in both the early and late game. You’d need 10 Settlers in their range to be as good as my initial suggestion. It’s also not nearly as intuitive as directly putting them to work. Even if someone doesn’t know it just makes them fatter and doesn’t gather directly, they would find out the first time one gets fully fat and goes idle.

Not being able to farm doesn’t make sense either. In Denmark Ox Carts would be pretty much exclusively used for farm labour.

This is the one thing that I’d maybe alter. As it stands there isn’t really an advantage to training an Ox Cart for the cheapest buildings like Houses. Even with a 10 second train time that’s the same as just letting a Settler construct it but with the added burden of requiring population space. If they had a cost of 50 wood + 50 food and 10 second train time there would be a slight advantage to using them for a House.

Why would it be strange? There are already Settler Wagons and African Cows can gather from Fields. They also wouldn’t need to be as big as a Covered Wagon. Something more like a Kingdom Builder would be fine.

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14

I think it could also be a destination for economical shipments.
I also think could “research” economical improvements for free by having him work in an economical building, for example:

I send it to a mill, and it will automatically begin to improve slowly. If I send it to the market, the improvements will begin to be implemented automatically. The same would be true of a dock or a plantation, factory and capitol.
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I also think it could be a way to “bring resources closer together.” For example, collect a tree quickly (Or part of it depending on its storage capacity), but it is not deposited in the storage, but in said unit, and the villagers can harvest from it as if it were that tree. Useful to protect the villagers, being a similar idea to what you suggested about the hunting that approaches the urban center, but this is applied to all resources.

2 Likes
15

Receiving economic shipments could be interesting. Using them to research sounds a little too convoluted though. There isn’t really anything that works like that currently and it would add even more complexity.

This could actually solve the issue of excess fatness. Rather than the Ox Cart collecting quickly, it could collect normally and then Settlers could draw wood out of it at ~1 resource per second. It wouldn’t be as efficient as building directly or transforming into crates, but it would help avoid waste.

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It would be like a kind of Italian architect, but instead of constructing buildings, he makes improvements for free.

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It feels a bit out of scope of the function of a unit like this. An Ox Cart is for hauling thing to remote areas or around a farm, not researching immigration at the Capitol. Some kind of scholar would make the most sense as a unit that researches for free. In fact, Griots already do something similar to what you describe. Although they just speed up research, not do it for free.

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Maybe it could be applied only to the things that would make the most sense.

19

I had completely forgotten that AoE3 workers don’t need dropoff points so I kept wondering why not just make ox carts work like they do in AoM (and mule carts do in AoE2) lol

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After some thought, I found a potential use: Why not make the Ox cart increase gather rate for nearby vills? Could have a train limit to offset that.