Kinda bonkers this is allowed in ranked but switching Persians to Central Asian architecture is not…
it’s hard to take anything in this forum seriously when it’s all issues that can be fixed with a mod?
yeah. individual architecture sets not being moddable is just incompetence at this point.
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If it was a change that needed a data mod I could see your point
But visual mods are a tiny annoyance
They should give every civ a unique castle skin. The original castle skins should be used as the regional skins when the option is turned off, rather than being kept as the castle skins of certain civs.
I once considered changing the skirmisher line units into bowmen, because javelin throwing was not a standard or commonly used tactic across all regions in the Middle Ages, and in practice javelins were intended to counter shielded infantry rather than lightly armored archers.
Making bowmen cost no gold but have lower base damage and a longer training time would also reflect the fact that this weapon is structurally less complex (and therefore cheap), but requires more training to master, and that the arrows they fire are less effective at penetrating heavy armor.
On the other hand, gold-costing foot archers would be available at the Archery Range in Ages III and IV.
- For most civs, it would be Crossbowman → Arbalester.
- For Native American civs, it would be Javelineer → Heavy Javelineer.
- For the Britons, it would be Longbowman → Elite Longbowman.
Crossbowmen would have the highest cost among these but the shortest training time; Javelineers would have the lowest damage but extra armor and also the lowest cost; and Longbowmen would have the longest training time but additional range. Compared to bowmen, all of them would have slower movement speed but more effective against armored units due to their higher base attack.
The issue is that for a civ that hardly ever used crossbows and did not commonly employ javelins either, such as the Japanese, it is unclear what to do. One option would be to have the Longbowman line become genereic for civs like the Japanese, and correspondingly change the Britons to have access to Yeoman Longbowman → Elite Yeoman Longbowman instead in order to keep their UU line (with the UT renamed accordingly). However, I am not sure whether there are other civs with similar issues.
Of course, I can also understand that a simple reskin would likely be the most practical approach.
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The problem is you can’t just replace the xbow with a bow and call it a day. If its going to be a shared unit suitable for other non-American civs it will still look European or “old worldy” and still be unsuitable for the American civs. Replacing the whole militia line with the Champi for the South American civs is the best thing about the new DLC from a visual design and historicity perspective and they should just already do the same thing for the spear, skirmisher and archer line as well. And while they’re at it, for god’s sake, include some new villager skins so they don’t all look like they are from medieval Britain.
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Yeah, Teutons with an Anglo-Norman castle are iconic but very silly, I’d love the option you propose.
If it were up to me, only civilizations with a historical tendency to use Crossbowmen (like most Europeans) would have the progression Archer → Crossbowman → Arbalester.
Civilizations with a tendency to use composite bows (I assume most Asian civilizations) would have Archer → Improved Bowman → Composite Bowman (the Armenians’ unique unit would have a different name).
The Britons would have Arbalesters, and the Chinese would have Composite Bowmen to avoid redundancy with their unique units.
In the case of the Vikings, they would have their own unique upgrades: Archer → Bogsveigar → Elite Bogsveigar (and their unique technology would be replaced).
And the American civilizations would have archer upgrades more suited to their style.
Similarly, Asian civilizations should have a Knight replacement called “Lancer” or something similar.
The Teutonic castle model should be the one currently used by the Slavs (based on Malbork Castle, built by the Teutonic Order). The Slavic castle model should appear to be partially constructed of wood, reflecting the effect of the Slavic “Detinets” technology, which replaces 40% of the stone cost of castles and towers with wood. The current Teutonic castle model could be a skin for the Britons’ castle (because it’s based on Rochester Castle in England) and perhaps it could also remain as a skin for the Teutonic castle. The idea of using regional skins also sounds good.
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how would these units differ gameplay-wise? aoe2 generally does not do different units with identical stats
The crossbow line could be a regional line for the civs that historically used them, heavier on gold cost, high pierce damage, low HP
The archer line becomes your suggestion
The archer line for the american’s civ could be something like
Light Archer<Archer<Heavy Archer
With lower HP but faster movement speed than regular archer line
And there is when technologies like cotton armor will play a significant role as bonus or UT, and the “wax with cotton” for burning ships of the Tupi’s could make them good at sieges without relying so much on ahistorical siege engines
Also, give Tupi’s stronger pallisade walls please, like, that’s the one thing it should have been there for the get go
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I disagree. I think something more clearly German, like Eltz Castle, would be better.
I would try to balance them by representing the differences between the weapons and other historical considerations:
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The Crossbowman line can be trained somewhat faster than the Bowman line, and as compensation, Bowman line upgrades can be cheaper.
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Crossbowmen can have a more powerful attack, but Bowmen can fire faster.
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Crossbowmen can cost more gold, and Bowmen can cost more wood (like Longbowmen).
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Civilizations with Bowmen can research Thumb Ring (if it’s available in their tech tree), and civilizations with Crossbowmen can have another technology available (“Steel Bolts,” for example). Both upgrades provide different bonuses (“Steel Bolts” could increase Crossbowmen’s damage by +1, like the Vikings’ “Bogsveigar” technology).
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I’m not sure how to design American archers. They can have less attack but slightly more hit points and movement speed in comparison, something similar to the Mayan Plumed Archers (with appropriate balancing). Some bonuses and technologies from American civilizations could affect these archers, making them more different from other archers (as is the case with the bonuses and improvements that affect the Slingers and Skirmishers of South American civilizations).
These are just examples, but my idea is that these lines be balanced comparatively, with certain advantages and disadvantages in each case.
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at which point this becomes a gigantic mess to balance. archers and crossbows are in a decent place balance wise, and you are suggesting to complete replace the entire system and start the balancing process from 0.
The design ideas you are proposing are fine for a new game, they do not belong in an established game, with 25 years of development under its belt.
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I don’t think this is a major balance issue; I’m just suggesting a few ideas:
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Age II archers remain as they are, without changes.
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Asian and American archers could be identical in every way but with different skins (like monks).
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The Crossbowmen line can remain as it is currently, and only the Bowmen line changes. Or it could be the other way around: the Bowmen line keeps the current Crossbowmen stats, and the other line changes.
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The changes I’m proposing aren’t actually that significant; it just requires slightly adjusting the cost, damage, and attack speed of one of these lines.
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Opinions are divided on whether these kinds of changes are acceptable, but if the developers believed these types of changes couldn’t be made, they wouldn’t release major updates like the naval rework.
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Every time new units are added, they also need to be balanced. For example, the upcoming “Last Chieftains” expansion will introduce many new units that also have variations due to bonuses and technologies, and all of this needs to be balanced, but these changes are still being made.
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The Viking Arbalesters with the “Bogsveigar” tech are a clear example that replacing Thumb Ring with a tech that increases damage by +1 doesn’t represent a very big change in comparison, as this graph shows:
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if you can’t upgrade archers into xbows anymore, that’s already a gigantic balance change.
the developers are awful for making changes like that.
this does not compare at all. New unique or regional units being added is very different from overhauling a core unit line that all civs have access to.
then you have utterly missed the point. One big difference is that Bogsveigar is only available in imperial age, while thumbring is a castle age tech (also thumbring is waaay cheaper and affects several unit line). this tech was meant to slow vikings down, to reduce their strength in castle age.
I don’t think you have the means to demonstrate that my proposals (which are just suggestions that should be tested first) would produce such radical changes as to warrant their complete rejection. I maintain that I believe they wouldn’t be such major changes and could make the game more interesting.
That doesn’t matter; the developers are willing to make these changes because they are the future of this game.
I already mentioned that the Vikings should have their own line of archers, which would allow their archers to have a more precise balance and avoid strange solutions like replacing Thumb Ring with an expensive, unique Imperial-age tech.
I have proposed that mounted crossbowman to replace cavalry archers for West and Central Euro civs. I assume there are also so many civs do not use crossbow. So how is crossbowman not a regional unit?
This isn’t compatible with what you originally suggested:
Upgrades shouldn’t make a unit worse, and in particular shouldn’t make a unit more expensive – so to make the cost differences work, you’d need archers to cost more wood than crossbowmen and more gold than improved bowmen. Thus there’s no way to keep the existing line the same for any civ, because the existing line has the same cost for all units.
(I think most of the rest of your suggestions for the differences imply similar, but perhaps less insurmountable, problems.)
“I proposed something that the devs haven’t done, so how come the devs haven’t done a different thing they haven’t done?” I think the answer should be obvious.
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This is the most acceptable proposal – the archer line remains with the stats it has, just reskinned (and perhaps renamed) so that its representative in each age uses a bow.
And instead of making Crossbowmen/Arbalesters an entirely separate line, they could be a precursor to Hand Cannoneer for some regions (Castle Age: Crossbow, Imperial Age: Arbalest, Imperial Age after Chemistry: Hand Cannon).
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Because these are just suggestions, proposals that can be tested through trial and error. I don’t know what the best alternatives are; they’re just examples.
Another possibility would be to have two completely separate lines:
Archer line: Archer → Crossbowman → Arbalester (the current line)
Bowman line: Bowman → Improved Bowman → Composite Bowman
The Archer and Bowman could be identical in every way except for cost (for example, while the Archer costs 25 wood and 45 gold, the Bowman could cost 35 wood and 40 gold, like the Longbowman).
The Improved Bowman could do less damage than the Crossbowman but fire faster (for example, the Improved Bowman could fire 20% faster instead of gaining +1 damage like the Crossbowman). Or perhaps the Bowman line keeps the current Crossbowman stats, and the other line changes. Or to simplify things further, both lines can be the same except for the cost, and the other difference (aside from their civilization’s bonuses/techs) would be that the Bowman line benefits from Thumb Ring and the Archer/Crossbowman line benefits from another tech called “Steel Bolts” (for example) that increases its damage by +1. In this way, both lines would be the same without these technologies, except for the cost.
I’m just throwing out some ideas, but to make these kinds of changes work well, a lot of testing and revisions are needed, as Sandy Petersen (one of the original developers at Ensemble Studios) has said on several occasions, because that’s the best way to do these things, and it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect any proposal to work perfectly the first time.
While I’m glad that you realise that ideas need to be tested, adapted, and sometimes abandoned – something that the current devs don’t seem to understand – I do feel like this is another case of something I’ve observed before on this forum:
Normal people: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
AoE2 fans: If it ain’t broke but it isn’t designed in exactly the way I would have designed it, make significant arbitrary changes until it is.
If you’re going to change the gameplay in some way, you need a gameplay-related reason to do it. I don’t see one in this thread.
I actually think the current archer line works well. One of the main reasons for having unit upgrades is to give the impression of technological advancement over time, and archer → crossbow → arbalest does that very well, probably better than any other unit line. It doesn’t matter if it’s not historically accurate or if some civilisations didn’t really use those specific weapons, because the game is (a) for a lay audience, and (b) an abstraction.
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