You need build a house with 2 vils within 5~8 secs in random map. We are used to it already, but beginners may be confused it “Do I need such a busy operation from the beginning for ranked play?”. Sometimes I also get a mistake to fail to build the house with hotkey. I push “A(build civilian building)” key while dragging vils.
So I come up with new feature.
- TC provides 10 pop space (except Chinese)
- everyone starts with 175 wood (except Chinese and Huns. Persians have 225 wood)
I tested it briefly with AGE3. If that setting,
- first 2 vils build a house, 1 vil takes 10 wood from a straggle tree
- Mayans can delay the loom timing (buff)
- you don’t need a house on nomad before building a dock
- you get less haused when booming
- everyone need to learn new start (cons)
Someone may think that you can do pre-lumber drush more easier than now, but it’s fine. You can’t make both militia and vills until reaching 12 pop for lack of food.
Micro ability is the important part in AOE2, but “10 pop TC” will help beginner learning buildorders or playing casually. You will be able to start calmly in ranked.
Any comments?
2 Likes
I always found pointless to start with only 5 pop space. Why town centers hold as much space as an house? What’s the point if you’re gonna build an house at the very beginning of literally every single match anyway?
5 Likes
I imagine it like the chief of the tribe kicked out the villagers from Town Centre and asks the villagers to go build your own house, this palace is mine.
2 Likes
In StarCraft 2, one main building provides 10 space, the starting one provides 14, and each “house” provides another 8. And I sincerely don’t understand how any strategy can provide less. You will say that AoE is not Starcraft, but the point is this:
“the game is fun, and if it’s not fan, why bother?”
Constantly building houses is clogging up the gameplay with unnecessary spammy actions that only distract us from the real gameplay and enjoyment. Personally, I would change a lot of things:
- Houses provide 8 places
- For at least some races in the Imperial Era, houses can be upgraded to manors / terems, which raises their placement to 12 slots and also increases hit points
- Town halls and castles give 15 places
- All barracks, stables and archer houses provide 15 more places (what’s the point of barracks if soldiers don’t live in them?)
- Houses are also alternate collection points for meat and fish (but not grain or wood). Mills do not collect meat and fish anymore, because it’s nonsense.
- All races can hide peasants in houses (otherwise what kind of houses are these?), but not shoot from them
- Loom is developed in houses (people do not do weaving in the town hall)
With all these changes, we would get a significant increase in the usefulness of houses and save players from spamming unnecessary, uninteresting actions.
1 Like
Oh and I forgot. There could also be a mechanic about houses which looks alike old German strategies where some mechanics are automatized. Any house which stands solo gets a button “build village around”. If pressed, this house is marked as center of new village and no-busy peasants will from time to time go nearby and build more houses and village grows.
Ofc you can still manage this thing on your own if you want. Just don’t press the new button.
It would be a small buff to multi-TC playstyles (effectively save 25 wood per TC and reducing the amount of space needed for houses). Also would be beneficial to some rms scripts - sometimes a random maps script will include a starting house/hut because players start with extra villagers. With extra pop space from the TC, rms scripters will have the option of adding a few additional starting units without needing to either pop-cap players or including a building that provides additional pop space.
I suspect players would often build houses anyways (but may build 3 instead of 2 - something Spanish can do currently) or have their starting vils chop straggler trees while waiting for their sheep to arrive under the TC. The old starts would still be quite effective, but might not be optimal.
Ladder players like the more technical start of the Build Orders with the starting houses and the boar luring, otherwise the “empire wars” mod would be way more popular than it is now.
Non-Ladder players can use mods. Sadly the Genie is a little complex to use, but if a part of the non ladder community needs specific changes, there will always be someone to do a mod as suggested.
I personally didnt get any problem understanding that we must build at least one house at the start of the game, I just got housed in my first few times, but it never really annoyed me as I saw it more as discovering the game. I didnt even understand how important it is to constantly produce villagers anyways.
Do we think the Mayans deserve a buff?
The Mayans, and multiple TC starts are basically the two things to consider for whether or not a 10-pop tc is a good idea.
Surely there are players who wanna play technically or feel the first house isn’t hard. That’s one of the point whether 10 pop TC should be added or not be. We can play it with a mod today.
Mayans are good in high elo ranked and not good in low elo according to aoestats. Mayans buff may help low elo players but also may cause Mayans’ storm in high elo and a tournament.
