Suggestions for Realism Improvement

[BombaRulz]

Hi,

I'd like to say that I love this game and I am very impressed so far. I have played a lot of real-time strategy games and would like to share my suggestions for improving the game. I am also interested in participating, depends on how much I can free my time in near future  I have played 2 single player matches vs bots so far, here are my thoughts:

UI 
- Show and Select Idle workers in a better way. Took me a lot of time to find the button below the mini-map
- Display how many workers are bringing food, stone, metal on top right. For example if 10 people are bringing food, Food 3185 (10)  Metal 2100 (4)  Stone 3120 (2). Maybe a worker icon as well in there.
- Pause button (Pause break or ESC) to pause the game or bring main menu in single player
- Better overall UI Design needed, it's hard to know what is what
- Building and Units attack/defense values to be visible at all times, not only when hovering the shield. Also each value to have it's own row. Units to become more experienced after few battles (gaining experience and training) to have increased attack and defense values than new ones.
- Send unit to a building (garrison) with right click and buildings that have troops inside to show head icons above their "health" bars.

Random
- Build roads from stone with workers for faster moving. Random roads to neutral villages to conquer (as vassals that will provide for you) on the maps would be nice as well.
- Fruit + Nut trees + Plant new fruit trees that will give fruits once per year.
- Seasons and their effect on spending resources like Wood to keep people warm or growing food. 
- Limited quantity in storehouses.
- Middle mouse click to rotate map like with Shift + Scroll
- Neutral markets to trade with.
- Hunting animals to be harder, currently they don't run from anyone and anyone can kill them very easily.
- Stone is very abundant in real world, should be the same in the game. Stone queries would be nice
- Introduce Mines for Iron, Coal, Gold, Silver, Tin, Copper (check this)
- Smelter and weapon smith and armor smith to actually create armor and weapons for the soldiers. 
- To make riders, first a horse breeding is needed, then a soldier that can ride that horse. To "grow" and equip the horse, you need to spend materials and food.
- Color & light options for special effects in the map editor. Currently there is only fog and sun position. This would be nice to create some darker ambient with foggy maps (warcraft style). 
- Night time and lights from buildings + torches. People to go to sleep if they are tired, they can't work 24/7/365  This means you can't always spam troops to work all the time.
- Diversity on Terrain textures + grass and bushes.
- Diversity on Height in Terrain will make game more real, more uneven surfaces.

Food - these tweaks will make people think more for the economy part of the game and it will prevent them to spam a lot of troops.
- Making food should be harder and the whole process to require more time. For example getting food from grains to include preparation of the soil, planting, growing, sowing etc. Then that can be turned into bread from a "kitchen worker) or feed animals for example. 
- Different types of food as a sub-menu in when hovering food on the top. Different types of Grains, different meat (+ smoked), fishes, 
- Food decomposing (how much each type last).
- Food Growing Seasons. Berries can't always be there, same as grain. This will make people shift more to fishing, fruits, nuts etc.
- There should be "growing" of the animals that takes time and effort, currently I spend 50 food for 1 swine, kill it instantly and gain 100 food from it = kinda pointless. 
- More types of animals: Donkies, Cattle (for milk as well), chickens to give eggs, sheep, goats, wolfs etc. 
- Animals to reproduce (males and females) giving you more animals.
- Age of animals = amount of meat.
- Worker to feed the animals or they would starve & die.
- Using animals for wagon transportation of raw materials.
- Fishing to be available for workers on shores but in smaller quantities. Also fishing to be available anywhere (with smaller effect), not just in few select spots where there are few fishes. 
- Spending Food by the population, everyone gotta eat right. That means pausing work to eat as well and people to be able to make food or eat it raw. Starvation and dying when there is no food.
- Kitchen worker to get food and prepare it (to feed soldiers and workers)

Tweaks:
- Attack values of soldiers against buildings are weak, my whole army couldn't even touch a civic center.
- Battering ram is too strong, with 3 of them I completely destroyed an enemy (all troops and buildings) 

Bugs:
- Defense towers shoot outside their maximum range endlessly if there is also an enemy Defense tower nearby. Eventually both do each other little damage.
- Send unit to a spot on the map (right click on the map) - Once It didn't work, after that it was working, no idea why
- After worker finished the task (cutting wood), it doesn't search for the wider area for new resource and just sits there when there is wood everywhere.
- Swine animation for walking, currently there is none. Same for dying.
- Peasants can't reach trees that are too high in the mountain and are all stuck trying to get to it

I hope you will use some of these suggestions in order to bring more realism to the game  

Thank you!

Edited February 11, 2020 by BombaRulz
added more things.

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

UI 
- Show and Select Idle workers in a better way. Took me a lot of time to find the button below the mini-map

You can use shortcuts.

5 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Pause button (Pause break or ESC) to pause the game or bring main menu in single player

There one but isnt a good one. Pause key

 

7 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Build roads from stone with workers for faster moving. Random roads to neutral villages to conquer (as vassals that will provide for you) on the maps would be nice as well.

No is useful and it can takes lot of development and pc resources

 

8 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Fruit + Nut trees + Plant new fruit trees that will give fruits once per year.

Performance...

9 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Limited quantity in storehouses.

No limited this isnt good for the game.

 

9 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Middle mouse click to rotate map like with Shift + Scroll

The game have many shortcuts to do this or move the camera.

 

10 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Neutral markets to trade with.

I agree

 

22 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Introduce Mines for Iron, Coal, Gold, Silver, Tin, Copper (check this)

I suggested more variety .

 

23 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Stone is very abundant in real world, should be the same in the game. Stone queries would be nice

We talk about similar idea with quarries.

 

24 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Smelter and weapon smith and armor smith to actually create armor and weapons for the soldiers. 

???? Huh?

 

25 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Better overall UI Design needed, it's hard to know what is what

Like what?

 

26 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

To make riders, first a horse breeding is needed, then a soldier that can ride that horse. To "grow" and equip the horse, you need to spend materials and food.

You mean more technologies?

26 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Night time and lights from buildings + torches. 

Planned but still hard and far to the current development.

27 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Diversity on Terrain textures + grass and bushes.

We are doing that but is great idea , im not sure with the performance.

Quote

Tweaks:
- Attack values of soldiers against buildings are weak, my whole army couldn't even touch a civic center.
- Battering ram is too strong, with 3 of them I completely destroyed an enemy (all troops and buildings) 

I disagree with the first. You need which units are better destroying a CC with pikemen you or archer you can because their type of damage.

With rams I agree.

31 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

Send unit to a spot on the map (right click on the map) - Once It didn't work, after that it was working, no idea why

Is working at last in SVN A24

 

32 minutes ago, BombaRulz said:

After worker finished the task (cutting wood), it doesn't search for the wider area for new resource and just sits there when there is wood everywhere.

This isnt a bug.

 

Some animals arent animated yet... So isnt a bug.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Stan` an official reply.

[BombaRulz]

 

Hey Lion.Kanzen, Thanks for the reply  I understand that not everything can be done easily, these are just ideas that can make the game little bit different than classic AOE and a lot of the suggestions come from other games as well. Those "realism" things will make people think more of a strategy way of playing instead of spamming troops. This is something that currently every strategy game is missing, implementing more things like these can make this game stand out more. Either way, this is just my thoughts only, it doesn't mean that this game should implement everything, everyone has different opinion and taste
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

Smelter and weapon smith and armor smith to actually create armor and weapons for the soldiers. 

???? Huh?

Well it can bring realism to the game and make people think more instead of printing soldiers  Get the raw metal, melt it, make armor and weapons from it. Different metals will give different weapons and ammo quality stats.
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

To make riders, first a horse breeding is needed, then a soldier that can ride that horse. To "grow" and equip the horse, you need to spend materials and food.

You mean more technologies?

Imagine to create 1 horseman you'll need to have 1 horse previously, meaning you'll need to make and feed horses.

 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

UI 
- Show and Select Idle workers in a better way. Took me a lot of time to find the button below the mini-map

You can use shortcuts.

- Didn't knew about shortcuts but still it's more convenient to see it in the UI

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

Fruit + Nut trees + Plant new fruit trees that will give fruits once per year.

Performance...

- Fruit + Nut trees should be very easy to a specific point. Currently workers go to collect berries, it would be the same function for a fruit tree, just wait till next season once it's done. Planting trees can be left out
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

Build roads from stone with workers for faster moving. Random roads to neutral villages to conquer (as vassals that will provide for you) on the maps would be nice as well.

No is useful and it can takes lot of development and pc resources

- Building roads can be the same as building a wall, connect an existing texture from 2 points. Vassal towns would harm performance I agree

 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

After worker finished the task (cutting wood), it doesn't search for the wider area for new resource and just sits there when there is wood everywhere.

This isnt a bug.

I think it is because there was a tree relatively close to it. Expanding the search area would solve it
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

Diversity on Terrain textures + grass and bushes.

We are doing that but is great idea , im not sure with the performance.

These things can eat performance but people have different machines that can support greater graphics Just sayin
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

1 hour ago, BombaRulz said:

Better overall UI Design needed, it's hard to know what is what

Like what?

I'll make a suggestion design layout 
 

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Quote

- Attack values of soldiers against buildings are weak, my whole army couldn't even touch a civic center.
- Battering ram is too strong, with 3 of them I completely destroyed an enemy (all troops and buildings) 

I disagree with the first. You need which units are better destroying a CC with pikemen you or archer you can because their type of damage.

With rams I agree.

I agree, I need to research more details about each troop, it was my first impression from just 2 games
 

[Lion.Kanzen]

I agree with the spam of soldiers is kind annoying 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

So just to start off, I'd say that a lot of these ideas are great, but adding complexity does a number of things.  Probably the most notable one is that it increases the skill cap of the game, which is critical in the RTS genre.  Some games are more economically focussed (usually city-builders) while others are more combat based (Company of Heroes comes to mind).  

In short, each feature should do the following: make the game more in depth without requiring a significant strain on a player's attention.  I'd say that the idea of a food being automatically used up by existing units would be a great option.  It could provide a much more interesting way for how people would spend that resource since a raid could quickly cut off that source.  Roads I think would be a fantastic option.  I doubt that many expert players would use them, but that would definitely allow for players who enjoy base-building to have a much more enjoyable time.

[Panther]

I agree to Thorfinn, besides that, many of the things you mentioned are possible to implement with some simple modding; you should check it out.

 

 

[Silier]

13 hours ago, BombaRulz said:

Fruit + Nut trees should be very easy to a specific point. Currently workers go to collect berries, it would be the same function for a fruit tree, just wait till next season once it's done. Planting trees can be left out

There are fruit trees in the game  (dont remember map)