I Miss Shipments from The Capital City...

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In a different thread, someone mention how boring capital cities are now. There were some good suggestions on how to make them more exciting.

Making capital cities more entertaining is good. However, making them more functional would be much better. Remember the shipments from the capital city in AoE I,II, and III? Why not something similar? Why not have some of those random villagers that currently do nothing but just walk around the capital, or pray to status, or fight with each other, do something productive?

It would be great if we could earn villagers -- population controlled by houses -- and have them do some work for us. For instance, there could be an option to build workshops where villagers could work creating shipments of food, gold, wood, or stone, that could be use for quests. There could also be a way to train military units to be shipped to quest cities. I think that would make the capital more productive and entertaining, since it would require managing villager and building within the capital city.

What you think?

|||I like it. I would post constructive criticism, but no improvements come to mind.
|||Having shipments of resources would unbalance the game big time, as not all players would use it, and others would have more than someone else leading to a better economy in game than the opponent.|||

I agree that it would cause unbalance in 1:1, or 2:2 matches. However, shipments would only be usable during quests, not matches. For matches, I think it should come to who has the best strategy, not who has a better head start. :p

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It would be nice to do this in quests. Yesterday I played a quest, I got the villagers collecting food and took my scout to find a better place to collect resources. I just get outside of the towncenter and noticed the AI already has a full built town with towers and everything. It sucks having to play catch up everytime.

|||The idea of Home Shipments was Home country cities helping to support their colonies in the new world. In this game, most quests/PvP matches take place in Greece, hence no need for shipments.|||Argh, as much as I like the ideas of this post, managing it all and everything, bfjoshua is right, the shipments were from a home country in aoe3, within a country supplies to toward the capital, not away... (exception is military and food i guess)
|||I concor holeheartedly (is that correct spelled?) . That would be nice when doing quests, and would also keep the aoe spirit alive.
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There are some 'shipments'(consumables):

Food=Drop some cows from the sky

Gold=Gold Mine consumables

Stone=Stone mine consumables

Wood=Tear down an existing building and hope your workers have the common sense to pick up the scrap materials

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The capital city was what made Age III quite enjoyable as a multiplayer experience, I agree that having Age of Empires Online use it could work. It would mean much more time put in the game, but it'd also mean having more interesting decisions to make in each quest rather than the typical "reach Age II, build 3 archery ranges and rush the enemy" strategy that works every time.

Also, why'd they make politicians passive in-city cards? Why don't they let you choose from among politicians when you age up? I miss that a lot from Age of Mythology/Age of Empires III too. :(

|||I never really enjoyed shipments in Age of Empire III, especially if i was rushing and the enemy sent shipments of troops and the army i made is then destroyedfromany defense plus the shipments, like musketeers orbritish longbowmen, sometimes pikemen and crossbowmen, it's alsomuch harder to rush against the spanish since they're shipments arrive faster. Unless they don't get a chance to get to the Colonial Age, but outpost towers were available during the Discovery Age. But at least you could use consumables in this game as a last resort, which is what i use it for, plus the fact that consumable units appear instantly. Shipments might not get there in time in AoE 3 if you get attacked and no defense available besides the town center which needs to be garrisoned to be defensive.|||

Wait a second as far as I am aware there were no shipments or equivalents in AoE I and II or did I seriously miss something big time in my many years of playing them O.o XD

Yeah as BF Joshua said consumables areequivalentto shipments and I guess less game breaking as you have to find or craft which limits the numbers.

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I hated the shipments from the home cities. it killed the "age of" games off

Happy as larry that they have gone back to the old game play style of games.

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It would be an interesting idea for single player missions, sure. My guess is we will see a greater role from the capital cities in future content.

I mean, for those who played World of Warcraft - think of how different the mechanics of that game are now, compared to whenit first released.

I'm not thrilled with everything in this game, but it's definitely a solid start to what I'm sure they intend to be a platform for years. I just hope they learn from the success of Blizzard, and keep actively building on it.

- Scott