[Suggestions] Improving Technologies

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

The technologies in question are Two-Man Saw, Gold Shaft Mining, Stone Shaft Mining and Crop Rotation.

Why? All these technologies are rarely used because their benefits doesn’t outweigh their cost or ther benefits take too long to be useful or it is better to invest in army than to invest in these technologies.

Solution that i propose to make these technologies more interesting and useful in the long run, not as long as just the speed bonus would take (perhaps in a team game)

  • Gold Shaft Mining and Stone Shaft Mining not only guarantee the speed bonus but make the resources last longer by 15%**, like Mayan civilization bonus.

  • Two-Man Saw makes the resource last 10%** longer

  • Crop Rotation increases FARM speed by 0.2 f/s**

Given that not all civs have these technology, i suggest to give them, perhaps with another name, but with similar effects modified for balance.

**Numbers need to be balanced depending on civs.

2

Welcome back Roomoftheevil!!
Before proposing these kind of buffs, look at the civ bonuses and civ strenghts to avoid overbuffing…

Other than those techs are fine…

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Hello, thanks. I lost my regular badge in the mean time:D

I know these techs are balanced for the civs and some don’t have them for this reason, but these techs aren’t good even for those civs that have it, according to some analysis of the userbase. Some made reddit posts about it, other made videos about them and the result/conclusion was that, or they are useful on the very very long run (if those resources lasts enough), or they aren’t and there are other better investments to do.

I don’t suggest giving 15% to all, i should make it clear.

4

and this is why buffs like these to technologies are a bad idea.
when you have to buff civs to counterbalance changing technologies, that’s not a good change.

5

Not buff civs, but change these techs numerical value. For example, Mayans don’t have gold shaft mining and have already 15% more, so they wouldn’t get 15% (their usual bonus) + 15%. But it will be, i throw a random number, perhaps 5% without the speed bonus or perhaps 10% speed bonus.

6

okay, but what about civs that lack those types of techs? for example -
Gold Shaft Mining - Goths, Italians, Lithuanians, Mayans, Portuguese, Spanish, Teutons, and Vietnamese all lack it.
Stone Shaft Mining - Britons, Burmese, Cumans, Franks, Huns, Japanese, Magyars, Saracens, Slavs, Tatars, Turks and Vikings all lack it.
Crop Rotation - Britons, Celts, Chinese, Ethiopians, Huns, Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols, Saracens, Spanish, and Turks all lack it.
Two Man Saw - Aztecs, Berbers, Bulgarians, Celts, Franks, Incas, Khmer, Malay, Malians, Mongols, Sicilians, and Tatars all lack it.

that is the problem - you literally have to buff nearly every civ under the sun - all because you want to make these technologies feel more mandatory.

and then there is Burgundians - who literally get them all an age earlier - so Burgundians - in early castle age - would have amazing buffs to there economy that are just flat out insane.

you’d have to do wholesale changes to civs just to keep this change balanced.

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7

Interesting suggestion OP. My main concern is that this would have the potential to just drag out games in cases where players are still very even in imperial age. If both sides simply have more resources to collect, those games will just last longer for no good reason.

These techs are not completely useless, but may be more map dependent. For example, megarandom maps can spawn huge amounts of gold/stone, where the shaft mining techs may still be worth it.

On maps with huge amounts of wood, and where games have a natural tendency to go on for long, like Black Forest, even Crop Rotation might be worth getting, just so that you can reposition some of your lumberjacks into farmers if you need a food heavy army.

8

You are missing a part of my initial argument. Why these improvements are needed? Because these technologies doesn’t provide any bonus to the civs that have them. For example if we take a civ that has them and another civ that doesn’t, and here, we exclude civs that get economy bonus, the first civ don’t get any bonus from having these technologies (or they would get it too far in the game). But i can see your point. The civs currently aren’t actually balanced for these last techs at all, so we would need to rethink of the balance. That is true. But it is because these final upgrades have inherit fallacies ( they don’t provide upgrades that imperial upgrade should give)

We have to consider that if you are in imperial, gold and stone would already be running out in the map. And even wood in some maps. Farms work rate, not farmers, just slows down the economy in the late game. So the crop rotation would actually give you the ability to output more army (less on food) and faster (more food)

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That’s why it’s map dependent in my opinion. In Arabia 1v1, yeah, these techs are often not needed, but then again, often these games don’t actually last long anyway, so a lot of units and techs are ‘affected’ by the same problem.

10

Yes, you would need to think which maps are more suitable for them to be useful. More variations but without changing much. I was thinking more in team game perspective but could be used in maps in 1vs1 perhaps. Also, they don’t just give you the 15% lasting resource, you also get their speed bonus, which they currenty already have, well, with balancing of course.

11

Sorry, to clarify: I meant that the existing techs are not completely useless currently, just that they’re map (and situation) dependent.

But I’m not against the idea of your changes, but I think it will be very challenging to balance this across various map types and 1v1/team game situations.

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But that is the thing… they aren’t, according to some analysis. Most of the time, the advatange of these techs need too much time to be useful and, in the mean time, the game is already over. It is always better to invest the resources of these techs somewhere else because for some time, they actually put you at disadvatange.

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Do you have any link to this analysis? (I believe you completely, I am just curious about the exact findings, because you are completely right in that these techs are highly situational and only matter for very long games, but would be interesting to see what was found)

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Of the list only stone shaft mining is actually bad. Two man saw is useful 100% of the time for civs that do get it, gold shaft mining is pretty useful to get the most out of the neutral golds, crop rotation isn’t as good as two man saw but once you’re floating res it’s still useful to get so that you can relocate/delete some wood vills.

And yes civilizations that do get them have an advantage already over those who don’t, by being able to use less villagers to get the same ressource income. And stone shaft mining is only bad because there isn’t enough stone on the map to make a big difference, but heck I bet you could justify getting it if you really want to dry up the neutral stones asap to make sure the enemy doesn’t get them.

Anyway to deal with it I suppose you could make stone shaft mining cheaper to make it worth getting more often.

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15

Purely on mathematical terms, sotl did on the crop rotation

More Farm Upgrade Questions! (Answering Comments) - YouTube

I saw a reddit post earlier about the stone mining (tldr there are less stones in map on average, it isn’t good to get the tech as you would take more time to gather back those resources (in food and wood) than what you get by the speed bonus, haven’t reviewd throughly on this though)

Analysis: Stone Shaft Mining is bad : aoe2 (reddit.com)

Here it leaves out gold shaft mining in its economic analysis

Step 3 - Economy Upgrades @ Age of Empires 2 Strategy Center (salamyhkaiset.org)

Zero empires leaves it out for late imperial

AoE2 - When To Get Economy Upgrades - YouTube

I also saw some old analysis posts about them but need to refind them. The most regarded of the list is definitely two man saw.

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Imo, I think maybe gold/stone shaft mining just needs a cost/time reduction. Two-Man Saw is ok but could use a cost reduction. Crop rotation is up there for most useless tech in the game, a slight farm speed increase would be nice. The tweaks would just have to be small enough not to throw off civ balance.

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17

Well first of all 2man saw - rarely used? Its a very standard tech and worth it pretty early. We see pros getting soon after hitting imp. So not sure why you even mention it.

For the other 3: They are rarely used - but whats the problem? They are situational and thats a good thing. Getting crop rotation is a decision: Will the game last another 30+min or not? So should i get the tech or not? If we buff it, its a “research once you get to imp” kind of tech.

Situational stuff is what makes RTS fun. You remember how Viper won a game with herbal medicin? It was a very weird situation, but it did make sense. He did something that in most games would be a waste of gold, but he realized he was in a situation it might just win him the game. And the hype was real.
Moments like those are ONLY possible if techs are situational. And thats why situational techs (and units!) are not only good, but essential for the game.

This and the mentioned balanceproblems makes your proposal a bad one.

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Vietnamese a d burgundians would benefit a lot from these kind of changes because of their eco bonus (vietnamese lack goldshaft mining though)

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If your not getting crop rotation or 2man saw after more than 20mins in imp then you’re probably going about it wrong. Crop rotation isn’t like earlier techs in effect but when you’re at your planned vil number and farms why wouldn’t you. Keep in mind when you research feudal upgrades you have maybe 30 vils so although they’re more effective the actual amount of res gained over the next 10mins is likely lower. Imp is usually done to get a power spike with trebs, unit upgrades so avoiding at for makes sense but once that’s worn off you should try and get those upgrades since there not exactly expensive.

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20

I noticed a pattern in the tech tree. Civs with strong lategame usually lack one eco tech related to their main comp.

  • gold intensive civs such as teutons, mayans or lack goldshaft mining.
  • Wood intensive civs such as britons, koreans or mongols lack crop rotation
  • And food intensive civs such as khmer, malay or malians lack two man saw.

Also, civs with some eco bonus use to lack a related eco tech (i.e. celts have wood bonus and lack two man saw)

Of course this is not 100% accurate, but i think that buffing those late game techs would benefit flexible civs such as sarracens or byzantines more than the top tier arena civs.