[Anonymous Player]

So far, all the units in the game have just needed two kinds of resources.

For example, the ballista elephant, which is a combination of an elephant and a siege unit, would intuitively need food, wood, and gold.

Is there a reason why only two types of resources are necessary?

If there were a unit that needed three types of resources, what special ability do you think it should have?

[depthofuniverse]

Bombard elephant would be a good candidate.

Costs food, wood, gold, and basically is a houfnice with more HP.

[harirarn]

Currently the wonder is the only anything that costs 3 types of resources.

If we look in the AGE (advanced genie editor), there are only 3 slots provided for the resource cost of any unit/building.

For units one of the 3 is always taken up by population.

Houses/TCs/Castles on the other hand provide pop space.

There is also 0 pop space provided by many other buildings so that they can be changed by various team bonusses (e.g.

slavs).

[Koala_eiO]

It wouldn’t be bad for ships.

[devang_nivatkar]

Despite people saying you require the third ‘Costs’ slot to be population, that’s not actually true.

Just above ‘Costs’ there’s a different infobox called ‘Resource Storages’.

Of these, the ‘Population Headroom’ = -1 and ‘Current Population’ = +1 are enough for a unit to actually cost population.

If you change the third ‘Cost’ slot to an actual resource, that doesn’t mean the unit takes 0 population.

For example, the ‘Population Headroom’ in ‘Costs’ for the Karambit Warrior is 1, and not 0.5.

However in the ‘Resource Storages’, its ‘Population Headroom’ is actually -0.5 and its ‘Current Population’ value is 0.5.

So the population values of an unit in ‘Resource Storages’ is the thing that actually matters.

The one in ‘Costs’ is basically meaningless.

As for my personal experimentation, I had set the Kamayuk to cost 40 Food 20 Wood 30 Gold, no problem.

It still took population space like normal.

This was around back in the days of the AoFE 2.2 mod for the Conquerors version IIRC.

That’s to say, there’s no technical limitation with an unit costing three types of different resources; even with the current framework.

It just hasn’t been done.

The limitation is if you want an unit to cost all four resources, that’s not possible.

[MrHumanist]

All units have training time , which is the third resource.

Also, food is a complex resource where wood and villagers time is converted to food.

[Inevitable-Copy16]

I would love to have a unit that costs stone too, it would be a good thing imo

[Korvu]

Everyone is speaking very technically so far in the comments, I’ll speak on the design choice.

​

I think economy wise and unit composition wise there IS an important design choice in making units cost only 2 gather-able resources.

1.

Scouting.

Your opponents should be able to reasonably guess what you are trying to make based on what your vils are doing.

For example, if I see you on gold early, I can expect archers and I believe that is an important feature of the game.

Having a unit that costs a bit of everything goes against that concept.
2.

Multi-unit comps and general rss balance.

In general, many comps will rely on 2 or more units, and I think the original design intention of the devs was to have you using units with complimentary costs, as well as complimentary strengths and weaknesses.

I like to think that the game is fairly balanced with rss costs, and for example beating gold units with trash units should net you a theoretical ‘return’ on investment.

A unit that costs 3 rss changes this.

It shouldn’t cost TO much gold right, since other costs are at play.

But then if it is countered by a trash unit…

well what does your opponent’s return look like on that?

The unit didn’t cost much gold so, not huge.

Kinda muddies the water here if you get what I am trying to say.

On the flip side, if this 3 rss cost unit counters some other gold unit, well now you have spent gold doing something you likely could have done without gold IE a spear/skirm.

Thinking even further on this, if you made the unit very costly, there wouldn’t be much room for a 2nd unit to add to your comp, since you are spending a bunch of everything already in this scenario.

So whatever counters this 3 rss cost unit, shouldn’t be easily countered by whatever 4th rss you are floating as well.

And there should likely be many counter options, so the opponent has a bit of control over what rss he is trading against you.
3.

General Difficulty.

I think it would harm or complicate noob experience by having a unit cost 3 different rss.

We are already bad at eco management and reading tooltips.

And it might encourage a 1 unit noob comp.

Even for the pros, this would likely have to be an end game unit.

Since having a focus on many rss leaves you open to attack early on.

Cause you would have to defend a med sized woodline, a med sized gold, plus a bunch of farms if the unit costs food/wood/gold.

Instead of say, towering your woodline/gold and having most of your vils there.

Not worrying about open farms.

Or ignoring gold and protecting wood/farms for a scout build.

Less open to attack to have a two rss focus.

All that being said…

I think Ratha would have been perfect for this.

You are getting a stance swapping unit, something that can do a bit of everything and thematically might have been nice for it to cost a little of everything too.

It can be countered by anti-archer, anti-cav, etc.

I think our unit needs to follow similar design.

Easy countered by many options.

But still versatile in its own way.

[Walt925837]

umm..

population space should be considered a resource.

Doesn’t make sense that only Karambit Warriors are the only unit that takes 0.5 units.

Elephant units should be considered 2 pop units.

So does siege weapons.

[slothismysin]

if you look in the genie editor you’ll find out that population is a resource.

Units are limited by the engine to costing 3 resources, so f+w+p or f+g+p or w+g+p.

Some units use fewer, e.g.

monks, gold+population.

The devs could adjust the engine to allow for a unit costing more than 3 resources.

[m_lecache]

I don’t think it’s necessarily some sort of restriction.

I think it’s just because of balance and simplification.

If the average player struggles to really balance their economy with units that use two resources, I can only imagine what needing a third resource would do to our ecos.

[Author]

Posts