I had these issue too and often annoyed me too. But I learned to shift command as often as I remember to the specific resource. Still happens sometimes but way less often.
But the video was unnecessary provocative and silly in its vibe + being unnecessarily rude doesn’t help anyone… and the devs don’t deserve this… sometimes the guys I charge do and a very few “special” ppl. But still: being really rude is not an option.
In in private life I personally despise ppl who think being really rude to someone is good or helpful - even if they have a responsible/authority role.
To be perfectly honest, the priority changes are stupid and whoever came up with them clearly never played any age of empires game.
If I build more storehouse right next to a ******* gold mine, then I want all my villagers to go to the gold mine, not have 50% of them wonder off 35 squares, potentially into enemy controlled territory, to chop down a tree. They are dumbing down the game for console players, because console players are all about RTS games.
This is the same dumb attitude that assumed players automatically want to train villagers from a newly built TC, without taking into consideration that TCs can also be taken to secure a specific position and not to train villagers.
Clearly whoever is in charge never played an RTS outside of sandbox vs AI. Because only there would this kind of changes make sense. And they supposedly cater to pro players. lol.
Maybe resource priority should just be a setting. That would solve all the issues.
The default settings are really stupid.
The first TC doesn’t out train but all others do, why?
The opposite makes so much more sense. Luckily you can change it in the settings.
You obviously do want to auto train on the first TC or else you will be behind the enemy. And it’s not hard to cancel if you want to start with a Dwarf or something.
It really should be that all villagers go to the resource that’s closest to the drop point being used. That’s the easiest to use solution and this is how it was in vanila AOM. If you built a storehouse slightly further away from a mine but closer to wood, they would all go to wood and ignore the mine.
buuut noooooooo, let’s have villagers go 243890759283745982374 squares, even out of their own scanning range, to have an even split in resources.
Again, they are just trying to dumb down the game hoping to attract new players or something but this just makes it worse. Literally anyone who finishes the demo campaign can place villagers properly.
because whoever designed this never played an RTS in their life.
ofc, you want the first TC to autostart simply to make up for desync at the start, where the opponent might load a few seconds faster and be ahead in villagers because of that.
I remember that these options didn’t exist in beta. Thankfully they listened to me and did it. I give em that.
And it is very rarely that an additional TC is taken for training additional villagers automatically. Sometimes they are, but most often they are taken to fortify a position or get additional pop. You don’t want to automatically train villagers from those, and if you do want, it is a right click away.
I understand that you don’t like the way I point out the problems, but I don’t think the devs are doing these things innocently, and that’s why I’m presenting the problems this way.
The devs are acting in two possible ways: Either they are being dishonest someway or they are being incompetent. (I still have the idea in my head that they don’t know how to fix the problem with villagers prioritizing wood.)
I vote that they are being incompetent in the jobs they CHOSE to do for a living. I do not accept that someone is this incompetent in a job that puts food on their table. The game is not free, so no, I don’t feel sorry for criticizing the devs, they are well compensated and are acting contrary to their pay. The game is not cheap, so I do not accept receiving a game with gameplay quality worse than a free-to-play.
I am extremely disappointed with the developers of AoM? yes, but that doesn’t mean I hate them or anything like that. I am disappointed and frustrated with their work, not with them as individuals. If someone can’t separate this, it’s better to abandon life, because that’s how things are: A football player is not judged by his charisma, nor is a president, etc…
It’s not the devs it’s usually NEVER the devs, what happened is the studio and Microsoft told them they wanted that game in a certain amount of time (unachievable by the way) and devs are doing what they can with the BUDGET they were given, if we want to blame someone is Microsoft or the executives
The villagers don’t even split. They go for the wood. Even when it’s much further away.
The only way to make them mine gold is to tell them directly. That or not have a single Tree on the map, but I’d have to check that.
I really wonder how the executives influenced the decision to make the villagers prioritize wood instead of gold. Or how the executives influenced the bug that allows troops to drag animals across the map. Or making it so that villagers can’t build a long wall line without leaving several gaps, or sometimes even abandoning the construction of a wall in the middle.
Can I at least blame them for hiring an inexperienced team?
When there is a gold mine next to a forest I place my storage pit inbetween so I save wood and villager time. But that doesn’t mean that I want to have a 5/50 villager split or all on wood or something like that.
I probably want all of them on Gold.
This usually only happens in the early game anyway but that’s when you micro your economy anyway.
In late game you will even add more storehosues closer to the wood as the forest is chopped down, and you don’t want the vilies making that to wonder off to gold.
At this point I think any way of making the result deterministic is fine.
RTS needs to be deterministic. if you do the same action twice, you should get the same result twice.
Right now villager behavior is essentially a wild guess. And this wood vs gold vs food (for Chinese too) priority thing is not the only problem.
Is there a situation like this where you don’t want them all on gold? Because then its obvious to set gold as priority when the distance is the same.
In all situations you basically want the nearest resource and if its the same distance, you will always want gold. There is no need for a setting and much less this split of villagers that I have no idea who wants this.
I’d personally always want them on Gold but that doesn’t mean everyone wants that.
People have very strange priorities sometimes and I don’t see why it would be an issue to give those people a choice.
I literally don’t remember a single RTS where I can go to a menu and change a setting to what my villagers will priorize when building a resource drop point. Never had to do this, because the game design know what the players want lol
Generally, the most scarce resource. In ancient Egypt, silver was much more valuable than gold due to the scarcity of silver and the abundance of gold. The rule applies here, since we have the map covered by trees and only a few spots on the map with gold mines.
I still refuse to believe that this isn’t a bug that the devs don’t know how to fix. Because it’s such a stupid ‘decision’ that we end up wondering if a human who really knows the game actually did this on purpose.
It would be less embarrassing if it were a bug they don’t know how to fix than a decision made consciously.
I think this game is more or less an experiment to see what sticks for future RTS games. AI is heavily involved in development and UI and they are testing the waters on actual application design decisions.
Since this game has a limited projected player base, any failures can be easily contained.