It features many very interesting units, but the one that caught my attention the most is the “wooden ox”. There are some youtubers who broke down the teaser and they all seem to think the wooden ox will be some kind of siege weapon, which I personally don’t believe.
The wooden ox was created by the inventor Zhuge Liang to transport grain. It was designed to be ALMOST fully automated. Now if you look at the two screenshots below, even though its bad quality (sorry about that) you can clearly notice that in the first one, it looks empty, while in the second one, it carries something.
I honestly think the devs try to mislead us by showing them with military units. My guess is that the Chinese will have a single drop-off site (like in EE) which won’t store resources directly in your stock. You’ll have to use the wooden ox to go back and forth between your storage pit and your forum in order to truly earn your resources. Basically like caravans.
There could even be some sort of small % additional gain if they travel from greater distances (again like caravans). It also seems that wooden oxen may have been trapped in order to prevent enemies from seizing them or what they were carrying. I think it would be cool to replicate this in the game, so they wouldn’t be completely vulnerable to raids, but you would still need to protect them.
My first thought was that it would be their caravan, tbh. Love the idea of transferring resources from drop sites to Town Centers, but it sounds like it would make their economy too slow compared to other cultures.
Just an FYI, it’s called a Town Center in English, not a Forum. I’m guessing you play in French? Or do other languages call it a Forum as well?
Well, it all depends on how you balance it. I suggested that they could gain a small % of resource the further they travel to compensate, but there could be other ways to make this viable. Also, this mechanic wouldn’t prevent villagers from directly dropping resource to the town center if no other drop site is near. I think the Chinese should start with 1 wooden ox and then you could train more later. Of course, there could be base techs or mythic techs to make it even better.
And like you, I also thought this could be the Chinese caravan, bit I feel like it would be a waste, even though this would save the yak caravan for a potential new civ.
Yes, I know, I’m just used to forum. XD And you’re right, I play in French.
Seems a little bit too weirdly gimmicky, like an Ox Cart with an extra step. I have a different theory: what if this is the method with which the Chinese gather Favour? The villagers drop some resources into the Wooden Ox and then, when it’s full, it carries that load to the Temple where those resources are converted into Favour.
This would be a very bad mechanic because of how annoying it would be to play with this faction. If Atlantean oracles are already boring, imagine this.
I don’t think they would do a mechanic like this, when everything else have the mentality of ‘auto-everything’.
Care to explain how would this make playing the Chinese annoying? A single right click on a drop site is all you’d need. How is that not simple enough?
It would be a big waste imo. As I’ve already mentionned, it was used to carry food and goods. What purpose would it serve as a campaign exclusive unit?
You misunderstood me. It would act like a caravan, so basically he travels back and forth by itself, no extra step. You’d only have to assign it to another drop site if you choose to move your villagers elsewhere.
Like an Ox Cart with carry capacity that when its full he goes to a drop site to drop it? This would only work if when the villager drop into the Ox the resource enter in your bank and the Ox only need to empty itself, otherwise the resource tickle would be very slow and with huge steps.
Not exactly. It travels back and forth from a storage pit to a town center, regardless of the amount of resources stored inside. But yes, this would make less frequent but bigger deposits.
Maybe they are not though.
Maybe this is a military support unit.
The Wooden Ox is kind of just a wheelbarrow with a centre wheel. It was commonly used to carry supply for troops.
Maybe it buffs nearby units?
The German translators got very confused when they had to start translating Village Centre and Town Centre into German and the game has different names for those two building pop up in different places now, like the Achievements having different names for both of those buildings then the actual game.
First of German has 2 words:
Dorf = Village
Stadt = City
There is no 3rd word for a settlement in an inbetween size.
Since “Town” and “City” are used very differently between different English speaking countries it is not always easy to directly translate.
Like how many “Villages” exist in the US?
So since AoE1 Town Centre has been translated as Dorfzentrum (Village Centre). Also makes sense since you train villagers there and not town folk or something.
Now AoMR actually introduced Village Centres so the translators had to come up with something new.
Town Centre = Dorfzentrum (unchanged)
Village Centre = Dorfkern (Village Core)
But somehow the people translating the Achievements made up their own names:
Town Centre = Stadtzentrum (City Centre)
Village Centre = Dorfzentrum (Village Centre)
If AoMR was originally released in a vacuum those would probably have been the best translations, but the issue is the long tradition of old translation since AoE1.
Thanks for answering that question! I was really interested to know about it, just from the standpoint of general interest in languages.
Out of interest, is “dorfkern” a term that makes sense in German outside this context, and if so, does it imply something lesser than “dorfzentrum”? And I’m guessing German doesn’t have a well-established word for something smaller than ein Dorf? (I’m guessing “Weiler” is, like the English “hamlet”, a little too awkward/abstruse to use in this context?)
Weiler does exist. But that’s like 5 farmhouses, or something along those lines. If a Weiler has 20 people, it’s big.
Also, there’s like Dörfchen or Städchen, which are smaller versions of Dorf and Stadt respectively, with the -chen. No idea how to translate the concept behind it into English. I can’t think of anything similar English has to, like, make a word smaller. But Dörfchenzentrum is super awkward.
The wheelbarrow is only one of the speculative reconstructions. The wooden ox may also have been quadruped and this is exactly the design they chose to represent in the game.
Also, how would you explain the difference between my 2 screenshots? On the second one, the ox clearly carries something, not on the first one. I don’t believe this is due to an upgrade.
