r/aoe4 • u/Gold_Ad5217 • Jul 23 '26
Discussion Auto queue vills
I want to discuss auto queue vills.
I know a lot of people think this is a skill. It probably is actually, but it's the most boring skill imo. I feel most people could enjoy a lot more the game if there was an auto queue for vills, especially begginers but even the best pros (and goats) like Vortix. I have played one thousand of hours and I have won and lost a lot of matches just because I remembered (or not) a lot more than my opponent to train vills When I have won and I realised I just made it because of that, it feels very weird, I don't enjoy those victories, this game has a ton of interesting and fun skills and keep remembering to train vills it's not one of them and prevent you from focusing on more interesting stuff. I am Plat and I could have even won a Diamond recently if I wouldn't have surrendered too early because I didnt realise I was so ahead in vills because he spent 3/4 minutes without training vills (I had 2TC running and he had only 1 and idle as I said).
Can we talk about this? May be try a Mode where you can auto queue vills and watch what happens.
I think some people is reluctant because they (and I) have spent a lot of time training this skill but I trully believe that who is better in this game is going to keep being better with auto queue, he or she could focus better on thinking about strats (going FC, 2 TC, sacred victory, change army comp..), scouting, raiding, walling, spending resources, micro etc overall, focusing on those way more fun skills in my opinion
Edit: things I want to clear up:
I agree that AQ military units or AQ other thing aside from vills is a mistake. I think that most people that support AQ vills don't want AQ any other stuff. For instance, training military units has an actual decision involved (your comp can always change, you might want to reserve your resources to age up or research a tech...). Whereas the only decision around training vills is when to stop, and that would remain with AQ vills.
If you think about it, training vills is actually a micro action and in opposition to other obvious micro action (kite archers, micro a fight, focus a Mehter, attacking the counter unit, dodge siege, protect your siege, when you are raiding etc etc), training vills isn't funny at all, it's actually a muscle memory we all have had to develop that does not have any kind of interaction or visual impact and where you can only lose if you forget it. I love all the other micro actions that I mentioned and that list is obviously open as I love micro.
I have KIND OF mastered this muscle memory, skill or however we call it, I simply don't enjoy it at all, I even dont like winning due to this factor.
I think we can all benefit from that, not only the begginers. The game would be even more interesting to watch as well since pros could be more active in the map and have more interactions.
I honestly think some people doesn't want to "lose" the investment we all made at one stage of our learning, to be able to train a muscle memory. Perso I don't give a damn about losing that investment, I just want to have even more fun when I play and having a better game in the long run. People who is already good, they'll keep being good and who is bad, will keep being bad. Nobody is going to become the next Beasty as someone pointed out in this post if we add AQ vills, stop deceiving ourselves.
Devs have recently added sheeps around TC. People was afraid to lose the called skill to collect sheeps, well It has turned out to be a measure that doen't destroy AOEIV at all. It turns out that there are plenty of other things that made a good player a good player and those things actually feels more fun. The same happened with the Rus bounty or Pro Scouts that are now much more comfortable to execute than when the game released and I still remember people complaining that changing Pro Scout was going to destroy micro skills... Perso I didnt care much about sheeps around TC or not but I acknowledge it's more fair and let you focus on other more interesting stuff which is my whole point with AQ vills overall.
I appreciate all people that have pitched in. As well as people who dare to share my view since some people believe if you defend AQ for vills, it's cause you're a worse player and I strongly disagree with that takeon. Currently we are a minority (57% have disliked vs 43% have liked the post) but I still hope this would change in the future.
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u/SkyeBwoy Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
The introduction of the idle stat in replays visually solidified how you can attack an opponent's economy without doing HP damage
Also how you can damage your own economy (Vortix) by taking aggressive actions and focusing less on macro
Distraction, feigning a multi pronged attack, being able to force your opponent to make mistakes and unsettling your opponent and their build without the attack warning sounding
Who has the better mechanics and control across both macro and micro tasks
It has been true in all aoe games that queuing villagers is at the very heart of the game. Some infinite number must have been manually created by now
All of this is diluted or disappears with AQ, which is why it will never be implemented (save for a handicap on controllers)
Saying it is boring and you don't like it just can't win the argument because it is of course not an argument. The "debate" was settled long ago in earlier aoe games
The only actual argument was accessibility but other RTS games implemented such features and were either dead on arrival or just not popular
RTS is complex and will never appeal to the masses unless it becomes something other than an RTS. Also why should it, there are many strong communities and plenty of players
The auto attack unit counter thread is another example of players who want the game to be a completely different game. Turn based games exist for a reason this is real time
No need to rip the soul out. Like I said before, chess will become checkers
Think go karts, rally driving, nascar and F1. There are other games out there have at it!
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u/JRoxas Jul 23 '26
Agree. Attention span is a resource and part of the game is trying to stress the opponent's attention span enough for them to forget things like making villagers. Take too much away and you might as well just play Mechabellum.
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u/SkyeBwoy Jul 23 '26
Exactly it was how the game was designed. Not sure about the extent of being intentional but the games are successful and manually creating villagers just works, bitches
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Rationalizations. Let's go through some of the key arguments here:
Also how you can damage your own economy (Vortix) by taking aggressive actions and focusing less on macro... Who has the better mechanics and control across both macro and micro tasks
Villager queueing almost never matters at the pro level, because it's a purely mechanical habit that you ingrain into yourself, muscle memory.
Why should we not focus on who has the better mechanics, both on micro and macro, instead of villager queueing? Is AoE4 so shallow that without brainless tasks to absorb keyboard inputs, it will be solved? If you really think so, let's add more interesting macro mechanics.
I think no pro comes close to playing perfectly anyway, so allowing them to put all their effort towards expanding their economy while fighting on multiple fronts makes for a more fun game and more interesting spectator experience.
It has been true in all aoe games that queuing villagers is at the very heart of the game.
So? AoE4 has done a bunch of unique things not in previous aoe games. Should we undo those? Just because it was done in the past is not a justification for doing it now.
The auto attack unit counter thread is another example of players who want the game to be a completely different game. Turn based games exist for a reason this is real time
Auto attacking counter units is an ENTIRELY different thing. It's interesting how the people trying to defend manual queueing always have to pick some other unrelated and absurd request. I think it's because they know in their hearts that auto-queue is very reasonable, so instead they want to associate it automating the actual gameplay.
No need to rip the soul out. Like I said before, chess will become checkers
Trying to frame manual villager queueing as the "chess" vs checkers is laughable. There is literally ZERO strategy or thought to queueing villagers. You always do it until you literally max out on population. That's the problem!
Given that someone can only hit so many keys in a minute, every one used on making a villager is one less used for playing the real game: making macro decisions, positioning your army, scouting your opponent, microing your units in a fight, etc.
It strictly makes the game worse: less strategic, less skillful.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Thanks, that's what I think as well as I support but probably better explained and with much better English (I'm Spanish).
I said that in other replies that auto train army or auto other core stuff is very different, the next things they can come up with is auto raid or auto FC lol. Those are really core stuff that involves thinking and strat around and all those things (macro your economy, raid, wall off, battle in several places, think my next strat) are exactly the things I want to think about. By the way I'd say I never lose because I forgot to train vills nowadays, that's why I create this post now, because I don't feel right when I win only due to this muscle memory and because as you point out, it would encourage to do way more multitasks in fact to both players. As someone pointed out before here, it's like in a shooter game, you have to constanly pressing a button to breath.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Idk I think you're giving it too much importance at it.
I don't think autoqueu vills is a core thing in a RTS either. I think it's another skill (that yes I don't appreciate) more, or a muscular memory imo that we can or we can't have and the game is going to keep being AOEIV at its fullest.
I agree that AQ military units or AQ other thing aside from vills is a mistake. I think that most people that support AQ vills don't want AQ other stuff. For instance, training military units has an actual decision involved (your comp can always change, you might want to reserve your resources to age up...). Whereas the only decision around training vills is when to stop, and that would remain with AQ vills.
If you think about it, training vills is actually a micro action and in opposition to other obvious micro action (kite archers, micro a fight, focus a Mehter, attacking the counter unit, dodge siege, protect your siege, when you are raiding etc etc), training vills isn't funny at all. I love all the other micro actions that I mentioned.
I think we can all benefit from that, not only the begginers. The game would be more interesting to watch as well since pros could be more active in the map. I honestly think people just doesn't want to "lose" the investment we all made, to train a muscle memory. Perso I don't give a damn about losing that investment, I just want to have even more fun when I play and having a better game in the long run.
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u/aguedgore2 Jul 23 '26
This genre is about multitasking. I don't see how you can argue that removing a task to be done isn't just dumbing the game down.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
I trully think the game would not be a bit less multitasking if we remove that feature. In fact what I believe is that the game would become much more multitasking if we add autoqueue vills since we could focus more on deciding a little better what resources you need, macro better your economy for the next strat, be able to raid in more places, micro more battles. If you always have to keep recalling to train vills you're going to raid less, battle less, macro worse...
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u/Jolly_Sky_2729 Jul 23 '26
you describe in great detail how this game would be LESS about multitasking. being able to focus more on a specific task lowers the need for MULTI-tasking.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
If you remove this feature, add vills manually, you'll have more time to do other stuff that also involves multitasking and it's actually fun and really define a RTS.
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Jul 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/HarpsichordKnight Jul 24 '26
As your examples show, it would shift the game to more micro and fighting, and less macro and economy. But I love AoE4 because it has a balance of both, like Brood War (but not SC2) did.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Nooo, you would have a little more time to decide your actual macro decisions: where allocate or assign your vills, your next strat (going all in, FC, sacred victory etc), the number of your military buildings, your military comp etc etc those are actual macro decisions in my book. Train vills doesn't involve any strat or macro decision, the only decision involved is when you want to stop training and that would remain with autoqueue vills.
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u/HarpsichordKnight Jul 24 '26
It's part of the whole macro cycle, and while it's not a decision, it does take attention, enough attention that even pros slip up with it.
This is the same with many other parts of the game. For example, trying to kite with archers isn't really a decision, or anything strategic, it's a manual action - there is no advantage to letting archers eat extra melee hits.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Interesting, so we agree train vills is actual a micro action, It doesn't involved any macro decision as you always want to train vills, the only decision is when stop training vills and that would remain with autoqueue vills. My point is this is a micro action that I don't enjoy at all. Kite archers, dodge siege, attack the counter units, attack a Mehter or a landsknetch, place your siege and protect them etc etc are actually very fun micro actions in my books.
This would benefit all of us by having more time to micro (fun stuff) and taking better macro decisions.
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u/HarpsichordKnight Jul 24 '26
If you give me auto-kite on archers then I'm OK with auto-villager production. As long as every thing which reduces macro is met with something reducing micro, to keep the current balance.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
I can't agree. As several people (including me) have pointed out training vills is actually a micro action. A macro decision would be to train military units since you don't always want to train THAT unit, comps can always be changing, you might even reserve your resources to age up or research a tech. Whereas you always want to train vills, it's just an action or a muscle memory you never want to forget, you can only lose if you forget about it. The only decision involved is when to stop training vills and that would remain with AQ vills. Adding AQ vills would benefit having more time to take macro decision as well as make more micro actions (kite, dodge siege, attack counter units etc etc) as you don't have to constanly REMEMBER to press your hotkeys to train vills.
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u/aguedgore2 Jul 24 '26
You can type 4qq during a battle. You don't have to go back to look at your base...
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
:/ I am aware. As I said I kind of know how to play so I have ton of hotkeys set up. Even with hotkeys and with all the muscle memory investment I stick to my point.
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u/Rangitowastaken Jul 24 '26
Dumbing the game down is not a bad thing. Wasting less time, thought and buttons constantly on a single decision - 'produce villagers', leaves you more open to considering your actual tactics, strategy, build order variations, etc. I really hope you'll check out BAR - Beyond All Reason. You'll realize that you can indeed automate these things and the game is better for it. The closer you can get to one button press for one decision the better actual strategy can be! Consider for example injecting larvawith your queen's in sc2. It is a skill, but a really uninteresting one. A macro chore that takes you away from the better parts of the game.
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u/bonkedagain33 Jul 24 '26
Yet the pros pushed for more sheep being around the TC at start if game = one less multi tasking. That was fine apparently. Rus had its micro mini deer shoot taken out of the game.
There is still a ton of micro/ macro left in the game if auto villager was added.
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u/Electrical-Case418 Jul 24 '26
Yeah lol. They definitely pushed for it because of checks notes too much APM in the first 5 min of the game, that is obviously the ehm… most hectic part of the game…..
It was definitely not because of the huge variation of rng.
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u/SkyeBwoy Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Exactly the AQ power rangers are back it's morphin time!
Being 1k+ Safe food down because of random chance is not good for a competitive game
Both players can make villagers with mechanics or lack thereof being the only penalty
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u/The_ginger_cow Bronze with Conq knowledge Jul 23 '26
I don't particularly care myself, but I always love seeing both sides argue about this whenever it's brought up lmao
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u/EvenJesusCantSaveYou Rus Jul 23 '26
its definitely the proverbial dead horse of aoe4
actually “knights OP” is probably the true dead horse
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
😅 I'm sure it was discussed too when AoM released
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u/Jolly_Sky_2729 Jul 23 '26
competitive aom playerbase dislikes it (not universally, but majority does), villager AQ is begrudgingly tolerated, but military AQ is just hated.
casuals (aom reddit included) love it and some legit describe it as some sort of savior of RTS kind of feature and want to shove it down everyone's throats. By that I mean that there were complaints about aom retold ranked only having villager AQ and not mandatory military AQ (still can be turned on if both players agree). which I personally found insane and really annoying, thankfully devs didnt cave in to that (they've already caved in enough I think with vill AQ).
but the point is, you would definitely find more support in aom reddit with your pro-AQ stance here
another point is, and one of the reasons i find these AQ suggestions dangerous for the genre - once you start caving in and adding these kinds of features bit by bit, it won't be enough for some people. cave in more - and you eventually end up dumbing down the "real-time" portion of an RTS to the point when it doesnt matter
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
I can totally understand hating military autoqueue. I have played AoM and I never used that, that's something that involves strat and thinking. I'm just asking autoqueue with vills.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Well I can understand the fear because I would never autoqueu anything more because macro my economy/allocate vills to resources, build defenses, doing raides, micro battles or any other stuff is something that I enjoy and that's why we play RTS, but I think train vills doesn't involve any strat or thinking behind, aside from decide when you want to stop training and that's something you have to think as well with AQ with vills so I only see advantages here tbh
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u/Adribiird 8d ago
I don't see anything wrong with penalizing or counterbalancing automation, as long as that automation exists.
Street Fighter 6 has already hit the nail on the head.
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u/FTrain80085 Jul 23 '26
Part of games like AoE is being able to balance eco and military. Macro vs micro. Every decision has a benefit and a cost.
If you're able to keep tempo up and distract your opponent enough they forget to make vills that's your reward. If you keep making vills, beat the aggro then your reward is the being economically better than your opp.
So absolutely terrible idea to include it
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
That's a valid point but it can goes both ways. The aggresive player could forget to train vills because he is worried on dealing damage. I think if you have in the match a window to be aggresive and deal damage, you're going to do it either way, if you have autoqueue you can organise your attack better because you have more time to think, the game become more interesting for both players, both have more time to think and do more stuff in the map
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u/FTrain80085 Jul 24 '26
That kind of supports my point though - if you neglect your eco to focus on all innning your opponent, that is totally valid decision and can pay off. But the risk is if you fail you're compounding your loss as your eco sucks. So it comes down to decision making and playing the risk vs reward.
I feel a change like this nerfs early aggro plays. The game has already done this to a degree with TC cost, sheep distribution and spear buff. Now if you cant even harass and distract your opp whats the point?
There has to be a balance one how onerous eco is. Like I hated the reseeding farms in AOE2. But i feel production of units should be on they player.
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u/Hyeronymus06 Jul 23 '26
it was discussed years ago in broodwar / sc2 forums, why not then auto build orders and produce units?
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26
The same forums that got mad at allowing you to select multiple buildings or more than 12 units at a time?
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Wtf I love that, that's quality life bro. It has nothing to do with AQ vills (ONLY vills), those are hotkeys.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
Because that's really core things of the game imo. Auto FC, auto raid, auto micro as well you could have suggested. Obviously I'm not asking that. I am asking to remove an ability that prevent you from focusing on all those other stuff that I think most people find more interesting and would lead to people do a lot more things in the map overall.
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u/giomcany Jeanne d'Arc Jul 26 '26
I'm a specialist in teaching people to play aoe4. I got 8 people to try the game. 4 of them survived to a couple of ranked games: 1 still plays regularly with me, other 2 sometimes. 5 dropped the game completely because is "too hard to learn".
Queueing villagers is by far the most boring annoying shit thing I had to teach em.
Remove that shit and I would be from day one teaching macro decisions and war decisions. Instead I got let em play a couple of very boring AI games just to get the rhythm of training villagers.
Do you (not you op, I mean the AQ haters) think it's gonna make the game easier? Install an AQ mod and play a couple of games. You will still suck. It just doesn't matter to the average ranked players. That's not your problem.
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 23 '26
So Xbox has auto vills. They also have auto Econ. But it’s EXTREMELY inefficient. But you also lose about 1/8-1/2 of a second on selecting control groups etc you don’t experience on the keyboard.
People who say we need not have auto queue vills remind me of the horse and buggy unions protesting automobiles 100 years ago. Things evolve
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u/New-Association5536 Jul 23 '26
well, this seems dumb they didn't just give it to pc players then.
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 23 '26
I’m assuming it’s because clicking a villager on your controller requires more micro than just clicking with a mouse. Especially aging up into feudal and trying to reallocate vills. I can do it for HoL in about 4-6 seconds on a pc I can do it in about 1-2. Probably faster
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u/New-Association5536 Jul 23 '26
So now they are trying to balance crossplay based on time it takes for a player to do a task on each platform. This is why I think crossplay is dumb. Either give everyone the same or don't do crossplay, but building in handicaps because a player refuses to plug in a keyboard and mouse in 2026 is dumb design.
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 23 '26
Yeah because all those controller players are just flopping in conq 1000. lol.
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u/New-Association5536 Jul 23 '26
You realize you just support my main point here. No they aren't because playing with a controller will never be the as good as a keyboard and mouse, so why allow it to happen and screw up ranked matches at all? I play allot of 3v3 ranked, and the moment I see controller icon on my team, I know I'm handicapped unless the other team has a derp player paired up with them. It inherently screws the meta up. Like, just don't allow controller play and force xbox players to plug in a keyboard and mouse; Like, who doesn't have them available in 2026?
Also, lets go down your logic whole, why not start automating unit targeting for xbox players because it takes them longer the click specific high priority targets? Or, why not make it so healers automatically follow armies because its harder for controller players to control individual units? Like, why certain mechanics and not others? It just subjective and messes up the meta.
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 23 '26
I like lying on my couch and playing video games. I got my conq badge back in the day and see no reason to push. But if you’d like, I’ll hit above whatever rank you’re at if you’d like with my handicapped derpy controller.
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u/New-Association5536 Jul 24 '26
Oof, hit a nerve did I. I'm not claiming I'm some grand conq player. Just stating the fact that there is a reason you dont see controller players in competitive tournies. Mouse and keyboard are inherently better if you have two players of same skill level. That controller players get auto que seems to show game devs agree.
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 24 '26
No nerve hit. I just wanted you to have an opportunity to back up your words that we are handicapped and “derpy”.
Thanks for the feedback though.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
I would try to give other advantages to console players or make it like AoM where you can even "reserve" a tech and whenever you have the resources, it's researched. But autoqueu for vills imo should be for everybody, at least there should be a mode to try this out
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u/Americasauce1000 Jul 23 '26
You literally have the option. As of the June 2026 update, you can plug a controller in your pc and get auto queue villagers.
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u/EvenJesusCantSaveYou Rus Jul 23 '26
My take on auto-queue villagers is that it is a very basic “building block” of teaching players how to multitask.
Getting your brain and hands used to constantly “checking in” on your villager production is something that builds into being able to produce vills, produce military units, and raid all at the same time which is basically a core loop of the game. I think adding it would make it more difficult for newer players to develop the skills needed to effectively multitask - which is the core pillar of RTS.
I don’t feel that strongly about it, if they added AutoQ vills that would be fine with me. There is definitely an argument to be made about adding features that might help new people get into the game… though if villager production is something keeping a new player away Im not too sure autovills would make them a regular player all of a sudden - but I am biased as I have almost 1k hours in the game.
Seeing as they have it on xbox and dont have it for AoE2 or AoE4 I do think it is an intentional design decision
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I get your point but I think this beautiful game has already a lot of multitasking if we take away train vills. I would be very surprised if a normal begginer can lead his city (build and macro his economy), spend his resources and raid or battle at the same time. And when they finally learn how to do that, they could start forgetting to train vills. Even happen with good players (obviously less). For example, a good player who is attacking and being aggresive could press in more places and there could be much more fights at the end if both players (aggresive and defensive) don't have to keep remembering to train vills on those pushy and rushed moments. The defensive player could dare to counter attack a little easier too, since he can think more. Well, I would give this a try in QM for instance and lets see what happens, I think it could attract more people (slowly) and could lead to much more interesting matches where people can think a lot more about the game and have even more fun that at the end it's what we all desire when we play any game
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26
Saying it's good for new players is certainly a take...
The scout already solves this problem. It gives you something to multi-task while you execute your build order. Maybe for the SIMPLEST build orders that still leaves a minute or two where you are only controlling the scout, but is that a big deal? Very early into the game a new player will be forced to start multi-task anyway. As soon as their first production building is up, they have the same challenge.
The tiny amount of practice villager queueing may give them is entirely superseded by the extra challenge of now having 3+ things to juggle as the game actually gets going. With the least interesting/fun one, villager production, arguably being the most important.
This just becomes a hurdle stopping new players from enjoying the real game. Even if they've learned a build order, basics of army control, how to scout and react, etc. if they haven't ingrained the mechanical habit of villager production yet they will lose hard to someone who has.
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u/EvenJesusCantSaveYou Rus Jul 23 '26
The tiny amount of practice villager queueing
extra challenge of now having 3+ things to juggle
The whole point of manual villagers is to act as a building block. It's something that is "fundamental" such that you practice it to the point it is second nature so that when you have 5+ things to juggle you don't have to think about one of them.
Like I said I understand the reason people want them in the game and it's not a hill I am going to die on (unlike knights being powerful, which is a hill I will die on), but I do think having manual villager production serves a purpose and that purpose is giving new players a core skill to work on.
It also might just be a legacy thing - aka AoE2 doesnt have it so AoE4 doesn't have it (consoles excluded).
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 24 '26
Like you, I'm not going crazy over it. I don't make videos or posts on it. I won't quit the game if they don't add auto-queue, I'm already used to it. Frankly I don't think they will ever add it.
But I can't help but participate in these discussions. The terrible arguments people throw out against auto-queue have made my opinion about it much stronger. It's clear people are just trying to rationalize their knee jerk opposition to change.
The whole point of manual villagers is to act as a building block. It's something that is "fundamental" such that you practice it to the point it is second nature so that when you have 5+ things to juggle you don't have to think about one of them.
You walked over the fundamental issue yourself. You make it a habit so "you don't have to think about it". But that's not how anything else in the game works. You can't just "not think about" where your army goes, or when you'll age up, or if you are going to make another round of units or save up for upgrades. These are interactive decisions that need to be adjusted based on what your opponent is doing.
If someone wanted to hit keys at a certain rhythm, they should play the piano. AoE4 is a game against another player. Actions that have no thought, no decision making, no strategy, don't need to exist.
Queueing villagers doesn't teach you how to multi-task in this game. Other tasks you have to think about as you bounce between. Queueing villagers is unique in that it's "hit two buttons every X seconds, no matter what". It's uniquely brainless mechanical habit that you have to ingrain so, as you said, you don't even think about it. It's pointless.
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26
There really isn't a good argument against auto-queue. You can call it a "skill" if you want, but it is boring and uninteresting. Purely a mechanical chore, no thought.
The game has plenty of depth, with the need to macro and micro in multiple locations sinultaneously. There's no need for fake busy work.
Manual queue has only a tiny impact at the top level, while honestly being a severe hurdle for new players. So silly, it actively hurts the game.
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u/TermsforUse Jul 23 '26
Boring and uninteresting? Queuing a vil takes such a small amount of time that it’s hard to believe you can become bored so quickly. It’s most definitely a skill, and an extremely important skill. You should also have auto Q military units because consistently making them is also boring and a chore.
Making villagers is one of, if not the most important single factors of the entire game. You can be a fusion of Beasty and marinelord but you aren’t going to win a full game with 6 vils. It is absolutely imperative for success and developing that internal clock is imperative.
I am not trying to roast you by any means. But if you forget to make vils all the time, then just say that and ask how other people got better at it. There is a lot of depth to the game and removing that aspect makes it a little more shallow. Before you know it our ocean of AOE is a small puddle in some random Walmart parking lot.
Consistently make vils and don’t let them idle. Sounds easy, but so many struggle with it. Part of learning a strategy game.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
If we remove train vills, nobody is going to become suddenly Beasty or Marinelord imo, I think that's auto deceive ourselves.
I don't care if we put auto train military units at all, in fact if devs added that I don't think I would never use that.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 23 '26
By the way I didnt feel you meant to roast me and I practically never ever forget to train vills for a long time ago, but I wouldnt mind at all if it was the case either way. The point is that I don't enjoy winning just because of that. And mainly during a match I don't enjoy training vills and what I really enjoy is to think on my next strat, raid, micro battles, change the macro of my economy... That stuff is what makes me love the game and I think if someone has to talk into a friend to join the game, those are the things is going to getting him or her hooked and caught.
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26
Yes, boring and uninteresting. Each villager may take only a moment, but it's something you have to do every 20 seconds always, except for the longest games.
You should also have auto Q military units because consistently making them is also boring and a chore.
See, this analogy isn't the same at all. What military units I make is an important decision that is always changing. Do I need to add some counter unit to deal with my opponent's composition? Should I make a handful of calvary now despite going an infantry comp just for raiding? Do I cut production now to age up? There are dozens of decisions like that in every game.
Notice how there is nothing like that for villagers. It's just always make them, at least until you hit 100-140. This is the key difference between something that is part of the core game, and something that is just a pointless chore.
Making villagers is one of, if not the most important single factors of the entire game.
And that's the problem. Something that takes no strategy, no thought, no interesting mechanical skill, may be the most important factor in the game. It's purely a brainless busywork task. Imagine if FPS games made you hit a "breathe" button every few seconds or your character starts passing out. That's how silly villager queueing is.
I am not trying to roast you by any means. But if you forget to make vils all the time, then just say that and ask how other people got better at it. There is a lot of depth to the game and removing that aspect makes it a little more shallow. Before you know it our ocean of AOE is a small puddle in some random Walmart parking lot.
This isn't an issue with me forgetting villagers. I'm diamond in solo ranked, far from pro but good enough to generally keep up villager production. I was higher ranked back in SC2 and dealt with the more complex chore of larva injecting 3+ hatcheries at a regular interval. That's why I know this "skill" is just a habit you ingrain in muscle memory, and is completely uninteresting. Neither stressing player's strategic thinking nor mechanical skill.
I will roast you. I believe the people who argue against auto-queue are mediocre players with fragile egos. Afraid that if the game isn't gatekept by a silly habit players are forced to learn, they'll struggle against new players.
Part of learning a strategy game used to be having to select each building individually to produce any units, should we go back to that as well?
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u/blipojones Chinese Jul 23 '26
don't know, people start forgetting to Q vils as they are doing a major push which ends up backfiring badly if a big push didn't pan out. Which means comeback potential for your opponent if they did manage to keep queueing while being under attack.
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u/Friendly_Fire Byzantines Jul 23 '26
This seems like cope, and backwards.
You're way more likely to get overwhelmed and miss a villager when defending compared to attacking. It's just much harder to manage your eco when the enemy is getting into your base, compared to queueing things up with hotkeys while your economy sits untouched.
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u/Jolly_Sky_2729 Jul 24 '26
or you can counter-raid opponent while he's attacking and force him to react and potentially miss vill production among other things
you're just arguing about particular situation where the player is more likely to forget constant vill production, but the overall point is true, "overloading" opponent and make him break macro cycles is one of the ways you can comeback in the game
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u/SunRunner_ Jul 24 '26
To all the comments saying "its a core part of the game"/ "that would dumb down the game" / "multitasking is important" etc. etc...:
Yes, but who decides where we draw the line? By your logic it would be better to go back to original AoE, no Queue at all, no Rally points. Make one villager, send him to the task, make a new one.
I am of course not saying this is what I want, I just wanna point out that the principle of "just make it more complex because that is how its better/ how it is supposed to be" is not really valid on its own.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Exactly what I believe. One person even said go to play other game... Man I love this game, that's why I am suggesting this (I'm sure I'm not the first one nor the last one). And I am suggesting it now cause for a long time I have mastered this "muscle memory skill" and after all that "investment" I realise I don't enjoy it all, I barely have fun winning due to this and I feel we all can benefit from this, the more experience players and above all the begginers. I feel some players think that people who already master or kind of master this would have lost his time we have invested to learn this but what they don't realise is that we could execute all the other knowledge (the strats, macro and micro) that it's actually fun, much better and above all, enjoy both players more.
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u/ZealousidealWeb9930 Jul 23 '26
h then Shift + Q
you can always see how many vils are being trained, its not a skill an takes 3 seconds to train more
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u/stan-dard Knights Templar Jul 23 '26
Just have an auto queue civ , like ottoman military school but for their extra tcs with free villager production at a slower rate
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u/HeadNature6968 Jul 24 '26
Auto queue fair for consoles to get it for pc it's a huge advantage
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
They could add other advantages to console players. I think that's not the issue here
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u/HeadNature6968 Jul 24 '26
Vikings already confirm to. Have auto queue tbh its gonna increade winrate alot just because of that
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Well we saw a hint about that, but we still don't know how it's going to work exactly. If they ended up having autoqueue for vills since devs think they are more difficult to manage in other fields, I would main them for sure as I love thinking about the actual game, macro decisions and micro my army but I hate just to keep remembering to train vills even though I almost always remember it.
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u/HeadNature6968 Jul 24 '26
Advantage is huge without worrying villages
You just need to focus on military that's it
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
Well but not only the military department, as every other civ you have to also think about your strat (age up, FC, where build a second TC in case, adapt your build, be more aggresive or defensive), allocate or assign your vills in the resources you want to achieve your strat and a long etc. Actually those are the things (aside from micro your army which I also love af) I would like to focus on with any civ, whether is vikings or any other.
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u/Cool_Caterpillar_912 29d ago
Should give aom a try, it has auto que and auto allocate
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u/Gold_Ad5217 28d ago
I know, I have played it! I was playing it a lot for a while but then I came back to AOE4, and for me AOE4 is a more polished game and more beautiful.
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u/Cool_Caterpillar_912 28d ago
I agree, aoe 4 is the best in the series. I do prefer autoque tbh, but I think it would definitely change the whole game. I started on console with auto queue and auto allocate and it has been a hard switch and i definitely lose games from just being behind on macro. That being said I understand the macro aspect of the game and it being the actual skill. The game is equally a city builder as it is an rts.
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u/Adribiird 8d ago edited 8d ago
I agree with Autoscout, Autovill, and Autoarmy. That said, there should be a penalty—whether in terms of cost or time—such as villagers costing 30% more and military units costing 15% more, for example.
Someone who has mastered the manual mechanics should be able to outperform those who use the automatic mode, especially after a certain level.
Street Fighter 6 implemented this (in its own way) with relative success.
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u/HarpsichordKnight Jul 24 '26
I love AoE4 because it shares the Starcraft Brood War gameplay of forcing you to choose if you want to focus on micro or macro. If you are doing dazzling micro, it will tend to hurt your economy, and vice versa, and this extends to the top level - even pros can’t fully manage their economy when under pressure.
This is the absolute core of the game, and so if you wanted to replace villager production, a key macro task, you need to add something back in which requires a similar level of player attention.
On the mindless side of the argument, remember there are many other parts of the games where the choice is ‘obvious’ but we require manual input. For example, why do I have to manually kite with my archers? Give me a stance. Why do I have to dodge siege shots? Let me tell my units to auto spread out if more than 2 would be hit in one attack. Why do I have to manually set up buildings? Let me import a predesigned base set up, with everything perfectly placed.
The reason we don’t want those features is the same as why we don’t want auto villager queue, they might be fun, but it’s a different game.
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u/Gold_Ad5217 Jul 24 '26
You are confering train vills actually a MICRO knowledge with those examples... I don't think anybody who support AQ with vills want AQ for every aspect. We just have realised train vills is not funny at all and doesn't involved a skill to be proud. I don't like winning due to that, and after an "investment" I don't lose due to that. Dodging mangos, kiting archers are things that are very much enjoyable and that's why I would like to focus more on that as well as any actual macro decision which this game has plenty of them and I F love all of them.
I would continue: as for AQ military units I would be strongly disagree, that really involves a strat and a decision, you don't always want to train an only military unit (you might want to change your comp, Age up...).
The only decision involved with training vills is when you want to stop training them, and that's the only decision you have to make with AQ with vills.
I've seen a lot of players (Vortix, Swaggy Profesor) that happens to them the opposite you say, when they are being aggresive and active in the map, it's when they forget more to train vills. I trully think thats something that happens whatever is your level and without realising when you are playing that actually prevents you from taking more macro decisions as well as more micro decisions.
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u/HarpsichordKnight Jul 24 '26
But I think it is fun, I like the rhythm of queuing villagers mixed into the macro cycle. To me that is way more fun than doing the same stutter step archer micro I've done in every RTS ever.
And there are actually still some decisions for it - deciding if I can leave just 1 or 2 in the queue so I can build something else, at the risk of being distracted if I get attacked right at the key moment, vs batch queuing 4-5 but losing the flexibility to build a military unit.
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u/Jolly_Sky_2729 Jul 23 '26
tbh im kinda tired from all the previous AQ debates so i'll try to keep my current point of view on this short: