Limitations are good for a strategy game, the more rules and limitations the pieces of the game has the more careful and strategic one has to be with those resources. So in a higher pop scenario making 300 plus it would not make sense to delete down at all since units would drain ecos too quickly, and it would just be too much to control efficiently. The more units you have the more autonomous AI like they need to be. For instance in TR and FFA games, sometimes it can be a tactic to delete down vills for more leverage of military strength… this can pay off if you start getting amazing kill ratios, but at a point, the amount of micro needed makes it too hard to use large armies as effectively, so to ask for more pop is also asking to dumb the mechanics down to make it more accessible for all. where a smaller population creates so much more variance as well. So to grow a millitary that much bigger means there needs to be either faster gather rates that may be hard to tweak ( see how small handicaps can make ecos go wild), or super large sprawling eco that is really just more to deal with than necessary. Now also to ask what does more than 200 pop really give us? I am not too sure about AOE2, but it seems there is a balance needed of 50/50 for military and economy. POP caps just seem like a good safeguard to making civs more balanced In Aoe3 I can have a million resources and still fight in respective strengths to other civs because of that limiting factor, making it fun and counterable… unless that pikeman has a X20 multiplier VS cavalry I see problems with that system in AOE4. A couple wont do you much good but once you have 5-7 in a army to really wipe the enemy clean, almost no amount of kiting can save an army if not prepared right.īut there is also different types of games like TR game and FFA, and I hope those thrive in AOE4, but if they include those with 1 pop unit counts then ends of TR will be laming, and not just for too many elephants but cannons and other things as well. So in a competitive game, making them is a huge cost so not too many will be made so that they are not too OP similarly like aoe2 there is a huge cost that prevents too many from being made. A mahout there not only cost 7 pop (without card) but also around 700 resources. And not just for competitive modes but for all 1v1, team, TR, FFA. I think the AOE3 system really got it right. There are many ways and systems they can use to balance population. There are civs that France have 65% win ration for middle users. In my opinion, this is the reason Frances have the better overall statistics than every other civ in AoE2DE (I think it is near 57% wins/losses). For the middle user for example, a cavarly civ is more easy to go because the natural counter (pikemans) can be handled easily with archers. Example an archer civ has bonuses vs an infantry civ and disadvantage vs a cavalry civ. For sure there will be civs with bonuses than other civs. Obviously the second parameter can vary a lot between specific civs statistics.
So having a bit more population seems to be very popular. Half of the people want to play with more than 200 population but half of those only with about 100 more population. Having more stable FPS is of course still an advantage but that’s true for basically every game.
It was a lobby setting not a player setting. Doesn’t that grant a significant advantage for a person having a better computer ?