there’s no reason for these to exist as cards, it only serves to make livestock mechanic undesirable and out of reach.
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Agree, though maybe not all of them. What puts me off livestock for most civs is it requires a lot of micro, if they could auto-harvest fattened animals like mexican haciendas with the card it’d be much better.
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Not every civ has all these 3 cards now, which means if they are techs, most of the civs (at least all Europeans) will become able to research them.
I don’t think just making them researchable is simply good idea, but I agree that the livestock mechanics should be redesigned for the old civs, especially the new civs (Africans, Mexicans) have fancy livestock mechanics.
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Cows could be present by default, and cards could increase that limit.
im sure giving germany fulling mills would have absolutely no consequences in treaty
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And I would like to give the livestock animals resource trickle ability, just similar to the Hacienda but may be lower.
When the cow and sheep are tasked at livestock pens, they can trickle food or coin. The food trickle is a bit more than coin trickle, and at the livestock pen the player can choose generating food or coin.
Except for beef and lamb, the cow produce milk and the sheep produce wool. They have ways to create income without losing their live. So I think that is really make sense and helpful to the late game like the treaty.
However, the European usually have strong economy in the late game so actually they do not need such buff. I cannot sure how to make livestock more useful and meanwhile do not make Europeans OP.
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On my forum I have proposed the reinvest mechanic (similar to AOE-2 and AOE-1 farms). Every 5 minutes you would reinvest a certain amount of coins + a certain amount of food per animal, and this will make it produce for 5 more minutes, and so on.
It also required cards for the cattle to be productive. (could increase the limit and could increase productivity).
I think that with reinvestment plus the use of cards it would be a good way to balance it.
They should be available as upgrades only to civs that have the cards, so no extra tech is introduced. Also pens should have 20 slots. They offer very little for their cost.
That will make the mechanic too complex. People will expect a persistent effect. There must be a simpler way for reinvestment and actually your concept inspire me.
The animal at livestock pen can generate food or coin per second equal to about 0.15% of the food it contains, which means it trickle more as it is more fatten. For example, a cow will initially generate only 0.075 food or coin per second, and eventually generate 0.75 food or coin per second. However it will make the livestock die (disappears immediately to make them unharvestable) after 10 minutes of tasked at the pen, so the player have to retrain them per 10 minutes.
The net income of cows per 10 minutes: (600 * 0.75 - 80) * 20 = 7400 at most, if they started to be tasked when they are already fatten. I’m still considering about the percentage of resources they generating. If people think it is too less or too high, it can be adjusted.
Anyway in this case, the reinvestment is just train new animals when old ones die, very easy to understand. This powerful mechanic should be introduced as a card in maybe the fortress or industrial age, and this card can work well with other livestock cards. For example, the card Stockyards can make them generate more resources in their 10-minute life because they can hit the max containing food more earlier.
It needs several shipments so balancing it is possible.
For now, at least, the devs could combine Stockyards and Ranching on just one card.
its a part of a factions identity and balance to be able or not to effectively use livestocks, making france or germany able to use cows effectively would instantly pull those factions into OP territory.
esp france with its fur trade could quiet easily get 50k more resources out of it if they are allowed to have fulling mill.
obviously talking about treaty since generally its too much investment to go livestock in normal 1v1 games.
people need to stop coming up with these dumb ideas that would make balance worse simply for the sake of making something “worth it”, it is absolutely fine that some things are less desirable than other things, and that some things aren’t equally good in every mode, no good treaty player will take 700 gold for example, and similarly few 1vs1 player will take any eco card beyond perhaps royal mint, economic theory and refrigeration, and that is absolutely fine.
if you want a faction to use more sheep/cows/whatever then either:
a) choose a faction that legitimately is suffering without it, which seems unlikely you can atm.
or
b) come up with a new faction that could use livestock’s, similar to how Mexico and the Africans have it.
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i am gonna have to just type this out: researchable fulling mills would take brits from a civ i do not enjoy playing against to perhaps the most oppressive eco civ imaginable. this would give them access to livestock booms in all game modes but also give them the extra 3 or 4 card slots to add even more eco or military cards. definitely not ok. haudenosaunee… maybe they could get it researchable, but frankly i still dont know why they even have that card tbh
china would be even worse than brits probably with that at their disposal and always having villages
This can be adjusted through costs. If the upgrades cost 400-600 resources, then it won’t be that oppressive. Especially if that cost is wood. The aim is to make them an alternative to mills, not to hunting. Imo.
fulling mills is a 300% upgrade who cares if its 800w if its imperial age thats obviously not even a question lol y’all pay 2000 res for imperial 50% upgrades without flinching, what should 300% cost. brits is already a top eco civ lategame, this isn’t feasible without further enhancing the civs lategame performance in all game modes
Thank you! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
For the first time in a long time (since EP 9), we’ve achieved almost decent balance across civs(maybe expect African civs?) in supremacy 1v1s. While most of you are coming from a place of genuine love and want the game to be the best it can be, trying to change the game to suit your whims and fancies is a step back. And, no matter how archaic Spain’s units are or how assymetric abus guns are to skirms, it is what it is. Unnecessary changes to the civ’s defining aspects that we’ve come to associate with this 16-year-old game is just not done. If it was unbalanced, sure, let’s all complain and get it fixed, but it’s not. In fact, on tp maps, which is around 95% of the time, Spain is clearly S tier whereas Otto is a solid A at least. At least that’s what the pro players say.
PS, okay the last bit was a rant about how every third post is about an otto or Spain buff, but yeah I guess we can apply it to eco upgrade cards too.
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some of the suggestion i see seem to want to bleed any character out of factions, being an excellent livestock civ with fulling mills is a british aspect, and could quickly become broken if esp someone like france or dutch got access to it. like there is no good way of implementing it that wouldn’t either massively hurt british treaty or massively buff other factions eco in some scenarios.
britain as it is now is a pretty mid tier civ in treaty, if they have issues its about their very poor artillery, and im certain making fulling mills researchable would only hurt them.
for france (depending on obviously when you can get it) this could quite easily be a massive boost, i would expect fur trades of perhaps as much as 200k food if they get that early enough, that would make them OP over night. you might say hauds can already do this but their economy is crippled by wood and a very awkward set up with dances etc.
this idea will hurt both game modes as others have stated for 1 vs 1/team games as it would allow strong ecos there to simply keep rolling late game.
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I think people discuss something like this thread not because they think the civs are weak and need a buff. People always like new things. If there is any way seasoning the bland mechanics and meanwhile keeping the balance, people welcome it.
Personally I regard this kind of threads as a hypothetical question. “How if we need to make the livestock mechanics more interesting and useful for the old civs?” “How can mechanics be if they are determined to be changed?”… Most of people know that it may be unnecessary. Like me, I had stated that I know European economy do not need this change. But I still I still came up with some ideas and shared them because I think it’s a thread about how it can be changed, not a thread about whether it needs to be changed.
People share their ideas usually not to ask devs to have to practice in the game, but to help the devs already have something to refer to when they want to make certain changes.
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Yes, exactly.
Also the reason so many of the items in the game are useless is because they haven’t been polished over the years. There is practically nothing new since 2007 until the release of DE.
I also think that the game should not remain unchanged just for fear of imbalance of the balance, that is, do not like the novelties in the already existing civilizations? Not interested in new mechanics? Is it impossible to achieve a balance just because new mechanics have been implemented?
In addition, cattle is something historically beridic, it is not a demand little argued.
quick read through the thread confirmed the need for a larger scale rework. if a mechanic is out of reach for the vast majority of games and can’t be buffed due to affecting the balance of a few civs in a specific sub game mode, it needs to be changed entirely or removed.
I don’t understand the luddite argument that since it’s been like this for a long time, it should not be changed. the game has already changed quite a bit; from euro villagers making town centers, revolutions being overhauled and most recently China tea export card. sometimes changes are hit or miss, such as Peruvian grenade launchers, French consulate and port hidden food gather bonus. but overall, it will lead to a better game for us to play. just look at how far the ai has gotten compared to legacy. (Revert multiplayer interface though)
other far more successful and popular games do this all the time, such as starcraft 2 with reworked mothership vortex and removing/adding mechanics and units, league of legends with yearly champion updates and biweekly balance patches, battle royals such as apex and warzone as well mmos such as world of warcraft and ff14.
leaving things broken because that’s just the way they have always been doesn’t cut it anymore, especially if we want the game to continue to grow over the years. I want to see aoe3 thriving 10 years from now and being stuck in the past with all its baggage isn’t the way to do it.
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nope, if a mechanic is specific to a faction let it stay specific.
there is no way to make livestock reasonably attractive in a rush game because it by definition requires a lot of resources to get going and long time to pay off, and you cant actually change that without completely reinventing it which is honestly a pointless idea. the game is fun and balanced, these are well liked and played civs and giving them what in any case would amount to a free buff compared to other factions is such a boneheaded shortsighted solution to make a mechanic like this “worth it”.
in rush the next 10 soldiers you buy might change who win, in such a scenario you never want to spend 2000 resources and 3 cards to get a cow eco up, its just not feasible and its not going to become more attractive by moving a card or 2 into a research. for those resources you could have gone to the 3rd age and send 2 falcons and 5 hussars or something.
suggesting that a mechanic needs to be “completely reworked to be worth it in all modes” just suggest a none-existing understanding of the meta, and to some extend even basic game theory.
they are not broken just because they aren’t meta. you are only going to break the game in other ways by bone headedly forcing it to become useful.
again if you want to have a new mechanic (say milking) then make a new faction that has that as a mechanic, i have in fact suggested such a mechanic for a faction i want in the game, that fits with that faction thematically.
but what you guys clearly want is a buff to these factions, like there is no way that is not going to become the end result of this.
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