Ideas to improve on, better than AOE4? :)

[JPluess]

Hi there. I just had my thoughts about AOE. There are some things that I find worthy of improvement.

Improvements

All improvement: going from stone age to the next, or unit improvements happen immediately after the progress reaches 100%. That feels unreal. Would be nice to have a more gradual change over the research time.

On Buildings Once we go from epoch 1 to 2 let there be instant work on the houses and buildings, randomly selected. Let’s say it needs 10 civilians that work on each building and the city gets reworked like in the real world. Houses are renovated every 20 to 30 years. No city renovates all buildings at the same time. Once a building is updated the developments from the new age become available for this building. That means even the epoch has not fully upgraded there can be a mill that is already in age 3 while the rest is in age 2. Add a Priority mode: infrastructure mode or defense mode military … Once an improvement is started to be researched it is being applied by the town maintenance workers. Houses tend to wear down. Random defects and issues add more drama to gameplay. Fixed by new Unit Town worker

Every building has passive units walking around and add to a more realistic impression. Those units are not counted in the max unit. Nor can a user give them command.

On Units Units need to be around the building to get upgraded. or a battlewagon or battle tent. Newly produced units get the improvement automatically added.

New Unit, Town worker

I think town worker would be a realistic thing. They are responsible for upgrading and keeping the city nice. Pls add a master button fix city. Fix defense so all respective buildings are kept well and fixed. This will keep the town maintenance works busy. Maybe each town center can have a max 5 maintenance worker. This would give the 3 centers more meaning. Distributing centers more wisely as workers tend to flock around center. I think they need to be kept in an automatic work radius called line of site and protection. Town Centers, Towers, Castles… the workers only stay inside those ranges to work there safely automatically. Outside range they need to be sent by hand, and they return to nearest town center to get new work. Equipped with hammers they can fight like civilians.

War

When a building is being attacked the production rate is slowed down. Be it units, food or any other. This way keeping buildings nice has an advantage in war.

Strategy.

It is reasonable that arrow units can completely destroy a tent but a Fort? I don’t think. An archer with fire arrows can burn a curtain but stones don’t burn. To completely destroy a building of stone, artillery or another infantry must be used. A tent can suffer 100% damage by archers but once it becomes a stone house maybe max 30% damage can be dealt, while the rest must be done with other units. A fort can maybe suffer 15% damage by archers A mill can burn easily so archers can create 100% damage on wooden buildings. In later epochs once with stone and wood archers can create less damage.This means an army needs to be mixed. And gives a more realistic gameplay

[mandosrex]

I'll consider it.

[JPluess]

Great.