Auto Farm Placement and AoE2’s Autofication
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2024
- In this video we'll look at the new auto farm placement mechanic using the shift key, as well as the expansion of auto scout. We'll then talk about the "autofication" of AoE2.
0:28 The basics
1:40 Putting auto farm to the test
3:20 More advanced tips
4:50 Comparing AoE2 vs AoE4 auto farm
5:50 Autofication of AoE2
7:10 Auto scout change
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Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition - Hry
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.
I was thinking the same thing, you beat me to it. :)
I remember getting HD a decade ago and being blown away that I could que re-seeds at the mill. I got DE this year and was hyped that I could now even shift-que them at the mill... haven't done it even once, because AUTO--FARM! The devs have done an unbelievable job keeping this quarter-century old game contemporary.
Ironically, auto-seeding makes the maraca-induced stress worse, since the sound now generally means my woodlines are getting raided and I'm out of lumber. Used to be the sound of micro-management, now it's more often than not a harbinger of doom.
Once they end up being dead farms and there’s an open slot, the villager will move to the free farm then rather replant, so there still is some roughness even in the new games. I came back to HD a few days ago to play the final mongol mission just because of mangudai madness, and good ol 33% fire rate against the “teuton” Hungarians.
@@AtlasJotun Conqueror had that feature way before HD
NO! Not the maracas! ANYTHING BUT THE MARACAS!!
The real issue is that the villagers only know how to build square farms.
Yes, they should build Scalene triangle shaped farms
Hexagon farms
Imagine if they added Manor Lords-style farming...
Imagine a brush like the zoning in Cities: Skylines 😄 That would get messy
@@BillyBlaze6907 🤣
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?
1
@@Vitas7thElement 11
It does, but if there is something occupying the place of a farm (like berries) it might change the position of some farms. In that instance, I think it's better to put the farm manually.
Lol was going ro ask
That will be a second video ^^
T90 farm no longer meme again 😢
What?
T90 is a sellout
next meme t90 house nothing?
@@green929392??
@@green929392 ??
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 don’t see how any civ could possibly beat out Teutons.
Clearly the old Inca bonus of faster building farms
Ah yes, the new tactic of going all wood, covering entire map with farms and not letting enemy build new buildings anywhere.
I think many of these autofication functions is implemented for XBox in mind.
How would you do auto farms on xbox ?
@@thomasdwalker9696by pressing x?
@@thomasdwalker9696 biggest imagination
I swear the "hey guys, spirit of the law here" is so ingrained in my brain I'm always looking forward to it
I don't know what would happen to me if he ever stops doing videos, and he will some day
His voice can calm even the most restless soul even if they don't understand English
Hey brain, spirit of the endorphins here.
oh oh! and "Starting with the Archers" this man ever stops saying we Riot!
you seem to have a great taste in music with that profile pic man
"Automicro, automacro, autobild, auto auto everything" - MBL
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.
Probably wouldn't be too hard to have any previous autoscout freeze in place (and lose autoscout "state") when another has been made the new autoscout
Edit: typo
Yeah, this makes the most sense to me
@@sandmaster4444 That, or just the oldest living scout is the one that can do it. That way it's kind of like the previous version, just not as bad if you lose your starting scout.
I was thinking this too, I guess the issue would be that if you have a bunch of scouts and then your auto scout dies, it would be hard to quickly figure out which of your other scouts "inherited" the skill. Maybe every scout has the button, but once you click one the rest lose it? That might be a programming nightmare.
I agree with the idea of unlimited auto-scouts, just one at a time.
Auto-scout gets a tri-corn hat to mark him as unique. Any time auto-scout dies, another scout automatically gets promoted and receives the explorer's headgear if other scout-line units are available (or it just gets designated automatically when the player selects any number of scouts and hits the auto-scout key). If no scouts are around, the next one produced receives it.
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.
I don't think attack moving a bunch of units will become meta in a game as complex as AOE2. More often than not it will just waste resources.
@@MhDaMaster Agreed. They would have to incorporate targeting priorities and then make those editable by players mid-game. I don't see that ever happening
That's why other RTS are better lol
You mean that a core gameplay is dragging finished games as long as possible? Like a 1 hour game to trace every villager makes sense, right? Even if he has no resources... makes sense why this mechanic is frown upon.
@@raizan5946 could add something from SC2 .. if player x hasn´t build stuff for a time he will be revealed on the map
or set mission objective to destroy all building with special ruling for Nomad
I smell some games where you can flex on your opponent by filling the whole map with farms lol
khymer love that trick
Oh shoot that's brilliant....
Alternative to spies/treason tech? Costs wood instead
Or some crazy strat where you try to limit an opponent (re)building on an area by just spamming farms there
@@RazorWinter you have to start building them to do that, you can only block yourself/allies without doing that.
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
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.
Thing is, in that game you could always improve whatever the "governor" (your ai) was doing. So it was a quality of life feature for inexperienced players, but deleterious for your game if you wanted to be at your best.
Well, a good leader is supposed to be able to delegate tasks to competent underlings.
Heck, it could be a tech (Sheriffs? Prefects? Ministers?) available in castle/imperial (or both, if you tier it). Maybe bring back the old Government Centre, but give it an aura and a bunch of buttons for how to auto-manage things within range. Being a building you have to spend time and resources if you want more automation, you have granularity (each could take different orders), and your enemies have a way to shut it down.
It could task villagers to do whatever you set it, or perhaps it could create up to 5 trash units of each kind if there are appropriate military buildings nearby, so you always have a small force stationed there. All this, of course, could be a hindrance if not overseen (vils on the wrong task, troops using up pop space and valuable resources when you're trying to save for something else, enemies hitting it), so it wouldn't be quite build-and-forget.
@@bandreol True that. It was just the first example that came to my mind for an "extreme" version of automation.
@@brotherofweasel Personally, I could see an Imperial age upgrade that, whenever you build a new mill, it automatically places 8 nearby farms (if you have the wood), as in 99% of cases you want it for farms anyways.
That's me doing anything on a computer, if it's simple enough to automate, I just do that. I want to save my brain for novel, stimulating tasks
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.
*attack-move is in the game since 2013 (aoe2 HD).
@@Manouil_III I think it's kind of clunky on how it works, but it might just be me.
@@llSuperSnivyll It is horrible, but the movement in the game is still horrible overall. (I'm a game fan btw)
They have a terrible thing with stuttering on taking a target, and stuttering on command reception. So for example, if you issue a kill command on an unit, microstutter, then the unit dies, stutter for new unit to kill. Attack command goes like, stutter to move to an area, stutter because a unit was found, then the same as above... So if there was an unit in the area, it gives an extra stutter that makes it clunkier, it is even worse if the unit is in the opposite direction of the attack command since the unit will move to that opposite direction instead of acknowloging the unit from the get-go (a composite AI command probably in the background). I think it even gets worse if you have multiple units selection since the delay from move command to attack becomes longer. I also think it will go in a scanner sweep behavior of: "move, attack something if close even if building and a unit is 1 tile farther, then acknowledge the threat level of the unit and attack that".
Attack command is so bad that I know SotL said pros use patrol instead. Afaik it skips most of the stuttering and the line deployment that it automatically gives the selected units is prone to less collisions when taking a target.
Patrol’s better because you can swap stance to micro without changing their movement direction. Just toggling no attack stance and another gives you archer micro.
Including auto scout for every scout cavalry is still not justified because the maps are random.
Aoe3, Aom and Aoe1 do not have it but also have random maps.
At least the only justification these devs have is that Empire Earth (that has random maps too) has "Explore" which is auto-scout.
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
He's going to boycott it.
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 could always rotate gates, it was just annoying
CTRL + Scrollwheel up or down
What do you mean? We could always rotate gates.
maybe his mouse doesn't have a wheel...
@@matthewcai7219 in this day and age you have to actively go out of your way to find a wheelless mouse
Auto queue for production was not in base AoM, it was added with The Titans expansion.
But the expansion came out shortly after the original, therefore keeping the original soul of the game
You are the best Age of Empires content creator. Not even close.
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.
Nice! SotL new vid right on my birthday! Thank you so much, @Spirit of the Law!
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.
The old days were all hun wars and never ending feudal skirmishes. It was nice but I think it's a lot better nowadays
That's how pros and high level ranked play is. The majority of players don't play that way.
I don't really agree that AoE need to slow down, but if anything, adding the auto farm feature makes the game less dependent on being fast and having high micro
Well said! It seems to me like theyre trying to take away what makes AOE2 so special. Why put aoe4/ modern systems into aoe2? Aoe2 is more popular for many reasons so they shouldnt try to retrofit it and ruin it!
I wouldn't touch AoE2 online gaming, specially low elo, with a 2 hundred kilometer long pole even for the lols. Games are usually 1 hour long already, it is too much. We are no longer kids, and the world isn't so boring in the wilderness that you need so much of a time dump. I love the game, but given the option to enjoy it in 30 minutes games rather than average 1 hour than can drag for hours (specially with surviving villagers chasing if the opponent is a douche is not the type of thing I want to do) isn't going to sell much better. If anything I would rather play 3 - 30 minutes games in that length with all the QoL my way.
I do respect that for fossils, they should add "rulesets" to the queues. Play Age of Kings no auto farm reseeding ruleset to your heart happiness for all I care, that is the QoL we need.
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.
As someone who just has generally low reaction times for literally everything, I love the automation.
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?
But there could always be two versions, with only the console one having this
@@CaesarCJ15 Console and PC versions have crossplay so FE/MS probably don't really want to diverge the two versions' featuresets too much.
Its also an accessibility thing. My sister has arthritis in her hands, so this could help her deal with less pain while gaming
Xbox already had auto farm placement since day one if you played on a controller. My take is they figured they've already scripted it, might as well use it?
i think pc players should be the ultimate standard for that though, and auto scout for all scouts crosses the line for me
Wow I didn’t know about automated queues in AoM
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.
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.
Retro vibes!
Who else does remember all the lumberjacks waiting next to a just built lumber camp? 😅
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!
Great video Spirit
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?
I doubt your enemies will autoscout in castle age with multiple scouts. Like they just into their death eventually with castles and stuff around.
@@MB-pc1xp on arena/hideout maybe? especially on arena it's almost a no-brainer to have 2 to 3 scouts autoscouting. you could have them on a control group and snipe monks easily. seems like that would change things, but whos to say if for better or worse.
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.
It's come a long way, give it a try
I'm new and sucked at converting wood to food so this is nice
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.
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.
In terms of bugs vs. features. You are aware that not all programmers are good at fixing bugs? And are you aware they likely have dedicated people for different tasks?
It always sounds weird to me when people say things like "why they not fix the bugs?!?!", because often it can be incredibly hard to fix without having to rewrite MAJOR portions of the game.
@@SioxerNikita tell me you're not a software developer without telling me you're not a software developer
@@neildutoit5177 tell me you have absolutely no clue without telling me you have no clue
As always, great vid! Can auto farming be toggled on/off similar to auto scout? Or are we stuck with it always on
Oh my god, I literally laughed out loud at “The Automans”; that’s amazing hahahah
I haven't played the game for years but I like your videos
This explains the nice farms i've been seeing
My pet peeve about AoE2 farms are that the fields are larger than the mill, unlike in AoE4. Can't get a clean grid.
As a kid i always liked to keep a one tile path free of farmland, leading to the mill's entrance :D
The solution is Windmills!
I'm in the minority; I liked AOE3's farms/plantations. 10 vills in a tightly clumped space was quite vulnerable but it didn't require you to take up half a screen on farms.
One of the reasons i love poles :D
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.
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
Hold down Ctrl to prevent them from going into other transports, just like holding down Ctrl prevents units from switching attack targets
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.)
Soo there'll be an "auto-play" feature where the game plays itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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).
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.
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)
Spirit of the la hire!!
Inefficient placement is code for T90 farm placement. He’ll keep the dream alive.
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
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.)
I’ve often thought about a game that has practically none of this automation, but you (the player) program it in every match.
There's a reason why Warcraft 1 isn't the most popular RTS.
Yes, it's cultural perception, and just as arbitrary as any other cultural thing. If we were used to something we'd call it "quality of life", but if we were used to the manual task being a skill difference then we'd say "you can't automate that!"
It might depend on what you were looking to get out of the game, but when I first started playing RTS I was sold on the "Strategy" part. So being a strategy maximalist, I was in favor of automating everything that isn't strategic decision making. Auto-queuing is therefore a thing I liked in AoM:TT that I wished would become the cultural norm for RTS. Re-queuing things is something that's just a chore with no strategic choice being made every time you cycle through production buildings.
But even though Auto Queue never became mainstream in RTS culture, I'm okay with it now since I changed my expectations of what RTS should be. The strategic stuff I can get from other genres like 4X or Grand Strategy games. RTS, despite having strategy in its name, is more like an e-sport in how much APM matters. You could say that the "strategy" is actually about how to strategically spend your APM. And that's fine, but it's just not the obvious kind of strategy that someone is lead to believe the game is about at first glance. At first glance you might think the Age games are about strategic placement of buildings, unit composition, unit positioning, tech choices, etc. You might not think that a lot of the game comes down to "what do you pay attention to for the next 3 seconds: looking at your army, or mashing your production hotkeys"
I think the farm placing automation is nice. Pretty much agree with everything said in this video
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.
Nice!
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.
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.
Sounds reasonable. Automation should cut down on distractions and stress, not win the game for you.
I've seen automated kiting (and general automated combat behavior) in Zero-K, but that game is designed for large-scale engagements, thus automating the micro-behavior lets you focus on the bigger picture (like optimizing your economy so you can keep throwing units into the meat grinder).
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.
That really is one part of autofication, though one I'll not use much probably
Hey law, spirit of the guys here
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.
Pro tip for you: check your post! 😂😂
I have been holding it in for like 40 hours now. Please let me know when I can stop I’m getting dizzy
@@Kerchock I blame my big fingers 11
Some players don't know shift+queue actions. So, for new players this is bether, especialy in the campaigns or single player.
@@Gonzalo_105 I can understand not knowing hotkeys but not knowing shift-queue action is so basic, surely it's in the tutorial
Hey, I think you did not try (or they changed auto-scout). Auto-scout (if you had ever had your scout alive by end game and tried it) doesn't scout anything on fully explored maps so it auto turns off on clicking it. The function is to reveal the map, not to trace enemy bases as you suggested - but would be nice if that happened. They would need to reprogram then logic so on fully explored maps they re-explore... the question is how do you set what areas were explored already so the scout (or other scouts) don't repeatedly go to the same place?
Is this part of an effort to level the playing field for xbox users?
Getting to far away aoe2 is a challenging game and that what makes it fun
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.
how about holding both shift and ctr and placing the as many farms as there are villagers (or as many as you can afford up to a maximum of number of villagers)? is this possible or the next update?
I liked the other changes but not this one
Likembl complained: will there be auto-everything?!
Omg first 10 seconds... craziest thing I've ever seen in my life
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.
efficient farm places < Efficient fulwark and carvansarai placement. show me the area of affect before placing the foundation!
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.
I don't play AoE but I do play Total War, I think your game could use the ability to command a group to follow a specific path, like what we Total War players do with our cavalry. That way you can split up 3 groups and have 2 loop around while the other goes straight to hit the enemy from 3 directions. Plus have selecting 1 unit in a locked group select every living unit in that group, but that might be too Total War for AoE2 players.
@@Cyrus_T_Laserpunch You can actually patrol and attack-move already, meaning the unit attacks any unit on their way. You can also shift-click multiple commands.
@@couchpotatoe91 Ah, good to know, did not know those were already features. Love it when there's advanced command options.
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!
Oh no... I can build more scouts that sub optimally scouts... Oh no... Players that have a hard time super multi tasking can now have a slightly better gameplay... How dare they make it so the sucky players can be better!!!! How daaaaaareeee they?????
@@SioxerNikitaI realize now, you're a troll
@@michaelwarenycia7588 People are writing all over the place that auto-scouting om everything is "crossing the line".
It is a "step too much"... Etc...
@@SioxerNikita to be fair, most of them are more nuanced, like, "it's ok if it's one scouting unit at a time".
@@michaelwarenycia7588 That's still silly, and really unintuitive. Sure, a bit more nuanced, but it just goes back to the same issue as there were before.
Auto-Scout is terrible, but it takes a load off from the people who don't have the capacity to handle it.
They are still significantly worse than doing it manually and keeping an eye out, so it wont particularly reduce the skill ceiling.
It's a silly complaint. It is a minor change, that is a quality of life inclusion for people who aren't super good at the game, that just wants to chill. Not every addition/change has to be for the ranked scene... Sometimes people need to remember the primary player base are not good at the games they play.
Wow, every time I see AoE4 it looks completely incomprehensible to me
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.
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.
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
The slippery slope argument...
", that AOE4 has had since release" Wait what? I've been placing farms manually this whole time!
Not sure if I like hussars with auto scout but would be interested in having auto scout only available to scouts (not light cav, hussar). Not sure how difficult that would be to implement but maybe it’s worth considering.
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.
Precisely. So long as even an average player can do it better, its just an accessibility option for newbies who haven't developed the muscle memory or confidence in these tasks.
I figure it just changes the skill used. Putting down your mills exactly far enough apart that the auto placement doesn't mess up, for instance?
what? NO CHARTS OR GRAPHS? :O
lol great video
Great video analyzing the new changes, all of your other videos are great too. I just got into AOE2 last fall, and I have been enjoying progressing in the game. Now at 1100 elo and don’t care if I win or lose, but understand the fundamentals enough to just have fun and try different civs
its easy to forget just how incredibly different Age of Mythology's town center mechanic works compared to AoE2.
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.
You can build over unbuilt foundations (like farms), so this won't stop castle drops.
I was not aware of the all (auto scout) one but, I do love the farm placement feature. (I read this one in the patch notes.) I don't mind all scouts having auto scout though.
also as for SoTL's point it can be scouted for enemy. Well it can be once, but at least before this patch auto scout didn't work if map is 100% scouted, so its not like you have map scouted and then can again press autoscout to find opponent wood or something. I feel like it takes some skill out of placing farms fast and decently placed, but in the end won't change much, especially that everyone will have it and it seems quite trash early on, as you usually won't build farms on straggler trees
excellent video Spirit 👍🏼
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.
But it also makes the game a lot harder for older players who might have lower APM, eliminating the player base, just based on if they have issues with arthritis or carpal tunnel.
I mean, look at the Viper or T90 even they are seeing their APM lower as they get older
In my opinion, the game should be about knowledge, strategy, and intelligence rather than how quickly you can click your mouse.
i think there is a danger that as the game changes too much it loses what made it so different, there is always aoe4 if you want modern qol stuff but i dont want aoe2 to play like aoe4
@@micahbonewell5994 Time and attention are a strategic resource. If people have disabilities that limit their ability, then their ranked score will reflect that.
All of this qol improvements or automations are good for the game.
Does the auto-farm placement mechanism work for Polish Folwarks as well?
I find those changes very nice. This is a strategy game,. Let me focus more on battles and decisions rather than APM.
Does auto scout apply to eagles? Meso civs might have a disadvantage let game if they can’t
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.
what if instead of right clicking the mill, it just moved the farm placement square to make it placeable. like, so, if you placed a farm on top of another farm, it would like "slide off" to the side and still be placed. This would be like an inbetween solution, you still place the farms, but its more forgiving.