Wood is an important resource used throughout the Age of Empires series. It is most often required for buildings or training ranged units and is usually acquired by felling trees.
Wood can be collected by a few methods which are all listed below.
Forestry
Trees are abundant on almost every map found in the game, including arid ones. Major forests can easily be located and cut down, both supplying wood for new buildings and clearing land to build on.
Market
Gold can be traded for wood at the Market. The more wood a player buys, the more expensive it gets. In Age of Empires and Age of Empires III, the Market also contains essential upgrades that can increase the speed of wood collecting from chopping down trees. In Age of Empires IV, FrenchTraders may also drop off wood at the Market.
Resource-generating buildings
Throughout the series, a few buildings are featured that steadily generate wood:
In Age of Empires III, building Trading Posts is another way to obtain wood. Some units of a chosen resource are produced for free each time a Coach or Train makes a full loop around a Trade Route (the amount depends on the length of the Trade Route), and the player can choose to make that resource wood.
Age of Empires III also offers the option of Home City shipments as a means to get extra wood. Once selected, wood arrives in the form of cords to the shipment point which by default is a Town Center. Villagers must work on them to unpack the shipments. All shipments that provide wood are listed in the following table.
Click for a list of Home City Cards related to Wood
Some cards are highlighted with:
Green
TEAM Shipment that is sent to each player in a team
Purple
Shipment that can be sent an INFINITE number of times
Ships 400 wood; Land villagers gather wood from trees and Mango Groves 10% faster
New Jersey Seaports
Resource shipments' content +900 and are immediately gathered; can send resource-only shipments that have already been sent for the second time, as well as "Washington Lumber Mills", "Minneapolis Mills", and "Plymouth Settlers" (except TEAM ones); infinite crate cards are only increased by +300
"New Jersey Seaports" is available upon selecting the New Jersey Federal State.
Wood is the most abundant natural resource on nearly all maps and can be used to create Farms which ensure food production, but in the original and Definitive versions of the game it is still a finite resource. In Return of Rome it can be obtained indefinitely with commodity trading at the Market, but this is an expensive way to acquire it.
Trees create a movement barrier referred to as a "wood line", which most units are incapable of removing. In Age of Empires, the only ways to demolish a wood line are to slowly cut away at it with Villagers, or to use the "Attack ground" feature of Heavy Catapults, expensive late-game units that many factions are unable to train. An effective defensive strategy is to keep wood lines intact to prevent enemy incursions into the player's territory, providing a more robust barrier than walls.
Wood has a myriad of uses in Age of Empires II. Wood is used to make almost all buildings: houses, resource collection, military production, palisades, etc. Secondly, it is usually used in the collection of food via farming or Fish Traps. Wood is also used for the Spearman line, Archery Range units, siege units, and naval units. Wood is invested into economic upgrades (as well as Thumb Ring at the Archery Range and certain University technologies). Overall it is generally important to collect some wood no matter what strategy is pursued.
Some other uses include being sold for gold at the Market, particularly if the price of food is already low. Massed Halberdiers or Skirmishers are sometimes considered during trash unit wars due to wood's general abundance throughout the game. The amount of wood collected may vary depending on the units in the strategy; for example, wood costs for siege units can accumulate rather quickly if multiple Siege Workshops are maintaining production.
In this game, wood has changed its role significantly. While there are fewer buildings needed, each individual building tends to cost more wood. For example, dropoff buildings are not required, while Houses have double capacity, but now cost 100 wood instead of the 25 wood in Age of Empires II. This is an equivalent to 10 wood per population (instead of 5 in the previous installment). Additionally, the rate of wood collection starts off slower to obtain than even coin and remains this way prior to Circular Saw.[1] Because of this, it is common to avoid chopping much wood unless necessary, and especially prior to the Fortress Age. The usual way to do this is to send wood crates, which provide enough for early military buildings or the first Town Center.
There are several other specific cases that change from their Age of Empires II equivalent uses:
With respect to food, it has reduced prominence, due to the abundance of huntable animals delaying the requirement for Farms. Mills are generally produced late in the game if at all necessary and a one-time cost producing infinite food over time without requiring more input of wood.
Wood is very heavily used for unit upgrades along with coin, unlike in Age of Empires II, where most unit upgrades cost food and gold. For example Royal Guard upgrades cost 1,000 wood. Wood is still required for archaic units and archers, cannon/siege, and naval units, although the number of different types of these units is fewer overall and most compositions focus on food/coin.
Wood partially takes on the role of stone in producing defensive buildings and walls, including the Town Center which costs 600 wood (500 since the Definitive Edition), over double its equivalent in Age of Empires II.
Wood is needed to make all buildings except Landmarks, Stone Walls (and accompanying structures), and Keeps. It is also the only resource required to build most buildings, with the exceptions being the Town Center, Wonder, and Military School. Notably, the House of Wisdom costs 50 wood which is unusual for a Landmark, but understandable since it behaves very differently from conventional Landmarks.