Modding the game and reworking units and prices made me think about the actual role of wood in the game
By taking a quick look, one can figure out wood is a limiting resource. The slowest gathering resource is used to create building and research upgrades. In other words, its a resource that allows the player to transform other resources in value.
However, wood is also used for units. European use them to produce artilery (thats cool) but also archaic units for some reason. Other civilizations use wood to create a variety of units: just the hadenosaunee use it to train their musketeer and hussar equivalents instead of coin. Native american civs upgrades increase the gather rate of wood in 20% each time, meaning they have access to a extra 10% gathering speed than other civs.
In contrast, other games use the limiting resources to produce high value units, to achieve what cannot be achieved by just spamming more of the same units or increasing their value. This is the case of fuel and vehicles in company of heroes.
I figure this is part of the baggages that comes from AoE3 being a transitional game between the old a new RTS paradigms
Just for curiosity sake, I’m going to change the archaic units wood costs for coin and see were it leads me.
What do you think will happen? What do think its the actual role of wood in AoE3?
The role of the wood is being annoying
Why else would you make a resource both slow to gather and extremely necessary for 70~90% of stuff in the game?
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I think the design of Wood is broken.
I’m pretty sure that early in development Coin ( maybe still called Gold) was supposed to be a rare resource in the late game like it used to be in AoE1/2/AoM. Why else would the weakest units that don’t have any Industrial and Imperial Age upgrades cost Wood instead of Coin?
Now those units are effectively more expensive. They don’t serve the purpose of trash units at all despite being clearly designed for that.
Wood had a faster collection rate then Food and Gold in AoE1/2 but in AoE3 it’s the opposite.
Maybe to make buildings more valuable because there is no Stone anymore?
I have no idea.
It’s one of the main flaws of AoE3 in my opinion but nothing that can be fixed anymore. There are civilisations build around the system how it currently is (Dutch Banks for example).
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Unlike in AOE2, in AOE3 they are not called trash units, they are called archaic units for a reason.
Trash units, meaning units that can be trained without restraint when resources are flooded.
Archaic units, meaning units that will gradually lose their advantages and withdraw from the battlefield as the game progresses.
They are clearly the latter and not the former. Such a design fits their purpose.
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I’m pretty sure that is something that changed during the development.
Maybe the developers didn’t like that games ended with everyone spamming crossbows in Imperial Age.
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It is to illustrate that despite advances in other technologies for gathering food and gaining wealth (gold), wood has stayed pretty much the same until late industrial age where advanced ways of cutting down faster were invented. It’s actually historical accuracy.
Mines are more localizated around fixed points, while wood usually is more abundant closer to the base.
While wood is slower to get, the transition from mines to estates puts you in a more slower pace (if you have wood techs) and need a lot of investment (for long games). So I would say that wood is safer, and that why is used on archaic/basic units. But just my take, IMHO.
Early aggression units cost wood so players that choose to rush using wood-cost units have to pay the price of not being able to collect coin as effectively to make it to age 3 as fast as their opponent.
ADD: Wood cost units are generally quite strong in age 2, when rushing happens. Civs that want to use heavy aggression in this age generally need to focus on gathering wood instead of coin - the civs that have strong age 2’s, for example, are the civs that have early aggression units that don’t cost wood.
This is civs like the Lakota, whose Axe Rider is an effective harass + raid unit that doesn’t force the Lakota into gathering wood. Additionally, since the Lakota don’t need to build houses and their early rush units don’t have to cost wood, they can effectively make it to Age 3 on the Chief’s shipment of wood from aging up alone.
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i dont think the original devs intended us all to just straight up gather 800f age and ship wood tbh. i think the reason there’s like, tons of wood rate cards age 1 seems to be the intended design. you’d chop a lot age 1 and take tps, build outposts, houses, get market techs like in other age games. Just generally have like 25 vills when aging. I think hardwoods and sawmills were intended to be used most games. Unfortunately, as we all know, they had absolutely zero clue what the meta would do. For reference, see the original civ guide describing ottoman as a turtle civ with no rushing ability
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That’s interesting; do you know where I can find that guide?
feel free to cringe as long as you need to
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Early aggression units cost wood so players that choose to rush using wood-cost units have to pay the price of not being able to collect coin as effectively to make it to age 3 as fast as their opponent.
ADD: Wood cost units are generally quite strong in age 2, when rushing happens. Civs that want to use heavy aggression in this age generally need to focus on gathering wood instead of coin - the civs that have strong age 2’s, for example, are the civs that have early aggression units that don’t cost wood.
This is civs like the Lakota, whose Axe Rider is an effective harass + raid unit that doesn’t force the Lakota into gathering wood. Additionally, since the Lakota don’t need to build houses and their early rush units don’t have to cost wood, they can effectively make it to Age 3 on the Chief’s shipment of wood from aging up alone.
Super solid argument.
I might add the relative high costs of wood allows the unit to cost less food.
For example: Xbows and pikes cost 40/40
40 food = 47 villager seconds
40 wood = 80 villager seconds
Total = 127 villager seconds
While musketeers cost
75 = 89 villager seconds
25 = 42 villager seconds
Total = 131 villager seconds
As you point out, wood costs also work as a handicap and the meta ends up favoring coin cost rush units
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Build buildings and ships and little else… in the colonial period (and even less in more modern times) it is not that wood served much…
In this game, wood has changed its role significantly. While there are fewer buildings needed, each individual building tends to cost more wood. For example, dropoff buildings are not required, while Houses have double capacity, but now cost 100 wood instead of the 25 wood in Age of Empires II. This is an equivalent to 10 wood per population (instead of 5 in the previous installment). Additionally, the rate of wood collection starts off slower to obtain than even coin and remains this way prior to Circular Saw.[1] Because of this, it is common to avoid chopping much wood unless necessary, and especially prior to the Fortress Age. The usual way to do this is to send wood crates, which provide enough for early military buildings or the first Town Center.
There are several other specific cases that change from their Age of Empires II equivalent uses:
- With respect to food, it has reduced prominence, due to the abundance of huntable animals delaying the requirement for Farms. Mills are generally produced late in the game if at all necessary and a one-time cost producing infinite food over time without requiring more input of wood.
- Wood is very heavily used for unit upgrades along with coin, unlike in Age of Empires II, where most unit upgrades cost food and gold. For example Royal Guard upgrades cost 1,000 wood. Wood is still required for archaic units and archers, cannon/siege, and naval units, although the number of different types of these units is fewer overall and most compositions focus on food/coin.
- Wood partially takes on the role of stone in producing defensive buildings and walls, including the Town Center which costs 600 wood, over double its equivalent in Age of Empires II.
Good point… That’s true…
Of course, I wouldn’t have said it better…
There is also something to be said that aoe 3 was developed after AOM which also had no trash units, where a fundamental change happened as which which is late game infinite gold.
In aoe 2 this was only possible in team games while in aom & aoe 3 infinite gold (and also infnite food on farms) became a thing which means that a new resource kinda had to take its place as the restricting resource and while in aom this only became the case in like the very very lategame (which almost never occurs) in aoe 3 that design became realised
And like dansil say, the devs may not have intended how the game played out since most aoe games before have had pretty slow age 1 and with buildings having massive hp once constructed and taking extra damage while building, its clear that it was thought on some level that it would be more turtlely, maybe like how aoe 2 kinda plays out with wall in fast castle, so to prevent that wood has to be somewhat restricting
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Of course, I wouldn’t have said it better…
Sure, that’s true… everything has a why in the game…
Of course, I mean all the post-aom aoe were designed that way…