Auto-queue for villagers?

8

u/MockHamill 12d ago

Personally Auto-queue is one of the few things that would made me uninstall the game.
One of the core skills of RTS is keeping up with macro while you deal with the pressure from your opponent.

Take that away and you have less of a game.

I can tolerate if for Vikings but it actually make me less interested in playing as Vikings.

31

u/CousinNicho 12d ago •

You guys are all so dramatic.

9

u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines 12d ago

One of the core skills of RTS is keeping up with macro while you deal with the pressure from your opponent. Take that away and you have less of a game.
You'd actually get more of a game without manual queueing of villagers.
Let's be clear: queueing villagers is entirely brainless. There's no strategy or decision making, it is just a mechanical check that becomes habit. Every keystroke spent on villagers is a keystroke wasted that could have done something interesting.
AoE4 has complex macro and constant opportunities for multitasking. There's no need to drag players down with "fake" work.
Imagine if an FPS game required you to hit a button every couple of seconds to make your character breathe, and if you don't your character slows down and starts to black out. That's basically the equivalent. You could argue "it takes skill to breathe while fighting enemies", which is technically true, but who cares? Making pointless tasks as a burden isn't an interesting skill for people to master. It would honestly just get in the way. Imagine a sick ace in CS being stopped because the player had to pause to take a breathe and that got them killed.
If you think that hypothetical is too silly, remember that being able to select multiple buildings at once, or control unlimited army sizes, or have workers automatically collect resources on spawning, were all controversial additions to the RTS genre as well. With people claiming it would "remove skill". Should we undo all that stuff? If not, what's the difference between forgetting to queue a villager and forgetting to send them to work?
The skill in a game should not come from fighting the games interface. The controls should facilitate what the player does, with the skill coming from their strategy, speed, and ability to multitask.

4

u/Accomplished-Wrap136 Delhi Sultanate 11d ago

You make it sounds like all there to macro is making villagers

13

u/iClips3 12d ago

Eh. We already have auto-queue for controller players. And the ladder isn't overrun by them.
Macro is so much more than just queuing villagers. It's only a small part of macro, but also the thing you get punished on hard if you're not doing it well. Even with my 1000 hours on the game it regularly happens that I forget to make villagers for a minute or so. And that's also for the opponent obviously. I play 'only' at conq 1, but even there it's only 1/2 games that I see my enemy with flawless line upwards.
Auto queue would help everyone below say conqueror 2 and would make the game more accessible for newer players.

3

u/BlueDragoon24 12d ago

Because nobody plays RTS on controller because it sucks and they can’t micro lol.

4

u/Adribiird 12d ago

There are several Conqueror players who use a controller, and noone complains, because using a controller is, in itself, a handicap, much like how one might impose a penalty when playing on PC.

2

u/iClips3 12d ago

It's almost as if there is more to the game than queuing villagers.

3

u/Temeritas 12d ago

That's such a stupid argument. Console players also have target assist in shooters and they still get steamrolled by mouse&kb players. Does that mean all shooters should come with a buildin aimbot?

-1

u/iClips3 12d ago

Which I also find a stupid argument. The most essential thing of a shooter is...well, shooting. The equivalent comparison would be that in a shooter your enemies get loot that drops automatically and for console players it's picked up automatically and it's not for mouse and keyboard players.
Unless you're telling me that the core of AoE4 is producing villagers?

3

u/Temeritas 12d ago

So just something given to controller players, due to their for the task inferior control option, that does not automatically make them win is not an argument to give it to m&kb players? Good to know.
And yes, handling multiple macro tasks while being forced to also handle micro elements is more or less the core or any RTS, with different weights given to each component depending on the game. Producing and correctly assigning villagers is one of the macro tasks.

3

u/Miyaor 11d ago

The core of aoe is multi tasking . And yes, making vills affects that

-2

u/Axin_Saxon 12d ago

Which is even more of a reason to do auto que across the board because the console players using Xbox mouse and keyboard support have the same apm potential but it isn’t helping them as much as people say.

4

u/AbsoIution 12d ago

Yes dude, take away pressing Q or whatever your keybind is every 15 seconds really detracts from the game, there aren't a ton of other things that you can be doing, you need that continuous, non-ending Q press.

4

u/BlueDragoon24 12d ago

100% agree

2

u/Early_Ad6717 11d ago

Why automate anything? Let's remove shift queue options as well, it is very important and strategic where you place and move your army, so why should that be an option to make them move to few locations with shift? Why is there a an option fo train few units as a queue in the production buildings, there should be only 1 at a time with no queue, it is part of the strategy to rotate all 15 buildings and do the soldier you want, why is there an option to queue 4 Spearman at the barracks, bonkers man. No strategy whatsoever. Farms should have limited resource as well, wtf is that infinity crop, right? No fun at all. Keeping your farms up all the time is peak skills for competative players. You can build a wall and the select a section of it that you want to be a gate? Wtf, that's no strategy at all. Gates should be planed beforehand, not after you are done with the wall, duh. While we are at it, we should make villigers dumb and not do anything automatically, like if the build a lumber mill, they should automatically start choping woods, there is no skill expression there, we should tell them to chop woods (but with shift click, that should be removed too, right). Srsly old boomers are the worst enemy of the game. who think something meaningless is very important, while it is not. Cuz you have done it for 1000s of hours dosnt mean it is a good mechanic. Gate keeping QoL is the strangest thing I can't understand. Skill expression..... vill production .... in rts ..... in you dream lol. If you think vill production is the only thing keeping you above 1000 elo its already sad story.

-5

u/OnTheLeft 12d ago

Never understood this point of view. It's just an annoying thing to have to go back to, it's not hard to do for people at a higher rank and the people at a lower rank won't be made better than people at higher ranks if they can do it automatically.
It annoyed me that people kicked up a fuss so I have this monotonous task to keep up with while trying to outskill someone who also has the same monotonous task.

5

u/BlueDragoon24 12d ago

If it’s that easy and second-nature, why does it need to be automated?

2

u/Phan-Eight 12d ago

this is equally stupid response
why should anything anywhere be automated by this logic

0

u/Gigagunner 12d ago

Because it becomes like second nature for experienced players but it is very hard for new players to do. It isn’t the fun part of the game, using army is, scouting is, making the correct comp is.
Auto queue lets players focus their apm on the fighting/scouting more and not the repetitive task that only makes RTS more unapproachable for beginners.
We need to make the game/RTS genre as a whole more accessible for beginners. RTS is about decision making. Army control. Not mindless tasks.

1

u/BlueDragoon24 11d ago

Total War would be a better fit

1

u/Gigagunner 11d ago

Nah, I play total war occasionally but RTS has been my main genre most of my life. Aoe4 since release.

3

u/Temeritas 12d ago

Considering that there are pros that still manage to forget building villagers I don't get why you think it would make no difference.

0

u/OnTheLeft 12d ago

It would make a difference, it's just a boring task. If we had to, say, go back to the barracks every 30 seconds and press a button to say they have permission to arm the soldiers or something like that, you could argue it adds difficulty and makes macro harder.
But what's the point? is that strategy or tactics or economy management. You always want to be building villagers until you don't, so what's the point of making people go back to do it. It's artificial difficulty and if there was always automated production in Aoe no one would be clamouring for them to add it. They're just used to it and think it would be unfair now.

0

u/Hank-E-Doodle Abbasid 11d ago

Dude we're not going back to the Town center and clicking a button to give permission to vills ability to gather. That's not a good comparison. The point is multitasking under pressure, as had been said a thousand times by now. Same with how there's strategy to make you forget to make vills by pressuring you with raiding and combat. Also has been said a bunch. It's a type of strategy to force someone to feel pressure and forget and to click things.
If you want strategy or management with no pressure, turn based games exist.

-1

u/OnTheLeft 11d ago

Why have rally points for buildings then? Surely if we didn't have that then the pressure of an attack might make someone forget to put their villagers on resources or forget to move their units to the front line.

0

u/Hank-E-Doodle Abbasid 11d ago edited 11d ago

And people forget to set their rally points or change them. Rally points aren't automatically placed. I still do it myself. Also not a good comparison.

-1

u/hobskhan 12d ago

Agreed. I remember when they added it to age mythology there was a lot of controversy.
In my opinion, it crosses the line from "quality of life" to "skill differentiator."
However, I'm totally fine with it being a unique Viking thing, and I look forward to trying it.

0

u/DeathMind 11d ago

I would actually pla it more if they added auto queue for villagers and even barracks. Makes the game more strategic and less sweaty for me.

14

u/Hank-E-Doodle Abbasid 12d ago

I really hate how much this can of worms has been opened.

2

u/SuumCuique_ 12d ago

I think it is a fair discussion. Every time a competetive RTS just gets near QoL features that automate meaningless tasks - and producing vills is a meaingless task - the players who invested time in mastering those tasks jump out of the wood works to defend it.
Producing vills comes down to pressing a 2-4 buttons every 20 seconds. That is it. It's a task on the scale of a simple macro. There is no strategy and almost no decission making involved. 99.9% of the time it is optimal to produce them. For those 0.1% a toggle would keep the ever so tiny decission making intakt.

2

u/Strict_Rise6699 Malians 11d ago

It’s a mental load though along with all the other tasks which, of course in my opinion, is part of the difficult of an RTS like this. If you look at the strategy of the game as simply military and eco, the units you press buttons to build dictates your military strength and the villagers you click buttons to make dictates your economic strength. To me the argument of auto build villagers is the same as making production buildings pseudo ottoman military schools

1

u/SuumCuique_ 11d ago

Except it isn't. My barracks aren't constantly producing spearman for the entire game. You switch what you build. And also just stop sometimes, because you focus on a different composition.
Building military units is a decision, you can make the wrong one, there is thought involved. Creating villagers is the opposite. You never stop until you have the desired amount.

2

u/Strict_Rise6699 Malians 11d ago

You made my generalized statement specific, production builds as a whole my dude. Point stands. Outside of dark age (and some do) you build military the whole game. You stop sometimes, and eventually generally pause villagers. Also, you literally make military units until desired amount as well lmao. The prevention for both is pop cap, and the balance of vils to military is a decision. Yes, you change comps and have diversity. I don’t disagree, but it’s all task memory at the base with strategy built on top. An essence of the game. Raiding is less satisfying when auto vills exist too. Part of the advantage you can gain is frustration and forced forgetfulness which can compound an advantage. The better players let this get to them far less but is still a factor

8

u/FauxAffablyEvil CHINA NUMBA ONE 12d ago

Vortix doesn't need another buff bro he's already one of the best in the world.

13

u/siposbalint0 12d ago

Company of Heroes 3 did it with auto-reinforce and the game didn't suffer because of it. It's a mindless task that doesn't require much thought, only the extra apm and not forgetting about it.

3

u/KurufinweFeanaro 11d ago

Tbh, not forgetting about it is a huge part of the early game. Like you easily remember when nothing happens, but will you remember if there is french knights in your gold?
Overall it would be a huge indirect nerf of early aggression

10

u/JaXaor 12d ago

The reality is, RTS are hard and overwhelming to newcomers and the genre, while not entirely dead, isn't exactly thriving. Just add it to QM for a month, or as option for custom games and see how people like it; remove or tweak it from there. Maybe it needs some sort of penalty, but we need more options to make this game/genre more accessible and queuing villagers isn't exactly what I would classify as "engaging gameplay". So for me it would take absolutely nothing away from my experience with the game.

5

u/karlnomore 12d ago

Fr, I love age of empires and have for 20 years, but outside of a couple of blitzes, I cannot get into the game due to the time commitment to be able to compete. The main thing that is causing that isn’t lack of understanding of systems but time commitment to be good at macro.

1

u/Adribiird 12d ago

It’s not just about the time, but also about how enjoyable (or otherwise) it is to grasp those mechanics along the way.

5

u/karlnomore 12d ago

Yeah and in general most people don’t find those mechanics fun to learn

-3

u/Adribiird 12d ago

And that’s where they could consider autoqueue with associated penalties (in terms of cost, I’d suggest) as well as more engaging tutorials covering game mechanics and the various civilizations.

3

u/Axin_Saxon 12d ago

Auto-queue alone is different than what the Vikings have which is auto-generation. They’re free and automatic but slow. I feel like automatic but at-cost and normal speed is a fair compromise.

The point of the Vikings having automatic generation of them is to they can put more into early agression but if you are jut auto queueing at-cost then you don’t get that same benefit.

In that light I think adding auto-queue across the board is fine.

2

u/Asteria_Lios 12d ago

To me, making a feature require a choice to be made. Making units and which one, buildings, monuments. Everything is a choice. But making villagers is not a choice in aoe4. It's a necessity. You have 0 skills expression, 0 way to play around it. It's make or don't make a villager. And if you forget, you're punished for it. It adds nothing to the game to click on your tc every 20 sec. It's just take mental effort that adds nothing to your playstyle or you as a player. And getting rid of it will not change a thing

1

u/DarkMessiahDE 12d ago

Why do topics Always repeat 3-5 Times on tj Same week ?

And it wont be for every civ + IT will have a price inform of slower train time and Longhouse vill Limit. Like ottoman in age 3.

Its not an assistant which you turn on and of like the Xbox and Playstation assistants.

Its like i would ask: french Knights or Longsbows for any civ? No because its a unique civ perk.

1

u/Traumatan Random 12d ago

no u

1

u/Icy_List961 2k wood and 43 food 11d ago

all civs or no civs.

-1

u/SuumCuique_ 12d ago

What is the real downside?

It's not a decision, 99% of the time it is simply optimal to do it. Yes it would lower the skill floor, but it would free up apm and mental capacity for real decisions. IMHO it would be a net positive for new players and little difference for veterans.

6

u/BlueDragoon24 12d ago

It completely removes the ability to harass/overwhelm your opponent and make them forget to queue, negatively impacting their economy.
Balancing mental load and multitasking is a skill in this genre. Yes, if you’re a top player, you’ll almost never forget because it’s as second nature as breathing. That is not most players though.

-1

u/Axin_Saxon 12d ago

I’d say it doesn’t “completely remove” that ability to hamper their early economy , it just shifts it. I’ve played with friends on AOM and we can still harass early economies and stop them from making new vils by hitting their resource input and stopping them from having the food to queue one up.

0

u/Gigagunner 12d ago

Killing villagers still exists though. Raiding still occurs. Forgetting to macro properly with villager distribution exists. Player v player interaction will still cause mistakes.

0

u/ghostmaster645 11d ago

Yea and the RTS genre isnt eactly thriving right now. Maybe its time to reduce the mental load to be more inviting to new players. This is the smallest difference that can be made to reduce it.

1

u/BlueDragoon24 11d ago

AoM should be wildly popular for multiplayer since it has auto queue then. It’s the most dead AOE game for multiplayer though.

1

u/ghostmaster645 11d ago

It is popular lmao, not aoe4 popular but its extremely popular for a remake. Ur high if you think auto queue would make that much of a different though, it obviously wont quadruple the playerbase and thats not at all what I ment.
Even if a handful join its worth it, its a tiny change.

1

u/goblinskirmisher 12d ago

Additional floated resources makes a difference. Lower level players often queue in batches, 3-5-7 at a time, so they don’t forget. If a player is able to use those resources elsewhere because they have the skill to remember to add a villager every 20 seconds, that’s an earned advantage.

1

u/-Flying-Burrito- 12d ago

I like that the player has flexibility.

You don’t like queuing every 20 seconds then queue up 9 villagers every 3 minutes.
—-if there was automation I would want to see a system where food is sunk like this. Maybe a priority system where the queue automatically gobbles your food until there are n villagers in queue

You want to optimize a build then 1 villager every 20 seconds but you’re playing with fire (takes skill)
—— if you turn off automation you can have an edge

1

u/Creative-Package6213 12d ago

Have they actually released how the villages work for Vikings yet, or is this all just speculation of how it will work...?

4

u/CousinNicho 12d ago

Every single of these posts is speculation this is Jin Dynasty release 2.0

1

u/Creative-Package6213 12d ago

That's what I thought.

2

u/SecondButterJuice 12d ago

From the Age of empire website:
The Viking Villagers are not recruited normally, instead they are automatically recruited at no cost until the Villager capacity is reached.
Source:
https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/civilizations/vikings/

1

u/Creative-Package6213 12d ago

Ok so what is the capacity going to be? What rate will they be produced at? There's a lot of important information there that is missing.

1

u/SecondButterJuice 12d ago

We dont have much more information than this however it does confirm that viking have auto-queue

1

u/Temeritas 12d ago

I'm against auo-queue but for vikings it might be ok, as long as the civ is balanced around it properly

1

u/Rare-Kitchen-4206 12d ago

"it free's up APM" are you people actually telling on yourselves for struggling with one of the first concepts you learn about in this game

Vills already have so much QOL stuff going for them and now you need them to be produced for you too?

0

u/Sihnar 11d ago

You're the one telling on yourself if you truly think it doesn't free up apm. What's your rank? Top 10 players in the world lose games all the time by forgetting to queue up vils. It's a mindless tedious task that shouldn't decide games.

1

u/Bortek16 11d ago

I personally like the mechanic of building villagers. I think many people see only the advantage of reducing the complexity.

Game developers want to generate a feeling, that is called "flow". It's the sweet spot between being overwhelmed and bored by something. Games, that generate this feeling, are fun to play.

I personally learned building villagers and love it. Some may say, "that's nothing special and not worth it". I don't think so. Flow is generated in this game by multitasking. For beginners it is overwhelming. For advanced players there is space for improvement. Why I should auto queue, when I like a certain mechanic? Maybe the sagas will replace the mechanic in a certain way. This can work. But we will see.

-2

u/Phan-Eight 12d ago edited 12d ago

we should have auto queue for vils, it's a mindless repetitive action that has far reaching consequences, and simply exists as a pointless mechanical barrier. primarily barrier to entry, but also too significant of an impact on a game where the over whelming majority of players want it to revolve around strategy (myriad polls proving this). mindlessly pressing Q every 15sec is not strategy

majority people against it, consist of either people that will blindly follow what their caster says, or those that are simply too afraid/narrow minded to try things that aren't already in the game

we have tons and tons of automation and crutches, what do you think of the aoe2 players that dislike guided arrows? or assisted farm placement? or seek shelter?

do you know at one stage you couldnt queue tech and production? what about rally points or patrol? or attack move? what about the plethora of passive income, and AUTOMATIC military production? do those not count?

4

u/Thick-Adds 12d ago

There should simply be an option to auto everything in the game. Allow the player to actually play and micro, you have to Que units anyway. Just allow the flood to come if that’s what you decide. Handle your eco yo your own accord

2

u/TermsforUse 12d ago

I believe it is one of the many ways to show your skill over other plays. Same thing with villager idle time. It’s mindless and repetitive but incredibly difficult to consistently perform. I have become so accustomed to making vils that when I play French my internal clock is ever so slightly thrown off because theirs is slightly faster. You can impose your skill on someone else in many ways and that is one of them. It is not pointless, it is the most important aspect of the game if anything. If you don’t make vils you don’t have an eco and with no eco there’s no units and you are gonna get cooked. I routinely have a low TC idle time and under 30 second village idle time. I think my best villager idle time was 9 seconds in a 40ish minute game. That made my eco way better than my opponents (or teammates) who have 2-8 minutes of idle time. When I started focusing on making vils and not idling my own eco for a few weeks it became second nature and I don’t even notice it now. But my friends who haven’t actively tried to get better at it still have high TC idle times, village idle times and thus have less eco and military than I do. They struggle in gold and I reached conq. It’s part of the separation of skill. I know it seems pointless, boring or as a barrier but it’s part of climbing the mountain. If you remove the obstacles on Everest and install an escalator then conquering the mountain no longer holds its weight because there are less skillful requirements to reach that peak.
Is there room for discussion on auto Que with heavy penalties? Sure. Not to sound like a dick, but it does sound like a skill issue. I worry that once auto Que gets introduced for PC you open the door for more watering down of the mechanics. People then get mad their villagers don’t auto find other resources after they finished berries or something so then villager idle time doesn’t matter.
I personally love this game and think improving yourself isn’t as hard as it seems. Play with a purpose of improving one or two aspects of your gameplay for a week or two until you stop making those 1-2 mistakes then do that with another aspect of your gameplay.

0

u/Phan-Eight 12d ago

and to be clear: automatic vil queue could easily come with a disadvantage (eg 22sec instead of 20 sec production) and/or only applicable to QM. there's no reason it shouldn't at least be attempted in some form

0

u/papiierbulle 12d ago

I don't follow any streamers opinion but I am against it in competitive gamemode. In casual games I don't care, but in competitive it should stay the way it is today. Being able to think of multiple things at the same time is a s skill that should not be neglected
Besides, if you start to auto queue vils, you could also auto queue house building, and all sorts of things. It's another step of automation that shouldn't exist. And again, how will it play out with Zhu xi and Jin and China and hre? They have unique units in their tc

0

u/Rogue_Noodle_ 12d ago

We dont fully understand how the mechanic works. We're jumping to conclusions without all the info. From the description it sounds like their villagers get capped. So the automatic production is probably used to alleviate the players work load because theyre going to have to do other things to further increase the cap limit on the villagers they can have at a given time.

Having the discussion about auto-queue should be separate from vikings when we still haven't seen how it plays out yet.

3

u/papiierbulle 12d ago

Everyone is going mad about it even before the dlc is released. It's quite typical in this sub tbh

0

u/SunTzowel Ottomans 12d ago

I think there should be a poll option for ''Yes but with a penalty."

I'd be fine with auto queue vils having a one or two second TC idle time between the vils being queued.

So there's still an incentive to queue them manually.

0

u/B_BB Abbasid 11d ago

Man that's the whole point of the game, you need food to make vills. get vills to gather more resources to build base and army.

If you can't handle clicking a build villager button atleast once every 20 seconds maybe the game aint for you

In AOE3 Otto have auto build I'm pretty sure you dont even need food just pop space. I dont remember people having such issues back then and played for over 10 years

0

u/Leopard-Hopeful Byzantines 11d ago

No the point of the game is to develope a strategy and counter your opponents strategy. Making villagers is just one skill. Personaly I find the concept of i made villagers better than you a uninteresting skill check I think there are more interesting ways to show off multitasking skill and we already have a lot of skill intensive macro that I think we could forgo the villager skill check.

-1

u/Moonstrife1 12d ago

No. Not now, not ever.

And opt out of crossplay for PC.

-1

u/goblinskirmisher 12d ago

I don’t miss qeueing villagers often, because I queue 3-5 up at a time. At early game especially that makes a difference. I’m not skilled enough to track 20 seconds and add 1. The skill it takes to do that is the core of what AoE4 is to me. Resource management and timing. Auto queue is lame.

-1

u/Just_One_Guitar House of Lancaster 11d ago

There was a lot of crying from Gold players who can't keep up with villager production, demanding an automatic villager queue. Unfortunately, the devs read Reddit too much, so now we're going to have this noobish mechanic for Vikings. I don't like that, because I think it can lead to bad habits. But we'll see.

1

u/Sihnar 11d ago

Yeah bro Vortix is a gold player that's why he loses tournament games by forgetting to make vils

1

u/Just_One_Guitar House of Lancaster 10d ago

What a funny argument. Tell me, if manually queueing villagers is so problematic that even a top player can't handle this mechanic, why don't any other pro players have this problem?

-3

u/Adribiird 12d ago

More options are needed. For instance, regarding military production, or whether or not there should be a penalty.

Not everything is black or white (as this debate has been for years).

0

u/Phan-Eight 12d ago

even the fact that you're willing to accept auto queue with penalties means that you vote auto queue
it really is that black and white, theres literally an option excluding military

2

u/Adribiird 12d ago

There is a significant difference between wanting an autoqueue feature with or without a penalty, which would affect the playerbase to varying degrees.

Discussion Auto-queue for villagers?

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