Is There a Technical Design Reason Why Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Cannot Have a Repeat Build Button Like Age of Mythology?
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I recently played Age of Mythology for the first time in a while and it was fun streaming the campaigns.
I noticed that some features from Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition were not available, such as shift queue, “select all” military buildings, idle military, and idle villager.
However, I did remember the great repeat build feature.
This allows you to queue up a unit and click a button to have the building produce that unit continuously as long as you have enough resources.
You have to be careful though, since you may need to save up resources for something else.
I’m curious why this feature was not included in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
It would be great to have the Town Center set to repeat villager build to reduce idle time and make the game more about strategy instead of fast clicking.
Does anyone know why this is not included?
I’m thinking of submitting a feature request to the developers.
What do you think?
>but I think it waits until starting to construct the unit or research the tech to subtract the resources, where as DE earmarks the cost immediately, but I don’t think this would be hard to work around
That’s not an issue.
DE has a similar mechanic for farms and fish traps.
The reseed toggle is permanent but cost is deducted only when a farm or fish trap actually reseeds.
So I do not think the issue is any kind of technical restriction.
It’s probably more to do with the fact that queuing villagers is now considered an essential macro skill as part of eco management and it might actually automate a massive chunk of gameplay.
[Auto everything!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q879j3ydfw8)
I don’t want to come across like a stroppy old school player (okay, maybe…) but this question of how much can be automated always comes up.
The question isn’t whether it makes the game easier to play (obviously yes) but whether it *should* make the game easier to play: fundamentally this game is extremely difficult and part of that is the fact that you have to macro and micro at the same time.
A high skill ceiling is good for the competitive scene and good for people who want to improve, but it’s bad for new players and casual play.
Which do you want to keep?
You can’t have both!
What an automation like this would do ultimately is make the game more micro focused, and shift the emphasis towards faster players who can’t multitask and away from more rounded players who aren’t as good with split micro.
So purely on a personal level, I wouldn’t like it.
Maybe my micro would improve but I like the balance as it is.
I also think the extremely high skill ceiling is the reason this game has survived for as long as it has, and making fundamental changes to improve casual play could put that at risk.
The same thing happened with WoW and I didn’t like that either.
I guess I don’t mind being bad at the game at times and I don’t mind it being hard, because it’s rewarding to improve, and that feeling is shared by lots of people who have also been playing since the early 00s and probably will be in the 2050s too.
So my answer to the question of who you should keep is definitely the competitive players, the pros, the streamers, the people driving the success of the game.
I don’t think it’s struggling for users to be honest, or that it’s going to become substantially more popular with a change like this either.
It’s online play which has made AoE 2 what it is.
Others can probably speak to this better but as to why this feature wasn’t included I imagine is largely because of the goal of AOE2:DE.
If I understand correctly, Most of the quality of life improvements that came with the release of DE were unfinished features of the original engine or things cut late enough in the process that vestiges still existed in the code.
While implemented differently than what was originally envisioned, even the constituent charge mechanic was inspired by a cavalry ability that was present in some form but not in the game on release.
So, if it wasn’t in the original engine it may just have not been a priority in delivering the “definitive edition” of the game.
I am not arguing for or against the merits of such an approach, just saying that is what I understand to have happened.
To add to this, I believe that AOM was built on the same engine as AOE3, a distinct one from AOE2 and I doubt there is much that was directly ported from the AOE2 engine given the very different direction of moving to 3D rendering rather than isometric sprites.
With things being done differently, it may not be straightforward to just move the feature to another engine as they are likely rather distinct.
I don’t have the code and could probably not say for sure even if I did but it does seem reasonable that a trigger similar to auto reseed could be implemented for buildings but the UI/UX design to implement that would take some consideration beyond just getting something that works.
With all this being said I imagine that while possible, it is not a trivial thing to add in and then it is a feature I haven’t heard people request before this post so I wouldn’t expect it to be super high on the priority list but it does seem to fall along the lines of things like auto scout that they have done to try and make the game a little easier to start into
The probable reason AoE2 DE does not have a repeat build button is because the dev team feared backlash from oldschool players who are so accustomed to not having that feature that they are defending the games lack of it.
I think a repeat build button would be a wonderful addition to the game.
No one plays Age of Empires II because they enjoy endlessly clicking or pressing a button to create Villagers.
If they did, they would enjoy playing Cookie Clicker more.
People like Age of Empires II because of the strategical decisions one constantly has to make.
A repeat build button would make the game more about that.
It would also make learning the game more fun for new players.
I usually tell players who try to climb the ladder that they are overvaluing the importance of strategy and undervaluing the importance of dumb, repetitive tasks.
But is that really what we want the game to be about?
I also think that the community would accept a repeat build button faster than most people would think.
All the other quality of life changes from DE, including multiqueue, were adopted almost instantly and are now cherished as clear improvements.
It would shake things up quite a bit.
Would need to be playtested first.
It’s not just vills, keeping military buildings producing is big as well.
And would make the game more micro focused.
I don’t know how the game would feel, so I’m open to trying this out.
Maybe as a mod or a cheat code.
yeah, many people worry that that might be overpowered, imo its not, it just allows players to focus on things that matter more
I want this too.
It’s not ‘macro skill’ to keep spamming ‘create vil’ like a machine with your own two fingers; despite what every other conservative AoE2 player would have you believe.
I’ll go against the majority and say that it would actually not break the game and be a useful feature for newbies.
Pros will likely not use it that much because they want more control on when they produce vils.
People used to say the same thing about multi queue saying that it is an essential part of the game and what not.
It would just make the game slightly more competitive strategy wise and micro wise as pros can spend more time on those aspects.
I would say allocating those villagers, knowing when to not produce vils etc.
are the game.
Constantly clicking hchchc makes the game harder, but it isn’t really a fun part of the game.
If you think it is a good idea, of course go for it!
Personally, I have accepted and even come to like some of the automatic features new to DE (as compared to Voobly times).
But for me I don’t think production is a quality of life feature, but a skill.
One of the things that separates players is how active they are with producing their units vs idling production.
You see someone like Larry, for example, making archers it’s a thing of beauty how many numbers he can crank out.
But yeah I hope we never see this feature or anything like it personally.
If you add enough auto buttons you might as well switch from RTS to turn based strategy imo.
The big aspect of the game is managing where you spend your time.
Creating units is an essential skill for the game.
If the game just plays itself what’s the point in playing?
There comes to a point where there are too few points of differentiation between players as things become overly automated, and that’s the point where we’d see players at higher levels losing interest.
It may be annoying having to remember to train Villagers at lower levels, but once you become good at it you feel proud of that skill.
Overall I think we’re at the perfect level of automation.
Watch the recent ACCM v Daut Nomad game on T90’s channel.
ACCM manages to have barely any idle time the whole game due to his own hard work (whilst Daut has a lot) and is deservedly rewarded for it.
Because it reduces the skill required to remember to keep your town center constantly producing.
It should be something people have to work on, being able to manage everything else and grow their eco at once, not a toggle you can just turn on.
Maybe with the console version of the game they bring something along those lines (at least for the console version).
I’d really like to have auto-villager/units creation.
It’s not fun to keep creating villagers.
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