Damn, Age of Empires 4 should adopt Warcraft 3’s upkeep system. Advancing from Age II to Age III is way too fast.
how is it that everyone now reaches the Castle Age in just 9 minutes? They stall with heavy infantry while using monks to grab relics, making it really hard to counter a straight Castle rush. The resource gathering rate for Ages II, III, and IV should decrease as the game progresses. A 9-minute Castle rush is unstoppable, even if you start producing units at 5 minutes.
I’m a 1000 Elo 1v1 player, mainly playing French and Ottoman. Right now, opponents can just hunker down around their TC, feast on deer, and reach Age III, turning the tide with high-armor, high-HP units. This makes Age II rushes a complete joke.
No way, the upkeep system is the most unfun and annoying part of Warcraft 3.
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I didn’t know what you meant by Unkeep until I checked, and I think you’re referring to what in Spanish was “Manuten” or “maintenance.”
In the case of Warcraft 3:
I found it annoying, and at the time there were no guides to know whether it was more profitable to have low manuten, more villagers and fewer troops with turtles, or frequent rushes without caring about manuten.
In fact, manuten ruined any attempt to create a colossal, awesome army. I think it was invented because of the graphical limitations of the time and to induce people to produce fewer units so their computers wouldn’t overheat.
In the case of Age of Empires IV:
On the other hand, AoE 4 has had a stable and entertaining economy for long enough for us to introduce a mechanic like Manuten that ruins it, completely changing it with the SOLE EXCUSE of removing the fast castle.
Seriously, I think there are dozens of other, more profitable options for removing the fast castle than literally modifying the game’s entire harvesting system.
We should create a topic to address the fast castle rather than inducing such radical solutions, which seem more like “more problems” than solutions.
In fact, it wouldn’t make sense historically either:
- As the ages advanced, food supply didn’t become more difficult to maintain; in fact, precisely because agricultural practices and technology improved, maintaining an ever-increasing population became possible.
Only in the World of Warcraft, where Orcs have apparently been living like cavemen for 1,000,000 years without evolving at all, do they have problems with sustenance. The same goes for humans, who have apparently been in their medieval period for 1,000,000 years without evolving at all.
From a historical perspective, isn’t it quite reasonable? The cost of maintaining full plate armor, compared to earlier times, must have been a heavier burden on people, right?
But on the other hand, slowing down the speed of reaching the Third Age through other methods might cause unexpected balance problems. Some civilizations would still dominate ranked matches like black rhinos. There don’t seem to be many global ways to stop players from quickly advancing from the Second Age to the Third Age
Why would I care about that? I want the game to be fun.
The upkeep system is not fun.
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The current patch is after they’ve reduced food gathering rates on berries, sheep, and farms. The only thing that hasn’t had its food gather rate reduced is hunted sources, boar and deer, which is one of many reasons why pro scouts is popular right now.
Constantly producing a unit from any production building requires approx. 10 villagers spread across the relevant resources. Starting with 6 villagers and adding 3 every minute, you’d have about 24 villagers @ minute 6. That’s enough to sustain constant production out of two buildings from 6 minutes onwards, adding a third by 9 minutes or using excess resources for rams/age up.
Feudal aggression can be very difficult vs fortified opponents, but what you gain through aggression is map control. You can pressure them off of gold to delay their age-up, production of armored units, and upgrades. You can idle their gathering villagers and gain an eco lead. With a ranged unit in your composition they can only gather safely under their main TC, that will quickly lead to them gathering all available resources while you have free reign of hunts and outer gold veins.
Personally I would prefer that the pace of gameplay remain relatively the same. Adding a handicap for aging up would heavily incentivize feudal play, as villagers trained in that age would have more value over time. That would lead to 2TC play becoming dominant in the meta, and would lead to a reduction in mid-late game intrigue over contesting sacred sites and relics.
One of the things you mention is your opponents being able to hide under the cover of their main TC while gathering deer. I think a major change to the pro scouting tech to keep it from being as effective in early feudal would make it easier to apply pressure to an opponent who has decided to stay in their base.
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Just because you haven’t come up with a way doesn’t mean there aren’t any, or that someone won’t find them in the future.
That’s what the forum is for, to talk. The point is to be patient and ask the right questions.
No, really not.
But don´t worry, is a common mistake.
Plate armor is actually “cheap” to make, and even more cost-effective than chain mail, if one knows the correct technique. In fact, when blast furnaces were invented, it made it possible to mass-produce breastplates; the same reason you see that all Spanish soldiers, even low-ranking ones, could afford at least one between 1500 and 1600.
Another thing is that, since firearms also began to be mass-produced around the same time, plate armor became less useful.
Technological evolution wasn’t intended to make things more expensive, but cheaper."
Thats why many units has the same price even when they upgrade their equipment beetween ages.
The same thing is happening now with computers; in fact, they have more processors than before, and they consume “less” energy per square meter.
To the OP: NO. JUST NO.
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unnnnnnnnnnnn, indeed
I think you are talking about hre yes their eco bonuses are broken.So mush gather rate at the begining and carry capacity its too much.It should need to increase with every age up.
I suggest for anti armored unit for the civs who dont get man at arms at age 2.
It is good feature.
It pushes gameplay more towards strategy than production.
But the game would need to be directly deignated arround it
Putting aside the fact that it would completly remake the whole game economic + military systems and probably have many side effects I think it may not even nerf fast castle (which doesn’t even need a nerf imo).
Like WC3 upkeep system is about reducing income when you reach a certain population threshold, fast castle builds don’t do that, they get as little troops as possible and even when castle is reached it’s not like 50 men at arms spawns out of thin air on the contrary the overall pop stays somewhat low for a while.
An upkeep system would probably nerf booming and trash army spam more than anything.
I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not that it should be completely adopted. It’s that the collection rate will decrease as time goes by.