So just a few months passed and you already forgot the long posts like “players will find themselves not enjoying the game anymore even if they are even allowed to zoom out more”.
Fun fact: this was the main topic under discussion here before you jumped in with your classic “no because there is a reason”.
How do you think ANY game with initially different building sizes than AOE4 designed their models?
AOE2 castles occupy far more grids compared to houses. AOE3 (forts) less so. But they are all consistent compared to other buildings in the respective game. How do you think it is even possible for those two games to design different sized models from similarly sized real-life objects? Fewer substructures, smaller courtyards, overall more compact designs. A lot of ways.
If anyone can do it from scratch, then you can definitely redesign them for the same purpose. Just ignore the anchoring effect from the existing model. Do a new model that was made for smaller grids from scratch.
Look at the buildings in your own town. Buildings designed to have 2 floors are not simply a 2x enlarged version of a one with 1. Buildings with 10x10 footprint are not simply a 4x enlarged version of one with 5x5. There are buildings that are taller but occupies smaller area. There are buildings that are the other way round. Larger buildings do not need to use larger tiles, larger bricks or larger windows. There are buildings that are both taller and larger. How do you think they are designed?
For example:
(I can foresee you going on picking “no it does not reflect to the case in the game/ it’s not strictly 3x3 or 4x4”. I know that. This is just a very abstract example. I’m not an expert on this. The developers are. Here are some possible, very abstract, solutions, just to demonstrate how this could possibly done, in principle. All of these need a lot of improvements in detail but I think the developers can handle it):
(1) Overall structure design:
If you want to reduce the size of (1), while other buildings are not changed, it would look awkward if you directly shrink it (refer to the next two sections to find out the reason).
You could either reduce the number of sub-structures, or reduce the spacing between them.
(2) Height
With a reference unit next to it, the door would look ridiculously small if you shrink the entire structure both in width and height, especially if a smaller building has larger doors than it.
You can still keep the original height, but make the area smaller, or the model more compact, like I’ve mentioned before.
(3) Width
Here is one sidewall of a building. It was intentionally designed to fit 3x grids, for example. Now I want to make it fit a 2x gird. Instead of shrinking everything like in (2), you can simply reduce the number of windows for example on each side, like in (3).
And if that makes the structure too tight, like I’ve mentioned, you can keep the height.
All of the above require a re-design with new details and assets that fit the new size, not some small adjustments on the existing model.
Here is yet another example, to show why “simply shrinking” looks awkward.
AOE2 bombards are somewhat designed to be small, mobile units. So they chose a (very unlikely in reality) small, compact, single-crew model so that it looks as if it belongs to the same realm as other units:
Now what if they took a model that was originally designed to be larger, with more crews and a carriage, and shrunk it to a smaller grid?
Or think about fantasy settings. Are dwarves and giants simply shrunk/enlarged versions of normal human beings? No. They have different body proportions. Usually dwarves are designed to be “fatter”, with a relatively larger head and thicker limbs. Giants are designed to be more muscular, and usually have relatively longer limbs. This is to make them somewhat “authentic”, to give a feeling of “what they might look like if they appear in the same world as ourselves”. All of these are compared to the body ratio of normal humans.
Now what if someone does this:
All of these need some changes in the design, not simply a change in the size, to make them feel like a natural part of their surroundings.
If this is a problem with units, then it is the same problem with buildings.
Good design:
Bad design:
That castle model is meant to occupy more grids. If you want to make a smaller castle, design a smaller castle, even a fictional one. AOE2 already has an example of how a “smaller castle” should be like, look at the structure on the right:
It is NOT a 50% shrunk version of the left one. The size of gates, windows, arrowslits and tiles are almost consistent between the two buildings.