Stop complaining about the change to military killing animals

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

(Interesting “topic is similar to”: discussion in 2020 from when this was a bug)

First, I would like to say that my favourite part of the PUP patch notes is that aggressive animals are no longer just reskinned wolves with different attack animation speeds.

Point: dead animals with food used to block units. I believe they no longer do in DE. When they blocked units, destroying their food meant that military could kill animals that were blocking a path.

But people say that it’s also removing a skillful part of the game. Let’s ignore that this “feature” caused even pro players, like Hera, to lose their boar and ask for a restart on that tournament map with very high elevation. Instead, let’s talk about what skillful things that players COULD be doing that they currently do not. How can players show their skill other than by risking defeat from killing the boar because they wanted to save an extra 10 villager-seconds by keeping villagers garrisoned for a second volley from their TC on a boar?

Our comparison: zero-risk option of shooting boar with villagers = 25 arrows or 50 vil-sec, shooting with TC = 30 vil-sec, so 20 vil-sec saved per boar. (Ignoring slowing of TC volleys from multiple arrows, and villagers being able to shoot immediately after ungarrisoning.)

The classic: not getting loom. Value: 25 villager-seconds gained each time Loom is delayed, or 1 vil-sec per second during age upgrades.

Collecting stone for a TC after building a tower without building a mining camp, by building a farm next to the planned TC to deposit the collected stone: 100 wood or ~250 vil-sec saved.

Slinging an ally in the same age with Teuton farm sling: 24 wood or ~70 vil-sec saved per farm.

Using ‘cheating’ market placement during a trade boom: one-way trip of ~210 tiles saved, or ~140 trade cart-sec saved per trade cart created, with a unit cost 3x that of a villager (but income of ~1 gold miner).

Proper refreshment of lumber camps during a long game: many vil-sec saved (I’m not bothering to calculate this).

Saving a single military unit through micro to dodge a volley of arrows: ~60 resources or ~160 vil-sec saved.

Placing a mill in a way that leads to one berry bush being 1 tile farther away than it could be: 26 extra tiles walked, or 32-vil sec lost.

Spending 20 seconds having 5 villagers chase 3 villagers during a villager war, only to retreat from reinforcements with no net gains: 40 vil-sec lost compared to opponent.

Using a house as part of a wall on Black Forest instead of palisade walls, with opponent destroying this house when trying to break through even though you manage to wall behind: opponent spends 50 extra vil-sec breaking through (126 vil-sec) compared to one palisade (76 vil-sec), you lose 96 vil-sec from the house while palisade wall is 15 vil-sec each, so on net you lose 31 vil-sec more than opponent compared to opponent destroying one palisade, or 92 vil-sec if they destroy two palisades instead of the larger house.

Laming four deer that opponent then takes with a mill with 3 villagers: cost of mill 100 wood or ~250 vil-sec, decay rate 0.25/sec, gather rate ~0.4/sec, time to collect one deer ~97 sec, food lost from other deer during that time: 73 food, value as part of a farm 25 wood or ~72 vil-sec.

Inducing an opponent to attack a siege workshop in front of a castle using a trebuchet, and repairing that building, instead of the castle itself: same number of repair villagers, but castle costs 3.0 stone/sec to repair (7.3 stone miners), siege workshop costs 2.1 wood/sec to repair (3.8 lumberjacks with Bowsaw). Even if stone’s lower available and higher market price is ignored, this is 1 ‘micro to kill boar with TC’ equivalent in value every 6 sec, although at a later point in the game.

If we like amortize a lumber camp’s cost over chopping 2x6, or 12 trees before refreshing it: a single trip is then like 1 wood in value. An unloaded villager that chops a passing tree for 10 wood before returning to the TC saves 1 wood, or ~3 vil sec, in lumber camp refresh value.

Hitting an enemy scout once as it passes near a villager: 1/15 of 80 food, or 15 vil-sec when using natural food sources.

Using a gate to change the pathing of an enemy scout, hitting it with 2 TC arrows out of 4 fired, but losing 2 wood from the gate: 30 vil-sec of damage, ~17 vil-sec expended, net 13 vil-sec of damage compared to opponent.

Bringing along a villager to quick-wall a monk while collecting relics on Arena: est. 120 sec of walking time each way, 240 vil-sec lost, 1 monk and 100 gold saved, equivalent of ~1.4 gold miners of income from relic, valued at 50*1.4 or 70 food: approx. 250 vil-sec of value gained.

Ok what examples do other people have? What can people learn to do with all the free time they save not having to ungarrison villagers from their TC to get the last hit on a boar?

5 Likes
2

I like the tc shooting boar change but I guess most people have a problem with military units not being able to make deer and chicken unusable. Like pre-mill drush will fetch negligible value now. There are of course other issues with dark age decision making but completely eliminating the ability to stop the opponent from using their deer/chicken with militias is unnecessary. I’ll be happy if the change is restricted to town centers killing animals.

2 Likes
4

No need to make it exclusive to TCs, just buff militia, increase their base attack or attack vs buildings. If they can’t disable animal food they should do better vs pressuring houses and/or villagers. Not to mention they can still basically take away a ton of food by decay,

5

I’d like that too. If houses and palisade walls received negative buildings class armor like -3 or -4, militias can get decent value even without killing the deer.

6

If you wanna do the optimal boar kill with the TC you should have to learn the pull the bullies out at the last second in order to not lose the food.

7

Right. The skill benefit is tiny and the skill hurdle is not that large.

They didn’t make the change in order to make this less skillful. It’s collateral damage from making it so scouts can’t run under an opponent’s TC and start denying sheep, knowing that if the defending player reacts in the natural way he’s going to end up accidentally killing a bunch of sheep with the TC and instantly rotting a bunch of them. It means that if a scout runs under TC and starts denying sheep he’s likely to deny tens, not hundreds, of food in exchange for the scout HP. They’re trying to dissuade that strategy. One of the pieces of that was removing the TC’s ability to rot animals, the other was the faster, larger TC projectile, making evasion at close range more difficult.

I agree that the change should probably have been localized to TC’s in order to avoid nerfing drushes. Otherwise, the loss of the “skilled boar lure” is a small price.

8

Well, this is basically an indirect Celts nerf, which I’m not sure they needed.