Auto-farms in Age of Empires II - is it GREAT or TERRIBLE? - Grubby

Check out T90's video here: • T90 Talks Farms
And TheViper's reaction here: • TheViper talks about T...
A recent PUP update for Age of Empires 2 just dropped, altering a mechanic that has been in the game for over 20 years! You will now be able to automate farm crop placement... Is that a quality of life improvement, or a terrible mistake?
Auto-farms in Age of Empires II - is it GREAT or TERRIBLE? (Live on 7-May-2024)
Catch me live all days of the week at: / grubby
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00:00 Intro
04:31 RTS Games Are Different
12:14 QoL vs Skill Expression
25:10 AoE Community Response and Developers Sticking To Their Guns
#GrubbyTalks #Thoughts #AutoFarms #AoE2 #QoL #SkillExpression

[@testitestmann8819]

TheViper vs T90: proxy wars

[@RolfReibach]

AoE and WC3 play here. I am surprised by Grubby's opinion as I was expecting a more nostalgic point of view. But what he said was perfect! He might have reflected this philosophical question a lot. I, for my part, remember the days when you had to reseed every single farm by hand. No hotkey, 50+ farms all game long! I still wake up at night in fear of a starving empire, cold sweat running down my spine. The innocent sound of a farm running out moves me like the fattest drop in a drum and base song. I run, I reseed. God, I was so happy when they implemented the reseed queue at the mill for the expansion where you had to click 40 times to preorder singular reseeds. Age of farming finally came to an end and made me enjoy the better parts more. Now it is even better, you have a single reseed icon that does not ask for pre-spent res. It just recognises the dry farm and spends the wood for a reseed when running out without having to reserve a set amount for x farms beforehand. It checks for res and reseeds. Great! Tbh, on the top lvl the farm auto placement will have no impact before late game where you need 60+ farms for specific strats. Pros are that good, it will not change anything today. Also they want to have a free choice over where to place them since the symmetrical placement is not always the perfect placement! Imagine being rushed. Would you seed farms around your mill at the offside or only closer to the tc? Besides that you might find it better to grow crops in a specific place to have some area left for a castle or other strategic buildings in crowded maps like Arena. Auto placement is not changing anything. It makes the game more enjoyable for beginners and for better players as well. It won't shift the win rates in favour of strong micro players in a recognizable way. T90, please 😃

[@Muertoloco13]

When autocasting was introduced it felm like a clutch, then it became the norm in all of RTS.

[@jarrakul]

I really appreciate your perspective on this, Grubby. You're very reflective, respectful of other peoples opinions and experiences, and empathetic in the sense of able to see things from multiple points of view. It's great to see, especially from someone with your expertise.

[@pollograssopollo]

sc2 has a lot of assisted placements. If you select the gas extractor building in the worker bar, you just need to hover somewhere around the gas geyser and it centers on it because obviously you cannot place it anywhere else. Also floating terran buildings also have increased priority in landing on an addon

[@Dschonathan]

In the early days of Heroes of the Storm I remember there was a strategy of players taking a Healing Ward talent and then just standing on top of it with their hero. The target priority would make it impossible to click on the ward like that. What I'm saying is that depending on the situation the help a dev tries to give can also backfire.

[@Nil-js4bf]

@@b.d.a.8719 You can queue injects if you banked up energy - forgot which expansion they added that in but it's been there for years now.

[@av3902]

​@b.d.a.8719 you better hope sc devs stay away from the thinking of aoe2 devs. Aoe2 devs have totally ruined the game and don't even know it

[@pollograssopollo]

@@b.d.a.8719 you can queue injects buddy. You can save up to 18 larvae per hatchery. tell a protoss or terran that u can remax your army with a couple of hatcheries instead of building 10 facilities and let me know. all races have pros and cons ( i play random, zerg is my worse btw)

[@R3stor]

23:00 in Age of empires 1 (without any datadisc) you could only train only one unit at the time, no queues back then

[@HazardSJ]

SotL went through this a long time ago, showing that unless you were placing farms 2-3 farm tiles away despite having the space to place them closer (AKA even worse than T90 farms), the efficiency doesn't drop by that much, probably around 100-200 food at the end of a 1 hour game.

[@adamNZ2024]

This fails to consider time as a strategic resource to manage. The placement of farms is now significantly faster with the computer thinking for you. The efficiency argument of 100-200 food difference is also false but irrelevant to my main point.

[@sitrilko]

@@adamNZ2024 Dude, how is this irrelevant to the main point? Then what even is relevant to the main point? The 2-10 seconds of mental effort you save across an average game? You still have to manage 99.9% of your time.

[@DM-rc4yu]

@@adamNZ2024 There is very little time saved if you're placing T90 farms.

[@adamNZ2024]

@@DM-rc4yu If it doesn't save much time, then stop using the argument that it enables more time spent controlling armies.

[@justincronkright5025]

This is about 2nd order farms though - not the ones beside the T.C. & bases get out of control QUICKLY, especially in fast paced games... lower Elo people are disproportionately affected by early aggression is the point. So by making auto-farm placements the 2 things that are going to be most crucial even early into the game are, better bases for very little input now (minimal focus or attention is needed to have a good base essentially now). You could delete 1 or 2 houses easily to remake space, but deleting a few farms is costly. The next thing is that the APM reallocation is going to have big effects on Eco-/Military-Management. The only, 1/one, singular, mono, dedicated, precise, direct, narrow, individual reason why it could be bad is that people - particularly low Elo people again, are going to forget straggler trees & lose out on wood more often + they don't protect their wood-lines as well... and so all of this combined with PROBABLY making more farms with the new mechanic is going to make wood eco even harder for them. **Which I argue is going to be far far far more detrimental to lower Elo people than the positives gained from this**. As you have RIGHTFULLY said with your SotL reference.

[@MulletPower75]

I think one idea overlooked is QoL changes that don't have an impact at high level play, but help low level play. A great example is how you can queue up multiple units/upgrades in buildings. It's a QoL that if relied on would make you worse than a player with the skill to regularly goes back to build units. An example of a new QoL that can be implemented like this, is for idle workers just put a delay before the idle worker icon/hotkey becomes activated. Then good players still retain the advantage their skill affords then while lessening the punishment for forgetting about a worker or miss clicking a command.

[@the_andrewest_andrew]

completely agree not many people take too much consideration the lower level players, but if they (us 😂) dont get the concept behind the mechanic this might as well be a noob trap

[@DivineBanana]

15:40 all the UD players just whinced thinking about how many hours of idle ghouls have gone to waste

[@RazAnime]

The main reason why I like the auto-farm placement change is because the actual numerical difference in farm effectiveness from spam-built farms to auto-placed farms is so tiny that it wont make the difference in almost any game, yet it takes a lot of time and effort out of any player, that could instead be spend on much more high-skill and impactful decisions. Less worrying about stuff that doesnt matter and more worrying about stuff that does actually matter; less unimportant upkeep and more important micro/decision making is something I always welcome and imo will actually make the game overall more skill-intensive and not less so. Not to mention that as a casual I appreciate it regardless

[@brykuss5191]

The efficiency of placing perfect farms might account for a total of 1-2 units more at the most during the crucial moments of the match while focusing on micro might make a 5 unit difference easily. Hard agree that the placement of buildings for a miniscule improvement should never be the focus of a RTS game.

[@OlegGolubev_yolo]

economy as much important as fight itself and both shoould be balanced. If your style more focused on endless fights - that doesnt mean that everyone else find this part attractive.

[@brykuss5191]

@@OlegGolubev_yolo Sure but do you really think that a few pixels of a building is as important as unit management?

[@Spazz4170]

​@@OlegGolubev_yolo you are actually braindead if your thinking like that.

[@coxandrewj]

Yes. I absolutely do. AoE2 is a game with 4 resources and pop space. If the devs didn’t want a focus on managing your economy, they would not have given a pop cap nor different resources, like any of the command and conquer games.

[@ZeroFate643]

Absolutely a great change. Imagine if other resource gathering didnt have this, like when a worker finished a tree you have to tell it the next tree to cut. There's zero skill or expression involved, so let's make it easier for everyone.

[@ImAzraa]

Anyone else remember farm placements on Empire Earth 1? It was expensive but you paid for an 8-set square of farms around the mill way back in the bronze age, and it remained with you up to the cyborg/mecha era 😂😂

[@belisarian6429]

I think when considering these QoL features one should consider what is core idea behind the game and if that clashes with it, AOE2 is strategy game where main thing that should matter are where units will fight, what units will be made, what resources will be mined, what territory will be held and so on, micromanaging individual things to make them perform slightly better is nice icing on top and it indeed makes game interesting, but it should be fun by itself, if micromanaging something is just chore to distract you then it could be QoL automated instead. So I think farm placement automation is fine, on other hand things like archer micro should not be automated as it is fun as satisfying. And of course things that should never be automated: where to place castle, which resources to mine, which units to make, where to engage and so on as that would tank main game concepts.

[@kirktown2046]

The difference in income efficiency is negligible, this saves time/attention and is a good change, this was never an interesting thing to spend your screen time on, and, most importantly... It never felt like a good expression of your skill against another player.

[@shift0]

One more example, coming from Age of Empires - in AoE 1, version 1.0, you couldn't queue up any units or techs. You could only produce one thing from a building and once you started, the only thing you could do at that building was to press stop button. Now this was INTENTIONAL design, because the devs felt that players should be paying attention to their base. It wasn't too popular and the devs decided to change it by subsequent patches. There were probably some more design choices like that and the AoE 1 dev team and SC 1 dev team worked at their games around same time and took inspiration from each other. It's interesting to think about how much they shaped their games and in turn how we think about RTS now, but also that they were willing to change and evolve their games.

[@VolodymyrMasliy]

Immediately thought about recent WC3 change to show hero level beside the health bar. What a great change. One thing that was also added is ability to change zoom level. Not sure if it can be considered QoL improvement, but it's good.

[@FernandoMartinez-zh6jz]

'If you hated this video please do not hit the subscribe button' I love you Grubby xd

[@StrobeFireStudios]

might not be your most popular content, but very interesting nonetheless. thank you for your work and insight Grubby! this content separates the wheat from the chaff, and i am here for everything you upload. keep it coming brother

[@DomSithe]

This video makes me wonder if grubby has played Total Annihilation and what his take on that game would be. I haven't really thought of it since 2006 or so but I remember liking it way more than Aoe1-3, Age of mythology, Rise of Nations, Warcraft 3, and so on. The only game that I liked about the same was SC brood war, but I doubt that's surprising. I loved how the game had such a simple win condition for such a nuanced rts. I never ended up playing supreme commander, but i wonder if it had the same depth now.

[@theshinken]

I now want a video of T90 reacting to this video including the part where we can see the video where grubby reacts to video from hera reacting to the video from T90.

[@tabula_rosa]

you brought up a really important point, that removing the micromanagement of one system does not actually reduce the amount of micromanagement a game requires, it can just shift the micromanagement from that system to another system you would be giving more of your attention if you werent being tied up elsewhere. & the question that must be answered is, is micromanaging farms placement more fun than what you could be doing elsewhere in the game if you werent busy micromanaging farms. i think for most people the answer is a resounding no

[@vongola8902]

Now I'm happy with dev lauched this update because it bringsin Grubby to talks with this 11 AOE2 community is awsome but kind of closed so it's really good to have oppinions from "outside" like this and I appreciate your opinions very much Hpoe you'll be with AOE2 more often too

[@iwantagoodnameplease]

Rise of Nations was the perfect RTS and all other games should copy it's resource / villager model.

[@khatack]

It sounded like you said "spirit of the lawl" xD

[@87JJosh]

Nice video. Great analysis.

[@Vhite]

Yeah it's definitely not as simple as "this is great" or "this is terrible". Some quality of life is needed, as I don't think there are many RTS veterans who miss the days before unit multiselect or control groups. I agree with what you said, it does make difference when the game starts with some QoL feature and when it's added restrospectively. In case of AoE2 or Warcaft 3 it means taking away from what pros would prefer in favor of casual players, but for these ancient games to keep a healthy playerbase, rather than just the aging generation from their golden age, which is now approaching their 30s and 40s, that trade is probably necessary. Then again, some might argue that AoE2 should be allowed to die in peace while keeping its identity, while letting the younger generation switch to AoE4.

[@user-im7tq8hq6l]

The idea that "quality of life" changes make a game more likely to succeed with "big casual" is the wrong approach altogether. If you want a successful RTS 1v1 experience, make: 1. The things you're doing in the game are fun. Units control well, base building is rewarding, battles are weighty 2. Meaningful decisions at every part of the game that lead to no "dead" time and give more variety game-to-game 3. Different game phases are distinct in terms of scale of decision making and where you need to focus your attention 4. Make it feel like when you lose, you were outplayed and need to improve something (rather than bad luck or imbalance) That's it, do that and the minute-to-minute is fun and you have a "just one more game" loop of wanting to continue to improve. Once you have that compelling 1v1 experience, you just need a way to get more people to try it and get hooked via a compelling campaign, more casual ways to get into competitive play (co-op, team modes), etc.

[@user-yj3mf1dk7b]

LOL, you are "trying to prove" that it's wrong with wrong logic. Everything you said is true. But it has nothing to do with QoL. It does not describe whether QoL should be or not. So you missed the point of "player should play the game... not fight the game". I believe Grubby struggle with some mechanics in AOE2 at first attempts. Also, it's funny to hear "QoL does not matter"... but EVERY RTS player HATED AOE4 cause lack of unit selection etc. (not the whole game...but a part with QoL) .

[@av3902]

​@@user-yj3mf1dk7bQuality of life does not matter for established games. Aoe2 was always going to be the most famous and popular game of the series, regardless of any qol changes. They bastardized the game for no reason whatsoever. new qol features should be kept for new games, not used for ruining established games.

[@ashley-paul]

@@av3902I’ve been playing AoE 2 since like 2002, and I’m ecstatic about QoL changes in DE. Speak for yourself.

[@SouLa_UA_]

Thanks for the great talk, Grubby!

[@MeanderingMikesManCave]

Excellent analysis ... thank you !

[@JustinSeizure]

And I genuinely lmao at your endings!

[@lfishl22]

This reminds me of street fighter development since 3rd strike But I like random farms in this

[@Olympus-Thas]

Grubby you keep speaking to my soul, man! Indeed, where should the line be drawn? RTS is actually three games in one, your first three bullet points of worker/bases/units, so it's no wonder there's not enough time to do everything. The draw for an RTS is cool bases and big armies. I'm sorry, but worker allocation I believe therefore should be automated. I want to uptick my worker allocation on wood by one and have the base build and send a worker to the nearest tree. I believe that system to still be enjoyable. RTS also has major seemingly unintentional exploits in the fields of micro and building placement (stutter stepping and walling off the main being a couple examples) that I don't think should be in the game because they're understandably unintuitive. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and ideas for fixing these as they are relevant to your arguments about apm and auto farms. Are these changes too far in the direction you're speaking about? Anyway, I look forward to your future videos and I hope your quest for a shift in direction is successful because RTS's are very punishing, not pleasing to the eye (by comparison to other genres), and two convoluted for me to try to involve anyone else in spite being my favorite genre. Cheers.

[@MrZu119]

The lumberjack example isnt the best, as a villager will auto gather wood after building a camp. And this isnt auto farming, its auto placement. Auto farm reseeding is better dedcribed as auto farming

[@MarcoPumpkin]

Hera had a video which taught players how to expand in the mid and late games, he suggest to add mills and farms quickly instead of spend time and micro doing the positioning , so I guess this auto farms at least help us to achieve both speed and effectiveness.

[@planetary-rendez-vous]

Homeworld 3 just released. It would be great to have your input on the game. I personally have never played it.

[@Broken_robot1986]

It's the end of an era

[@EvolutionWar]

I dont know man I liked the old cars where you had to move the clutch and gears with your entire might. Why make introduce oil to the gears and clutch so its a bit smoother and easier to change gears and clutch now xD. I also think this is bad for the car, I mean game.

[@XUndergroundRap]

Woodline should auto build a new camp when it reaches like 7-10 squares

[@ohjajaja]

I think QoL feature additions (especially after release of a game) are best when it comes to information accessibility. For example in case of WC3 it is adding the option for constant life bars. It might have even raised the APM average of players because the ALT hotkey isn't tracked as an action. It frees up attention to actually issue more commands in-game than before. On the other hand automated placement of buildings (farms in AOE2) is manipulating a moving element in the stage of play - a key element I would say, even when it's only farms. Farms are always necessary, extremely scalable and are massively taxed by their area footprint. As mentioned by Grubby and other creators this takes away a huge part of skill expression and dimminishes visual permutiations and diversity. Simply said: the game will play and look more boring. In my opinion it is bad design, but not a hopeless one. If they think it will improve overall engagement, they probably have reasons for it. A strawman argument against this would go something like "So soon workers will be able to automatically kite animals to town centers for optimized food gathering". Imagine WC3 wouldn't have auto spell cast on units from release but would have added it to the game with Reforged. How would we have reacted to this change? Probably not very well. But nobody can deny they weren't happy this existed when they first played the game. I certainly loved having my shamans constantly spam Bloodlust! Grubby has talked about this in another video. Auto-cast is useful but also a noob trap. Units don't know the optimized way to cast spells - even with some priority automation - so they will waste mana. Farms won't have that except in special cases where farms run out of space etc. I suggest them to add the feature with a less optimized building pattern so manual optimization is possible but players who don't want to spend the time are afforded to spam the auto-build key. They probably think of that option while testing the system right now anyways. Lastly with everything being said, I want to highlight the importance of differentiating automation of play and automation of accessibility when designing games, especially when a big audience has established expectations of known systems (post-release patch, sequels, ...). ps. I really wish WC3 had a worker count indicator. I am struggling to beat any easy computer opponent in WC3 as Nightelf because of it. pps. I am an end-stage terminally bronzed noob in any RTS but I love the genre, so thanks for considering my thoughts. Grubby made me believe I can just hop in and start learning!

[@LonesomeSparrow7]

Interestingly enough, the mill and farms in AOE4 are both the same size (2x2 tiles) while in AOE2 they are not. That of course makes it a lot easier to perfectly place the farms quickly in AOE4 but they still felt the need to add the automated system. Spirit of the Law did a great job showing the effectiveness of optimally placed farms vs suboptimally placed farms and there isn't too much of a difference. quite franky, it hardly matters at all. Unless of course you exaggerate just how suboptimal you place them, but having a few farms one additional tile away is insignificant. So it's probably a good change that stops players from worrying about something that just isn't all that relevant to begin with, allowing them to focus on more important matters. And of course it helps to make it look nice

[@soulmask2781]

Actually there's one QoL thing in brood war that should be in there. Allowing spell casting with multiple units selected. Having to select spellcasters individually is just too much micro but in a way spells are balanced with this in mind. If you could spellcast while having 12 units selected and it worked like WC3 for example, then a lot of spells would become totally broken, like well most of them that are used right now in pro play. But still, the fact you have to select the high templar or science vessel individually and then press hotkey and mouseclick the target is just too much for 90% of people in the middle of a macro/micro war that is SC:BW. It ensures you can only do it a handful of times in a given time, with great odds of messing micro somewhere else on the map and losing a ton of units for nothing. Plus, the reason it's not in starcraft 1 is not that it's "too quality of lifey", it's that the development time for it was not considered to be worth for adding it in the game.

[@M2theAGGOT]

Coming from an FPS background (old games at least) Quake 2(and beyond) had haters because of the timer on the screen, like the literal timer showing how long the match is going for. The best Quake 1 players could time the Mega Health and Armours to the second in their heads (with feeling, or however you want to describe it) and some of them felt that having a timer made it "too easy" to time the items on the map. Are they wrong? Nope, at least not in my opinion. But did having the timer on the screen enabled your Average Joe to time the item/power-up pickups easier? Yes. And also IMO it was a great change. Loved your perspective on this Grubby, its truly refreshing to have someone talk about changes with an open mind and trying to see it from all angles. Edit: just got to the end when you talk about the ingame timer for WC3, and it's very similar to what Quake did. Will it lower the skill ceiling? MAYBE, a little. Would it make the skill floor lower so that people can get into the game easier? Almost certainly.

[@stevestrangelove4970]

Skill expression is important but its also important to pick in which areas skill expression should be focused. Lets say grubby start a factory to make dolls, each grubdoll requieres a station for hair, clothing, eyes, voice, etc. If every station is manual grubby would have total skill expression whem making hia grubdolls BUT is that the experiense he and other people who want to start his factory wants? So grubby may want to automatize some stations to streamline the process but keep manual input in others to keep his skill expression. This would be a none issue in a new game, but legacy games like aoe2 or wc3 it can be a big deal.

[@stevestrangelove4970]

This was a big topic on the fgc a couple of years ago when easy inputs or single button inputs where introduced and the resolution was way more simple: some games will have it and others dont, and thats part of their identity and you accept them whem they do and when they dont. But rts are in a different spot, its harder for rts players to play diverse rts games, to play online and to support each other (where is an evemt in which aoe2, aoe3, aoe4, wc3, coh3, etc are being played under the same roof?)

[@Hagelnot]

I feel like what you are saying not only applies to RTS, but life in general.

[@bentybursky858]

Also you joke about these games becoming auto-battlers, but that's what would happen. Every new game will automate something and before you know it you literally won't have to play the game

[@smashenYT]

wait is this the real bendadikt cumberbatchler ?

[@videogames102]

You can always go back to Brood War :)

[@lukusridley]

I think the answer to this is very contextual to the game, no? There's attentional limits; if you can replace a repetitive boring but required action in a part of the game where you have interesting tactical decisionmaking you could be doing instead - ie "oh i've freed up cognitive resources to harass or engage more seriously in skirmishes" that will be a net benefit. It lets both players focus on engaging with each other. If, however, this lowers the total cognitive strain so much that players are able to easily optimise the other things they're doing in that period of the game - ie it never forces interesting decisionmaking about where you direct your attention, or distinguishes between different levels of player - then you have just *lost* skill expression. But it's all contextual. It's never as simple as easier/harder good/bad.

[@danielmorrow5307]

The problem isn't that anyone is really that mad about auto farms. It's that the rapid increase of quality of life features is scaring people into thinking this will be a slippery slope and aoe will quickly become unrecognizable.

[@annaairahala9462]

100% agree with you

[@IHeliosI]

I wonder what you would think of Tooth and Tail...

[@LordAkuna]

As a Polish-onetrick pony who loves to place farms with great care, I feel this makes my sacrifice less valuable and my base not as special because "everyone can do it by spam clicking'

[@sooooooooDark]

an easier fix (than to have auto-placement) wouldve been that having a "perfect" farming setup doesnt exist and it comes with upsides and downsides (never played aoe2, maybe its already the case that having unoptimized placement has some benefits that make it worth considering over the optimal layout)

[@FloosWorld_AoE]

Well it kinda does exist in AoE 2 as even not perfectly placed farms still have a high efficiency

[@sooooooooDark]

@@FloosWorld_AoE but is there scenarios where u want "not perfectly placed farms rather than perfectly placed ones"?

[@Leon.Stanic]

@@sooooooooDark yeah if you don't wanna spend too much time while in the middle of a fight

[@tgo007]

are you allowed to say which game do you see more potential with, david kim's game or stormgate? Just give the caveat that things could change greatly with final release.

[@jajaxaxa]

I think most people who dislike or resist changes like this haven't been in that situation that Grubby described with the inventory or mana bars where you resist a change initially because you put in effort in learning it and then it is just handed to other for free, more or less erasing your effort as one of the reasons you were better than them. I remember when they added the debuff duration bars (or stun duration bar) to dota 2 where you could see when the stun ends in real time. You didn't need to know what skill stuns for how long and you didn't need to check your teammates for what level of ability they had. I always checked and I knew LSA is 1.6s, impale is 1.0-2.5s, euls is 2,5s etc. I had learned all this and to layer stuns efficiently without the enemy getting a chance to get unstunned. So I resisted. I said all the same things of this removes skill expression, this makes the game such a casual baby game, and at the expense of us hardcore top of the ladder players. Surely the reason newer players play the game is that they too want to climb up to rank 170 like me? Well, no they don't and I learned that the change didn't really put a dent in the overall skill expression of the game nor did it flood the game with casual players. It made very little difference other than convenience and over time I even learned to like the change and if they reverted this now, I could still play (though I don't really play dota anymore anyway) and it would be pretty much the same to me. Just less slightly convenient and more laborious.

[@Aiveq]

its normal though. we see such situation in real world all the time. automation replacing service industry or heavy machinery replacing labor. efficiency goes up at the cost of reducing workforce

[@jajaxaxa]

@@Aiveq Yep, it is definitely normal. I understand where people who resist are coming from and I sympathize but it is coming from a place of emotionality and not rationality. Just as it did for me and apparently for Grubby too. Irl workers have far more to lose on stuff like automation but there are positives to it as well. We never see those positives until we calm down and think about these things with a more clear mind. Then there's also the factor of how many people need to gain and how much for us to be willing to give up some small comfort or such?

[@Spazz4170]

@@Aiveq this has got to be the most non-sequitur I've ever seen. Yes in completely different situations where THE WORKFORCE IS BEING AUTOMATED AND WE LOSE SKILLS. IS PLACING A FUCKING FARM IN THE RIGHT SPOT FOR < 200f/hr A SKILL YOU LOST????????? jfc doomers like you need to actually fucking critically think about things before you fucking spout them. This is why terminally online lefties hate people like you I'm pretty apolitical but jfc this is fucking me up hearing this shit all the time. do you think command and conquer was so popular because it was the most complicated game at the time or do you think that all your unit production on 1 side of the screen and your extra unit faculties only increase prod speed. Making the eco simple and "automated" did people lose skills there or did they create new ways of skill expression. EVERY FUCKING TIME, PPL are saying oh what if we can't do it anymore...... WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THEY'RE TRYING TO AUTOMATE IT FOR? WHAT WORKFORCE IS REDUCED BY AUTOMATING SOMETHING THAT HAS MARGINAL IMPACT?????!!! use your godamn brain before you just spout shit you heard on fox news.. OH we're all gonna lose our jobs!!!!! Oh now we're all gonna not be able top play AoE anymore because of this. "I tell you wahhtt boii, them govern'rs be making the game play itself here, next thing you know I won't be able to move ma mouse." thats what you guys sound like btw. Its concerning in specific situations. when I hear it at every fucking thing thats automated I ignore any actual value your conversation might have had because i can tell you believe it for the wrong reasons. Thanks for coming to my ted talk, if you think automation is going to make you lose skills in rts you don't have any. automation as we know it is no where near dangerous to our ability to work and our current skillsets unless your skillsets are strictly manufacturing car doors/batteries. Even work in green rooms (work done with robotic hands and no human in put) are all supervised. this notion that our skills will dissapear before we transfer them to something else has about as much merit as an AI takeover. and if you believe that, I've got some real nice land in the south of Florida to sell you.

[@adamNZ2024]

It's a false equivalent because one feature is simply providing information for the player to act on, while the other is detracting from precision and creative process by letting the computer perform the action for you.

[@Aiveq]

@@adamNZ2024 you walk in warehouse and see assortiment of goods that needs packing and sorting. you walk in warehouse and see conveyer with machines scanning and sorting goods. one gave you information on what to do, another removed your involment and performed actions for you. think before you speak

[@rikosakurauchi7161]

Next patch placing house be will automatic

[@victorhugo-rf7py]

I want to see some age of empires gameplay please

[@sophiaperennis2360]

To be honest, i think even if the change is good to do it on a game that is this old just feels wrong to me. It's one thing to change things in an expansion like with TFT but after 22 years i don't know. Would it be ok to introduce similar features to Starcraft NOW? Koreans would probably go ballistic. You could make it optional but that would just split the community.

[@johnny9532]

Question: Don't you think the auto farm feature is bad for new players? Because I do. Probably many new players will not know about this feature. Some players maybe will not look up guides or beginner tips. Before the auto farm feature they would be placing farms like everybody else. Now new players are maybe placing farms the old way while old players will be placing farms the new way :P I atleast think this probably makes a larger stepping stone are a bigger gap between new and old players.

[@Mamm772]

That’s sort of an issue with guides in general, especially for a game that is still being updated/developed. Cause one day something will get nerfed, buffed or changed and that guide ends up being outdated. And I think most farm guides anyways talk more about the timing of placing down farmsl. (Aside from SoTL doing math) And to solve to issue of people not knowing X feature exists would to just have a tutorial or tooltip for it or maybe an announcement. This sort of complaint isn’t even a complaint about how the auto-farm works and just having players be informed that it is a mechanic that they can use to improve their gameplay, like auto reseed or using patrol instead of attack move.

[@johnny9532]

​@@Mamm772 I agree the issue of people not knowing is different from the feature itself, but you also cannot see it seperately. People say auto farm is good for the new and casual player. But if the new and casual player don't know the feature it not really a great argument. Also you compare with auto reseed, but this is different. Auto reseed has visual UI as does partrol. Auto farm is not so straight forward. That why you could make the argument it is bad for new players as instead of making a game more accessable you could make it more harder to learn all hidden features in the game.

[@SuperDomochan]

I don't think we really needed this feature, they should rather be improving lobbies

[@DudeStone]

It is a feature, primarily used in late imp when, if, you are floating wood, otherwise do not use it and end of debate. Use it or not .

[@rubenmaessen4724]

The only automation introduced n the game I dislike is the autoscout. That one does take away choices of the player on how to scout. There is no creativity or choices to be made on how to place farms exactly. You still need to choose on which TC or mill you place your farms so the only real decision making about farms is still part of the game. I am even in favour of autoque for creating units. Just like with the autofarm feature you still need to switch it on and off depending on the situation. It would mean autocreating villagers in early game and probably most of the game, and autocreating military units in later game and perhaps even early as well, but you need think about to switching it off for saving resources to go to the next age or squeeze in a technology. These features don't change decision making, but makes execution more convenient, allowing to focus more on decision making and micro. You still need to decide on what units you spend your resources on. I think it would be good for the game. But please remove the darn autoscout feature.

[@FloosWorld_AoE]

Auto Scout is inefficient tho as it always scouts in the same pattern. It goes into a corner and then systematically scouts the map. Manual scouting remains superior. However, since Auto Scout is now enabled on all scout-type units, this will definitely bring a change mid game.

[@GingerDRan]

I think that it is awesome but they need to slow down the auto placement part of it. it shouldn't be faster than than a high level players farm placements maybe like 2 farms a second, but it can definitely makes a really annoying part of the game more enjoyable

[@game_jinx]

keep it up mr grubby 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@charlesc4511]

I'm slow and dumb, so i love these automated stuff😅

[@mitko1955]

Tierlist when?

[@0.974]

None of my non-RTS friends are interested in any of these new RTS games, even when they try them. What is stopping people from playing are not these minor things like farm placement they aren't even aware of; in my experience a lot of people just don't enjoy competitive 1v1 in general. The most popular RTS and fighting games aren't the simplest and most accessible in their genre. Seems to me like the modern accessibility trend is mostly going to alienate the existing players and resistance to things like farm placement could be because it feels like RTS is on a slippery slope toward too much automation.

[@DivineBanana]

I really think it's simple as - some people only like to control one character at a time. Some people simply don't care for controlling multiple units or find it too complicated I.e. requires too much multitasking. It can be hard to convince league players to play Dota because they don't like to control the courier or illusions, etc. they just want their one character. If they won't even bother to learn that, they sure as hell won't take the time to learn how to control an entire army, including workers and base building. Nothing wrong with it, just preference. It's why some people play tabletop war games like Warhammer and like to control a whole army and consider large-scale military tactics, army formations etc. while others play tabletop roleplaying games like DND or Pathfinder and just wanna focus extremely in-depth on their single customizable character. So sadly I don't think QoL will change anything, RTS is simply a niche genre, and no amount of casualization, automation or pandering will widen that niche IMO. Maybe it will attract new people to try short term but bottom line is, if you aren't into drawing boxes and controlling armies then RTS just isn't for you.

[@belisarian6429]

True, but I think this is where having great AI can help as lot of people enjoy playing but against other players its seems stressful, which is why majority of AOE players play vs AI and why SC2 coop commanders was such success. Also what I have found is that lot of players dont like idea of "build orders", sure you dont have to do them/know them, but from what I have heard some new players feel like "you have to play like this", which kind of kicks into idea of sandboxy RTS.

[@JustinSeizure]

I've loved the campaigns in WC3 and SC2 and bought SC1 remastered to play that as well. But I just didn't enjoy it the same way because I was constantly annoyed by the lack of qol.

[@Twister9517]

Also Viper said in his video that manual farm placement is still a skill, you could place farms in a more defensive location away from the enemy, the auto feature does not take that into account. Another example is villager distance to the farm, you could place a farm closer to the villagers so he does not have to walk half a screen to start building it.

[@Aiveq]

arent we glad to have option to do both?

[@SamSGLM]

The are a lot of extra efficient things you can do. You can always give prio to the left side since they only path in a triangle on the right side of a farm so they would be closer to drop off. But realistically, some benefits when booming are minor than having relevant APM. Spending time/APM in placing farms when you are just setting your 3rd or 4tg TC is perhaps wasted when you could be doing something more important like cresting more production buildings so the extra food as a consuming flow; teching something; Scouting or better yet the 3rd and 4th TC are done on the back of your own aggression so you need to micro the feudal army you had or early castle to give yourself space or help your flanks. I am not for full auto or anything close, I prefer wc3 and aoe2 over sc2 and àoe3-4, but I can see when something is just a quality of life making me do better more meaningful APM. The best will do what is the most effective, I will end up scattering farms around because I don't want my scouts and xbows to die, for these situations it's fine

[@tkzsfen]

If you like it use it, if not - don't. I know, amazing, right!

[@dicecurator4073]

Not really a fan of the auto farm placement. I always liked building an optimal and aesthetic base in aoe2, now it will just be spam clicking cause that is the easiest to do. I don't care about the apm requirements, just the base design aspect. You could also have the rest of ur buildings etc be autoplaced, building housing be automatic etc, but i think it adds character and personality if you do it yourself. It's important that when you look at your base you are like "I made this".

[@MrTBSC]

addition of changeable hotkeys to a rts game = eliminating the need to memorize the games preset hotkeys ... KiLls PlAyEr ExPrEsIoN !!!11! player expression no one cares about watching a cast because you don't see that anyway ... and because many old rts games do not have the function to replace hotkeys it can mean that either you sometimes have convoluted combiations to activate a function or you have a number hotkeys bound to functions that you may just not need because the game may have easier/more accessible alternatives to access the same function over the HUD ... i said it before as a casual player i welcome it VERY much to have a level of QoL additions to ease the execution of repetitive tasks be that rapid placement of farms, or in games like Total Annihilation the need to place many extractors (resource generating building), powergenerators or the need to chaincommand reclaiming scrap from destroyed units or buildings ... functions like that will not turn the game into a self playing simulation ...

[@soulmask2781]

Majority of gamers receive new QoL features always the same way, with cheers. But often, the game comes out and it's bad. Biggest example is SC:BW vs SCII, SC:BW is obviously the better game even if it has bad QoL, while SCII has great QoL but is honestly less cool and less inherently balanced. Protoss used to be the king of mineral efficiency, in SCII they are king of cheese. Zerg used to be king of early game, expanding and harassing, now they are king of the late game. It just doesnt fit the faction lores at all. While in brood war, races follow their lores in-game perfectly. Another thing is the hydralisk becoming a tier 3 unit and being replaced by roaches. Hydralisks are undoubtedly the coolest units in Starcraft, and making them tier 3 units, and not even the best tier 3 unit, makes the game simply less cool. In comparison, roaches are hydralisk midgets that cannot target air. Roaches are about 10 times less cool than Hydralisks, and that's not debatable. Also the music is less hype. Another example of QoL actually being bad for a game is Skyrim VS Elden Ring. Now, Skyrim has been a great financial success, I can't deny that. But every single quest objective is pinpointed both in game and in the map, there's literally no searching involved into quests. It's also a quite easy game that can be exploited pretty easily, but even without exploits, it's still very easy. In comparison, Elden Ring has no quest markers, so if you don't search online for quests you can actually miss a lot of quests. But that's part of the fun, finding quests, finding hidden stuff, BY YOURSELF. It's also MUCH better balanced, better looking, better lore, more cool, more hype, basically better in almost every single way except QoL. Finally there's the people that look at others who are against QoL changes and they say: "They are just grumpy people who hate change! QoL, who doesn't want that???" Well, to those people, I say: "You are a complete idiot."

[@XUndergroundRap]

How long tell when you place a dock you get auto fishing ships?

[@hai.nguyen995]

The auto farm is alright because it's very basic, it doesn't care about other farms/mills/TCs etc., the efficiency is not much better for 90% of games. The other 10% is about moving vils from other resources to farming, saving space in tight map or fighting this game god awful path finding. There are definitely noticable adventages with auto farm but I think it's small enough over the course of the game that it won't sway the game by itself. The other QoL changes tho is what I really hate. Drop of resource hotkey is the worst offender. Auto scout is another, it was bad and restricted so noone paid any mind to it but now they remove the restriction and I think it's a bad idea.

[@drobostoko5714]

Dautt does not care

[@ZhangHe2369]

Tbh, bw could add auto rally workers to resources, an idle worker button, and multiple buildings to a control group and only who have been grinding since 1998 would care. Lots of those QOL things are only missing cause the game is very old. BW: Remastered already allows for assigning custom hotkeys and there isn't much push back against people reasigning build probe from P or w/e. Too much of BW's annoyances aren't very interesting versions of skill expression. I can respect having the game keep the clunky mechanics for prosperity's sake, but I don't find it that engaging to have to manually assign every new worker to minerals every time for 40-60+ times a game.

[@letsmakeit110]

I'm all for removing arbitrary execution barriers; same reason FPS games don't require you to input the konami code to reload your gun.

[@lildgamedev6885]

Something QoL I wish they would add to warcraft 3 is bigger unit selection, like sc2 style

[@boombox2112]

Still can’t line up farms properly lol still all jank around mills

[@karelvalecka7653]

Team Viper or Team T90

[@testitestmann8819]

You have a lot of good points. Personally, I'd prefer to not have the auto-farm feature, but I find it hard to express a rationale that is consistent when it comes to other QoL features.

[@JamesJohnson-kl1eu]

I thought the mill would auto-generate the farms, not just highlight and clicking them lol this isn't a huge change at all. Also, if you're a pro gamer, you should already build your farms optimal. Now if you want to talk about auto-villager queueing, that's different. The whole point of raiding/hitting at random places is to distract people and hope they make a mistake.

[@stampolaoc]

I think the auto farm just looks ugly in aoe2. the game doesn't need this feature + it has tiny impact and in the end its just another clunky feature on top of all the clunkiness that the game has. I wish the devs had higher quality standards and actually cared about fixing the myriad of issues the game has. If you gonna add QoL to the game how about you add something that would be accepted by everyone like being able to place gather point for unfinished buildings.

[@beruzebubu6115]

START PLAY AOE2 GROBBO!!!

[@inkarnator7717]

It's just a matter of game design. What is the game designer aiming for? So they have to tailor the quality of life features towards that end. You say that we don't want an AFK RTS where we watch our simulations fight each other. Why the hell not? Imagine a game where all the boots on the ground stuff is taken care of and the player's way of controlling the situation is by issuing general guidelines and decrees. There is an entire realm of game design to be explored here. I think we all just suffer from an utter lack of imagination when it comes to RTS design..

[@adamNZ2024]

What you described is an auto-battler, not an RTS

[@qzeagh2241]

This video is a discussion about QoL in general and it falls into the trap of suggesting that different QoL are comparable, just because they share the QoL label. Whether or not for example auto farm placement is welcome or not solely depends upon the context of the game it is put in. Ideas like "Auto farm good in AoE4 -> auto farm good in AoE2" or "shift queue good in AoE2 -> auto farm placement good in AoE2" are nonsense. These things have nothing to do with one another.

[@ivantolkachev4808]

Deciding what it is that's worth the investment of your attention and what isn't is where most of the depth, decision making and differentiation comes from in RTS games. The difficulties that the interface presents is a fundamentally important medium for the genre. It's almost impossible for a game to be too mechanically challenging. For instance broodwar is very hard mechanically because you cant select more than 12 units, you can't select more than 1 building, theres no smart casting and the workers don't automatically work when rallied at a resource. But the game is still very interesting and exciting to play as long as players are of equal level, because there's no expectation that you or your opponent are going to be executing anything perfectly. In AOE2 Having to place the farms manually never hurt anyone and the ability to invest a little more attention or effort was just one more option available to you.

[@ivantolkachev4808]

Not being able to see what items your opponent is carrying in WC3 is a more fundamental change however.

[@Spazz4170]

yes an option that has 200f incr over 1 FULL HOUR. yes such a great option me = lose ~2+sec every farm placement rotation, me = gain 200f IF the game goes at least 1 hour with all my farms placed. seems like a decision I should make............... Any new players will get rkt by this. I remember when I first started and thought all my farms had to be perfect. Was instantly winning games when I watch sotl vid explaining the math. This isn't good mechanical limitation its an unintentionally designed trap for new players.

[@ivantolkachev4808]

The issue isn't so much the minimal difference in food income but the amount of actions it takes to build X farms + the compactness of your base once you've built X farms.

[@DaddyMouse]

"The difficulties that the interface presents is a fundamentally important medium for the genre" - Yes and no. Like yes in a way that limitations define a game as much as its features but also i have a question - which ones of those limitations are FUN? for example, limiting the game's resolution to 640x480 would create many new mechanical challenges and make people be more mindful of where they point their screen at. Would that be fun tho? Same with the farms - is a tedious monotonous task like placing farms FUN for most players? If it has so little impact on economy, then why not just let people bypass it if they want to

[@ivantolkachev4808]

@@DaddyMouse I think that once someone is used to some quality of life improvement they definitely don't want to give those features up, but the argument that "the action is not fun for the player so we should automate it" makes no sense because just about every individual action involved seems not fun. What is fun is the game as a whole which is made up of lots of action requirements which if considered on their own most people would find "unfun"

[@TeslaStormX]

It's a big surprise to see you make a AoE2 video, I'm so used to your wc3 content.

[@FloosWorld_AoE]

Well, he played some AoE 2 with Viper two years ago

[@TheLastSoundNL]

9:01 The point with lessening 1 aspect and skill expression is you're changing the game overall. Just completely taking out 1 aspect of a game you get a different game. I have nothing like age of wonders 4, it looks fun, but do we want aoe2 to be more like another game when we can play the other game? It's more than just skill expression. If all quality of life changes are considered positive and give a larger player base, do we implement them in all rts? Obviously I don't think that's what you mean, but if there is a financial incentive cater to the casual player base then the publisher will do that. doesn't that lead to the rts genre to be more homogenized, like it has for completely different genres like shooters and open world exploration games? In how many games do you need to climb a tower to reveal the map? It has spilled over into Zelda games. We have evidence that it can happen and there is a motive to get there for at least the publisher, even if not fact based but perception. at what point is it enough, where is the breaking point where it start to change the core identity of a game? Just because it hasn't in the past for qol changes, doesn't mean there isn't one. Which is a question I heard confidently asked. "Why is this not fine but you were fine with this other change in the past which is worse." I think we have come to that breaking point for many people with aoe 2 now and for others not yet. People can play aoe4. What is fine there does not mean it's for aoe2. You don't think you can boil it down to only 2 factors or sides to be for or against with skill expression. The reason I said perception for the publishers' motive, is because I don't know if the majority of casual players actually do want this change for multiplayer. I don't have the numbers. I've seen people from low mid and high elo be divided and even against their own interest sometimes.

[@adamNZ2024]

The players that argue that it makes a negligible difference to economy conveniently forget that it requires human input which requires time, attention and focus. Most of the quality-of-life features that are compared to in this video are false equivalencies that do not actively detract from skill expression. Providing information to the player allows them to make informed decisions, it doesn't replace the thought process behind it. The farm placement removes skill expression and replaces it with automation. It reduces the amount of precision and creativity to place structures and buildings which is a massive part of the game. It detracts from what makes a strategy game by letting the computer think for you. That's the difference. If all that was required was deciding how many farms to make, then there is no difference in having a computer script to do the build order for you. It's completely ignoring the skill of performing the build order using attention and focus as strategic resources to utilize in the game to manage, especially under pressure.

[@planetary-rendez-vous]

Auto farm is galaxy brain. How is this meaningful to micro manage your farmers? Micromanaging this is a relic of the past, it's not very meaningful imo and there are other ways to do skill expression. Imagine if I had to manually replant trees in SpellForce 3 using my elf reforester? It also lowers the entry barrier to need simple micro your way out of having a functional economy for newbies and allow people to focus on other parts of the game.

[@sapatanque5881]

You addressed the biggest argument those that are against QoL changes use: why not automate everything? Why not auto queue villagers? When will they stop? 🙀

[@dariussonofjazzlin7433]

Past Dark Age it disrupts potential strategies. In the end you should always decide what you build, the QoL changes are about how things are built or created. It honestly just sounds like an overly dramatic slippery slope argument.

[@konstantinriumin2657]

How about we remove autoattacks? And every unit's every attack will require manual command

[@coxandrewj]

Archer players rejoice! Yes, let’s do that. Finally an even playing field against cav civs.

[@Spazz4170]

Yes I like that change, but I also feel theres too much control for units these days. we should limit it to a single unit per selection that way they can really micro what unit they want. And heres the best part we can actually also just remove hp bars for things not selected, that way theres more skill expression since you have to select each unit individually to know its health.

[@JJBeauregard1]

Great video and very balanced and mature approach to the topic, Grubby! People are so dramatic. Why do such discussions always sway towards the extremes? No, automatically placing farms won't ruin the game or the skill expression within it. At the same time there obviously needs to be a limit to qol and nobody is suggesting to automate everything. Not naming any names... MBL

[@kingenfuuken]

I think the important question to ask is; Does this objectively improve the game for everyone? Its hard to say yes or no, people seem split down the middle on it. And because people are split, I think we should default to no. If you reword the question and ask "Is it good to make a controversial change that splits opinion in the community 50/50?" I think the answer to that question is "No". Therefore its better to not make the change. That's my opinion on the matter.

[@DarkwynnTV]

Sometimes people don't know better and will inherently reject change. In this case however I also tend to agree. Oldschool Runescape is a fantastic example of this. It's never been more successful and the reason is they poll every single major change that they want to add to the game. All players then vote on if it should be added to the game and the devs follow the majority. So far numbers tell it's been working very well for them.

[@alejandroballesteroshernan1678]

Im 1600 player in aoe2 and I love the change

[@slayerdark0]

I stopped playing wow classic when wotlk pre patch launched, I thought the expansion "cataclysm" had "ruined" the game, BUT turns out my dear "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion was the culprit, the reason I quit is because everything became QoL, every single mechanic that required timing, observation and knowledge was removed and replaced by "click more" "mechanics", 1 day I was i DotA, the next day I woke up and wow had became LoL, people that couldn't get past 60% perfomance on their best day were now top performers, a joke, really

[@sophiaperennis2360]

Your reaction was the correct one. Cataclysm absolutely sucked and did a lot to set WoW into the absolute wrong direction.

[@slayerdark0]

@@sophiaperennis2360 Nah, wrath did, that is a misconception

[@ledizzy2634]

I think you're missing the point. Aoe2's signature is the fact you HAVE to concentrate on so many things. The game is supposed to stretch you thin. It's a competition between player's ability to do everything, which obviously leads to some players being better in the various other areas. Automating more and more of the game is removing this signature. It becomes less about a player's ability to manage everything and more about who can micro the best - in other words, it becomes JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER RTS. If you need any proof about how all these "quality of life features" have changed the game, go and play Aoe2HD - the gameplay is completely and totally different. It's unrecognisable. And that's the issue, we have been on a path AWAY FROM WHAT MADE AOE2 BEAUTIFUL IN THE FIRST PLACE. And now Age of Empires 2 isn't even age of empires 2 anymore, it's a different game wearing its skin. They have tweaked and changed so many things over the years and it's starting to feel like the devs don't even UNDERSTAND what AoE2 used to be about.

[@reinoldrojas8733]

I don't think grubby missed this point at all. Checkout 10:00, all rts games have you concentrate on many things, thats really not unique to AoE2. Most rts games have micro and macro as an integral part of the gameplay in order to win. I really don't think this change and others (auto-reseeding, attack move, auto scout, etc) are detracting away from what makes AoE2 great. I'd recommend watching Vipers video if you want more specific discussion on that. Also what did AoE2 used to be about? Just going by player numbers on steam they've been going up since the release of DE so it seems the devs understand their playerbase.

[@ledizzy2634]

@@reinoldrojas8733 I'd recommend actually acknowledging that many players don't like this for valid reasons, going and playing AoE2 HD and DE side by side, then acknowledging that the 2 don't play anything alike and then maybe you will understand the point of view of someone who played since 2000. I doubt you will. And that's part of the problem, all you all see is how it "betters the game" without actually realising that all the small changes introduced, over the long term, have morphed the game into something it shouldn't be. This is meant to be AOE2, not AOE2.5. If they wanted to throw all this junk into the game, they should have made a new title in the same engine and maintained the original formula for AOE2. This is death by a thousand cuts and eventually you will have a bland generic RTS like every other one. And that's the direction AOE2 is going. If they want an age game that plays like all the others, make A NEW GAME.

[@GraveUypo]

@@ledizzy2634 that's very stupid and elitist for no reason. you want the game to remain static, unmodified, just because you're nostalgic? how about you ditch that optical mouse for a ball mouse too while you at it? remember how fun it was to have to open the bottom part to remove those huge wheels of crud that formed on the little axles every 2 days of use? You're removing skill by using a mouse that doesn't need that done to it. And yes, this is exactly the level of your complaint. This game would've died off if it wasn't for this kind of improvement. And by the way, it is TOTALLY meant to be "aoe 2.5". if you want "aoe2", go play the HD edition

[@ledizzy2634]

@@GraveUypo I love how emboldened idiot bullies are when they are typing i to KZbin comments lol

[@somebody-anonymous]

I would like to suggest to invite spirit of the law to talk about Lanchesters law and his way of analysing unit strength. Or to try to take a page from his book Its kind of crazy that spirit has done about 100 videos in which he simulates battles to see which units wins if you start with equal resources worth of units.. but I've hardly ever deen videos like that for wc3. Do you know who would win an equal resource fight, rifles or fiends? Of course wc3 is quite different because you typically fight with fewer units and there is more potential to withdraw individual units etc, so that fights often less straightforward, and an equal resource analysis would need to involve unrealisticly many units... but ... still it would be nice to know who has the better raw fighting power between a rifle and a fiend, right? (I.e. who wins a fight with balanced resources assuming all units are always attacking with perfect efficiency (no overkill, no walking around)) Id also like to a comparison of wyverns vs hippo riders vs dragonhawks And I'd like to see 50 food taurens vs 50 food knights. For sure the taurens will pulverize the knights For an example of spirits method, today he discussed the huskarl unit in a video, with and lots of matchup against different units. Just some ideas, have a nice day