Right now in 1v1, even in late game you have realistically 3 town centers, you have about 135 population space for army. With cavalry units costing 3 pop and human units cost 2 pop, you have really small army in the late game. The game would feel more epic if you can field more soldiers. Balance could be hard, but I think it is doable.
-Incoming boomer rant-
My dude.
Back in the day you could only have 10 houses and Fortified TCâs were 20 pop instead of 25. Yes, you had 160 total, with 80 villagers (which was max at the time) you had 80 pop for army and it was GLORIOUS. The majority of human soldiers cost 2pop and you can hardly make a frontline with cavalry but stacking your army with it made the avarage pop of your individuals 2.5 That was a whole 32 SOLDIERS, more than you could select at a time, max being 30 (Currently you can have 80 Selected!).
Now you complain that 135 is to little when that was what you had to work with army and civilian pop when you where a TC behind. A HUNDRED and bloody THIRTY-FIVE?! Thats a darn near 69% increase! Thatâs awfully NICE. You can make two whole armies with that, and that is if youâre booming like a greedy bugger to reach the full 100 civilian pop.
You could even delete a lot of vills, or even GASP turn of the darn Auto Queue for them to make more warriors. Heck! play the Norse, worship Baldr CAST RAGNAROK or if you dont TURN YOUR GATHERERS INTO BERSERKS.
I feel like Iâm olding 40 years as Iâm typing this, but kids like you are so goddam spoilt that they canât find themself with a âmeagerâ 54 soldiers if theyâre uncreative, when they could fill the whole bleeding battlefield with a near HUNDRED BLOODTHIRSTY SOLDIERS if you just knew how to creativily use the COPIOUS DEEP MECHANICS that allows MANY DIVERSE PLAYSTYLES, instead you just go on the forums and complain that âI canât fill the battlefield using mindless strategies from a youtube buildorder videoâ.
-End of Boomer Rant-
In Seriousness though, aside from my half-joking boomer-rant, the game has already changed a lot, mostly for the better and very little for worse, but that is only my inner Grognard naging inside about those.
Currently the pop cap for someone like me donât feel big. It actually feels enourmous and it is in a place where most veterans like me are happy, many of the newer other AoE player jumping into this are accomodating to the current army sizes.
If you still feel like your army size is still to small, I will now seriously recommend you play the Norse. Raiding Cavs are 2pop each you can make less civilian units as you need no specific âFavour gatherersâ because you get that by fighting. Like I mentioned Ragnarok is a god power that with or without it you can turn your civilian units into warriors.
And after all that, if itâs still not enough soldiers for you. Use mods. There are mods that lets you build twice the houses, twices the cap and some even outright remove it. Join a discord server, set up matches with people who also uses these mods (Or if you just fight the AI no need to do all that).
To re-iterate the first part of my comment is a HALF-joking âboomer rantâ. The developers will most like not consider your request as they have already gone above and beyond to make this game as large-scale as it already is, and relativly balanced for it.
You have plenty of options to costumize your experience to your liking. By the Gods, use them.
Enjoy. Have a nice stay. This game is wonderful, so keep playing it and find the full spectrum of experiences it offers.
4 Likes
The population limit was a flaw in the classic AoM due to the lack of power in PCs at the time, which couldnât handle large armies. There was an opportunity to fix it for Retold, but I guess in the end they decided to âkeep it classic.â
My advice? Play the campaign and then move on to AoE4, AoE2, or another RTS, and leave Retold for the classical enjoyers. (Unless you donât mind playing casually with mods and your own customized game.)
This game had the potential to surpass AoE4, but if they didnât plan to properly address issues like population limit⊠it would have been better to make a conventional Definitive Edition and then an updated AoM2. But anyway, this is what we have, so ENJOY THE CLASSIC.
1 Like
The Chinese pantheon has yet to be launched and there is a lot of potential Chinese playerbase.
AoM has improved its performance in terms of population. You can study the possibility of building some more houses, but what you have now is a substantial improvement over the classic.
This game is called Retold and not DE because they have redone graphics from 0 and has new mechanics, therefore, it is a Remake that reminds us of the old/remaster.
The numbers mean nothing, AoE2 remains super classic and is the one with more playerbase.
1 Like
There will be a certain spike. But I donât think this game will reach the player base level of AoE4
Please stop trying to turn AoM into another game.
3 Likes
Brilliant argument. Yes, it wasnât a good idea to improve the pathing, or the graphics, or anything else⊠lest we turn AoM into a different gameâŠ
Well, I let AoM for you. Itâs a shame about its lost potential
1 Like
Housing limit should just really be a lobby setting.
Mods always have downsides. If you want to play multiplayer you always need to make sure that everone has the mod and then the mod could just brake after an update.
Itâs always a pain.
Also you have to turn the mod back off if you want the normal limit or if you want to play ranked or something.
Itâs just not very convenient.
Itâs ok to be like that if you use a mod that changes a lot about the game, but just for one value itâs stupid.
It is also a lobby setting in AoE2DE/HD and a lot of people like playing with higher population.
That might not be what ranked players do but many casuals love 500 population matches.
This works well in AoE2 so why not bring it over to AoM?
If everyone starts playing with more houses then the devs might consider increasing the limit for ranked too.
3 Likes
Having it as a lobby setting is a comprimise/solution I think most people would approve of (including myself).
More options (in casual settings) is always welcome.
It would be wise to include a Civilian pop limit option along with it, as long as it can be changed independently.
Just pop in a good old drop down menu:
(a .5 could have a simple new building called a villa, available when all other manors are placed (40W 10G 12.5s half garrison space) a much more fun solution than making all houses even-numbered limit)
I donât think Ranked would/should change though, a major adjustment to the balance could be necessary and in so cause unwanted division.
1 Like
I think good numbers would be:
| Houses | Manors | Population | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 5 | 100 | 62.5% |
| 16 | 8 | 160 | 100% |
| 20 | 10 | 200 | 125% |
| 26 | 13 | 260 | 162.5% |
| 32 | 16 | 320 | 200% |
| 40 | 20 | 400 | 250% |
| 50 | 25 | 500 | 312.5% |
The 500 population limit in AoE2 is 250% the normal limit so that would be equivalent to 40 houses.
But since TCs provide population too maybe 50 houses is practically the closest.
The absolut pop cap would stay at 1000 so with 50 houses you would âonlyâ need 20 TCs to reach 1000 (unless you play as Isis and/or have Citadels)
It should be an independent setting.
I also think that all economic units (Villagers, Dwarves, Fishing Ships and Caravans) should count the the same limit (Citizens count twice).
I think a good default value would be 100 +5 per TC.
That means more TC = more economy too, not just more military.
| Limit |
|---|
| 80 |
| 100 |
| 125 |
| 160 |
| 200 |
| 250 |
| 300 |
Donât need to write down the percentages for this one.
This setting would be independent of the Housing limit.
You can play with 80 villager limit and 50 houses if you want to.
Or 10 houses and 300 villager limit, which effectively means no villager limit.
I think what they should do is reduce the Villager population back to 80 and caravans to 40. Why? Because then we have more space to military instead of the player using most of their pop space to economy and floating resources and using the suicide-army-constant-reinforce tactic.
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The original had 115 pop space (15 TC +100 from 10 houses) with a player maximum of 160 (20 with upgraded TC * 3 Settlement spawns +100 from 10 houses), so with 80 villagers you had 80 pop space for military, less if you make caravans. (up to only 40 if you make 40 caravans)
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In Retold we have 175 pop space (15 TC +160 from 16 houses) with a player maximum of 235 (25 with upgraded TC * 3 Settlement spawns + 160 from 16 houses), so with 100 villagers we have 135 pop space for military, less if you make caravans. (up to only 75 pop if you make 60 caravans)
In an average game, I noticed players have all their 16 houses and 2 non upgraded TC, so they usually have 190 pops. Making 100 villagers means they only have 90 pop space for military. Did you notice that your average game only have 10 more military pop space than the maximum of the original game� So despite having a bigger pop cap, the players are not fielding a bigger military than original.
So a lower villager (and caravan) pop cap mean players will be able to field a bigger army and actually care about it instead of making the late game suicide conga line with millions of resources on bank.
Itâs not âback in the dayâ itâs 2024 and the monster computer I paid for and built can run a lot higher pop-cap than theyâre giving us.
Would be a lot more fun building a big army if you could actually built a BIG ARMY.
This is something I suspect will be dealt with sooner or later.
Funny, I never notice these problems in AOE3:DE. But I run out of pop space in AOMR every game.
In AoE 3, basic infantry takes only 1 pop while in AoM even basic infantry cost 2 pops. Imo, they are very pop inefficient as they are now because at early age Villager actually put up a good fight against them, not to mention powerful MUs like Minotaur cost only 3 pops which also makes them look bad.
I particularly like the numbers with 20 houses and 10 manors. Round and nice numbers to me.