Cities are boring in age of empires online

[TamaraAce]

Anyone else find your home city to be pretty much boring and kind of useless? I mean other than for crafting and talent points there really aren’t that much to do and with another thing I've been noticing is that a lot of people don't even bother with the decorating items. Personally, I think there should really be something else to really give the home city much more of a point and not just something to stare at. Maybe even do some small city building element where decoration and houses actually do something? Just a suggestion but still, I really feel like the home city is a pretty weak part right now.

[Cain]

I'd like to see decorations actually doing something. Like, not enough of an effect to be overpowered, but maybe each decoration takes a few seconds off of material workshop build time, or perhaps residences giving you some sort of small daily income (taxes?). Just an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a bit, perhaps other people can come up with logical ideas on how decorations can be beneficial.

[TamaraAce]

Well, as far as the basic/free decorations do something useful its fine by me. but when i need to buy the vanity packs to get specific bonuses it would really hurt the game (even if the bonus is small, people will build as much as they can) so perhaps a build limit or a bonus limit for every type?

[Amy_i3]

The Crafting halls \ Workshops and all the other important buildings like Palace and Gear hall are far from useless, but I do however understand your point. I personally actually like the decorations and have quite a few in my city but find the whole thing still rather lacking. I would love to see the city alot more customizable, Take Argos for example, the curved road up to the Fortress is awesome and I would love to be able to change the landscape like that, also the "liveliness" of cities is so much more then we can do at this stage, a few villagers raking a garden or praying at a fountain is ok, but where are the villagers doing what they actually do in-game.

[Cain]

I think this would add a lot more personalization to the cities and allow us to design something we are proud of rather than the current parameters. The taxes could be a interesting concept and you could use something similar to what I mentioned above to limit this I.E Only able to build X amount of houses and limit the villager or taxable NPC population that way.

[TamaraAce]

Well, maybe it’s not exactly currently, but there are 2 more cities in the Egyptian side, plus Sparta as mentioned above. I like the idea of taxes and being able to build roads and stuff, customization is so limited, you can’t even change the landscape like tree's etc.

[Cain]

I don't know about taxes but something does really need to be done. The least they can do is make customizing a bit easier or just give some more action to your city, cause right now all they have are random villagers walking around, those stupid looking trade carts and the boats which look like their being controlled by a drunk man. There really needs to be a much bigger reward too building these things besides to look good cause that mentality only works for bad Facebook games.

[JErastus]

Keep All Questing and battling the same, so it's still true AoE, but the Home City 2.0 deal needs to be like Sims-meets-Caesar-meets-Tycoon. That’s the only way to make this "persistent" aspect even worth mentioning. The workshops generating recourses while you're away was a cop-out IMO. I'm talking about having to truly manage the culture and society of the city as well. This system could be tied back into the "XP" and leveling system, with probably just another tech tree and 1 more point/level. Any requirements of the home city won’t implement until level 5-10, when civilization is require growing an Empire of the Ages.

[Hadriel]

So the potential for our Home City (HC) could be much greater then it is, I agree. I also understand this is beta and we are asking (and stating) that the current system of the HC is lackluster and should be improved. I personally do not want to have to log on each day (or any other micromanagement time) to herd villagers around or produce more villagers, etc. I do like the idea of having Barrack, Calvary, Archery, Siege and other buildings. For the barracks you could have some training grounds where you see them practicing/sparing, etc. Also we could have villagers cutting trees and moving it to the lumber yard to be cut into planks. Our villagers could be mining stone, herding sheep, etc for any of the materials that can be produced in the game.

[Amy_i3]

I think the basic idea of AOE: O shows a lot of promise. But if this is just about all we can expect from home cities, from gear, from tech trees, from crafting, from questing, and from PvP, I am going to be majorly disappointed by the full release. I just keep telling myself "there's a lot more on the way." I'm sure there's plenty that they want to keep for the final build and not release to beta testers, too.

[DamarisK]

The Home City feature in AoE III wasn't great but it was better than this. When I first heard about an MMORTS I couldn't imagine how that would work and now that I have put more than a few hours into it, I still can't. What is it with modern developers that think that everyone wants to spend hours customizing and beautifying their characters (in this case, their home city)? When I play a modern RPG it seems like it was designed for people who like to play The Sims as so much work goes into the character creator and subsequent clothing that should have been into the gameplay. With this game I was disappointed to find buildings that could beautify my town, I will never use them. I don't play Age of Empires to pretend it's Sim City.

[JErastus]

building your home city may not be for everyone but for me i kind of like the option and it is an option to build your city up, its something extra to focus on while you play the game,as i say not everyone wants to or even bothers to focus on their city, its not a requirement to do it, its an Option for those that do like to build their city up. if you don't like that part of the game, its simple, don't bother with it.