I think it’s a good idea to expand the population limit to 300-500 units, but add in an “eating” mechanic on a logarithmic scale.
For example, if you’re camping and walling yourself up and have ~400 soldiers, you must produce a certain amount of food per minute to keep them alive - otherwise they have a debuff based on how starved they are.
Comparatively, for those of us who use raiding tactics/smaller armies, the amount of food needed to maintain a ~100 man army is very low to nonexistent.
This solves the balancing issue of high population limits while letting everyone play in their own way. Got a super strong, robust eco? Sure, crank out that horde of elephants, dammit.
In fact, I would argue that we could do away with population limits entirely and just let this scale set how large/small players make their armies.
Good suggestion! I’ve always been slightly annoyed at the hard pop limit so a more natural control mechanic like this would be awesome.
The upkeep system in warcraft 3 is similar but there you pay gold.
I don’t really like it.
I would also like to see the pop cap increased - 50 is simply too low, and restricts the building of cheaper units as its not hard to simply afford 50 expensive ones.
I don’t think that this would need balancing with an attrition system like you suggest. Initial unit cost will automatically take care of that. 10 axemen are literally 10x more expensive to make in time and resources than 1 axeman.
Unit upkeep doesn’t belong in AoE in my opinion. It would change the game too much and make it not feel like the original anymore. Increasing the population limit would be good though.
I agree with OP. I would love to see this implemented into the game.
I don’t get why would you then even want higher population limit if you want to cripple the ability to upkeep them?
Isn’t the whole point of high population limit to create massive fights in huge maps whilst always being able to quickly expand your empire and gaining advantages through map controls. If your units starts eating food it means that having more units doesn’t scale so well. In other words; gaining map control has smaller effect.
@pate623 said:
I don’t get why would you then even want higher population limit if you want to cripple the ability to upkeep them?
Isn’t the whole point of high population limit to create massive fights in huge maps whilst always being able to quickly expand your empire and gaining advantages through map controls. If your units starts eating food it means that having more units doesn’t scale so well. In other words; gaining map control has smaller effect.
OPs point is not about having more units on the map, it’s about avoiding a arbitrarily hard limit. I agree with this line of thinking very much. That said I don’t think upkeep is something that fits aoe1 and particularly not for a re-release like this. Arbitrary or not hard pop limits is part of what makes aoe aoe.