Like how building a trading post in given sockets on railroad/rickshaw trade routes on land, helps in gathering experience and generate resources. AOE3 DE should explore waterways based traderoutes. They can replace rickshaws/travois with catamarans/canoes loaded with crates, which can be upgraded to Merchant Ships later in the game.
Pirate coves in middle of seas, with a socket for trading posts which will act as sort of SeaNatives.
Give the Outlaws/Ronins and Privateers ability to shoot at Trains/horseCarriages and Merchant ships/treasureFleets respectively to drop crates on the land and floating crates on water respectively, which nearby idle villallgers/outlaws and privateer ships can collect respectively.
Give trains/horseCarriages/tradeRichshaws/tradeTravois ranged and Merchant ships a ranged powerful attack, Which they can fire as they move.
They can reduce the economic bonus from raids but, just keep it high enough to justify the presence of outlaw/pirate type units, and their population and resource cost.
This is infact the central theme of this game. Trade routes, lawless towns, treacherous seas of colonial era.
These units pirates/outlaws/privateer ships are already in the game and the Campaign. Having 2 renegados can be placed mid way from your Tradingpost and your Enemy trading posts. And they will make sure, that the your enemy doesn’t recieve full amount of resources when the train reaches his town. if he wants the full resources from his trade routes, He will have to clear the outlaws you have hired from that section of the railroads by sending an army or a fleet when it comes to privateers.
Just an Idea.
A game called Northguard actually implements the raiding Mechanics very well. Using proper raider units that can be assigned to ports.
Just an Idea. Because some units, like Outlaws privateers aren’t being utilised because of limited scope.
But I am glad you atleast like the water trade routes Idea.
The rest of the stuff: Probably won’t work, if you make the trains and carriages units with collision that can be robbed and fight back, you will open the door for a lot of glitches and exploits. Better to keep those as they are right now.
No collision, they will just fireback as long as the outlaw units of the same team attacking it is within range. Attack won’t reduce hit points of the train but just make it drop resource crates, and may be treasure technologies in some cases.
I still think that this feature will be kinda of awkward to implement and may mess too much with the balance, but hey, if the devs manage to find a way to do it in a balanced manner, it will be an interesting feature.
This could be a great feature for a naval themed expansion pack. Of the top of my head I can think of Polynesian Tribes as a naval native ally, groups of Pirates could work as well as allies.
Just consider trade routes that go through water, and the trader transforms into a ship when they enter the water areas.
Rafts/Canoes → Trading Ship/Indiaman → Steam Cargo Ships
There are some cool ideas here, but I’m just not sure if we’ll see the level of additional content/features like this in an update to AoE3DE. AoE2DE received DLC, which was a pleasant surprise, but I don’t see that happening for AoE3DE.
This part sounds convoluted, and would realistically be either OP and nulify Trade Sites real quick, or just become another ignored mechanic, like fattening herdables.
The rest of the suggestions are very decent, however.
I support the idea of Water Trading Sites.
I will have to agree, that’s a legitimate fear.
I guess they will have to make game modes in which outlaw/pirates units are the only army available, and saloon is the only military building. And thete are no mines. And rest of the army is to be sourced vi local tribes. Markets, Trade routes, and looting are the only source of Gold, as there are no mines on the maps.
Like Bombard Brawl, but called The Heist instead, and you have to capture small towns with your Bandit Leader (Explorer) in preparation to blow up the train tracks and rob the cargo.
Could be a nice event, if paired with a good Outlaw rework (half pop cost, double Gold cost).
And this will be followed by a random Event, in which railroad company, will send it’s own army of Mercenaries/or Armada at the town centre/docks of players who have cost railroad/seatrade company a lot of money. This event will be also be accompanied by a train, which instead of having the usual resources, the train will have machine guns, which can wipe out the unsuspecting outlaw bandits standing at the train tracks.
You would start with only your Bandit Ringleader and a Town (Minor Settlement, like the Native Settlements, but with Wild West architecture), and would have to choose between support of 1 of 3 families, like an automatic Age Up.
The Castros would give you a deck with Gold Crates, Renegado, Pistolero and Comanchero shipments, and a few buff cards for Outlaw units.
The McGruffs would give you a deck with Gold Trickles, Grenadiers, Riflemen and Hussars, themed around army defectors, with a few buff cards for Riflemen (Skirmishers) and Grenadiers.
The Ahyokas would give a deck with Food and Wood Bounties for killing units, Cherokee Riflemen, Apache Cavalry and Comanche Horse Archers, themed around native tribal support, with a few cards that increase Native unit limits.