Replace Factory Houses

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Issues

Houses that are mini-factories are overall a very poor design. You need to build houses anyways so the cost for the extra production is tiny and provides unraidable income that can be created much faster than villagers. This leads to overpowered civilizations like Inca and Japan.

Resource generating buildings should be balanced by being irreplaceable and limited (Factories and Wonders) or expensive and inflexible (Banks). What they should not be is the houses you were going to build anyways.

Kancha Houses

These are the worst offender and don’t even require proximity to any natural resources. Their food generation should be replaced by Qullqas. Kancha Houses could retain a bonus by spawning a Llama when constructed. Since they wouldn’t be tied to resource production, more bonus Llamas could be provided by reducing their cost and population provided and increasing their build limit (or they could just be replaced by normal houses).

Qullqa

Qullqas were storehouses of the Incan empire. They would be similar to Banks but generate food instead of coin. Upgrades and/or cards could enable the generation of other resources (Quipu would be a good name for an upgrade). The Incan Plantation trickle should also be moved to this building.

Shrines

Shrines should also be separated from houses. A function more similar to Mountain Monasteries would be a much better fit for Shrines. Their quantity could be reduced, but cost and productivity should also increase to balance out. Kannushi healers could have a role similar to Abuns and be able to construct and work at Shrines.

One way Kannushi could work at shrines would be if Shrines would “deplete” animals. Animals could slowly lose food while at a Shrine and leave the Shrine once they reached zero to forage in the wild and fatten again. Animals away from Shrines would temporarily be vulnerable to other players. Kannushi could be tasked to the Shrine to feed animals and keep them there. Too few Kanushis would only slow the animal’s hunger while excess Kanushis could very slowly spawn new sacred animals. This method would discourage very greedy forward Shrines to deny hunts because the hunts would periodically need to replenish or the Kannushi maintaining the Shrine would be vulnerable to attack.

Torps

Torps don’t actually generate resources like Shrines and Kanchas do so they are more like a stationary villager than a mini-factory. Provided they are properly balanced, they are functionally okay. Slight nerfs like giving Torps a food cost to slightly offset the berries or slowing villager train time for Sweden could be options to make up for the strength of Torp booming.

One area that could be improved for Torps is the visual style. Instead of a weird green ring around collected resources, Torps could visually change with props surrounding them based on what they are gathering:

  • Any work = smoke from the chimney
  • Mining = pickaxe and pan of gold
  • Chopping = stump with axe and woodpile
  • Hunting = tanning rack or curing rack
  • Berries = jars of jam

Other similar buildings could also be visually improved:

  • Villagers affected by Granaries or the Karni Mata could have basket backpacks to show their extra capacity
  • Granaries could have dogs come out from them to join hunters after Village Dogs is researched
  • Karni Mata could have rats move up to the radius it boosts (the gather bonus is called “keeper of the rats”)

The green indicator could still show up when the buildings themselves are selected to maintain clarity.

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There is nothing wrong with shrines or Kancha houses. Japan is not OP and saying Inca are OP is not true. Their houses are the best thing about them when they nerfed them previously it weakened Inca. If your getting beat by Inca all the time it’s either the other player is just a lot better or some other reason because Inca units are not OP at all

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Not necessarily overall OP, but they both have oppressive power spikes at certain points in the game due to their factory houses and some very favourable matchups. Separating resource generating from houses isn’t necessarily even a nerf, it just makes their gameplay less cheese.

There is a lot wrong with those houses, they are very gimmicky and not fun to play as or against even when you defeat them.

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Inca kancha boom has been nerfed significantly, they give less population now and are very expensive, basically like 12 unupgraded vills or something on food. When compared to a brit manor boom which is a similar wood cost there’s no comparison. Their units are also very food heavy.

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The only OP inca unit atm is the Huaraca, it should be a Arrow Knight and behaves like a kind of better abus gun.

The rest of his units are regular and balanced imo.

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I agree that Huaracas are definitely not balanced. I would also say the speed of Plumed Spearmen is too high. It lets them be capable of hit and run siege like Oprichniki or Steppe Riders. However, unlike those units, it also has all the benefits of being a Pikeman that can kill every unit that’s fast enough to catch it.

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The nerf to Kanchas made them reasonably balanced but they’re still a boring and uninspired design. Trickles on a building you’re going to make anyways is not very interesting and causes ridiculous restraints like limiting your maximum Age 2 population to 190 if you don’t have control of trade sites. Imposing a max of 8 Plantations which you will want to build all of is also a silly result of trickles. Having a dedicated building that only provides trickles similar to a Bank would eliminate a lot of the ridiculousness. Alternative Kancha bonuses like spawning a Llama could make for a lot more interesting gameplay.

With all cards sent, Kanchas are close to 10 fully upgraded villagers so still pretty decent rates even after the nerfs. That is also virtually unraidable income which is a bonus that should not be ignored.

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I agree on all accounts. Factory houses are too efficient and allow civs that use them too much safety when using them.
In the cases of both Shrines and Kancha Houses, the factory portion needs to be removed and put onto a different building. The ability to generate free resources on top of increasing population is efficient to a level that other civs can’t keep up with, and the two main civs that do this (Inca and Japan) are notable outliers in how difficult they can be to balance because of their extremely safe early game.

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I always thought houses trickling food for a civ whose units all cost more food than usual was big brain design

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Yeah that’s my main complaint with japan. Everything is safe. They have near 100% vil efficiency with no danger to them. They have two heros to collect herdables and can poof away in a moments notice. They get los all over the map and tie up the herds around your town. The civ really is agravating and I hate playing it

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I think the overall resign is interesting, when you house boom it gives a compromise between a normal civ and the lakota 200 pop civ. And like the dutch it gives a mid game power spike when you get both those housed and the regularly trained villagers.

So in the end for me incas/japans/swedes houses are not so different from brits (way stronger early game and midgame spike) and durch (strong mid game spike but no 200 pop limit)

I do not see why resources gathering building would need be irreplaceable like factories if the civ also get a lower villagers pop limit to compensate.

For your propositions:

  • I like the idea of houses generating llamas, whuch combine well with the plaza and the card “llama lifestyle”.
  • I dont like the idea for shrine, this looks way to complicated and would need to be way stronger than what what shrines currently do to compensate, which would just further increase the skill gap for the civ, makes it too strong at high level and too weak at low level. Aggressive shrining can also be discouraged by decreasing hit points or preventing explorers from building them (so forcing a villager ti come forward and sacrifying some eco)
  • I dont mind the cost change but dont see why you want to enforce a food cost instread of correspondingly higher wood cost, as it should not change anything until hunts are gone. The visual changes sound nice and interesting.
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The fact that they are houses is the problem. A food bonus that coincides with elevated food cost is a reasonable design choice.

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I play inca a lot and I like the kanchas as they are. I don’t see any major issue as a full kancha boom is a similar wood cost to a brit manor boom but worth half the villagers, even less if you take into account it’s food and not a villager gathering wood or coin. There’s also the fact that the units cost a ton of food which balances it out.
Inca lack a lot of eco cards too compared to other civilizations and no factories either, it’s not like the kancha boom beats a brit or dutch eco, late game they’re even worse off.

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Why is this a problem?

I don’t mind a food cost to the building (both fir design and balance), but do not understand why adding a food cost is better than increasing the wood cost.

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It’s basically Dutch’s design, just replace food with gold.

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i would argue dutch only has one unique unit, the ruyter. the rest are merely coincidence. My snark is more directed towards the jungle bowman, plumed spearman and chimu, all of which are drastically food weighted. (i would also say bowmen cost about 30 res more than they are worth). At least now kancha feel more reasonable and strategic, but im still not really a huge fan of resource houses

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Ruyter, Skirm (II age), artillery in general, everything costs more than nothing gold. Why is it an Inca design problem and not a Dutch design problem as well?

If we talk about coincidences, their Aztec counterparts cost more food than other resources, with the exception of the pikerman and the eagle.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that it’s not a design problem at all, and if you argue that it is, then it’s a Dutch problem too.

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The food cost is for units, not for kanchas.

Being houses become them a 2x1 building unlike banks that only gives gold(not pop slots)

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Banks are a lot better though, isn’t each bank worth 4 dutch villagers on coin, so without the additional bank cards or coffee trade that’s 20 vills on coin. Coins a more valuable resource than food too, there’s no comparison to the incas kancha that’s worth like 10 vills on food. In regards to transitioning to farms/estates the banks work out better too because it’s cheaper to build a mill or farm than an estate.

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Also banks are nigh invincible. But hey, why bother with facts when we can complain instead?

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