I think there’s a small but noticeable visual design issue with the Asian civilizations in Age of Empires III.
Right now, Asian economic buildings use the same basic rice-field visual, even though the fields can produce different resources. Mechanically this works perfectly fine, but visually it can be difficult to tell at a glance whether a field is producing Food or Gold, especially when you have a large number of them covering the map.
I think it would be great if the different resource types had some visual distinction.
For example:
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China, Japan: Rice fields for Food + mulberry trees / silk production for Gold
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India: Rice fields for Food + cotton fields for Gold
These wouldn’t necessarily need to change the underlying mechanics. The idea is simply to make the economic function more readable while also giving each civilization a more distinctive agricultural landscape.
Another, probably easier, solution would be to modify the small structures or decorative elements in the middle of the rice fields. Food-producing and Gold-producing fields could have different central buildings, storage areas, equipment, etc. Even a relatively small visual difference would be enough to let players immediately recognize what a field is producing.
I think this would be a nice quality-of-life improvement without requiring any major gameplay changes. It would also make the Asian civilizations feel more visually unique instead of having several civilizations essentially sharing the same “rice field” aesthetic for different resources.
The economic system is already interesting — I think the visuals could do a better job of communicating it.
16 Likes
They should absolutely do this! It has always bothered me to be forced to select each rice paddy individually to know which resource it is producing. The same kind of change should be made for haciendas. In this case, the central area at the center of the building would be the best spot to make slight visual differences depending on the resource produced.
7 Likes
It needs more than just a visual change. The building itself is a Rice Paddy so at the very least the building needs to be renamed too.
I’d be more in favor of changing things up more and adding a Tea Plantation instead. If all 3 civs shared the same model that would actually be less work than what is suggested here.
It would have the drawback of being an additional building ideally with a higher cost. But it could have an extra benefit of being able to toggle to produce a higher fraction of export.
1 Like
I mean not really, you could just keep it a Rice Paddy and simply swap the color of the rice being grown depending on whether it’s food and coin. Like I agree with OP, mechanically the building is fine, it just needs a better visual indicator.
It’s not like it’s unrealistic to have two different colors of rice.
10 Likes
As a minimum visual distinction, I can fully understand it. But the difference between green and yellow rice is only the difference between immature and mature. For East Asians like me, whose parents have grown rice and have actually seen rice fields, it is intuitively strange to use green rice and yellow rice to distinguish between crops and cash crops, but I can understand your minimal change. As a visual distinction.
I mean I’m not East Asian but my family also grew rice for a living. I know it’s just ripe and unripe rice lol.
You could always pretend they are selling unripe rice so it last longer to be sold or what have you I guess.
I’m not a rice expert, but I know that many different species of rice were cultivated in China, as an example. Some of these species appear more yellow in color than others, even at maturity. So, I guess a simple color distinction would make sense.
If all you’re doing is making it visually distinct then that’s the best option.
But it is a little weird how one civ’s cereal crops are just food and another’s is a cash crop too. Something that makes the export mechanic a little more integrated than just a barely adjustable trickle would be interesting too.
