Let's Explore Mechanics, Bonuses, Battles, History and More! Join me on various expeditions as we uncover the past and present, and envision the future of Age of Empires!
actually having wells are aqeuducts in map generation could be really fun, like it is a better spot to farm, but outside of TC range, so you need to build towards it, maybe in castle age with a new TC, or risky earlier in Feudal with walls and stuff. You could just treat it like any other ressource node
I think it should not affect working villagers. Don't know if it is possible, but would be cool that just moving villagers get the bonus. I imagine this in a competitive game and I know that no roads between parts of the map will be build, just chunks surrounding lumbercamps and mines.
I’m unsure of how you code ‘defensively’ here. Cause if it’s just an aura around a building it only means building that building first before your towers etc. It reminds me of the silo train to your opponent in red alert 1 then flame tower their base. Perhaps a better rule would be not within aura of opponents buildings? Not sure if that is possible though
Im personally against bonuses that railroad the player to a specific playstyle. One of the main appeals of Age 2 is how you can use anything you have in the most unconventional ways.
To the extent that matters to anyone (and it might not), there are excellent in-universe reason to give villagers a combat bonus when fighting close to home. People tend to fight harder when defending their own communities, but also, knowing the local terrain is a significant advantage when fighting against foreigners. It also makes sense for defensive structures like towers and castles to be more effective (or cheaper, or built faster, or all three) near local economic buildings, since that would mean decreased supply lines.
The farm should have more costs too. Lets say a farm costs 150 wood instead of 60. But you can also put 3 villagers there. So instead of making 3 farms for 180 wood. You build 1 farm for 150 wood and you use 3 villagers on it. You save 30 wood like that. Pros = you get more space and save wood. Cons = Enemy can destroy your 1 single farm and you basically lose 150 wood.
Defensive buffs being used offensively goes back to the original release of AoE 2, there were Teutonic "Death Star" tc's that could outrange other ones, leading to TC drops. I'd like to see a true defensive bonus work, but for them to not be super toxic they would basically need to be so hyper specific in where they do and do not work (location, time of the game, does it benefit starting walls in arena, extra villagers in regicide/empire wars etc.),it would lead to them being really obtuse at best and just cumbersome at worst. If they don't have those restrictions on them then they have to be weak enough where frankly, now it's just an undesirable bonus. Honestly what probably holds this idea back the most is that AoE2 at a high level doesn't really have alternate victory conditions. You've gotta use your resources to make stuff that bonks the other guy, this isn't Civ where you can get a culture victory or something. It's why all these defensive bonuses were used offensively in the first place, you've gotta try and get map control/damage in or you may as well not have a bonus at all.
This issue could be solved with the ability to make roads that form connections between buildings and TCs. Buildings with connections to TCs would get bonuses like tower extra range etc
If being close to a TC is the limiting factor, people are going to TC drop into ranged vill rush :D BTW: love the force field mechanic, I remember discovering it accidentally as a kid playing with editor triggers that killed all enemy units in my base... Only to find out it also destroyed projectiles! Then I remember making it a necessary campaign objective in a custom scenario, to collect all the missing pieces of an ancient mechanical god (relics) to enable the force field at the last minute, after resisting endless waves of enemies with siege.
An interesting thought! It's on the periphery of AoE2's design philosophy imo, but has been implemented more and more, e.g. Georgians, so there should be many potential bonuses that fit but haven't been used yet.
defensive bonus used offensively were always a thing. In portuguese civ III mod you had ranged villagers in the Tupis civ, and that lead to villager rushes in dark age that were very infuriating and funny
The celts stronghold does have an healing aura which can be defensive in nature though i would like to see low priority techs like herbal medicine gives healing aura to monastery and city watch gives armor to villager near town center. Tying it up to techs will stop any douching in early game but also gives some value to those techs.
I love to see this idea getting some attention. I've discussed similar ideas on the forums. In regards to a persian douche-esque strategy, i think in dark and feudal age, if you delete your tc, then your next tc won't give off the aura. conversely if it's destroyed by enemy units, then your next tc would give off the aura. It's a bit complicated, but I think it'd produce the intended results. you can have a defensive bonus, you can't intentionally relocate your tc for a cheese strategy, but if (likely in a team game), you need to move your base after your tc is destroyed you aren't punished. A related idea, from Robby Lava's Deccanis build, you can use aura's to debuff enemy units. His idea was to have fortifications reduce enemy unit speed. You could even combine these auras. Say any tower that is within x tiles of the TC, gives off an aura where enemy units walk more slowly.
There's lots of interesting things that could be done with farms. Smaller farms that cost less wood but produce less food, e.g. 2x2 "gardens". Larger farms, as you've shown with the possibility of assigning multiple farmers. Even late-game "luxury" farms, or vinyards/orchards, which are expensive but produce food and gold. It would also be neat to see farms upon which other buildings could be built - like a wall in an emergency - without having to delete the farm first. The building would reduce the total amount of food on the farm, proportional to how much of its coverage was lost to the building, but it would still be functional.
I like the idea, but lets be honest: Thats a thing that will NEVER come to aoe2, at least for multiplayer. Its such a big change, that doesnt really have a spot in the game right now in any form discussed in this video. The frature added for the scenarios would be really cool though.
you can kinda make villagers share a farm in the scenario editor, by overlapping farms on itself, it looks like multiple villagers are working on the farm
You know what the devs should really do for proper and aesthetic farming? A click-and-drag placement. You make your farm as smol or as BEEG as you want in a single click, and it costs 5 wood per tile. ... Yes, it inevitably cheapens the cost of a 3x3 farm from 50 to 45 and that would be a whole mess of rebalance, but the AESTHETICS!!! You can freely fit farms anywhere! This same click-and-drag mechanic should be implemented for building ROADS, which I know you'll agree. Every single AoE 2 player wants to place roads in their bases.
This is actually a super awesome idea, I feel like the only way the oldhead community would accept it would be as a civ bonus, but it has applications in early game timing like you mentioned but also endgame survivability. Starting a new base in a team game could be so much faster with a little stockpile of wood if you're forced to move by enemy advancement. You'd be able to get on your feet much faster after a move, or just spread out farms across the map and play like a rat super effectively
That's a crazy bonus to have and solve a question : "why can't villagers be on the same farm?" Crazier bonus on dark and feudal age and being less strong the latter you go thanks tou handcart speed but precise number would be needed to tell how strong it is on top of wood economy at first.
I also wonder if somekind of Mangrove Forest Building can be introduced, mainly being a Wood version of Farms that cost a lot of food and can only be built like Docks so you need to build them on the coastline where at maximum 5 villagers can work on it, this is mostly for Water maps where you can have somekind of late game wood income.
It can be a good Farming Bonus for Incas but in the form of an Imperial Age Farm which can be designed after the Incan Terrace Farm but not the mountainside but rather the mountain foot version/circular one where the main building being 2x2 but the farms outside are 6x6 which is 4x the size of a regular farm but 5 villagers can work in it though the farm does cost 200 wood and might have separate reseed queue if you uses the AoC Farm Reseed queue instead of auto farm reseed.
Once again, a great idea well within the ability of the engine. I'd imagine these would cost a decent amount more than a regular farm, so could be difficult to get your initial communcal farms down. Civ bonus, one free communal farm under your starting TC?
I really like this idea. The only downside I can find is that this would ultimately reduce the space needed for your base. Finding space to expand to in the late game is important and this would somewhat damage this aspect of the game. Maybe bigger farms would help mitigate this.
Yep, it's on the list! It will need some kind of additional synergistic bonus to compete with farms though. TBH I wish I could make videos much faster. Tons of ideas, but I'm lucky if I can get 2-3 videos out in a week.
@@AdmiralWololo I feel like it has a few bonuses on its own: -It's kinda like this, where multiple vills can gather at the same time -they are smaller and can even be used as walls -There is no need to have "farms are cheaper" as a separate bonus, these are different than farms, so they could be cheaper from the get go
@@julianxamo7835 Good points, OTOH gather rate is lower & assuming they're normal bushes, they have much less food so it would be more annoying to refresh unless their is some kind of auto-replant feature that I may not be able to mod in. Still should be a fun discussion, and there isn't a "set" cost/build time, so it can be anything. But ATM I like the idea of pairing it with a longer-lasting berry bonus. It could also be a unique bush, but I'm not crazy about the idea of normal bushes having 125 and plantable bushes having 3-4x.
For realism, you'd want multiple villagers sharing multiple farms: harvest one of them, then wait until food regrows and work on a different farm during that time. Not sure how that would be mechanically implemented - maybe make a farm only harvestable if it has more than X food collected, or similar. Though then it might not be much advantageous compared to just have one villager per farm.
I would likely limit it to 2 villagers on a single farm just to not have the early game advantages get too out of hand even if on borrowed time. It is still a solid bonus since you would not have to build as many mills, getting 8 farmers going on 240 wood instead of 480 wood as well and also have more open area around your base. there could be 2 or 3 fewer vils on wood focused on food instead for a fast castle which would then go back to getting heavy plow before the second round of farms. Not tested in the slightest but taking advantage of build order: build 2 houses with starting vils 3 starting vils + 3 vil on sheep 3 vil on wood building limber camp next to trees 1 vil to get boar with 6 from sheep once under TC 1 vil to build house then mill next to berries 2 more vil on boar 4 more to berries house built by vil on wood who then goes back to wood 3 more to wood (down from a standard 4) 1 new vil with 3 vill from boar go to get deer use 6 vils from boar to build 3 farms (saving 60 wood for the moment since it often is 4 vils on 4 farms. 2 or 3 on gold advance to feudal 2 or vils to lumber 2 wood vills build market 1 vil builds blacksmith Speculative advance to castle Research Horse Collar while advancing Research heavy plow ASAP once in castle hopefully before farms expire. Just a general theory of how it might work out. I know that fast castles tend to be slightly limited by food at least in my playing so a slightly higher focus on food might pay off.
