I DO enjoy the wood drop off points and this makes sense as you cut the forest back. But the other 3 are completely pointless… Change My Mind!
In my opinion you could just add the upgrades inside these 3 drop points, into a new building like a market (or whatever you want to call it)… or even the town center… Food, Gold, and Stone really doesn’t make much sense. The buildings are super cheap anyway and just serve to clutter the map. I guess it does help to add an esthetic touch to the appearance of your city, Otherwise its just going to look like a cluster of military buildings, especially with the also dumb 1 unit build que… You need like 5 of each barracks to actually produce troops at any reasonable rate… These were things i thought 3 improved upon (except i’d leave the wood drops as mentioned). Also building tons of individual squares to farm, seems like it’s just cluttering your build space… I get the price and layout add a bit of a edge to them… but just increase the cost of farms like age 3 did… I can’t say resources have ever prevented my transition to farm eco…
Why are players so obsessed with these drop points?.. If anything it would make sense if you had to drop everything in a TownCenter like starcraft or something if you think its “realistic”… But simply building it for super cheap right next to a stationary resource seems pointless…
Post Edit- I guess the real solution to this that’s been bothering me, is a slight overhaul on the look and function of the Gold and Stone on the map. A land feature that can be worked backwards sort of like the minerals on SC. I wonder if this was considered and why they stuck with the classic example of AOE3 where its just a small blob of rock that gets worked at. Maybe worried about it over crowding the map…? It also would make the map look less “natural” being you would need gold and stone scattered everywhere for there to be enough for everyone. But, i still feel like there might be room for some improvement here… The mines in particular, just don’t feel right for some reason…
Maybe creating more of a texture look on the ground where instead of an impassible structure, Its looks like rocks on the ground and units can walk over it like its just normal ground (ie. the farm plots). As the resource is gathered the rocks disappear and grass replaces it. This would still add the maintenance of maintaining a close gather point but not blow up the map with more impassible terrain… hmm
Maybe you could convince me Food drop points make sense but i guess my real point is with the Gold and Stone mines… idk… I guess the argument is consistency ?
I take it you didn’t play the earlier AoE games? Drop-off points for the various resources has been an AoE feature since the first game, with AoE3 being the only exception.
I come from enjoying most of the AOE3 mechanics. I did play the earlier titles as well but you can tell even the developer moved away from them. probably for the exact reasons i lay out above… Not exactly sure why players seem so attached with the this mechanic… The best argument ive heard is its “Realistic”. but i fail to see how delivering gold to a mine is realistic lol… If anything it should be the other way around moving people from your mine to somewhere else, if “Realism” is what your going for. Maybe a warehouse building or something that an enemy could raid would make more sense? idk…
Resource drop off points make you commit to a location and provides a place where the enemy can deny the resource and do damage. I think this is an important part of gameplay.
RTS games are not by nature realistic, so I would not use that as an argument. It’s a case of how you want the economy to function. AoE3 moved away from a lot of eco management micro by removing the need for resource drop-offs and consolidating all eco research at the market. It was a design choice, and you either liked it or not depending on your preference, I suppose.
Given that AoE4 is a lot closer to AoE2 than 3 in terms of setting and gameplay, I can understand why they reverted to the AoE2 resource system. Personally I don’t mind it at all since I played all the old games so I’m used to this system. Coming from any RTS that does things differently, you’ll need to adapt, but that’s true for any game.
My only additional commitment is a small amount of wood and what 15 seconds of build time?.. If i send a bunch of villies out to a gold mine on AOE3 im just as committed to the location as far as protecting the resource and villagers as I am if it was a cheap building nearby… Maybe if i could garrison Villagers inside of the mine (just cant attack out or really low damage) or something it would seem to hold a purpose. When in general it could just be adding to my total without the .1 second drop time which doesn’t even seem to be a factor, unless you have 20 villagers on the same gold vein I guess…
Valid points. I’ve been playing a lot of mongols with super drop off points that cost 100 wood and move, so I’ve been spoiled in that regard. Hmm, another point is that the drop off points give more cheap buildings for invaders to destroy. Also, adding the drop off buildings close to your town adds the procedurally generated pathways and such. You’re right though, maybe they should cost more and have more functionality.
In my opinion how it was in AoE3 magically got transferred from the villagers into your bank was stupid and didn’t make much sense.
Also it requires more skill to keep an eye out and always check them and build new ones when needed etc. Also gives you a chance to disturb your opponents economy by raiding it down.
Those 3 resources should just gather on the spot like in AOE3. Its not “stored” anywhere like for instance having a Warehouse building or something that could be raided. (not saying we should add that but maybe a different mechanic for once or add more functionality…?) I just don’t see the purpose of spending a few wood and making my people walk 2 steps behind them to “drop it off”… Maybe if the resource nodes were spread out more like a land feature of rocks that gets worked backwards like the wood as its gathered. But for a stationary small blob it just seem pointless to even have the mechanic in there.
But the raid consists of losing 15 seconds of build time and a few wood. Which i guess in a super close competitive game early could make a difference, but very minimal…
Like mentioned, there is the Wood mechanism that works great and has maintenance to it (building closer to the dense forest as its cut down) but the mines in particular we are talking about 2 steps backwards unless you have no idea what your doing and place it a ways away i guess hah… Either way it magically goes from across the map into my bank. Unlike for instance StarCraft where maybe it makes more sense if that’s the argument, being it all has to be gathered up and dropped at one central location (your towncenter)…
That my question! What exaclty makes them a “key” feature. Except for wood like i explain, which i think is FANTASTIC. If the drop off points make sense, we should have a spread out feature of rocks that gets worked backwards. The Mines in particular are pointless… and really the food only moderately makes sense, really only early game collecting hunts for instance.
Putting those techs in a town center does multiple negative things.
The largest issue it now causes is you have to stop village production to get eco tech. At higher levels of play villager counts are game deciding. AoE2 sees this a lot. a 2-3 villager lead by castle age is considered a large advantage going into castle age. Anything that causes villager production to stop to often is bad.
The next thing is techs like Wheel barrel that give your vills +15% movement speed become very very strong as your villagers would need to walk to the TC to drop off resources if there were no drop offs. (Not going to consider vills just standing at a resource because that isn’t the current mechanic of the game and wont be changed as that is how it is coded.)
The last point is a bleed off of the wheel barrel idea. Since vills have to walk to a drop off point, building a resource dumb near by increases their efficiency but is also a riskier choice. Town centers have an attack function with arrows. If the only collection point is the TC then in castle age players will instead be focused on using Town centers to reduce the walking gap. This in turn over benefits players that turtle and defend as they have a defensive building on all major resources. Town centers in AoE4 are very strong compared to previous entries. Along with this being bad for the ability to raid and attack it also slows the game down alot. Resources that could be used for castles and production are now dumped into way too many TC’s and forces players to play a 1 TC strat where you are accepting the poor economy and going all in or multiple TC’s and dumping resources into economy. Again this benefits the eco player as they are boosting economy and defense with one building making the turtle strats far stronger.
