The new meta is becoming a boom of villagers who make many farms taking advantage of the fact that it is an infinite resource, the game does not reward the aggressive player, the defender in the face of an attack will spam laceros or horsemen since they only cost 20 wood and the cost of food is provided by farms.
You can state several reasons why the game limits the population to two hundred and it is for the same reason that I dislike this goal: produce around 140 villagers, in addition to that if there are at least 3 siege units they occupy nine of population for what remains 51 population for the army discounting naval units, I consider that amount insufficient and that I do not enjoy watching games like this, a goal that forces to produce more villagers and few military units (the siege that is the unit that must kill units quickly, it’s been nerfed) and the games drag on..
I also think that the keep favors that very defensive meta so a population cost of the keep would help (Portuguese in aoe2 have the factory with population cost)
I won’t suggest limiting the number of villagers because I don’t want the game to limit the player’s creativity, but if there is something that discourages him from producing more villagers, the game has some features depending on the quantity, for example: the construction time decreases when there are more of a villager in the same building, Delih’s research time changes according to the number of scholars, the guild room accumulates more resources according to the amount of resources etc.
Proposal
20 of all villagers will cost double the population, the town center will produce villagers with double the population cost when the villager count exceeds 120 and will stop producing them when there are twenty such villagers, I think twenty villagers with a population of forty is demotivating enough to rethink producing many villagers.
The keep has a population cost of three, if you prefer to increase the population limit to 210 (except Mongol), an additional ten takes up the space three keeps.
Evidence of recent games with more than 150 villagers
Interesting topic. I welcome trying to use analysis, reasoning and argumentation to make a point, even if I would go a different approach / solution.
What really saddens and worries me and hurts the game, is that in exactly ZERO cases the player picked the Delhi Sultanate, and in absolute ZERO recent matches I’ve played / watched any player picked Delhi.
Delhi pick rates have fallen further to 3-4% for most skill levels, with English reaching 30%. With thousands of $$$ on the line and pro levels involved, it is beyond joke to argue “Delhi is ok, in good shape, balanced”, but no one picks it.
Accumulating wrong decisions have killed and buried the coolest civ among the original 8.
I’d rather increase the effectiveness of the villagers but give them an upkeep, where villagers over 80+ becomes less effective in the long term. Keeping similar average resource gather rates in each age with fewer villagers, having the need for anything above 80 vills to be more redundant. To promote larger army numbers in the late game, without sacrificing resource gathering in terms of gameplay.
That approach could also create more comeback potential in the late game, as the economies would even out faster.
What I don’t get is, if pros or ppl in general do 150 villagers is because they need that amount of villagers, otherwise they will kill villagers to produce more army. If you have noticed some games, moreover chinese tend to boom to 130-150 villagers (i’ve seen 200 too in team games) and then kill to stay at 100-120.
Personally I’d like to stay at 100-110, no more, and in some games when trading I usually stop at 80-90.
But maybe the problem is not the villagers, maybe the problem is the need of constant unit spam OR what is worse for me, the need of constant spam keeps.
I would reduce some gold (and stone) mines on the map, but I think the problem is something else.
The problem is that, in many cases, the meta is oriented towards Farming Simulator.
The buff from the battering ram and research was a distinctly smaller buff than the TCs’ shot automation, where you can only benefit from a raid of a great numbers of horses. Even with that, the main TC has a lot of HP for a Landmark, in my opinion.
Nerf the main TC, buffs the battering ram (apart from units inside the battering ram buffing it) and that the Siege Tower has some other utility (an idea I was told is that it would also function as a mobile outpost, no outpost upgrades, with less HP and fire static and with a range equal to an archer).
Do you suggest Keep will take pop-space. I like it.
Add towers, which should cost 1 pop-space limit.
(reduce TowerDefence games).
Bad idea, Cause resource management already complicated, you addition will add more complicated resource management and HRE will benefit.
I think the problem is siege, which cost a lot, do nothing, and take pop-space.
In aoe2 (surprising comparison), some civs can afford 110 military supply, others with paladins can afford only 60 supply.
But here, even if you building archers or knights. It does not matter, if one trebuchet cost like 10 units.
To afford 5-7 trebuchets (which you need either way), you need 30+ workers.
Each upgrade cost 1000+ resources, which you want to learn, cause early push wont work against 1-2 keeps. You forced to learn upgrades. So, you want to make a lot of vils.
thanks for the comments, in short I don’t enjoy the games in which they wall themselves off (sometimes the map helps with that) they accumulate 4 thousand, 5 thousand, 6 thousand of food and win, the “meta” benefits the defensive player and not to the offensive
If the simplest thing is to limit the villagers to 120, then do it, for the same reason that they limit the game to 200 population
a limit of 120 is enough, 120 can constantly produce units from 14 buildings of which 6 constantly produce knights (240 in resources), which are the most expensive, 2 constantly produce men-at-arms that cost 120 in resources, 2 constantly produce crossbowmen of weapons that also cost 120 in resources
