I personally love the idea of sheep in aoe 4 - it rewards players for scouting the map and encourages interactions but I feel like the feature is not fully realized as once all the sheep are gobbled up thats it.
I have a few thoughts of how this work in the past but feel like I have finally found an interesting way
How they should work generally
1. Each hunting camp can only process one carcass at at time, this will prevent players from just dropping a bunch off and extends the amount of time players have to play the map for these resources (possibly only for deer and boar)
2. When a scout goes to pick up a carcass they are locked into hauling the carcass to the closest free hunting cabin (thus prevent players from simply keeping a dozen carcass at the base of the cabin) (also makes the scout vulnerable to infantry)
3. Scouts start with the ability to pick up carcasses but at the slower rate, professional scouts place the carcass on a sled and can move at normal speed
4. Boar creates a sled that can be hauled by multiple scouts (more scouts = more speed up to normal speed)
5. Allow hunting cabins for non-russ players to be converted to mills or double as a mill later in the game
while sheep encourages and rewards scouting this would make deer/boar encourage playing the map and gaining map control while also encouraging more interactions in the dark, feudal age, and possibly even castle age
you should remove the yellow block to make it easier to read, having to sidescroll is quite… annoying lol.
I agree that something needs to be done about prof scout to make it more attractive. I’m a fan of early prof scouts, especially in darkage-feudal age.
And it kinda drops out later on in the game but creates a interesting early dynamics.
However I don’t like how insanely expensive it is to get.
I think being able to haul carcasses should be a standard for scouts. and as you say, make the upgrade allow them haul them faster. balance it around movement speed of the scout.
The sled thing just sounds to make thing more complicated.
Boars are special cases and shouldn’t be haulable for the reason they are quite viable strategic resources, much like stone or gold in a sence, and shud be a fight for controll and security rather thank joinking it and run away.
Rus is fine; when you check the win rates and matchup win rates at plat+ you see Rus is 50% and gets better as you get higher.
If they cant fix everything they need to worry about the low win rates first.
I suggest allow each scout to carry up to 3 carcass; but for each additional carcass over 1 will reduce the scouts speed by 5% for a max of 45% speed reduction with 3 carcasses. This will keep it a risk reward situation.
To be fair maps have always had a STRONG impact of what civ floats to the top. And Rus is optimally a camp/water civ hence the stats on those closed maps.
If you had to take 1 scout and pick up 1 carcass that is at least 50 tiles away from mill thats a 78s round trip and you just got 1 carcass. With my suggested change 1 round trip would take 87s (9 more seconds) but carrying 2 more carcass? The micro efficiency is HUGEE! You could clear a dear herd with 3 scouts as oppose to 7 or something less than 7 making multiple trips and multiple multiple shift click E’s etc etc.
Meanwhile making the scout even slower keeps it punishable, otherwise the Rus’s and Mali’s, and French’s would destroy the game.
Different amounts of reduction based on the number of carcasses carried (not to mention allowing multiple carcasses to be carried) is, by definition, more complicated.
We don’t even know if the functionality for multiple to be carried exists, plus that now has to be represented in their unit card and/or visually so you can tell when they have more than one. When it comes to dropping them off, the carcasses cannot stack, so they will have to drop in multiple spots from one scout, etc…
Just because the tech is a little too weak right now.
true, The idea for multiple carcasses was to balance the cost of professional scouts, reducing the cost and doing a speed / damage bonus would simplify things
Most players do not fight for the boar though its usually a tc drop - my idea about hauling the boar was more or less to balance the boar around this suggestion but perhaps this idea should apply them .
I agree that they simply need to partially revert the excessive nerf that changed it from almost always being used to almost never being used.
I don’t think it would actually be that much of a problem if it was almost always used by high skill players, as there are other things in the game that are almost always done, such as continuously producing villagers, collecting sheep with scouts, collecting relics, and these aren’t seen as a problem. A huge part of the game is rapidly switching between different activities, so it would just be another element that differentiates lower skill from higher skill players.
