Basically what I suggest is that when you tell your scout to follow a deer (E hotkey for me) it stays closer to the deer so that it never leaves it’s line of sight so that you don’t have to babysit it until it is under the TC.
It is probably extremely easy to implement since the follow command is already there, all that needs to be done is make the follow command stay closer to the target.
And if that is a problem for the general follow command there could be an exception that if a unit follows a deer type unit it will go closer to it and react faster.
This would allow lower APM players to not have to focus so much on microing those deer.
Other suggestions to make pushing deer less annoying:
Sometimes deer go back to their old place after just 2 seconds if not babysitting it - change that to 5 seconds instead of a random amount so that it is less annoying to micro.
It could also be great if that walking back could be broken by just getting close to the deer again with a unit.
From my knowledge at the moment you can break this walk-back-behavior only when the deer is attacked - like with a villager.
I would find that a shame. Apart from the famous “instant reset” where the deer does not even wait a thousandth of a second before Reset. As well as the “Crazy Deer” or the animal suddenly travels 15 squares at once!
However I like that Ostriches, Gazelles and Zebras have different standards than Deer. The Gazelle is clearly less “crazy”, so if there were “mixed” packs we’ll beat the gazelle first and the deer last because he’s the stupidest xD
For players with very low APM (Hunting goes very well at 20+ APM when you have learned to go back and forth with a control group). I have a 1300elo friend with an average 18APM (its crazy !) who is doing very well too. For the others, well there remains the solution of putting one more in the wood and making two mills. this barely delays the BO and does not restrict the rise in Elo from my experience up to 1100 minimum.
Also I wonder if deer walk smaller distances than back then before they rolled back the far running deer so that now it takes more pushing attempts than a while ago.
If they walked 50% further with each “push” and didn’t reset so fast that would also be a huge improvement in my opinion.
I don’t want to have to push each deer 10-20 times when they are further away. That is really just an annoyment which is why I like the improved follow command.
There is still enough other stuff to micro and higher Elo/APM players will still be better thanks to better military unit micro.
I find deer to be in a good place now. They used to be super easy and close to TC. Then they nerfed them too hard and made them walk back really quickly. Now they spawn further from TC but they don’t walk straight back. Deer pushing is not supposed to be noob-friendly, it’s supposed to be a bit tricky. And it’s not the end of the world if the deer walks back. I regularly watch high level games like from Viper etc. where his deer walk back. He just curses and goes back to lure it again. It’s part of the game. We already have tons of automated things in the game, we don’t need auto-lure.
I think deer should behave the way they do in Return of Rome, where they never even return to their old position. It’s strange how a game that’s supposedly inferior has a feature that’s much more convenient. It would make deer pushing so much easier if implemented in AoE2.
Deer pushing is not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to give an edge to higher skilled players.
Sick of this game being dumbed down. The challenge of aoe2 is what sets it apart from other games. It’s satisfying to improve and get good, because it’s so difficult. That’s one of the reasons why its popular. It’s a slow burner, it’s hard to get good, it’s very deep and you have to have so much knowledge and mechanical skill. Might as well have deer spawning under the TC if you’re going to dumb down luring that much.
That’s what people said about auto-scout, or auto-reseed, or other features like that. But they’re features that make the game more convenient and remove elements that aren’t pure strategy, which is what the game is supposed to be focused on. Removing having to deal with stubborn deer isn’t going to remove any strategy elements at all, and will actually help bridge the gap between casual and pro players by making pushing deer much easier.
Aoe1 had luring that was more difficult than aoe2. Gazelles would go much faster and further, change direction unpredictably, and never return to their starting location. In aoe2 the deer would move very predictably, but If you don’t push it again in the next .1 second it will completely ignores your scout and will leisurely walk toward its starting location. I find aoe1 system much more fun because the difficulty comes from the gazelle trying to evade you. In aoe2 I feel like the devs are actively ****ing with me.
bringing all res under the TC is the dumbed down version of the game
the high-skill version is when you had villagers near a mill and had to defend them if you wanted to take advantage of deer
moving deer even farther away didn’t improve the game at all. it just made it more frustrating when the deer run back because of lag or pathing issues or other random DE glitches (and this happens a lot more frequently in teamgames)
I’d still like the follow command to be improved but fixing the instant reset bug and making it that the deer won’t walk back or at least that if it walks back you can stop/interrupt the walking back with the scout would be viable improvements as well.
Making deer so easy to lure means deer become an essential part of all build orders for all ELO levels. Sometimes I’d rather have scouting information than deer luring depending on the civ matchup or the map. But if luring is done 100% of games at all levels because it’s been simplified, it forces me to also lure deer every game without fail, as I’ll be at a huge disadvantage if I don’t.
Map spawns are supposed to be random every game. I like the randomness of sometimes having a really unfair map or awkwardly positioned deer. It challenges you to think of more aggressive strategies to balance the unfairness.
Which is unnecessary unfairness. Too many times I have seen me or my opponent experiencing 3 out of 4 deer walking back, while the other had none.
The dumbest “skill” ever.
Compare it to say laming a boar, you need the skill of judging distance/timing correctly, avoid exposing vision, avoid being blocked by opponent scout, while avoiding idle TC / vils and avoiding messed up build order, etc.
What does deer pushing require? Clicking follow every 3 seconds. Anyone with hands can do it.
It has been, and still is. Just like nerfing palisades doesn’t stop the walling meta, making deer further doesn’t stop deer pushing. It’s still necessary. And thus the spawn of deer behind woodline, deer reset etc. is complete BS now.
It’s not the pushing itself which takes skill. It’s luring deer + luring boar + keeping TC active simultaneously then garrisoning and ungarrisoning 2 villagers to kill the deer under TC then repeating the same process for all the deer without any idle time or mistakes. The multi tasking is the skill, not the deer lure itself. Obviously it would be super easy if all you had to do was push the deer and nothing else. There’s a reason why Hera says it’s a mistake to push deer at low ELO. Scouting info is more important and he has obviously observed idle TC time and mistakes at low level when deer luring is introduced to them too early before they’re ready for it.
And I wasn’t condoning the unfair spawns behind woodlines, obviously, I meant deer far from TC or near gold pile etc. Of course they still walk back sometimes, but it’s not as bad as it was before. Maybe distance from TC could be lowered a bit. Or slightly increase the time deer stays put while chasing. But no auto luring please. You can’t compare it to auto scout or auto reseed, because sometimes those things are a disadvantage. Manual scouting will give you much better info. Auto reseed sometimes ruins your build order, especially when you hit castle age and need wood for TCs + buildings. If you make luring super easy, there’s no drawback really, you just lose a few minutes of scouting time which you can easily make up for after luring, especially if you started luring early, immediately when you found the deer.
That’s what people said about auto-scout, or auto-reseed, or other features like that. But they’re features that make the game more convenient and remove elements that aren’t pure strategy, which is what the game is supposed to be focused on. Removing having to deal with stubborn deer isn’t going to remove any strategy elements at all, and will actually help bridge the gap between casual and pro players by making pushing deer much easier.
Wolfs ignore the Scout, what about deer ignoring the Scout too? Deer should not be an easy food source, where you have to kill just your Scout 1 time. It is supposed to be hunted by Villagers. Pushing deer is ok as a pro trick, but should not be normal for average players.
The Dark Age is the most boring part of the game. It shouldn’t be longer.
If it is so boring, then you can use the time to push deer with skill. If you have instead less to do than now, then it would maybe become even more boring for you.
And if it would be longer it would be extended in the least repetitive part at the end.
But changing the scout-deer interaction is probably too big of a change. Deer rather far away is probably the thing that can be done.