Actually this does not seem normal to me. Gold is virtually infinite but the cheaper units require wood. And sometimes you need trash units like archers against lightly armored oppopnents like for example russians.
On the other hand, reality and historic accuracy wise wood was abundant in ancient and old times respect to gold.
Yeah I definitely find wood scarcity to be an issue in the late game. Although I just veto the maps that only have a few clusters of forests anyway.
In team games cavalry is too meta to ever stop building spears so you need a huge supply of wood available. Plus a lack of decent forests makes walling up harder as well.
the trees could provide more wood. there was a official mod for it, but it wońt work right.
imo trees should be nearly doubled in woodamount for standard
Yeah wood per tree could be increased. A quick fix which won’t disturb any other mechanics.
Any increase in the total wood provide per tree would greatly impact the pace of the game.
Example let’s just say we increase each tree by 50? That’s already an straggler tree’s worth of wood added around your TC. You could now cut all the wood need for a 2nd TC WITHOUT building a lumber camp.
(Currently there is 450w around your tc but you need 50 for a house and 50 for a lumber camp and 400 for tc. Even if you’re french this isnt enough wood for all 3 things).
This would increase th pace of hybrid maps. Drush rushes etc etc. Mine you this is just 50 extra wood per tree??? Imagine they go extreme and double the amount from 150 to 300???
Nvm this is a good idea for a special map design!!!
Well if you cut the whole forest of you country, you have to buy wood by trading with other countries.
I don’t find it unrealistic.
They could increase wood but wouldn’t change the problem would just make the game longer.
While there are maps where wood becomes an issue instead of gold (Prairie, to an extent altai for example), they are pretty uncommon. Some maps will have safe trade, but that is a fairly large upfront investment and many maps dont’ have safe trade.
Also late game armies are usually extremely light on wood excluding a few siege. Knights, MAA and xbows all cost 0 wood.
Actually apart from wood, there is another thing that annoys me, which is endless supply of gold via trade.
anyway. The mechanics of the game is quite different from aoe2.
Actually, the units made up with wood are not trash units anymore. They are even more rare.
In multiplayer, a player can exploit a military or economic weakness and beat the enemy but for example in single player, game becames a stalemate often cuz noone is short of any resources except wood. (except you are a very good player, keen on multitasking and can beat AI that is medium, hard etc.)
So, right now, single player is quite boring. In aoe2, resources were limited and so the game had to come to an end.
Yes, it’s ironic how wood makes for trash… unless you run out of trees, at which point wood is more valuable than gold.
It could be said that matches are not intended to be that long (even though you have maps that feature scarcity of wood) or that the game is not designed to be balanced in the same way at that stage. That could be relevant but I can’t answer, only the AoE4 game designers can.
AoE3 had the same problem, basically, you have a way to get infinite food and gold but a much more limited one for wood. In this game the only standard way is trade but differently from AoE2 market prices reset over time. A funny thing is the lack of systems to generate infinite wood. There never was one in the series, even AoE3 didn’t have a specilized building for that (Factories aren’t specilized). Imagine having tree planting in the game, that would be a first… Pay a few gold, maybe some food, wait a few minutes and get a normal tree you can then cut down. That could keep the balance sort of the same.
It should be noted that “trash unit” is much more of a AoE2 concept than others, because “trash” is a different kind of cheap that depends on resources global availability, accessibility and also gather rates, which are different here than AoE2. We have less wood but Farms don’t need to be reseeded, anyway food is infinite and gold too, as long as there’s a neutral trading post.
I don’t know how you guys are playing, but i run out of gold much more often than i run out of wood.
In 90% of games i play if i run out of resources it will be gold.
Are you just booming without attacking each other? And not trying to deny trade at all?
Just trying to understand.
That actually never happened to me unless when I was testing some things with the AI… 
But theoretically that could happen.