Auto Farm Placement and AoE2’s Autofication 

Me, an Age of Kings player, who still has to manual rebuild every farm when it expires and has PTSD about the maracas sound effect when they expire.

The real issue is that the villagers only know how to build square farms.

I feel like the most important question about this has, surprisingly, not been adressed. Does it place perfect square farms around the Pole's Folwark?

T90 farm no longer meme again 😢

And for the next video: Top 5 civs for automatically filling a map with farms. Will it be the wood bonuses that lead the way? Will it be the farm discounts? The extra farm duration to avoid losing progress due to replanting, or will improved trade rates be the real sleeper pick for converting farm food back into wood for even more farms?

I think many of these autofication functions is implemented for XBox in mind.

I swear the "hey guys, spirit of the law here" is so ingrained in my brain I'm always looking forward to it

I think they should have limited autoscout to one at a time, but still made it not dependant on whether it is the starting scout. It was always annoying to have a special high value scout in the mix that is more painful to lose, and I'm glad that is no longer the case. I have often felt that no autoscout would be better than an autoscout you can permanently lose.

"Automicro, automacro, autobild, auto auto everything" - MBL

I will always say no to a 'Seek and Destroy' button, as you said, having to manage to micro the enemies vills down, and macro back at your own base is the core gameplay loop, if you automate either part, that makes the other just that much easier to focus on.

A notable weakness of auto-scout that should be addressed is that scouts will only scout unexplored areas of the map, not areas that have been previously explored and just have fog of war. In a normal 1v1 game, most of the map is explored by late castle age except maybe the corners simply from players looking for relics and the enemy base. Thus a late game group of hussars on auto scout will do very little to actually affect how the game plays out unless the other player's secret base happens to be in an unexplored area as opposed to an already explored area that just has fog of war on it. This change has more utility on nomad starts since now your scouts that you build can auto-scout on a map that is much less explored. This could be especially impactful for those large 4v4 land nomad games where one player is far enough away to go undiscovered and gets a free boom

I smell some games where you can flex on your opponent by filling the whole map with farms lol

In Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, you could basically automate everything and become a glorified "Next Turn" pusher, as your cities automatically found new cities, improve said cities, pump out army which then automatically sought and conquered the enemy. I think that might be on the "a bit too much" scale of automation.

6:45 The Automans, am I right? Aaayyyyyyyy

Ottomans in AoE3 produce settlers (yoruks) without food cost, but at a very slow rate, so it's still a little different from autocueing villagers in AoE2

T90's ELO is gonna increase by about 100 points, calling it now

Auto queue for production was not in base AoM, it was added with The Titans expansion.

Automatic farm placement, although still not optimal, is perfectly okay. It's an incredibly minor task so it's not big deal. (Proper) Attack-Move can be easily added into the game, plus it technically already exists in the form of Patrol. When it comes to automatic scouting, one has to keep in mind what sets AoE from other RTS (modern or not): the maps are randomized. In 1v1 Starcraft 2 maps, you already know where the opponent spawns, so you just right-click to a single point and you already find them. You also know where the resource nodes are, where major map nodes are, where the roads to the different points are... where as in AoE2, the opponent's spawn locations, the resources, the roadblocks... are all random (save for the preset maps), so scouting is a beast of a different color.

Old player (20+ years) here: the "auto" feature users will miss out on the struggles of strategising on quickly herding villagers to farm placement in the midst of quickly launching or averting an offensive within the wee minutes of a deathmatch-like game. Also tactically placed farms, just like houses, can act as distractions for the enemy as while they're busy with them (unless micromanaged), you can quickly retreat into the fog of war. I'm old school and appreciate that every seemingly manual-mundane aspect of AoE2 has it's merits in exercising strategy. As a dominantly Briton player, relying on Warwolf, I hated when auto-Trebuchet pack-redeployment couldn't be disabled. For these reasons I still go back and play the HD version.

That list of "innovations" is really cool. Think I'd call it quality of life improvements but makes sense. Also...we can rotate gates now? Hurray!

You are the best Age of Empires content creator. Not even close.

Nice! SotL new vid right on my birthday! Thank you so much, @Spirit of the Law!

I have nothing against the idea of improving how quickly farms are placed, but I don't think this is the best way to do it. I would much prefer to be able to "draw" a big square area on the ground and have selected vills build as many farms as possible given the space and available resources. Kinda like when you place a wall but extending as an area rather than a line. I know the engine can handle it because I've noticed one can "draw" an area like this in the map editor, for example for triggers. Then again I would also like a wall like mechanic for house walling, so maybe it's just me being obsessed with this method.

0:50 the thing that is kinda wrong about this comparison is, that you can fit way more farms together, way more place efficient with the new feature.

Attention is a resource. Resources induce tradoffs. Units/buildings/strategies have different attention costs. Eg, mangonel have a higher attention cost than knights. QOL doesn't just make the game easier, it affects the game balance because changes the attention cost of units/buildings/strategies. The problem with all this messing around is keeping balance. Auto farm placement and auto reseed are both buffs to cavalry civs. Unit regrouping is also a buff to cavalry civs. Units freezing is a nerf to mele. QOL features affect balance. Bugs affect game balance. I honestly feel like the biggest balance changes in the last while haven't been changes to units they've been changes to mechanics. I'm not against this sort of QOL addition. I just wish they would put their time into fixing bugs first. And I worry they might not always think through how QOL affects balance and the viability of different strategies.

As someone who just has generally low reaction times for literally everything, I love the automation.

I don't know how I feel about this. It's a nice qol feature, but macro is an RTS skill to be developed same as micro. Just because NA historically under performs at macro I don't think the solution is automation. I know it's only a couple small things right now, but it's a step in the wrong direction.

While a lot of current auto-fications are fine I am more concerned about the fact that the game is getting faster and faster by the expansion or even patch at this point. The devs seem to buff things lagging behind more than toning down things and all of this moves in the direction of Starcraft with more and more emphasis on micro rather than Macro/planning. While I think the game needs to evolve to stay relevant and that it is a long way away from being medival Starcraft I can't help but feel that it is slowly losing what made it so interesting for me to play it over "faster" RTS games. I'm not saying it is doomed or even close to being doomed but I still think we need to fix fundamental problems still in the game 25 years later (seriously, pathing still being this much of an issue) before we make more civs play like each other and in general gentrifying the game. Edited some of my awful grammar and spelling.

Retro vibes! Who else does remember all the lumberjacks waiting next to a just built lumber camp? 😅

Just throwing ideas guys, what would you think of having unlimited auto-scout but only for "scouts" (scout cavalry, camel scout, eagle scout). Once you upgrade them to their next "version", they lose such ability? Btw, nice video SoTL, as always.

Wow I didn’t know about automated queues in AoM

I personally am all for features like this, for the more casual players like myself, I've been playing it for 20 years since I was super young and just never really got that good, but always enjoyed it. I know most people I play with say the same thing here and that these features help us and whether we find it easier or more enjoyable doesn't effect the next player at all so it's none of their business. However for the players who really don't like these auto features, you should have a menu that lets you individually turn off things like auto farm reseed, auto farm placement, auto scout, unit objective queues and things like that. The farm reseed made sense since there has been the reseed queue since Conquerors in 2000, and it was very bad, as it used the wood for the reseed queue before the farm was made, and eventually ran out before it needed more queued up. Auto scout I see a welcome feature for people like me who mostly play with AI, because they could execute tasks a lot quicker and with greater efficiency than any human, having many units scouting while telling their units to do this and that all at once, it always felt like I was at a disadvantage, auto scout mitigates that. There's also the point that if you still found yourself beating the AI, there was 3 difficulties and if you beat the campaigns on Hard you're just really bloody good at the game, but the easy difficulty can be too much for some people. I see stuff like this as not just quality of life but also accessibility. People shouldn't be elitist about this kind of thing.

Great video Spirit

Oh my god, I literally laughed out loud at “The Automans”; that’s amazing hahahah

My pet peeve about AoE2 farms are that the fields are larger than the mill, unlike in AoE4. Can't get a clean grid.

I'm new and sucked at converting wood to food so this is nice

There's no reason to add seek and destroy. Most players resign when it gets to that point and we always have Spies for the ones who don't. I don't mind this auto-farm feature. Seems like it'll only help new players get into the game (if perhaps by developing bad game habits, like ringing the town bell.)

i honestly rly like those changes, it's a great way to improve/remove annoying parts of micro and make things more efficient without costing a lot of time, while still being flawed enough that a more experienced player would still rather do things manually in order to make things even more efficient, meanwhile people on lower elo will have more time to focus on more important things than placing farms on the perfect spots (and i assume that building perfect farms on hills should be much easier and quicker now) meanwhile, i think ur comparison of the ottomans in there doesn't fit at all as an auto queue, at first sign it might seem like it but it's a whole gimmick of their civ that imo really cripples their early game unless u're able to build docks to compensate. the way it works is that villagers are made automatically and for free, but in exchange it takes CENTURIES to make a single one, and it has a cap. u can do some research in the mosque iirc that both increases the speed production and villager cap, but it feels like ur tc only starts to make vills as fast as normal ones when u're at the 4th age. also iirc u can't tell the tc to stop producing at a certain point if u need to, so like u need free pop space to make a better army? well screw u, have another vil!

In some way this just shifts the decision of farm placement back a step to mill placement. Where you place your mill will determine whether autofarm can place new farms efficiently or not.

Good point about late game auto scouting. I'm a low APM player with a heavy focus on secret bases around the map. So limiting autoscout to Dark Age and Feudal would be advantageous to my playstyle. It's a bit of a concern (already in Castle Age). Could be like cheap "spies" maybe? Or maybe streamlines the gameplay, because one is cautious about doing something out of the box, that needs to be a surprise?

Well, this also sets a point for a video about auto-everything history in the game since AoK when villagers couldn't even mine gold right after finishing the mining camp. Also how some context with the QoL changes such as queuing farms (which was HUGE back then) were even improved/replaced by auto-seeding

Damn first time I've seen aoe4 game play in a long time. So jarring.

Pro tip better than clicking auto scout: select a scout, hold in shift and click on the unexplored places on the minimap, eks from left to right.

I haven't played the game for years but I like your videos

1.auto reseed 2. auto scout 3. auto place 4. ??? 5. 2 AI play for us and we just give it directions like 'go for scout rush' 6. ??? 7. we play, the ai tells us how

Getting units inside transport ships is also automatized now. You only need to have several transport ships around a group of land units and ask them to get on a transport ship. They will all automatically seek out any transport with any slot available. I personally find it annoying, because sometimes you may want to put a specific group of units inside a specific transport, but it depends on each player

The only present automation feature that I personally find not right, on a theoretical level, is auto scouting. Scouting is a highly strategic activity and players scout differently depending on their objectives or skills. Having it automated removes this layer of complexity and player expression, at least for lower level players who will not scout manually because they don't have the macro skills for it.

I think some aspects of the game can be automated just fine, like auto reseed, this type of farm placement, etc. But I do see some getting dangerously close to broken level that even as a pleb I can see the impact like dropping resource hotkey or group garrison hotkey. And "autofication" is a tricky thing to add because if it's perfect then the skill ceiling just drops but if it's just ok then players just rely on these crutches and not improving their game.

I think for an old game like aoe there's definitely a preservation value for keeping an older version that stays as close to the original release as possible, only adding in expansions and the occasional software patch to ensure compatibility with newer hardware. But atleast with steam there's a simple solution to that since games can offer multiple version and easily allow the player to switch between them as desired.

As always, great vid! Can auto farming be toggled on/off similar to auto scout? Or are we stuck with it always on

As someone who does have good micro (I used to be a highlevel Rise of Nations player and I still play a lot of Hardcore mode on micro-intensive ARPG's like Grim Dawn), I welcome this sort of what I call "distraction micro" going away (but then again, Rise of Nations player, so I'm used to automation and micro only being for battles or when you want to edge out some extra efficiency). Farm placement or scouting shouldn't be what decides skilled play. There should still be situations where micro shines though, as it is part of what makes an RTS an RTS. At the top level of strategy games, this kind off micro isn't what decides games anyway, everyone has it as muscle-memory and strategic (or more accurately operations level), macro-level decisions become the dominant factor. I mean just look at Daut, his micro isn't the best, but his game knowledge and macro skill is widely considered one of, if not the best in AoE2. My red line is combat automation though, if someone figured out how to automicro archer blobs or dodging projectiles (which some Starcraft AI's can do) I'd hate that.

The problem with automating the economy side of the game too much, is that managing both your military and economy is a core part of Age of Empires' identity. There's other RTS games, like Company of Heroes, where you don't really need to manage economy at all beyond capturing points for resources, and most of your attention is focused on combat. Map control, unit abilities, and countering the enemy's tactics become key rather then economic efficiency. On the flipside, you got games that are mostly economy with only a little combat mixed in. A recent example is Manor Lords, which is still in early access, but is mostly a medieval village simulator with heavy focus on the economy, while occasionally having to rally the militia to deal with bandits. Age of Empires has always straddled the line between these two extremes, so if you automate the game too much, the balance shifts more towards the combat focus side of things.

things that aoe2 already automates/simplifies that no one complains about because they are "quality of life" (automation/simplification under a different name) :) unit queues tech queues gather points waypoints shift queue control groups hotkeys vil resource drop off after building a building vil targeting the corresponding resource of the building you just made (lumber camp, etc) (which was not the case in AoK i might add!) vil targeting of new instance of resource after exhausting the previous one vils drop off resources at all without having to be told manually each time fishing boat fish retargeting farm queue idle vil button/icon (huge) DE tells how many vils are on a resource units auto target units speed up a tiny bit to catch up to their formation, saving you needing to micro them individually sound alerts (gives you information you wouldn't have if you weren't paying attention) remembers when you see things in the fog of war would it make the game more challenging to remove any or all of these things? most definitely. should they? it is all relative. ultimately people are saying their preference, which is as subjective as it gets. (side note this whole nonsense also applies to the queen autocast spawn larve ""debate"" in SC2 as well. "autocasting removes skill"? why not make it so the hatchery doesn't auto-spawn larva? would it add skill to make it so you have to micro every drone back to drop off minerals manually? would those make it take more skill to play the game too? it is all arbitrary ultimately.)

Me as a Teuton loyalist that have to put like 150 farms per game in the map have liked so much this, its so easy to play massing farms now and it give me more time to think and plan the game instead of just outspam farms in the entire territory like a madman

Auto scout should be limited to usable by only one scout at a time. I don’t like that if you lose your initial one, its over, but i also dont like the idea of 20 hussars on autoscout at once.

The auto scout at 7:49 to 8:14 looks very evenly radially distributed and efficient. Whereas the previous one at 7:18 to 7:38 seems to ignore a huge chunk of the map to the northern west. I wonder whether at the time of calculating the scouting direction the steppe lancers were included even though they would later refuse to follow that order.

I'm in the 800's and don't like the auto scout thing past the original scout. Maybe all scout units in feudal, but I don't like the direction. It is all about that control.

I've always been of the opinion that winning because of your strategy is way cooler and more interesting than winning because you're better at clicking repetitive tasks. I'm all for auto-scouting and even auto-villager creation though I wouldn't want an automated search & destroy command as deciding where and how to attack-move your units is more interesting and leaves room for tactical decisions.

A lot of the "autofication" might be being considered because of the game also being available on console, which sort of has a natural lesser APM ability, so these systems help to make up for that?

I liked the other changes but not this one

I think the farm placing automation is nice. Pretty much agree with everything said in this video

Inefficient placement is code for T90 farm placement. He’ll keep the dream alive.

I would say the mass auto scout is crossing the line, rather i would say that auto scout can only be active on one light cavalry at a time, making it possible to recover from loosing the initial scout!

5:18 I think that has always been a thing in aoe2, unless they changed it this time. I still remember the numerous times when I ordered 8 villagers to build 8 farms around a mill using shift-clicking but without clicking on the mill manually in the end, they all just built the farms one by one instead of spreading out when the mill is built. It happened frequently enough for me to grow the habit of adding that manual click at the end when I build farms with shift-clicking.

I always like these automations in the game having played all iterations of it, because these always touch on boring aspects of the game freeing up even more time to do the fun parts of the gameplay. Take reseeding for example, how annoying the sound cue was specially late game, and now that's not a problem anymore. The core gameplay isn't clicking on scouts to scout in the late game or even destroying the last remnats of a player who just won't quit, so changing those isn't diminishing to the actual gameplay and helps alliviate a boring part of it.

That really is one part of autofication, though one I'll not use much probably

About automated unit production being the red line: Total Annihilation and its sequels/successors have repeatable unit build queues, and I wouldn't say that line of games has less skill expression than AoE2, or similar rts games. On the other hand, automatic continuous production fits in better with a continuous economy (producing a unit costs x resources per second, rather than a lump sum op front, and resources don't run out), making it a less good fit for AoE2. Ultimately, being forced to divide your limited attention between different tasks is what the rts genre is about, but I was personally always in favor of streamlining the management tasks that do not have any meaningful decisions behind them, like the exact placement of farms. Unit production is kind of in between. It is a meaningful decision to begin, end, or change production of a unit to a different one, but if I for instance build a stables with the intention of building knights from it for the rest of the game, having to do the apm for the production cycle every 30 seconds just feels like a bother that's keeping me from more important/interesting tasks. I guess it's a matter of taste, but I'd be okay with more automation, I'm sure I will still be able to mess up my macro while microing five men-at-arms and 3 archers.

Soo there'll be an "auto-play" feature where the game plays itself.

I feel like if they do add a "search and destroy" function, it wouldn't necessarily ruin the balance of the game, simply because low level players would still suffer from a lack of map awareness. Armies sent out to just seek units would be incredibly easy to pick off with micro, since they're moving entirely on automation without player input. A skilled player would still be able to outperform a low level player using "search and destroy" simply because they have better command of their units.

Spirit of the la hire!!

For now it feels ok, since anyways requires manual control for competitive play in both farming and scouting. At the same time makes the life a bit easier at late stages of game when such micro management doesn't make much sense, rather helping to save time for more important things.

First played AOE 2 ages ago and recently started playing the campaigns in the definitive edition. Kinda surprised that so many qol features I took for granted in RTS games like Rise of Nations and Age of Mythology (which I am more familiar with) weren't in the original AOE2 and are getting added now (with a bunch still missing)

First of all, im a very casual player, meaning campaign/PVE only. As for my opinion i would agree, doesnt seam as bad as it sounds since you still need to click it. Yeah its a bit faster but nothing more than that. Like auto-re-seeding. I think its more about the fear of what they will do in the future? I wouldn't want too much automation since it would affect pro play, but some quality of life features that arent perfect are fine. Help casuals and lesser skilled players and pros can decide to use or not.

efficient farm places < Efficient fulwark and carvansarai placement. show me the area of affect before placing the foundation!

If I am being honest I don't like the farm change, its a sacred thing to me. In a way, the heart and soul of all campaign eco is the Zen of the farm placement mini game. This is touching that. It doesn't really add anything cool enough and it takes away some of our humanity and feels disrespectful a little bit. The auto-scout I would say doesn't do enough. I would have liked to see it be updated to not go right so much and to be semi comprehensive, truly random and usable for just seeing more; as exploration fear and anxiety is not a pleasant energy I covet and can be messed with for quality of life.

Nice!

i really wish youd have checked something like having one mill built, then building 3 layers out. and building a second mill on the edge in the "pattern proper" spot to see if that mills farms will line up properly 3 layers out again, using the autofarm, and then continue doing so until you have 4 mills and we can see whether or not it makes an nice perfectly filled in farm region taht it already struggled with.

autofarms: I just hope you cant use it as a defense against castle and tc drops. It would be a fragile endevour to block space, cause everything oneshots it and it costs a lot of ressources compaired to palisades. Yet its way quicker, gives crucial seconds and can be rebuild quickly. Against me you could argue that its not relevant at lower levels and top levels dont tend to have enough ressources spared to spam waste farms. The grand idea is fine. Minimizing the repeating tasks to reward strategy. autoscout: hmm you protect your starting scout more if its the only unit to have autoscout. Also it allows more to sneaky strategies and allowed crazy surprises and comebacks. In campaign you might trigger enemy attacks too early and breaking the scenario. The general function is something that improved my gaming experience and i might change my opinion when im used to it.

Omg first 10 seconds... craziest thing I've ever seen in my life

Getting to far away aoe2 is a challenging game and that what makes it fun

Hey law, spirit of the guys here

Is this part of an effort to level the playing field for xbox users?

I agree - I think the mass auto scout Is a lot more overboard than the farm thing -I feel like the ability to continuously scout the map thoroughly during all the chaos in the game is much more of an essential differentiating skill then your ability to place farms one or two tiles more efficiently to a mill

Does it place farms beneath stragglers? I've tried it last night and it always seemed to avoid them, leaving one line gap between farms wherever there was a straggler.

Context: I haven't played AoE2 in over 15 years and barely watch any content about it. So I am neither a veteran really or a newby. I think that something that veterans and newbs tend to forget which you bring up fortunately is that line. I don't think AoE2 would have been as popular right now if not for the continuous support it has. This is the newby perspective. However, from a veteran perspective that modern support came in because the game is just that good by itself. So a good consensus through discourse should be reached between the three groups of people: veterans/high MMR, newbies, and the developers. The veterans job is to clearly state where the line is. The job of newbies is to make the veterans compromise a little bit on that line and then developers should mediate this discussion and then bring out updates to the game that clearly do not ever get to the line. It's also important that the line is not crossed but also never reached. A bit of buffer room prevents the slipperly slope problem from actually happening. Due to us being human we cannot get too close to the line. We make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes can be catastrophic. In general, you already did a good job of outlining(pun not intended) what the goal here is. Community needs to clearly define the line in a way that is fair and enjoyable. The Devs then have to respect this line. It is unfair to expect the Devs at this point to know what the line should be because AoE2 has evolved far past the mind capacity of a single person or team. By that I mean that AoE2 is so complex and the community has invested so much time into it, that the most fair way of approaching this issue is through discourse. And of course I say let conservative people set the line and progressive people argue for making the line less strict. In this case conservative and progressive are fully intended to be neutral. Shitty Western politics that invades our daily lives not-withstanding. I think being conservative is more appropriate with AoE2 because of how old it is. We are attached to the nostalgia of the game as much as if not more than the quality of the game itself.

I think the game being somewhat clunky is part of the charm, it means that optimizing it is not easy. The farms autoplacement for example removes a step in control a player would have to learn, which is a very small step, but each small step is an achievement, it actually takes away from the experience. This is the age old problem of trying to be for everyone and ending up being for none.

Most of the newer improvements I wouldn't consider to be "autofication", they just allow the player to continue planning macro without delaying other actions. The auto farm-placement I hate because it was a (very shallow)learning curve that was satisfying once you figure out the meta to farm placement. It might have a mostly negligible impact in the game overall, but it feels wrong, very un-Age-of-Empiresy. In regards to auto scout, the Devs should only allow one scout unit to have the auto function at any one point in the game. That would solve a mass scouting rush in late game.

@SpiritOfTheLaw, thanks for the excellent video!! I still think the game was better without this feature and IMO if this feature is to stay, there should be a more direct tradeoff when is comes to manual placement vs auto placement. What do you think about the following : Autofarm feature would be a toggle at the mill next to the autoreseed. When its toggled on you do get perfect farm placement but maybe pay 5-to10 wood extra per farm placed, as opposed to when placed manually. This way someone meticulously placing ideal perfect farms has an direct eco advantage over someone using the feature. Also this way, especially in feudal age and early castle age, pros probably wouldn't use the autofarm feature in order to get a few extra units on the field. Beginners anyway float tons of wood, so they might benefit from autofarms even if they have to pay extra wood per farm. Intermediate players decide whats best for them. In late Imp pros probably might decide to turn the auto farm toggle on to spam farms for hussars (here the extra wood per farm wont affect that much and it probably will be much easier to get hussar spam going).

its easy to forget just how incredibly different Age of Mythology's town center mechanic works compared to AoE2.

All of this qol improvements or automations are good for the game.

I find those changes very nice. This is a strategy game,. Let me focus more on battles and decisions rather than APM.

", that AOE4 has had since release" Wait what? I've been placing farms manually this whole time!

there must an auto attack button for villager since thry just fleeing when get attacked even by the other villager, this button might be useful to counter early scout rush or even on the late game as desperate attack if you play as spanish

My biggest problem with the auto-scout is actually the right hand bias of them. A player on the left corner of the map is at a massive advantage in the early game.

Wow, every time I see AoE4 it looks completely incomprehensible to me

Hmmm good scouting is such an important thing, and requires forethought and skill, so I'm not keen on adding that in for all scout line.

I wish there be an option in match settings allowing to choose the level of automation. But it might be a little to demanding in terms of resources to implement. Probably. Overall, for me the best automation level is presented in Supreme Commander.

I'd be fine with autoscout being given to all units as long as it only started in Castle Age. From the get-go is probably too much.

Seems to me that a 'seek and destroy' command should require a 15-1 population ratio and be auto-disabled in Regicide, possibly also in diplo (in team games, it should count team pop against team pop, not individual pop). That way it's only useful in 'my opponent lost but won't admit it' scenarios.

Personally, I think this new auto-farm system is good if you notice that you just need more food, throwing down a mill, grabbing 8-10 villages, and placing that many new farms, then forget about it since you need to manage your current army or something else, trying to overthink it will just make you mad.