I had originally posted a lot of this in the map part of the beta forum, but barely anyone looked at that section to give feedback. The maps being accessible may not have been intentional so hopefully these are not the final version, but what was in the beta was very concerning. A lot of these maps, especially the treeless arctic and north sea ones are very rough in both visuals and how they play. Some more creativity to make them have a more standard design that doesn’t rely on janky resource work arounds would go a long way to fixing them.
Having a single map with a scarcity of wood and a unique way to get it is an interesting novelty, but when there are half a dozen of them with compromised playability it’s a problem.
Out of Place and Overused Timber Importers
Timber Importers are a last resort to address this, and feel like more of a cop out than a solution. These log cabins with a lumberjack look like they fit into a woodland clearing. On desolate treeless islands they are jarringly out of place. If these are supposed to be a supplement because the maps don’t have trees, why is the guy literally chopping down a tree?
They are also overabundant to the point where these cabins outnumber polar bears on Svalbard. For reference this is what the Svalbard map looks like:
There are so many lumberjacks and lighthouses that they crowd out all the actual treasures. The lighthouses are neat, but any more that one per team is redundant, so they could also be fewer in number to make room for more actual treasures.
Obviously there needs to be something on the map to push out to and control, but logically you only need one entrepôt to get the stuff. Controlling more than a couple of them is a little nonsensical. The map control aspect of these is also not as meaningful as standard resources since they don’t actually need to be gathered. Therefore you don’t need to spread out your villagers to gather and make them vulnerable to raids.
Better Starting Conditions
For starters, a starting wood trickle treasure for each player would be a helpful wood supplement. A starting wagon to build a Dock, House, or Market could also help players get on their feet even with limited wood.
More plentiful wood treasures, and ones that grant techs that give bonuses like cost savings or improved yields would give your Explorer more of a role in bringing in some wood income early on. For example there could be some like this:
- A sod hut demonstrating building techniques that save wood. -5% wood cost for buildings.
- A beached whale whose sturdy bones can be used for construction. ~300 wood.
Alternate Gatherable Wood Sources
Salvage
Shipwrecks, ruined structures, and driftwood could all provide good sources of wood that your villagers and ships would actually need to gather. There are already wrecked treasure ships so a slightly reskinned version of that could work for this. Large quantities of driftwood from Siberian forests regularly make it into the Arctic, and this could be collectable from the shore by villagers or from the sea by boats. Finally, recycling existing structures is a common practice in these desolate lands. Adding a few derelict cabins that could be cut down for salvaged lumber could work.
Stone Quarrying
AoE3 is unique among the series in lacking the stone resource. Conceptually this implies the “wood” resource represents all building materials. So while stone is not wood per se I don’t think it would be unreasonable to have harvestable sources of stone that yields wood.
This would fit in very well with these new treeless arctic and north sea maps as all have prominent histories of quarrying. In the arctic, the Inuit used soapstone for carving, and constructed stone structures like inukshuks. In the isles there is Ailsa Craig which is the source of granite for curling stones.
Visually, stone sources should have a standard footprint and shape akin to how all mines look similar. Having them be a bit smaller than mines and spawn in clusters would look good in my opinion and help differentiate them from mines. On the new maps, stone types of soapstone, basalt, marble, and granite would be appropriate.
Functionally, stone gathering should be upgraded by mining techs, not wood techs.
This would also open up lots of possibilities for other maps. Maps for arid regions could get away with less or no trees by replacing some of them with stone which would give more visual variety and improve the immersion by not having forests in deserts. Mountainous maps could have stone instead of trees at higher altitudes, and potentially could have passes that are blocked by stone deposits. Acropolis could have you quarry marble from ruined columns.
One final thing to note is the mining prohibition for Lakota should not apply to quarrying as they did have a history of quarrying pipestone.
