It would be nice to be able to start building without fully collecting all the resource a building requires and instead resources would drop your balance by x% such as 1% or 5% at the start and every x%, resource required should be dropped from the balance to proceed with the next x%. It can also be proportional to the HP of the building, basically similar to how the repairing works. The dynamic could be implemented so that you can put a foundation of any building (if you meet other preconditions) but in order to start/proceed the actual construction, you would need some resources the building requires in the bank. This way you can start the constructions earlier and spend resources more effectively.
I think this might make the game resource management somewhat different in early stages and have some impact on how meta develops.
As this is a 20 year old game and this idea might have been suggested previously, I am also interested in what would be the downsides of such a mechanic.
2 Likes
I don’t think that’s even possible in the game’s engine. If this game was based off the Command and Conquer engine it could be done.
However, this could be exploited by using foundation spam to block units in the middle of battle. I don’t think it’s a good idea. We already have people complaining about quick walling, this would make it even worse.
3 Likes
I think a more “useful” way could be to use bigger buildings to quick-wall the whole base more easily when you notice enemy knights approaching as you do not need all resources for it. However this can be addressed by giving building foundations some negative armor.
I think it’s a bad Idea.
Because ressource managment is a key part of the game.
I think there is no reason to make it easier to manage, it’s supposed to be a difference maker even at the highest level of play.
4 Likes
This idea makes sense and would be a nice addition
you wouldnt lose all ur resources if a mangonel shot your 20hp castle you just started building 11
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there are several reasons why this shouldn’t be implemented and pretty much others have covered them already.
on top of these, it would just make walling your base even easier because you could drop buildings you don’t even intend to finish.
1 Like
I think the biggest problem wouldn’t even come from walling (since it’s quite rare you can’t afford some palissades or a house) but from the that everything would become available earlier. Especially if people learn to start their buildings at the right time they would be able to do stuff like starting a barracks when they have 50 wood and finish it right as they finish getting the 125 missing wood. So you basically get a barracks the moment a player would only be able to start building it with the current game mechanics. Quite a huge change, with no good reason backing it up tbh.
3 Likes
ACCM would be happy about this then 11. But yeah, those mangonel shots to kill all the invested resources are although quite rare, I think it is a nice pepper and salt to the game.
It is a huge change. Good reason behind it is to make resource management more dynamic. I do not know why people think this makes the resource management easier, it does not. You start building something, and if you cannot maintain the income, you cannot finish it. Your villager building it goes idle and you need to do something about it. But I can also bring a counter argument to my proposal. Technologies or unit creation are not proposed with this change so it will be inconsistent. However, if those actions are changed the same way that you can queue units without having resources for them, then how will the game decide which one to proceed when there is resources available. Being housed is kind of similar mechanic I believe, but yeah it is not one dimentional thing to improve. As suggested in the first post, maybe it ends up with the game engine that it is a core requirement to start spawning/executing things when all preconditions are met and building/siege repairing is done with a different mechanic.
I used to play a game with a resource system like this – I think it was Total Annihilation or Metal Fatigue, something with robots anyway. You could also queue units without having the resources for them. If you ran out of resources, building/production would just stop until you had them.
The result was a total mess. You would frequently have workers that were apparently busy building but actually idle. In the mid and late game, when you did gain resources it was hard to tell what they were actually being spent on – if there were multiple things requiring resources, it was unclear how things were being allocated. I found it totally frustrating. And this was, I think, with only one resource – imagine what it would be like with four! (Or even just with the two normally used for buildings.)
As far as I can see the main effects this would have on the game – aside from the drawbacks already mentioned – are that in the early game, build order optimisation would become even more important, and in the mid and late game, it would be much harder to keep track of your economy. Even with this just applying to buildings, how the game decides where to allocate resources would be crucial, because you can build more than one building at once.
So it doesn’t seem appealing to me. I’m open to changing my mind if someone can put forward an argument in favour – but the only reason I can find in the thread so far is “to make resource management more dynamic”, which honestly is more like meaningless corporate business-speak than an actual reason.