For those of us who want to play crazy Diplomacy games of Europe or something with massive armies. Or a rich 4v4 map of michi. Will we be able to edit the population cap with triggers? For example, 1000 or more pop for each player.
Since the game is made in a new engine. Will it be less laggy?
Thereās not a lot special when comparing a modern engine to an older one with your request specifically.
200 pop cap / player was chosen because 8 & 200 = 1600 entities which can move around at once is roughly a reasonable upper bound on how many units a āstandardā computer can handle.
You may say, but Rome total war etc have more units!? and this is correct, but the units in aoe games are very individual, and require much larger overhead than squad or āarmyā based games. Despite advances in the speed of processors etc, because of the way multiplayer still needs to be implemented, its difficult to get more than 1600 unique entities all pathfinding and moving around, checking ranges, auto-attacking etc. (youāll note the original value in aok was 75 per player)
From what Iāve seen, I suspect the 200 limit is not hard-coded, but variable, and that youāll be able to ābreakā the game and have a 8 player match with 1600 pop each, but it would be laggy and unplayable for most people, unless all 8 players have top-end computers, and are likely LAN.
On the plus side, 1v1 with 800 pop each is likely to be perfectly possible.
This is all assuming that the devs allow pop change, which I suspect they will, as its not difficult to code per se. However only a Dev will be able to answer if they include that feature. As far as what to expect, I would look to the population system in age2 as an example of what age4 is likely to have.
Iād say if it is possible maybe better let it be done in a custom game or mod or something equivalent. If it is an option in game it may create the entitlement of people to ābalanceā around it which is absurd or to āfix lagā on it which would be next to impossible.
These kinds of game modes are very fun and i will occasionally play a match of such if it exists, but let people expect that its gonna be laggy and messyā¦i donāt want the developers spenting time and resources to improve that instead of the real game.
I wonāt even mention the reasons why it takes all real strategy out of the game it should be obvious to anyone who has thought about itā¦ so thatās why iād prefer if it is left as āfun mode custom gameā or mod or something equivalent.