Hello, I am an old school AOE player, so I know a lot about the game and its problems and I’m going to try and contribute my suggestions and ideas to the community, hopefully they will help.
I know that probably this topic has been talked about a lot, but I feel the need to bring it up. There’s no land trading in the game, however you can trade by sea with trade/merchant ship. I feel that this makes no sense. Another problem is that often times as you maybe know stone and gold run out very quickly in longer games, a few times even the wood ran out and there is no way to get it. Considering that civilizations are not as balanced as in AOE 2 and no gold will be a game breaker for some, I think that land trading should be added in some way.
Now, people might say correctly that there’s no land trading and it was intended that way, but in the scenario editor there is a building, called the Trade Workshop. People said that it was intended as the name suggests as some type of trading building, but it was scrapped in the beta. So what I think is that it could be added to the game as something similar to the AOE 2 trading mechanics, a trading unit, sell or buy resources for gold and different trading upgrades.
IMO this will be a better option than using the market for these potentially new additions, because of a few reasons. First, it will not change the original purpose and developmental intentions for the market and trade workshop. The market remains exactly as it is, and the trade workshop is added like it has been intended to be added. And second, it will add a nice looking new type of building for aesthetical purposes.
I have some other ideas, like adding an unique hero type of unit/s for the civilizations, like those Heroes in the scenario editor, adding gates and making stone a more valuable resource(because as it is, it is only used for walls and towers, maybe a few not very important units), and making defense a more viable strategy.
And two more suggestions: First, unique wonder for each civilization. Assyrians and sumerians build pyramids, not very historically correct, phoenicians and minoans build the colossus of Rhodes or whatever that statue is, not very correct as well.
And the second one: in the original each civ had a different UI, just different images but still made for a cool little detail and feature.
So this is it in a nutshell, let me know what you think about it.
First of all, this is not AOK, the gameplay differences are what make it unique. It is a game where gold is scarce, and a direct exchange among other resources for gold would annul that, as a buy / sell button.
But on the other hand I think so, a land trade unit with the same function as the merchant ship would be a good addition. It wouldn’t give us tons of gold, but it would help a bit to prevent it from running out so soon. It would also add new strategies, such as defending your trade routes with your allies or destroying the enemy’s trade, something that is seen very little with ships.
The Trade Workshop building is already present in the game, it is used as decoration in the campaigns. Giving it more useful use would be great.
As for doors, unique units, unique wonders, I think it is not necessary at the moment. The grace of AOE 1 is that with a single large technological tree it is customized for each civilization.
If there are future DLCs, I hope that this feature is not lost by adding unique units, but more general units are added to give more variety.
Yes, but some of these ideas were originally intended and scrapped by Ensemble Studios for unknown reasons, the developers know best why. IMO trading can be added to fit the character of the game in the way that it was intended to be added originally. The trade workshop building is there for a good reason and resource trading I think will work fine if added in a balanced way.
I think this is important for two main reasons, one being that it was originally intended and scrapped and second, because when you ran out of wood, stone and gold resources there is no way to get them. And tbh, they run out very quick and having sea trade but no land trade is kind of … you know
Adding trading markets (trade unit to convert time into gold for initial gold investment) could be a nice addition as a voluntary seperate setting to activate/deactivate in lobbies.
Sadly I am quite convinced that there won’t be any changes to this game any time soon, if at all, since they seem to focus on AoE2DE completely for at least another couple of months.
Just to note but trade in Age one works different from Age 2. Age one trade does not generate gold out of thin air like age 2 trade does, it exchanges resources(food/wood/stone) for it.
So it helps for running out of gold, it does not change that running out of wood and stone is still going to happen eventually.
I got attacked just as my villagers replanted their farms which left me with 100W and my entire forest line of villagers killed. So I was unable to relocate on the map and start again. Not enough wood for a storage pit or a town centre. So as already remarked, a market for gold is a limited use of trading options. They would need to rework the model like that in AOE2 for it to be of any real value. But then you would be changing the game play. In any case the way trading works in this game is that the closer your docks are the better whereas in AOE2 the further they are the better the return in gold. If you have the original game try this mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jrcO4zhqRY
Incorrect. You want your docks to be 200 tiles away, that gives the most gold. Around 200 gold per minute compared to 20 gold per minute you get if they are right next to each other.
Further than that does not give any more gold, just need more ships to achieve the same.
Then make it as an exchange of resources… I still put the stress on the problem that in longer games ALL resources run out, even all of the forests get chopped down. Maybe the amount that can be gathered from each tree could be increased… because one entire forest normal size gets chopped down in about 15 minutes
I don’t see how running out of resources on the map is a problem. It provides a natural way of steering the game to an end when wonders are disabled.