Random idea: reuse the icon of Supplies

The Supplies is going to be removed, so a random idea came up…

Introduce a new Feudal Age tech in Mills that can increase the work efficiency of Foragers by 20%.

The cost could be very cheap, like 25 food and 25 wood. The work efficiency of Foragers is the slowest one among gathering food. This tech could encourage civs other than Franks to actively gather berries if it’s a map with extra berries.

The Franks would have this for free due to the free Mill tech bonus, but they would also lose the Foragers bonus in exchange, so in fact it’d be a nerf, like delaying their Foragers bonus to Feudal Age while other civs are able to have their Foragers work faster too. Besides, the Portuguese might be the only civ that not have access to this.

Its icon could recycle the Supplies’ one, a crate of apples, tomatoes and carrots, and its name could be something like “Harvest”, “Food Storage” or any suitable term.

By the way, if possible, this tech might also allow Farmers to carry +1 food, which is moved from the Heavy Plow so that the whole Horse Collar line upgrades would simply focus on providing Farms more food.

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Yeah why not, but also it’s not necessary and may interact with some civs’ bonus to be overpowered on some specific maps (although, removing it for Portuguese, etc. seems fair). Moreover, there used to be a Tech called “Hunting Dogs”, which, I believe, worked similarly for hunters.

Why not but by the time you reach feudal then research that one tech, how much berry bushes would be left ?

Yeah it might be not necessary. I said it’s a random idea, without rigorous thinking. I just had thought about reusing the icon of a crate of apples. :apple::joy:

I think why the Hunting Dogs was getting removed is because hunting is already fast. There could be no need to speed it up. Or, if Hunters work even faster, the balance could be broken. Paying in Dark Age also made it hard to research. On the other hand, Foragers are slow, and if there are enough amount of berries in Feudal Age, paying for it could be acceptable.

I don’t know what else might be at risk there besides the Portuguese and Franks ones, and I mentioned them above.
Its cost is so cheap that the Vietnamese won’t save too much.
Maybe the Burgundians? I’m not sure if the cost is worthy in Dark Age, but still they could be the second civ next to Portuguese that not have access to it.

Like 4 or 5, anyway it should allow you click the Castle Age seconds earlier.
But I agree that its real value is on maps with extra berries.

Won’t this cause confusion?

I’d all for it if it was a Dark Age tech. And maybe Franks bonus stay unchanged.

Frank bonus changed to get for free. After all franks get mill techs free is pretty reasonable and understandable to read of Mill Techs free

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We should get Dogs as a unit we can use to lure or chase huntables. Not all civs would get it but it would add much to the game variety and help deer pushing, boar luring, etc.

It’s a brilliant idea. Forage bushes become lack luster in late game.

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I don’t think they should reuse the icon. Not like icons are that hard to make. If they wanted to save money they could use some of the hundreds of icons already made for AoE3DE for example.

But I do like the idea of adding a forage boosting technology. This would also allow adding some more berry bushes on maps and have players actually care about them. Like it could become strategically viable to put a TC next to a berry bush instead of a gold mine or tree line.

Though I think the tech should be a little more expensive but give a bigger bonus. Around last 100 Wood 100 Food cost but offer 25-30% faster rate. Hunting is around 32% faster then Foraging so even after this upgrade it would stull be faster.

If it’s too cheap it would mean it’s almost always worth it which might be too strong.
On the other hand giving it more then +20% makes it useful beyond Feudal Age if there are enough berries on the map.

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Yeah AoE3 has a lot of icons that can be used by AoE2, just like AoE3 has also used AoE2’s icons. Perhaps, the icon for the crates of 300 food from AoE3 is enough to be the icon for this AoE2 tech.