What if TRACKING Worked?

[@MasterSonicKnight]

i'd personally love to have a mechanic like that even that dust cloud for all cavalry (but with much smaller clouds, because that example was just insane lmao) and then make it so tracking extends the lifetime of all tracks (including boats! they were the first one to have this "leave marks where they went" feature)

[@Kaliayep]

Excellent ideas !

[@ChewingGumFlavor]

It can be actually really good for dark age scout laming, seeing which way sheep were going

[@misteral9045]

It would actually be anti-laming. Sheep will always be going to the TC and spawn in set locations close to it, which is easy to find anyway, and knowing where they have been doesn't help you lame them. It would be better to just knowingly run ahead of them to intercept, but good luck doing that. If you find the sheep before the opponent, that's when you lame them, but you didn't track them and it's actually the opponent who can track them to take them back. Unless you're playing a special map with a lot of sheep, like nomad or ghost lake, it would do nothing, and on nomad people just fish/hunt and use the sheep to scout, and on ghost lake all the sheep are in the middle.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

@@misteral9045 there's sheep scouting tho

[@misteral9045]

@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Only if you're using your scout to push deer or something. In which case you're not going out to lame.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

@@misteral9045 I meant that if player A is sheep scouting and player B is out to lame, then player B might see a sheep trail which is not from a sheep going to the TC, which could help the laming. To be clear, I don't really think it would be a big deal anyway, just saying it could help laming quite a bit some of the time

[@misteral9045]

@@user-sl6gn1ss8p If the sheep isn't going to the TC, that means it wasn't going to be eaten, so therefore is not a lame. I really do not understand why y'all are so passionate, let alone passionate about something scummy like laming.

[@mubashirulmoula1798]

3:30 - What did the elephant do? It doesn't deserve that.

[@MaxHohenstaufen]

Animal cruelty

[@CappnRob]

I really like that first idea. The dust cloud is cool too but a bit too much, but damn if it doesn't look good; on the other hand I think the sound might be a good mechanic to add? At the very least bringing back tracking and allowing you to see enemy movements is cool.

[@AdmiralWololo]

Yeah, I think just a more useful version of basic tracking would be cool. Dust clouds and blood trails can be saved for scenarios

[@fulguratingbean9489]

Some of these ideas are absolutely fantastic. I could see a trail mechanic for a custom scenario, and a dust cloud can still be really cool for cinematic effects as just a flavor thing. I'll have to check if there are such clouds that aren't as disruptive to game readability

[@AdmiralWololo]

Gunpowder projectile dying graphics are possible candidates for smaller dust clouds

[@NeinStein]

Man, you hammer out those great ideas left and right! I feel the original idea behind tracking might have been something like this. As those tracks in the snow only came later in AoC, perhaps technical limitations prevented that initially, and later the devs didn't want to change the base mechanics to much.

[@artursjoblom5142]

Great video, great ideas. You earned a sub. Now all of these ideas implemented in an exaggerated fashion would be obnoxious no doubt, but subtle hints of them that not only fits the beautiful graphics of aoe2 but also are useful in a practical sense. That would enhance the game i feel.

[@Νικόλαος-ο5γ]

The poem was inspiring

[@justxavier9999]

This is a fantastic idea as a flavor effect and a mechanic. I hope nobody uses this mod to technically not cheat (ironically, I use the beach TC mod)

[@uwuowouwu4846]

it could be folded in to the speed techs like squires and husbandry to let those unit's LoS see tracks (or see them for extra long), if it were to be a generic tech otherwise it might be too expensive to get in early castle when it would be most beneficial. maybe useful for feudal age too but eco is so tight when there are few units that it might be too expensive to get. It could also make sense for it to be tied to the scout line for better scouting of enemy units

[@AdmiralWololo]

Yeah, it could definitely be folded into other techs as well, perhaps Town Watch

[@shanem8957]

I’m pretty sure it was added as a base feature for all infantry

[@ashina2146]

In Warband there's a Tracking Skill that gives these kinds of bonuses on the Map. -Allows you to track moving entities, lower tracking can only mark if there's movement on the map, while higher tracking skill gives more information like the numbers of soldiers moving in the tracks. In AoE2 a tick of 10 to 30 Ingame second can be given where you can track the traces of movement during that tick. -Marks of Battles can be seen like knowing if there was a battle here, where higher tracking skill allows you to accurately know how many soldiers are in such battle. in AoE2 it could just show the corpses after battle which is one of the more forgotten mechanic from the Original.

[@afz902k]

That dust cloud and gallop rumble are so epic

[@thire7432]

A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ho ho Silver: the Lone Ranger!

[@Xastor994]

This is a sick idea actually, and a basic variant of it (all units leaving tracks like they currently do in snow terrain) could even be seamlessly added to the current game without affecting the balance or meta in any way. If we can hear onagers, why not any group of cavalry larger than 10? People would need to strategize to avoid that, bringing both realism and interesting choices to the game. An advanced version could probably include tracks that can only be seen by scout units until Tracking is researched (or having tracking just increase how long they last). There is absolutely a place for a civ bonus focusing on this, and it would probably cause some really intense micro and cheese strategies at the highest levels.

[@1AEGIS]

my militia in my base 5 minutes later: my militia see a jebait unit cross the forest near my peaceful town and start following that unit till his fortress

[@pandaprewmaster325]

Actually this could work very nicely especially in large sized maps lets say 1v1 on largest size it could create interesting scenarios and reactions and giving each unit type a unique trail so much could be done with this.

[@paweborkowski6959]

2:25 that looks so cool

[@patricksteinhuber6981]

I think a little effect is good but not to long in blood or steps (or more effect-detail and NOT overpainted) - and by a lot of horses, camal the Dust can fit it like this video 😮

[@jakab174]

Really nice video! I also have a long desired thought on simple mod: I dont know if it is possible, but It would be cool to have a mod where houses could also spawn vills. Bonus if its needed first to have a man and a woman garrisoned during the creation time. :D It would completly change the game. Since the TC would be stop being the most important thing.

[@darkranger116]

This would be absolutely perfect if they ever did a Native America civ. *start game with Scout eagle warrior like equivalent, while its selected, you can see tracks of other units up to 60 seconds, when this Scout unit is within 5 tiles of a set of tracks, it gains +25% move speed*

[@ZS-rw4qq]

All of these are amazing

[@MahazonaTiN]

Dust cloud is cool for a cinematic thing

[@MoRDekai1364]

Yeah, sure. It kinda feels native to the game, truly aoe2 spirit

[@teutonichealingfortress]

I would like Heresy to no longer affect buildings - this would help greatly against civs such as ports where you could convert their feitorias which will in turn give researching the tech to do so won't suddenly be worthless - and then move heresy to imperial age

[@MaxHohenstaufen]

You know, this is a topic I would probably never think about in a thousand years, but now that I do I think it's quite interesting. I'm all for. Ore realism in AoE2 and this could add a bit in that regard.

[@No_Complaint_9790]

Would love to see it on the Genghis Khan Campaign. Behold, the horde approaches. With the dust cloud and the background score. 😊 On normal games, we’d lose the crazy moments where a sneak villager or unit gets past because of LOS.

[@MauricioOsuna-et8et]

Damn, if only 😂 being able to follow the tracks of enemies would be MASSIVE.

[@connormako1987]

I actually thought this is what the tech did when I was 7

[@quaintserpent]

Looks awesome but the „track” effect must depend on kind of terrain. If tracking on grass then tracks would quickly disappear. If snow/sand then tracks would last longer and would remain in 2x distance than usually. On the road tracking wouldn’t work. Btw night mode should be a standard. Then tracking also wouldn’t work and line of sight of all units should be reduced.

[@AdmiralWololo]

Yes, I have it leaving no tracks on roads. You can also make the tracks more sparse or more intense on different terrain types.

[@1AEGIS]

tracking on water . W

[@PauxloE]

Of course, you'd also be able to track stolen boars or sheep.

[@Xeonerable]

I think if footprints were barely visible (unless you specifically looking for them) and last at least a minute it would be useful but not OP or add on-screen clutter.

[@JuliusCaminus]

Funny enough, though not the tracks themselves, the sound queues come up as a feature of AoE4. It is one of the many soundscapw features in that game that make me hope the game gets a tad more attention from devs and the community at large. As to footstep tracking in AoE2, I think it would be a great generic, cheap scout tech.

[@flyingsteaks]

fun idea but wouldnt it be really bad in these 100 army pop late game situations?

[@AdmiralWololo]

For huge dust clouds, probably. For simple tracks, probably not - It's the same mechanic as is already experienced on snow maps, which doesn't slow anything down. Either way, there could be a way to disable the graphics, like you can disable bloom & particle effects.

[@RobotShield]

On a personal note it would really mess with my play style of get hammered hard and flee my base. As fleeing villagers would be easier to find and kill :(

[@IorekMetal]

This looks like AoE4 stuff.

[@alijabevrnja4310]

Where do you dig these gem ideas from?

[@battleforevermore]

This should be in AOE4.

[@paweborkowski6959]

Your voice reminds me of that of Nick on planet ripple (who talks about lego). Anyone agrees?

[@martinleperche9461]

How did you manage to show the blood and footsteps in the scenario editor? I've tried once but it crashed the game

[@misteral9045]

Tracking isn't a thing in any RTS simply because it's too slow paced. Knowing where your enemy has been can tell you where they're going, but it's also fairly easy to mess up or erase tracks to the point where you shouldn't bother tracking or can't, which also slows down the opponent. Edit: what other RTS does have is units who can see through fog of war or give you statistical data about the enemy, such as the sensor tower from StarCraft or spy abilities from Rise of Nations. But that's not tracking. A lot of what you're describing as tracking is simply reading your opponent on a personal level, analyzing their strategy and habits, while also understanding your own vulnerabilities and strategies, and predicting where they're most likely going to be. It only happens in real life when you know the tracking efforts will be worth it (such as when hunting injured prey who won't go far, or when the tracking is very easy like following footprints in the snow) or when you can't do anything else so you might as well indirectly collect information (such as guerilla tactics or before warfare has started, neither of which applies to Aoe2 unless you're playing a FFA diplomacy game).

[@ahbraveconscript997]

How many viewers have you converted with that intro?