3 - Miscellaneous Ideas (Mostly Regarding Existing Civs)

[TheConqueror753]

There are no ideas in here that will benefit the game if I’m being honest, except maybe regional monk skins. You’re mixing up historical realism with gameplay, and breaking a lot of stuff in the process.

@siarnyhni

Archer: Leather Archer Armor, Quilted Archer Armor, Composite/Metal Archer Armor

Cavalry: Scale Barding, Mail Barding, Plate Barding

Infantry: Scale Armor, Mail Armor, Plate Armor

Totally unnecessary, especially as players are now used to the current forms, there’s not need or real reason to change them.

@siarnyhni

-The Monk should be renamed “Cleric” and the Monastery, “Temple”, since not all of the religions implicitly featured in AoE2 had monastic traditions. (I won’t even get into the names of the various Monastery technologies, mostly because there’s no way to render them very inclusive anyway, so that it matters less that they’re so overtly specific to Christianity.)

It really doesn’t matter, and those names don’t sound as cool. Especially cleric, if it had to be renamed, priest is the way to go. And it doesn’t need a rename.

@siarnyhni

Maybe I’m over-interpreting, but a similar policy already seems to have influenced which civs do or do not get Heresy – I just think it would be fun to turn this into a more even relationship, rather than a similar positive-negative, “some get this, others don’t” type of dichotomy.

You don’t seem to understand that against a player using monks, heresy is a very helpful tech. It has very little to do with historical stuff, and a lot to do with balance.

@siarnyhni

-The Siege Tower will never be a very useful unit, to be sure. If it were removed from the game, nobody would notice. I do think, though, that improving it a bit can only be to the good. To this end, it seems fair to give it a ranged attack as long as there are troops garrisoned in it, the strength of which would correlate directly with the number of troops inside. One could also limit this to archers (except for Teutons, of course, whose civ bonus should extend it to infantry). Like I said, it would hardly make the unit viable in any proper sense of the word, but maybe we’d at least see it every once in a while on closed maps.

I’m not totally opposed to giving it a double ability.

@siarnyhni

A second possibility would be to give the Siege Tower to a specific civ as a replacement for its ram-line (not so far-fetched, since the Siege Elephant has already set a precedent here). In this case, the Siege Tower would receive an anti-building mêlée attack of the same or almost the same strength as the ram’s, and one could even incorporate the suggestion made above (ranged attack if garrisoned) and then render it possible for players to toggle between the two options (another precedent set by the latest expansion, this time by the Ratha).

Not needed, and removes the option to use both, or give them distinct roles.

@siarnyhni

-A hotkey for “de-select all units that are at full health” would be great.

Reasonable.

@siarnyhni

-The Byzantines should be renamed: Romans. It is understandable enough that they are called “Byzantines” and “Eastern Romans” in other contexts which do not exclude the original Roman Empire, or even in cases in which the Holy Roman Empire constitutes another game faction/realm. Since the civ which usually represents the latter in AoE2 is named the Teutons, however, rather than, say, the Holy Romans, there is no reason not to call the Byzantines by the name they used for themselves, rather than one invented subsequently.

Don’t rename things that don’t need to be. Even if it is historically more accurate, most people don’t care, and it prevents any confusion with the actual Romans.

@siarnyhni

Also, I’ve never understood the name of this tech. I know that not much was recorded about the religion of the Huns, but is there even a shred of evidence that they were “atheists”? And if they were, was it in a way that set them apart meaningfully from other religions that either feature no god, at all, or at least invoke the idea only in a minor, even peripheral way (e.g. Buddhism)? In short, this tech isn’t just mechanically uninteresting, it’s also thematically unclear, at least to me. Something evoking the terror and dread inspired by the Huns in their enemies would make more sense, if the revised version of the tech were to be similar to its current form.

To my understanding, the term Atheism was used by the Romans to refer to anyone with a different religion. The technically correct term would be Tengrism though.

@siarnyhni

As I understand it, the Samurai was originally supposed to be very similar to the Bengalis’ Ratha unique unit.

It wasn’t mounted.

@siarnyhni

AoE2 is a really, really abstract game (arguably the main reason why the other titles in the franchise have struggled to develop a comparably large and lasting appeal). Nobody expects it to reflect reality in detail.

It’s not that abstract, and if you accept that the abstraction is a part of the appeal, why are you trying to ruin that?

@siarnyhni

As for the Magyars, their woodsmen ability is better than nothing, but it, too, only implies a nomadic way of life in a pretty attenuated sense. Moreover, the Magyar case offers special opportunities that one absolutely ought to capitalize on: For one thing, unlike many of the nomadic peoples featured in the game, the most famous episode of their migration was the flight before other advancing peoples (compared to the conquering journeys of Huns, Mongols etc.). Also, it makes sense for their nomadism-related bonus to come early in the game, since they ultimately settled in Hungary (and indeed did so on the earlier side, measured by the chronology of AoE2). One really unconventional option would be to make their units move 10% faster in Dark Age and 5% faster in Feudal Age. Even if that particular idea doesn’t appeal to you, it hopefully illustrates the potential for an unorthodox, thematically well-founded civ bonus. In the proposal for the Jurchen, above, I mentioned several further possibilities, including a hunting bonus that would cause food to trickle in without having to be deposited at the Mill or a TC (presumably unbalancing for the Magyars, though, and therefore inadvisable) and lowering the stone cost of TC dramatically. The general principle underlying the latter could be tailored to the criteria described above – specific emphasis on capacity to retreat and adapt plus main impact during early-game –, e.g. the Magyars could gain some variation on the ability to move or rebuild their TC (representative of leaving Etelköz for Pannonia). (Disclaimer: I am not taking any money from Rubenstock or Lyx.)

You really don’t need to mess around with Tatars or Magyars. Both are decent civs, don’t disrupt the balance when it doesn’t need changes.

@siarnyhni

The Karambit Warrior (Malay) should be replaced. The reference to the karambit does not necessarily need to be changed, though it could be replaced by one to the keris, and the ugly and unrealistic depiction of dual-wielding could also be dispensed with through this change.

A possible revised version of the unit would no longer only occupy half a population space and would have noticeably better stats, but would still be light infantry suited to jungle warfare, a fact represented by an ability to pass through trees – with the caveat, however, that there has to be a clear tile adjacent to, or perhaps just within two spaces of, the tree that the unit is trying to pass through. That way this would only be possible if the band of trees being traversed was relatively narrow or if the trees were not clustered too thickly, and maps like Black Forest would continue to function as they’re intended to.

It doesn’t need to be replaced. Maybe slightly buffed, but it’s meant to swarm enemies with numbers, and fits into the Malay theme of a lot of weak stuff cheaper.

@siarnyhni

-The Obuch (Poles) is a weird, boring, improbable unique unit and should be replaced.

There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a strong unit, and it’s fine in the game. Don’t replace it with something broken.

@siarnyhni

-Slavs should be renamed: Rus’. The fact that they had ever had this broader name has to do with the history of the game: The Forgotten was regarded as a last expansion that could cram into the game a few civs that would have been especially obvious candidates to include in AoK or AoC.

Fine.

@siarnyhni

-Timurid Siegecraft is boring. I suggested an alternative above, in the section on nomadism (and for those concerned about the ensuing lack of Tatar bonuses pertaining to siege, note my recommendation above to give Tatars the proposed Siege Tower unit, along with Persians and Tibetans).

The +2 range is useful, it doesn’t need to be changed. Just make Flaming Camels not linked to it and you’re fine.

@siarnyhni

-Turks should be renamed: Oghuz.

No. Just no. The Turks represent both the Seljuks, and the Ottomans. Turks is by far the most intuitive term for them.

@siarnyhni

-Vikings should be renamed: Norse. “Viking” is in effect a word for pirate, it is not a civilization

It’s better recognized as Vikings, but I’m ok with Norse.

@siarnyhni

-I’ve limited myself to one strictly-graphics-gripe, and this is it: Berserk[er]s should finally stop having horns on their helmets. This is maddening to me. Petersen even explicitly admitted once that they knew this was inaccurate and added it anyway to “kowtow to Hollywood”. (Whatever that even means, especially in the context of a comparatively niche, twenty year-old RTS game which – I say this with love – nobody in Hollywood could care less about.)

It looks cooler, people like it. Just make a mod if you really care that much. And I just want to point out the irony that you complained about a ton of stuff, yet don’t want the name changed from Berserk to Berserker.

Anyway, please no. Almost none of these are good, either from a balance standpoint, or from giving stuff confusing or pointless renames. It sounds like you should really make a string file mod, and rename everything yourself. Or learn datamodding, and make all of these changes.