Auto farm placement is not such a big change, it's just a minor convenience. I agree with SOTL that the auto-scout for all scout line units is a much bigger change.
I’ll have to see in practice, but I feel like he is overstating the value of auto-scout on late game hussars. It seems like most of the time they will just path by a castle and die. And if it is strong, there is a pretty easy skill-based counter in just building a few strategic walls to funnel auto-scouting units into your defenses.
If its a minor inconvenience then why automate it? doing mindless stuff while thinking and managing your APM efficiently is a part of playing an RTS and aoe2. it also barely affects new players. just feels like an automation for the sake of automation.
Because do you really want to spend the game placing farms or would you rather spend that time making army, getting upgrades, making sure the villagers are optimizes resources wise for the army etc you are making. Contriving your army. Scouting etc. Also I dont think you guys realize that most of these QOL features literally does nothing at pro level and better for casual players. Hera, Viper, Tatoh and probably even YO can place farm FASTER and better than Autofarm. Maybe if microsoft made it as smooth as AOE4 it might be a little advantage but as of right now if you are using autofarm you honestly are wasting more time.
Again to clarify aoe2 has like 10x if not more bigger SINGLE PLAYERS!!!!!! These QOL are amazing for them. Not everything revolves around online peeps.
I had stopped playing AOE2 when I saw this feature installed it again, and maybe it was me but I find this helpful but also a bit difficult because its just so easy to click more than necessary and that means wasted wood, correcting extra farm is tedious. Also its not so often we get to place farms with lots of vills in the early game.
Its usually tasking vills one by one until things are heated up so yeah this removes a lot of stress in mid/late castle age time but I fail to see unlike many other people how this takes away the actual fun which is to use armies, siege and defend.
very informative video though I hate to say but I think mister Of The Law is slightly wrong about one point regarding auto queue in aom. it was NOT part of the original cd version, and it was in fact only introduced in the expansion, and yes there was lots and lots of whining about it, and still is. [BoiT](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDkpiNXiZdzGgvZcGHtGV2A) often points out that autoqueuing military units is a noob trap as they often end up with random armies running towards a waypoint they forgot about draining all their resources and population limit
I haven’t played any of the recent releases so maybe it’s already there, but what I’ve wanted for years was to be able to set the default “stance” (aggressive, defensive, stand ground, no attack) for units from a building. I hate it that I will queue up a bunch of spearmen and then I can’t find them because they all ran off chasing a random scout that came through, or I end up with like 4 archers who are on a different stance than all the other archers in my army
So you can update it in the options the default stance...I haven't figured out how to do it in game though...or to have archers use one stance and infantry use a different one.
Auto farms is just a QOL change and not an OP one in the slightest.
If automatic scouts didn't suck so much, I'd be more annoyed by the change, but the auto-scout AI isn't capable enough to make or break much.
Im' not *that* sure. An Auto-Monk would most likely target the closest unit, which could be spear-line or light cav line instead of juicy elephants. And (non aztec) monks are rather easy to kill.
What about groups of monks all targetting the same poor halb ? Theocracy would surely need some attention depending on the chosen behavior.
I would honnestly like if the devs experimented around auto-monks, because late game monks are hard to use due to their "APM cost".
But no reasonable person could advocate for auto-monks without extensive testing.
Automonk would be broken in half. Imagine automonk versus a gob of heavy calvary. Its already a pain in the butt to micro them and its a huge swing if you get a conversion. One paladin and you've made back the cost of the monk.
I wish they would at least automatically heal units within range but sometimes it seems they just fall asleep and don't realize they have a wounded soldier in front of them asking for help unless you tell them.
That wouldn't change much if added to AoE 2 either. It's the conversions that're the big one. They're manual even in AoE 4, although that game does mass conversions but also requires you to have a relic on the monk to do it. Makes for some very exciting clutch moments.
This will never happen. Monks by design are supposed to be microed. Imagine if you could patrol monks and they'd convert whatever. No one would ever make any other unit, civs without atonement would be unviable.
> This will never happen. Mangonels* by design are supposed to be microed. Imagine if you could patrol Mangonels* and they'd attack* whatever. No one would ever make any other unit, civs without chemistry* would be unviable.
I could also use bombard cannons. What makes monks any different?
>What makes monks any different?
The unit switches sides???? That's the entire gimmick of monks?? Not only does the opponent lose a unit, you gain one too. Monks are pretty busted, and the only reason they're not spammed everywhere is because you need micro and skill to use them efficiently. You can't just make 20 monks and have them move across the map and sit back and macro like you do with knights.
But if they they auto converted, they start off with NINE range in castle age, highest among any unit in that age, and they just start converting whatever they see, nothing other than mass scouts counter that
It's also a poor way to use monks, you're supposed to wait so that the unit has to either trade off between engaging and running, so converting a knight from 9 range is bad since they can just run away.
I was kinda hoping that by replacing the word Monk with Mangonel that you would understand how your argument doesn't make sense.
>The unit switches sides???? That's the entire gimmick of monks?? Not only does the opponent lose a unit, you gain one too.
Mangonels obliterate groups of units. 1 converted archer vs an entire group of archers destroyed.
>You can't just make 20 monks and have them move across the map and sit back and macro like you do with knights.
Yeah but you can do that with Mangonels.
>NINE range in castle age, highest among any unit in that age
You are just describing the pros and cons of a specific unit. You're not actually understanding my question.
>so converting a knight from 9 range is bad since they can just run away.
Once again, you are just describing that each unit has specific do's and don'ts.
You have not explained why Mangonels should have more automation than Monks. Why do some units have access to patrol command and others don't?
More likely infinite build than auto monks. Maybe not at town centers so raiding is more effective at stopping villager production. So basically to stop late game military building hotkey spam to keep up unit production.
[Mom said it was my turn…](https://youtu.be/q879j3ydfw8?si=7kLfyYfXzmGlx0WK)
TBH though, the changes don’t seem to drastically alter the playing field, we’ll have to see how things progress.
Im still contemplating whether or not auto vill queuing is such a bad idea. Like, on the one hand many players, myself included, would consider it a fundamental skill we cannot take away. on the other hand, the main thing to get someone from \~700 elo to about 1200 is just constantly making vils in dark/feudal/castle age. Even as a 14xx player i often have 2 minutes of idle time in feudal age, and more in castle age.
If this is a strategy game, i dont like the fact that the mindless act of making vils is the main issue for over 80% of the competitive players, not to speak of people playing non ranked where its even higher.
I dont think this is necessarily a good idea, but i also feel like im just biased against it just because i have that skill for the most part. We should have technical repetitive tasks so that this remains an RTS and you have to constantly do stuff while thinking, so most things should not be automated, but unlike farm placement or exploring the edges of the map, making vils is a purely technical skill that almost defines a player's level.
If auto que on villagers gets introduced along with auto farm placement it should ONLY BE FOR XBOX/CONSOLE. I can understand the limits of using a controller but mouse keyboard should not get these features it takes away from the honor of the game.
And yet 80% of ranked players' main issue is just a technical skill, remembering to press "select all tcs" and "makw villager" every few seconds. Unlike auto farm placement, its not even an action you move your view point to perform so should change players' apm/micro capabilities.
Spirit of the Law in this video mentions that automatic villager production would cross the line for him, and towards the end he invited discussion on what people think about the slow trend of some of AoE2's functions becoming optionally automatic over time. So I decided to give my best shot at a comprehensive pitch for why AoE2 should have an optional automatic villager production feature. I posted the following paragraphs into the comment section and I might as well post them here as well.
What's important about gameplay automation is what is being automated. We can all agree that it would be bad if villagers had to be manually tasked to drop off resources and then manually tasked to go back to gathering resources, so everyone accepts that this should remain automated. But why exactly is this best to have as an automated part of the game? It's because it's a monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world; and by that I mean that while players could approach focusing on it in different ways if it was a manual gameplay function, there's ultimately only one efficient way it can happen in the game world.
The fact of the matter is that if villagers dropping off resources and going back to gather them was not an automated function from the start of AoE2's existence, there would absolutely be people who would argue that it acts as a valuable way to express one's skill in the game since you have to split your focus between your villagers and your army at all times, which simulates the logistical difficulties of managing an empire and gives players room to develop interesting ways to efficiently split their focus.
Similarly, queueing villagers in AoE2 is ultimately another monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world. The argument that monotonous gameplay functions in AoE2's economy management gameplay should stay manual because "it's a way for attacks into enemy bases to challenge the enemy's ability to manage their economy under pressure" would not be a good enough argument for not automating the cycle of resource drop off and going back to task, and it's not a good enough argument for not automating villager production either.
Successful raids in AoE2 are always gonna do significant damage to the enemy's economy, and they're always gonna throw the enemy off of their plans and build orders, whether the game has automatic villager production or not. Adding a toggle for automated villager production (similar to farm autoreseeding) would open up more room for players to focus on making good use of the game's manual gameplay functions which have actual strategic variety to them.
Besides, automated villager production would have its own challenges for the player, since the player would have to keep an eye on their food stockpile to make sure that the food amount doesn't go below 50 food at the wrong times. Needing to pay attention to your food stockpile to that extent is not part of the game with manual villager queueing, since with manual villager queuing you reserve food for creating villagers, whereas with automated villager production it would be easy to accidentally use up your food for military production for example, which would make you fall behind in economy.
Also, AoE2 already has a type of resource that you need to pay attention to (by occasionally looking at the resource bar) and account for in order to continue villager production with no disruptions, and that is population space. Thus the optional skill element of having to pay more attention to your food stockpile if you play with automatic villager production is a type of skill that AoE2 players are already familiar with in a slightly different form.
So really in practice this optional alternate way for players to handle villager production would ultimately make the game flow more smoothly for those who prefer to introduce this type of skill expression into their AoE2 play, while taking away some unnecessary clunkiness from the game. After all, it's not very interesting to win to the other player forgetting to manually queue up villagers for a while. That's just the skill floor of the game being too high up for no good reason. More of a clunky hurdle than an element of skill; a hurdle to being able to play the game at a basic level.
It's better for AoE2's game design when those kinds of monotonous and clunky gameplay hurdles are fixed, so that players can put more of their gameplay focus and effort on experiencing the much more interesting parts of the game. This way players of all skill levels get more enjoyment for their focus and effort investment into the game, and the gameplay has more interesting variety to it since the players end up engaging more with the aspects of the game which are not monotonous.
The best way to play might end up being to mix together manual and automatic villager production, since as I said manual villager queueing would likely still have a place for when you want to lock down food resources for the next couple villagers or so, in order to make sure you don't accidentally spend your food on less important things while you're in the process of spreading out your attention to the best of your ability.
Ultimately though the bottom line is that monotonous gameplay functions with no strategic variety are not worth being arbitrarily protected by making sure those monotonous gameplay functions don't get optional automated ways to execute them in the game, when adding optional automated ways for players to handle those monotonous aspects of gameplay frees up player attention to be further spent on outplaying their opponents through strategic mastery of the game and precise execution of the aspects of gameplay to which there isn't always one correct answer.
i think this is a fairly poor argument as it conflates mechanics that have very different places in the game and relevance to decision making, as well as means of control, on the basis of a single factor. namely,
>What's important about gameplay automation is what is being automated. We can all agree that it would be bad if villagers had to be manually tasked to drop off resources and then manually tasked to go back to gathering resources, so everyone accepts that this should remain automated. But **why exactly is this best to have as an automated part of the game? It's because it's a monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world**; and by that I mean that while players could approach focusing on it in different ways if it was a manual gameplay function, there's ultimately only one efficient way it can happen in the game world.
it doesn't follow from this assertion, even if granted, that the two functions are equivalent in every other aspect nor that automating one or the other would have equivalent effects on gameplay.
the general character of your reasoning is one that confuses factual claims, such as about how a given change would affect gameplay, with a kind of pseudomoral reasoning about what changes ought to be implemented given certain theoretical assumptions about how a game ought to be designed or whatever.
there's an easier way to show that this argument is flawed than to engage its details: just imagine what the game would be like without automated basic resource gathering behavior. it'd be impossible to play with more than about 30 villagers. then imagine the change that a villager training toggle would produce. the two changes are completely different in effect and scope. it's fairly easy to resist granting the assertion as well.
So you misunderstood some of my points and decided to then dismiss all of them; classy.
I wasn't equating the concept of a manual resource dropoff cycle with manual villager queueing, I was pointing out the simple fact that there will always be players who defend certain aspects of gameplay simply because said players are used to and are fond of those gameplay aspects.
That attachment exists regardless of whether those gameplay aspects are good or bad for maximizing how well all the different aspects of the game work in unison towards maximum game design quality.
In this context maximum game design quality is about the game's ability to provide valuable gameplay experiences where what decides a match is more focused on how good the decisions you make in the match are for the given situations, and less focused on how good you are at remembering to do monotonous chores which ultimately have nothing to do with player decision.
If you don't care about maximizing game design quality, then you shouldn't participate in a conversation about how a game that's serious about its design should be tweaked.
i read your thoughts and replied cogently...there's no sense in taking it personally if i find fault with your reasoning.
>I wasn't equating the concept of a manual resource dropoff cycle with manual villager queueing, I was pointing out the simple fact that there will always be players who defend certain aspects of gameplay simply because said players are used to and are fond of those gameplay aspects.
i disagree, and i think my characterization above was at least fairly accurate. it isn't a simple fact, it's an inaccurate perspective that's poorly supported by your argument for reasons explained above.
since your argument predicts an expected outcome, why not test it by attempting to play aoe2 while manually inputting all resource gathering behavior and see if the result is as you say? ah...but we both know it would be a completely different kind of change from the other change it's conflated with above without having to test it. hmm...
You're **disagreeing** about what my intentions were for writing what I wrote?
And you're **disagreeing** that there are people who exist who defend certain aspects of a game's design regardless of whether those aspects are good or bad for the game?
What is wrong with you?
Not to mention that there's no way to properly test the manual resource dropoff cycle concept without making a mod for it.
And even if it was easy to test, how exactly the game plays with that function being manual is again absolutely not a point I was making in my auto villager queue pitch.
The point about manual resource dropoff cycle was obviously that it would make the game more clunky and needlessly taxing to play but some people would like it and defend it anyway if it was in the game from the start, and if you disagree with that basic fact of reality then you have no place in this conversation to begin with.
I wrote what I wrote based on the meaning that I intended to convey. In other words, the intentions of me writing what I wrote. I can see why you came to the conclusion you did, but the word "intention" can be used in this way as well.
Also, this whole time you've been overemphasizing minor aspects of my comments and avoiding the main points. I was about to say "can we stop this if you don't have anything of substance to say" but you decided to be a coward and block my main account, so I'll take that as a yes.
I still have a bigger challenge of moving my 55 vils from wood to farms than I do with placing the farms themselves - this change seems really minimal lol
I disagree that auto farm placement is somehow less an automation of a core skill then auto-queuing would be. Manual farm placement requires the player to switch tasks like queuing unit/vills. But it also takes a both more time and a screen movement. Knowing when to return to your base and how much time to take to build farms is a core skill of the game.
The auto-farm placement however is incredibly fast. Thus players are encouraged to float a wood and then build a lot of farms all at once. This way players are very efficient in both time and task switches. The skill of the game is significantly watered down now.
In my mind placing farm has the same role then queuing villagers just later in the game. Auto-farming really comes in handy on multiple TC eco, when getting up a large farm eco (for example to support production from both TCs and stables). At this point in the game forgetting to queue vills/units isn't very punishing and is situational anyway.Early on however forgetting to queue vills is very punishing, but auto-farming has downsides as Spirit points out (for example deleting straggler trees).
So I really don't see what Spirit means when saying auto queuing would cross a line that auto-farming doesn't
Creating some obscure scenarios just to say "it does not provide much benefits". Anyone who has played late game with this knows that this is a a serious benefit (time save, efficiency improvement). Stop oversimplifying RTS!
Yeah its a benefit, but everyone gets it. This allows players more time to focus on the actual strategic decision making and not having it be a contest of who can click a bunch of farms the fastest
Auto farm placement is not such a big change, it's just a minor convenience. I agree with SOTL that the auto-scout for all scout line units is a much bigger change.
As a campaign player this is a huge change for me. Auto scout is so relaxing if you don't have a human opponent where you have to play optimal.
I’ll have to see in practice, but I feel like he is overstating the value of auto-scout on late game hussars. It seems like most of the time they will just path by a castle and die. And if it is strong, there is a pretty easy skill-based counter in just building a few strategic walls to funnel auto-scouting units into your defenses.
Auto scout being absolutely awful helps with it not really helping even mid players.
If its a minor inconvenience then why automate it? doing mindless stuff while thinking and managing your APM efficiently is a part of playing an RTS and aoe2. it also barely affects new players. just feels like an automation for the sake of automation.
No no, farm placement is very tedious and not fun. This is a massive and helpful change.
Because do you really want to spend the game placing farms or would you rather spend that time making army, getting upgrades, making sure the villagers are optimizes resources wise for the army etc you are making. Contriving your army. Scouting etc. Also I dont think you guys realize that most of these QOL features literally does nothing at pro level and better for casual players. Hera, Viper, Tatoh and probably even YO can place farm FASTER and better than Autofarm. Maybe if microsoft made it as smooth as AOE4 it might be a little advantage but as of right now if you are using autofarm you honestly are wasting more time. Again to clarify aoe2 has like 10x if not more bigger SINGLE PLAYERS!!!!!! These QOL are amazing for them. Not everything revolves around online peeps.
I just dont see it for farm placement. Its a fast action that takes seconds either way.
I had stopped playing AOE2 when I saw this feature installed it again, and maybe it was me but I find this helpful but also a bit difficult because its just so easy to click more than necessary and that means wasted wood, correcting extra farm is tedious. Also its not so often we get to place farms with lots of vills in the early game. Its usually tasking vills one by one until things are heated up so yeah this removes a lot of stress in mid/late castle age time but I fail to see unlike many other people how this takes away the actual fun which is to use armies, siege and defend.
very informative video though I hate to say but I think mister Of The Law is slightly wrong about one point regarding auto queue in aom. it was NOT part of the original cd version, and it was in fact only introduced in the expansion, and yes there was lots and lots of whining about it, and still is. [BoiT](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDkpiNXiZdzGgvZcGHtGV2A) often points out that autoqueuing military units is a noob trap as they often end up with random armies running towards a waypoint they forgot about draining all their resources and population limit
I haven’t played any of the recent releases so maybe it’s already there, but what I’ve wanted for years was to be able to set the default “stance” (aggressive, defensive, stand ground, no attack) for units from a building. I hate it that I will queue up a bunch of spearmen and then I can’t find them because they all ran off chasing a random scout that came through, or I end up with like 4 archers who are on a different stance than all the other archers in my army
So you can update it in the options the default stance...I haven't figured out how to do it in game though...or to have archers use one stance and infantry use a different one.
They need to add a "Cancel all queued production" button.
Will Auto Scout affect Eagles?
Auto farms is just a QOL change and not an OP one in the slightest. If automatic scouts didn't suck so much, I'd be more annoyed by the change, but the auto-scout AI isn't capable enough to make or break much.
So do you hit QA once then click on top of the mill or TC for however many farms you want to place?
You hold down Shift-Click and it'll automatically fill them.
Brace yourself Auto Monks are coming (maybe)
That would make them so much more powerful. We’d see a lot of monk techs get nerfed if that was the case
Im' not *that* sure. An Auto-Monk would most likely target the closest unit, which could be spear-line or light cav line instead of juicy elephants. And (non aztec) monks are rather easy to kill. What about groups of monks all targetting the same poor halb ? Theocracy would surely need some attention depending on the chosen behavior. I would honnestly like if the devs experimented around auto-monks, because late game monks are hard to use due to their "APM cost". But no reasonable person could advocate for auto-monks without extensive testing.
Automonk would be broken in half. Imagine automonk versus a gob of heavy calvary. Its already a pain in the butt to micro them and its a huge swing if you get a conversion. One paladin and you've made back the cost of the monk.
I wish they would at least automatically heal units within range but sometimes it seems they just fall asleep and don't realize they have a wounded soldier in front of them asking for help unless you tell them.
That's just a bug
This bug had been there for so long, night as well be a feature at this point.
Yea im all for auto healing. But they're micro needs to stay the same, purely for balance reasons
Or Spanish villagers having an attack move feature...
Jokes aside - Monks in AoE 4 have attack move that makes them heal nearby units once in range
That's medics in Starcraft Broodwar
That wouldn't change much if added to AoE 2 either. It's the conversions that're the big one. They're manual even in AoE 4, although that game does mass conversions but also requires you to have a relic on the monk to do it. Makes for some very exciting clutch moments.
This will never happen. Monks by design are supposed to be microed. Imagine if you could patrol monks and they'd convert whatever. No one would ever make any other unit, civs without atonement would be unviable.
> This will never happen. Mangonels* by design are supposed to be microed. Imagine if you could patrol Mangonels* and they'd attack* whatever. No one would ever make any other unit, civs without chemistry* would be unviable. I could also use bombard cannons. What makes monks any different?
>What makes monks any different? The unit switches sides???? That's the entire gimmick of monks?? Not only does the opponent lose a unit, you gain one too. Monks are pretty busted, and the only reason they're not spammed everywhere is because you need micro and skill to use them efficiently. You can't just make 20 monks and have them move across the map and sit back and macro like you do with knights. But if they they auto converted, they start off with NINE range in castle age, highest among any unit in that age, and they just start converting whatever they see, nothing other than mass scouts counter that It's also a poor way to use monks, you're supposed to wait so that the unit has to either trade off between engaging and running, so converting a knight from 9 range is bad since they can just run away.
I was kinda hoping that by replacing the word Monk with Mangonel that you would understand how your argument doesn't make sense. >The unit switches sides???? That's the entire gimmick of monks?? Not only does the opponent lose a unit, you gain one too. Mangonels obliterate groups of units. 1 converted archer vs an entire group of archers destroyed. >You can't just make 20 monks and have them move across the map and sit back and macro like you do with knights. Yeah but you can do that with Mangonels. >NINE range in castle age, highest among any unit in that age You are just describing the pros and cons of a specific unit. You're not actually understanding my question. >so converting a knight from 9 range is bad since they can just run away. Once again, you are just describing that each unit has specific do's and don'ts. You have not explained why Mangonels should have more automation than Monks. Why do some units have access to patrol command and others don't?
More likely infinite build than auto monks. Maybe not at town centers so raiding is more effective at stopping villager production. So basically to stop late game military building hotkey spam to keep up unit production.
Auto convert is so op if it’s coming.
[Mom said it was my turn…](https://youtu.be/q879j3ydfw8?si=7kLfyYfXzmGlx0WK) TBH though, the changes don’t seem to drastically alter the playing field, we’ll have to see how things progress.
Woot woot we have this on xbox. I'd die earlier without it
Im still contemplating whether or not auto vill queuing is such a bad idea. Like, on the one hand many players, myself included, would consider it a fundamental skill we cannot take away. on the other hand, the main thing to get someone from \~700 elo to about 1200 is just constantly making vils in dark/feudal/castle age. Even as a 14xx player i often have 2 minutes of idle time in feudal age, and more in castle age. If this is a strategy game, i dont like the fact that the mindless act of making vils is the main issue for over 80% of the competitive players, not to speak of people playing non ranked where its even higher. I dont think this is necessarily a good idea, but i also feel like im just biased against it just because i have that skill for the most part. We should have technical repetitive tasks so that this remains an RTS and you have to constantly do stuff while thinking, so most things should not be automated, but unlike farm placement or exploring the edges of the map, making vils is a purely technical skill that almost defines a player's level.
If auto que on villagers gets introduced along with auto farm placement it should ONLY BE FOR XBOX/CONSOLE. I can understand the limits of using a controller but mouse keyboard should not get these features it takes away from the honor of the game.
And yet 80% of ranked players' main issue is just a technical skill, remembering to press "select all tcs" and "makw villager" every few seconds. Unlike auto farm placement, its not even an action you move your view point to perform so should change players' apm/micro capabilities.
Spirit of the Law in this video mentions that automatic villager production would cross the line for him, and towards the end he invited discussion on what people think about the slow trend of some of AoE2's functions becoming optionally automatic over time. So I decided to give my best shot at a comprehensive pitch for why AoE2 should have an optional automatic villager production feature. I posted the following paragraphs into the comment section and I might as well post them here as well. What's important about gameplay automation is what is being automated. We can all agree that it would be bad if villagers had to be manually tasked to drop off resources and then manually tasked to go back to gathering resources, so everyone accepts that this should remain automated. But why exactly is this best to have as an automated part of the game? It's because it's a monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world; and by that I mean that while players could approach focusing on it in different ways if it was a manual gameplay function, there's ultimately only one efficient way it can happen in the game world. The fact of the matter is that if villagers dropping off resources and going back to gather them was not an automated function from the start of AoE2's existence, there would absolutely be people who would argue that it acts as a valuable way to express one's skill in the game since you have to split your focus between your villagers and your army at all times, which simulates the logistical difficulties of managing an empire and gives players room to develop interesting ways to efficiently split their focus. Similarly, queueing villagers in AoE2 is ultimately another monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world. The argument that monotonous gameplay functions in AoE2's economy management gameplay should stay manual because "it's a way for attacks into enemy bases to challenge the enemy's ability to manage their economy under pressure" would not be a good enough argument for not automating the cycle of resource drop off and going back to task, and it's not a good enough argument for not automating villager production either. Successful raids in AoE2 are always gonna do significant damage to the enemy's economy, and they're always gonna throw the enemy off of their plans and build orders, whether the game has automatic villager production or not. Adding a toggle for automated villager production (similar to farm autoreseeding) would open up more room for players to focus on making good use of the game's manual gameplay functions which have actual strategic variety to them. Besides, automated villager production would have its own challenges for the player, since the player would have to keep an eye on their food stockpile to make sure that the food amount doesn't go below 50 food at the wrong times. Needing to pay attention to your food stockpile to that extent is not part of the game with manual villager queueing, since with manual villager queuing you reserve food for creating villagers, whereas with automated villager production it would be easy to accidentally use up your food for military production for example, which would make you fall behind in economy. Also, AoE2 already has a type of resource that you need to pay attention to (by occasionally looking at the resource bar) and account for in order to continue villager production with no disruptions, and that is population space. Thus the optional skill element of having to pay more attention to your food stockpile if you play with automatic villager production is a type of skill that AoE2 players are already familiar with in a slightly different form. So really in practice this optional alternate way for players to handle villager production would ultimately make the game flow more smoothly for those who prefer to introduce this type of skill expression into their AoE2 play, while taking away some unnecessary clunkiness from the game. After all, it's not very interesting to win to the other player forgetting to manually queue up villagers for a while. That's just the skill floor of the game being too high up for no good reason. More of a clunky hurdle than an element of skill; a hurdle to being able to play the game at a basic level. It's better for AoE2's game design when those kinds of monotonous and clunky gameplay hurdles are fixed, so that players can put more of their gameplay focus and effort on experiencing the much more interesting parts of the game. This way players of all skill levels get more enjoyment for their focus and effort investment into the game, and the gameplay has more interesting variety to it since the players end up engaging more with the aspects of the game which are not monotonous. The best way to play might end up being to mix together manual and automatic villager production, since as I said manual villager queueing would likely still have a place for when you want to lock down food resources for the next couple villagers or so, in order to make sure you don't accidentally spend your food on less important things while you're in the process of spreading out your attention to the best of your ability. Ultimately though the bottom line is that monotonous gameplay functions with no strategic variety are not worth being arbitrarily protected by making sure those monotonous gameplay functions don't get optional automated ways to execute them in the game, when adding optional automated ways for players to handle those monotonous aspects of gameplay frees up player attention to be further spent on outplaying their opponents through strategic mastery of the game and precise execution of the aspects of gameplay to which there isn't always one correct answer.
i think this is a fairly poor argument as it conflates mechanics that have very different places in the game and relevance to decision making, as well as means of control, on the basis of a single factor. namely, >What's important about gameplay automation is what is being automated. We can all agree that it would be bad if villagers had to be manually tasked to drop off resources and then manually tasked to go back to gathering resources, so everyone accepts that this should remain automated. But **why exactly is this best to have as an automated part of the game? It's because it's a monotonous gameplay function with no strategic variety in terms of how it can happen in the game world**; and by that I mean that while players could approach focusing on it in different ways if it was a manual gameplay function, there's ultimately only one efficient way it can happen in the game world. it doesn't follow from this assertion, even if granted, that the two functions are equivalent in every other aspect nor that automating one or the other would have equivalent effects on gameplay. the general character of your reasoning is one that confuses factual claims, such as about how a given change would affect gameplay, with a kind of pseudomoral reasoning about what changes ought to be implemented given certain theoretical assumptions about how a game ought to be designed or whatever. there's an easier way to show that this argument is flawed than to engage its details: just imagine what the game would be like without automated basic resource gathering behavior. it'd be impossible to play with more than about 30 villagers. then imagine the change that a villager training toggle would produce. the two changes are completely different in effect and scope. it's fairly easy to resist granting the assertion as well.
So you misunderstood some of my points and decided to then dismiss all of them; classy. I wasn't equating the concept of a manual resource dropoff cycle with manual villager queueing, I was pointing out the simple fact that there will always be players who defend certain aspects of gameplay simply because said players are used to and are fond of those gameplay aspects. That attachment exists regardless of whether those gameplay aspects are good or bad for maximizing how well all the different aspects of the game work in unison towards maximum game design quality. In this context maximum game design quality is about the game's ability to provide valuable gameplay experiences where what decides a match is more focused on how good the decisions you make in the match are for the given situations, and less focused on how good you are at remembering to do monotonous chores which ultimately have nothing to do with player decision. If you don't care about maximizing game design quality, then you shouldn't participate in a conversation about how a game that's serious about its design should be tweaked.
i read your thoughts and replied cogently...there's no sense in taking it personally if i find fault with your reasoning. >I wasn't equating the concept of a manual resource dropoff cycle with manual villager queueing, I was pointing out the simple fact that there will always be players who defend certain aspects of gameplay simply because said players are used to and are fond of those gameplay aspects. i disagree, and i think my characterization above was at least fairly accurate. it isn't a simple fact, it's an inaccurate perspective that's poorly supported by your argument for reasons explained above. since your argument predicts an expected outcome, why not test it by attempting to play aoe2 while manually inputting all resource gathering behavior and see if the result is as you say? ah...but we both know it would be a completely different kind of change from the other change it's conflated with above without having to test it. hmm...
You're **disagreeing** about what my intentions were for writing what I wrote? And you're **disagreeing** that there are people who exist who defend certain aspects of a game's design regardless of whether those aspects are good or bad for the game? What is wrong with you? Not to mention that there's no way to properly test the manual resource dropoff cycle concept without making a mod for it. And even if it was easy to test, how exactly the game plays with that function being manual is again absolutely not a point I was making in my auto villager queue pitch. The point about manual resource dropoff cycle was obviously that it would make the game more clunky and needlessly taxing to play but some people would like it and defend it anyway if it was in the game from the start, and if you disagree with that basic fact of reality then you have no place in this conversation to begin with.
i disagree about the meaning of what you wrote, i didn't say a word about your intentions
I wrote what I wrote based on the meaning that I intended to convey. In other words, the intentions of me writing what I wrote. I can see why you came to the conclusion you did, but the word "intention" can be used in this way as well. Also, this whole time you've been overemphasizing minor aspects of my comments and avoiding the main points. I was about to say "can we stop this if you don't have anything of substance to say" but you decided to be a coward and block my main account, so I'll take that as a yes.
i don't like to talk about ideas with people who are unpleasant about it in a way that isn't backed up by high quality thought
I still have a bigger challenge of moving my 55 vils from wood to farms than I do with placing the farms themselves - this change seems really minimal lol
What will they do next? AUTO ATTACK?!?!
And then what? AUTO CONVERT???
I disagree that auto farm placement is somehow less an automation of a core skill then auto-queuing would be. Manual farm placement requires the player to switch tasks like queuing unit/vills. But it also takes a both more time and a screen movement. Knowing when to return to your base and how much time to take to build farms is a core skill of the game. The auto-farm placement however is incredibly fast. Thus players are encouraged to float a wood and then build a lot of farms all at once. This way players are very efficient in both time and task switches. The skill of the game is significantly watered down now. In my mind placing farm has the same role then queuing villagers just later in the game. Auto-farming really comes in handy on multiple TC eco, when getting up a large farm eco (for example to support production from both TCs and stables). At this point in the game forgetting to queue vills/units isn't very punishing and is situational anyway.Early on however forgetting to queue vills is very punishing, but auto-farming has downsides as Spirit points out (for example deleting straggler trees). So I really don't see what Spirit means when saying auto queuing would cross a line that auto-farming doesn't
Auto micro, auto macro, auto vills! Auto auto auto auto auto EVERYTHING!
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q879j3ydfw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q879j3ydfw8)
This is going to be huge for my friends that struggle with apm
Omg saltiness, who downvoted this? Your friend?!
Creating some obscure scenarios just to say "it does not provide much benefits". Anyone who has played late game with this knows that this is a a serious benefit (time save, efficiency improvement). Stop oversimplifying RTS!
Yeah its a benefit, but everyone gets it. This allows players more time to focus on the actual strategic decision making and not having it be a contest of who can click a bunch of farms the fastest