Units attacking farms

don’t u find it annoying when ur units attack farms ? it would be legit to have them focus on units first, then proper building, then fortifications then farms, a ram destroying a farm always pisses me off 11

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Yeah it really sucks. My preference would be units never attack farms unless specifically told to. And even then only with a specific key held in. Like how alt overrides buildings.

Atm that’s the workaround i use. But still annoying when they idly attack farms.

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Yeah, should take farms as “neutral” unit. Just attack it if you order your units to do it

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I guess this is from a MP perspective. On Single Player, this is useful. The AI often tries to build a farm no matter what, so destroying the 1 HP base over and over will make the AI run out of wood, so have a short(er) end to endless unit spam maps :slight_smile:

Sounds boring and Ai exploited as f**k 11

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I’m okay with this ‘issue’. Not every aspect of micro-ing needs clean-up or automation, otherwise there will eventually be nothing left to micro and all players will be the same, more or less.

Not every player should be a 100% automated war machine. If your military units simply automatically attacked the next perfectly ideal building or unit within their sphere of influence every time without getting distracted by a farm or castle, then attacking the enemy’s home base is just going on auto-pilot at that point.

Just send 20+ military in and let them do their thing without any micro intervention while you go back to your home area to build lumber camps, farms, and TCs? No thank you…

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I think you are going too far with the reasoning… there are too many steps between avoid the farms and the «auto-push» you are prophesying…

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Putting units on war machine auto-pilot (don’t attack farms) provides one less thing to micro when attacking. And as it stands, there really isn’t a lot to micro to worry about for casual and decent (non-elite, non-Viper) players. Remove the farm aspect, and the casual and decent players become closer in skill level than they were before the change, imo, and they don’t have much to do, strategically or micro-wise, in times of attacking. What else will they need to micro when most every other building attack is a far less waste of time than doing farms? And in this game, time is of the essence. If you remove the farm ‘time waster’, then it makes all players more efficient war machines

I don’t want to do the slippery slope thing, but isn’t the next logical step to ask devs to make it so your horses don’t go straying away through open gates on random war paths through enemy TC area and getting drawn to Castles and TCs that shoot them, like a moth to the light? Thus, one less thing to micro?

The two ‘issues’ go hand-in-hand together, imo. Fix one, then might as well fix both.

I prefer to just leave it as is and let players micro this stuff as it always has been

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I think it is literally what are you doing. You are comparing ignore an object (that is something that already exists with vils in neutral stance) with auto-dodge TC’s or castles.

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Literally, I know… that’s why I put a “but” there. However, it’s not too far-fetched and perfectly relevant in this conversation – unlike most slippery slope logical fallacies.

Since you’re wanting to focus so much on the slippery slope aspect as a tactic you maybe learned on the school debate team to try and de-legitimize an argument, let’s just focus on farms only then. Please explain and educate me how it’d not be simplifying the game and putting attacks more on rails like a carnival ride to have units ignore farms

Because they are both part of the attack onslaught, and two things that most any player could get frustrated by and argue for their fixing. I know from experience. They both frustrate me and I see them as very similar – my units are getting distracted by things I don’t want them to be yet – but it’s just how it goes. I embrace them as just part of how the game is, and how I need to spend time micro-ing my units rather than sit back on auto-pilot.

Ignoring farms would be a detriment to the game and competitiveness of it, imo. Please explain how it’s not, and how it doesn’t level the playing field more between two players – one who is decent at micro-ing armies (to have their units not attack farms) and one who is not as good, not as fast, doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about micro-ing around farms

If this conversation were taking place at or before launch, I’d probably be on-board. However, we now have farm auto-reseeding, auto-scouting, and auto-treb pack/unpack moves. I’m in favor of all those three things and am glad they’re in the game. But I’ve said before, I’m now at the point where I don’t really want any more automations or auto-pilot things. Or if there are, then there must be very, very good reason to do so. So far, I’m not convinced we need units to ignore farms. It’s not totally useless that they attack farms, since that is a food supply/econ hit.

I’ll give the same argument that gets raised any time stuff like this gets brought up in the past (including on things I’ve proposed): just leave the game alone; why change it? It’s been popular for 20 years for a reason :smiley:

Regarding the OP’s post, though, I see an argument for rams to not attack farms before buildings. That’s reasonable, for sure. All other units, though? No thanks

ah the old forum regular occurrence… "let me exaggerate what you have said so that i can discredit it… "

auto everything :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes:

/s

“so you shouldnt really want it either, because what i want/dont want is obviously the right thing”

Hey, at least I recognized it, proactively fessed up to it, and gave you all cannon fodder to latch onto as the main (only, for some) way to try and discredit anything else I’ve said :wink: Typical debate team stuff… attack one weak point to try and win the argument rather than tell me why you don’t think ignoring farms will level the playing field a bit or how it is okay to change an aspect of a game that has been around for two decades

For rams, it’d be a fix because their primary purpose is a siege weapon to take down (in the case of AoE) walls and buildings; especially ones that shoot (castles, towers, and town centers) so that your other troops don’t get peppered with arrows by them as much or as long – and because rams are slow and lumbering with no ability to shoot and are very susceptible to hand-to-hand combat attacks.

You know, it is okay for an individual (me) to have an open mind and feel that rams ignoring farms would be a fix and something that should be fixed. I know it may be surprising to you that on one hand I’m afraid of more automation, but yet on the other hand I want the rams fixed. Truth be told, there can be gray areas; everything in this world isn’t black and white. (I’m surprised you don’t want an ally in this effort.) Rams are so slow and vulnerable that getting caught up attacking farms is the last thing I want them to do when I need them to get to a castle. The ram’s issue is more about ‘just go do your job because you’re going to die if you keep focusing on the beautiful farms.’ Other units aren’t as problematic in this regard. There’s a reason you and the OP singled out rams.

Also, if you’re suggesting in a roundabout way that you will never reach a saturation point on automation (because you’re making fun of me reaching one), then you’re free to think that. But let’s talk again in a year or two+, if more and more automations are done in the game. I want to see if you ever reach a saturation point. Want to see what your threshold is. If/when that time comes, it’ll be fun to comment “auto everything :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes: /s” when you finally say ‘enough is enough’ but see one tiny thing that could be fixed.

You shouldn’t really want it either, unless you’re okay with leveling the playing field more, or with doing less micro during attacks. If you’re cool with that, then great; maybe try to say some things that will enlighten me toward that end, or reassure me that it’ll be awesome to have all units auto-avoid farms. Believe it or not, some people are actually okay with dialogue and hearing both sides of the story. I’ve changed my mind on past things on the forum. So far, I’m not seeing any reason to change my mind on this, and posts like yours don’t really do anything for me to want to change it :wink:

“so you should want all units to never attack farms, because what I want/don’t want is obviously the right thing”

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Rams not attacking farms sounds about right because they are so dumb already, and you don’t need rams to kill farms. Also capped/siege ram already decimate farms by hitting other buildings thanks to their blast damage

For other units it’s fine if they auto-attack farms, especially since sometimes your opponent has tons of defenses and there isn’t anything else to attack, so better have your units do something without excessive baby-sitting.

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Units already have hierarchy for attack.
They automatically target another unit over a building, and rams ignores non-siege units. These things not define the skill, they are qol features imo…

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No im not. Im suggesting this isn’t the saturation point.

Generic units attacking farms can be coupled to their stance. Aggressive =yes for farms. Defensive = no for farms. Or we could add it to the game options. Units attack farms on defensive stance yes/no and is couple to rams ever attacking farms.

This… Resulted in the sarcastic response. Because you’re simply exaggerating what we want. And it is false anway.

No, you’re at it again… We should have the CHOICE whether units attack or don’t attack farms. So people like you can let their unis kill farms, while people like me will only kill farms when needed with a directed attack . But after your very nice post(which i agreed on to some extent) , well done on ending it on a brain fart…

Heaven forbid :scream::scream::scream: they fix the vil bumping issue so players don’t have to almost constantly micro the vils to work effectively… Because you know what… It will level the playing field and then auto everything

And that’s why people enjoy aoe because we have to micro bumping vils, and pull rams off farms…

AOE isn’t popular because of the time period, unity variety, playability, aesthetics, counter system… No none of those things… 2mil copies sold because you need to baby sit retarded units :roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

There is an Edit Post function :slight_smile: No need to rapid fire three replies in a row :wink: I see your points and will mull them over. I don’t think it’d be the end of the world to neutralize farm attraction, but their ability to seduce units with their beauty isn’t the end of the world either, imo

Yes man, super annoying bug that didn’t happen in conquerors. Not only farms, units like hitting building in general. Even towers and castles sometimes prefer buildings. Coming back to farms, it is even hard to steal them with villagers like in the old days.

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If Conquerors didn’t have this issue, then let’s bring back the days of old, I say! I thought it was a design decision born 20 years ago. But if what you say is true, then let’s fix this/these bugs! (Along with making CTRL+F12 work again to take a full map screenshot)