Food(acts like money but its for paying only)

[SirPat]

There will be food in AoS but acts like money couriers
@DoomsdayDragonfire
@QuadrupleStrat
Lets continue talking here

There will be a new unit called food courier (or meat wagon maybe? )
They act like money couriers but are harder to obtain
Abilities:
Speedup production by 1 turn
Pay mercenary- 3turns
Feast- it gives an effect called healing for 5 turns it heals a unit by 2hp per second and gives heal bonus of .5 to unit
All of these abilities consumes the food courier

Ways to obtain food courier:

Hunting
Animals leave behind carcasses except for bird and dogs
There will be a new tech called hunting it will give archers(upgrades) poison archers skirmishers and net throwers an ability called collect carcass
Collect carcass ability have a range of 2 tiles and spawns food couriers on carcass as if youve collected the carcass but with people to collect them for you

Growing crops

Pheasant with hoe, and pheasant with pitchfork will be important here
Pheasant with hoe can build Farmlands a new buildable 1×1 tiles and once farmlands have been created you can research a building upgrade there like barracks to fortified baracks the upgrade will be called crops it takes 2 turns to make
When it transforms to Crops pheasant with pitchfork will have a built in ability called harvest crops range of 1 it trans forms crops into food courier

In short you build farmland then it upgrades to crops in 2 turns using a tech just like fortified tech then pheasant with pitchfork will transform it into a food courier using an ability

In conclusion:
Money couriers will be the normal currency for paying mercs but you can also make mines to increase for paying mercs or boosting workers using minerals with minecart while you can use hunting as an easy but limited form of mercenary paying limited because of the amount of animals but there is an alternative but not limited which is farming and food gives healing boosts so its different from other

[Badnorth]

Better money couriers is an awesome idea but I think Hunting will be hard since animals are rare in campaign maps nor multiplayer maps I suggest to add a building called a Slaughter house which is where animals is slaughtered to provide food for humans (but not often) Slaughter house produces food couriers and meat wagons but I think it still needs hunting.

farmland is for the Peasants to have a use rather than just die in battle Peasants are also Farmers and so its natural to offer supplies to collectors/Couriers I like this idea.

Meat wagons or Food wagons I guess will be a better version of Food couriers imho.( meatwagon reminds me of warcraft )

[SirPat]

yeah they should actually add meat wagons at Age of Fantasy

I was thinking of making Hunting limited and more valuable so lets add meat carts
(No meat wagons cause they also remind me of warcraftIII)
they pay mercenaries-6turns
Have "feast" ability range of 2tiles and AoE of 2tiles gives 1.0heal bonus and heals 4hp for 7 turns
Can speed up factory by 1turn

And food courier will look like a farmer with a wheel barrow of food