AoM Retold has more population and that´s fine to see. Early-mid game is ok… but the game still having a problem in terms of population when the late arrives. And this problem is “trade caravans”.
When gold mines run out and you need to trade, you have to create ‘trade caravans’ that take up an important part of your population, resulting in fewer large battles in the late game compared to the mid game.
TWO POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
First SOLUTION :
Make “trade caravans” cost no population, or perhaps have their own limit like ships in AoE3. For example, imagine that “trade caravans” have their own “houses”; each market adds 10 to this limit, up to a maximum of 50 (but they wouldn´t cost real population)
Second SOLUTION:
Keep “trade caravans” costing 1 pop, as they do now, but count them towards the villager limit. For example, if you have 50 “trade caravans,” you can only have 50 villagers.
I looked forward to the higher population. But playing the beta gives me more a feeling of ‘‘well, the game wasn’t build around so many pop.’’ It feels a little off to me. The old pop cap was something you had always in mind, every tc was fundamental. Now it feels like ‘‘yeah, build some houses and spam units. Spam… SPAM SPAM’’ hahahah But i guess i will get used to it.
The problem of “trade caravans” still in game. They require too much population. If you allocate enough population to maintain a decent army despite the caravans, it would unbalance the population issue before creating the caravans.
That’s why it’s better to address the issue of caravans separately. I proposed 2 different solutions.
Yes that’s true. I personally think your second solution would be the best. I don’t get why a ressource gathering unit doesn’t count for the villager pop at all.
Caravans always existed to replace villager count in AoM lategame and pop cap was increased by 75 (60 from houses, 15 from 3 tcs), which is around 45% increase so naturally you need to increase amount of economic units you own by 45%. This still allows you to have about 50% bigger army than previously.
Overall, I don’t think we need more population. Armies are BIG now. So big that if youre continously fighting, its impossible to stay max pop.
I think it can.
If you don’t directly send all your trained units into death it can keep up with a pretty large population.
I don’t like the lategame situation where you kinda have to make your units go die within seconds because else you just pile up useless resources.
By reducing the economy and increasing the population it’s more adventurous to attack in waves instead of in an endless stream which I think is a lot more interesting.
But i guess i will get used to it.