Add more “water terrain” types, such as storm waters that damage ships, and currents that allow them to move faster. Make land units and warships move slower in shallow waters.
Add driftwood and coral tiles that allow to mine wood and stone respectively. Allow Fishing Ships to gather wood from reeds along the shore.
Allow Fishing Ships to repair ships.
Allow Villagers and Fishing Ships to build Sea Towers, Sea Walls and Sea Gates on beaches and shallow waters.
Invert the illogical triangle! Hulks are armored so they should be resistant to Galleys, but vulnerable to Fire Ships!
Change the Hulk’s attack animation from throwing hooks into ramming like in Chronicles (dedicated naval rams weren’t used anymore, but ramming enemy ships as a tactic never died!)
Move some naval techs from University to Blacksmith.
Split individual ship upgrades again and either enlarge the UI in order to fit them or move them to the Sea Tower.
Allow Sea Towers to train monkships (“Corsair Ship”?) that throw hooks to convert but are very low HP so you need a lot of them to convert enemy vessels. (Maybe half pop like the Karambit?)
Edit:
10. Add Onager Ship from Chronicles to encourage actively using different unit formations on water!
11. Consider splitting the Dock in two like in Chronicles.
i think that the water rework was just generally bad, and made the game worse. but yeah, we agree that loading old patches/data sets should be an option
water is already very snowbally, being able to then fortify the water would make comebacks on water completely impossible.
Byzantines are really funny because fire ships and dromons, which realistically should be unique to them, are shared units, and their one UU is something extremely generic that would probably have been a better generic heavy cav than the Knight.
Maybe let it stay common but rework it to resemble the Chronicles variant (Lembos), where it just throws pots of hot oil instead of Greek Fire?
I’m afraid going this deep would actually discourage from going naval, not encourage. Maybe some civs could receive a bonus that allow Villagers to board Fishing Ships in order to speed them up, and military units to board warships to make them better, but I don’t think it should be common.
New water terrain type can be a cool thing but… I’m not sure that changing units behavior on terrain specific is a good idea.
Why only the naval unit should have debuff terrain ? The entire game would requiere to get that.
It can be interesting for some specific event maps etc, but I don’t see it as a global gameplay change, it’s way way way way way too huge. However I’d love to have some extra terrain for that yes !
The wood are generally more some thing you’d gather on the beach, not with a ship, and without needing of an axe. That’s more a scenario thing than a global gameplay content to me.
The coral, that’s a regional reskin for the oyster, can be cool but not game changing.
Hm, that’s an AoE4 feature. It’s an interesting one but I’d rather give it to a specific naval civ instead of a global gameplay addition, or maybe a tech-locked mechanics.
Fishing ships are not really the one for that. It would be better to have that on the trade cogs but with another tower, an Outpost type. And once more could be interesting as a specific civ feature rather than a global gameplay, like no tower upgrade but water tower building capability.
For the sea gates and walls, well having them as a buildable feature would be interesting but could requiere a new ship type. It’s also a big gameplay changing feature so idk if it’s a good idea… Imaging how balance breaking it could ends up with people walling the fishs xD.
Medieval naval warfare was more about killing the crew than destroying the hull. Galley have better weapon type, and larger crew, so it’s legit they are powerfull against hulks. The fire-ship line are basically some dromons of that era, or you could say mediterranean galley, which were bad against high-profile hull ship design, so weak to Hulk is perfect.
Historically wise it’s actually accurate, Hulk defeat low-profile hull (fire-ships) and are beaten by high crew capacity vessel (galley-line)
Hulk style ship never rammed ennemy, they were a counter ship type to the ramming one actually. But you need to understand what a Hulk was, it was a ship type meant to have strong sail types (square) and high loadout capacity (lots of soldier). They had the high hull to avoid the fast rowing ships easy boarding, and had that “I’m higher” advantage which meant better killing capacity. When you fire an arrow from above you’re deadlier than from below, if you see that I mean.
The fire-ship line actually represent some medieval dromon style ships, which gave up the ram at some point. During the middle age, all the frontal part were more of an inbuilt “boarding system”, like the roman movable Corvii bridges, but instead it was built in the ship hull. That’s why the medieval “rams” are above the water and not in the water like the antiquity ramming ships. The antiquity one were designed to break the hull, the medieval one were made to improve de sail rigging system and serve as boarding small-bridge.
The plated hull of ingame hull-line ships is to sustain the high sea wave fiercy power, not really to sustain battle damage, if you see what I mean. The metal covering allowed a more water-dynamical profile and lowered the bernicles attaching that slowed wodden ship, leading to more repairs. The metal plating was way easier to clean, so better speed to repair time consumption ratio.
Hm, that’s an interesting point here. Yes metal working is more legit on a blacksmith but it’s scientific research that lead to changes. The blacksmith did not really searched academically how to improve their work, they just did it by try and retry if you see what I mean. Of course some high level school type searches helped, but in the wood work for house framing and ship hull design, it’s more legit to have them at the university. The best would be at a Shipyard dedicated to the building of specific ships, but it’s also fine and accurate to have it at the university, it’s a good compromise. Blacksmith would be a mistake as currently it’s only there to change armor and attack value, not speed behavior. (that’s also why the thumbring and parthian tacctics and some infantry techs are not in the blacksmith too)
One part of me is missing the old unit per unit upgrade design. But one part of me thinks that making ships upgraded all at once is also a good idea. When you discover an improvement, you apply it to everything you can. Gameplay wise it’s also, idk … Honnestly I don’t know, I enjoyed the game with the two dock page and unit per unit a lot, and I also enjoy the fact I don’t need to research every tech ahaha… But… Hm … Maybe instead of reverting it entirely, having some civ with the all at once, and some with one by one, but it would create a hughe gameplay gap then.
Changing the UI is not an option so far, they choose to do it like that not because they had not enought space, they choose to make it “simplier for non expert to play water”. The goal was to make the naval warfare more attractive, easier to access to new player, and in that regard it’s a success like it is right now.
Converter Ship should be a civ unit / regional unit, not a global thing. It’s a doctrina, not everyone captured ships, it was mainly pirates. The hp represent both the ship structural viability and the crew amount. A boarding ship needs enought hp to reach target and boards. And think of it as… You board and swap ship rather than “divide the crew to man two ships”. It’s hard to balance a boarding ship logic in this game. The easiest way to represents it is by giving a “generate gold / food on kill” aibility.
Interestingly, the boarding ships were part of the original design plan of the game, and we still got the units that were meant for that purpose in the client. One day they will probably add that to the game as a more generic content. They’re making the longship regional with Viking Sagas, they added the naval rework with Last Chieftain, so to have boarder ship to the game … We’d need a dlc centered on the mediterranean powers that relied a lot on naval supremacy like Venice, Genoa, Ottomans, and some other people. So my guess on that is … late 2027 - mid 2028 for a boarding centered gameplay.
Agreed, it should be some new map design, like “realistic variant” of the generic maps. The “casual” generic gameplay should stay as it is, it’s part of the core identity of the game.
The game is designed a way that yes the current ships are small, but it’s totally fine for the game logic. Collision wise it would become a MESS if they increase ship size.
Why ? Because the bigger the sprite, the bigger the square selection per unit. It’s a a pixel per pixel detection, it’^s a big squarish shap, or maybe rectangular. I’m facing that issue with my big ships, it’s very hard to select surronding units on specific angle rotation. To avoid that issue you have to work with the space between unit and then it impact the gameplay balance and the ai behavior.
I actually think the ships are fine like they are, size wise, for the AoE2 I mean.
I’d prefer a speed boost like the rams when you have men inside, and hp increase eventually. But it would require a new ship, a regioanl / unique ship for that. You can’t give this mechanics to every ship, it would change it too much. They did something abit similar in AoE3 but ships of that era were not designed for the same purpose as the one in AoE2.
Terrain buff/debuffing, yes for custom design, no for generic gameplay, as mentioned above.
Technically the Hulk use a boarding system, it’s just not capturing the units. With charged projectile it’s possible to have ranged attacks and close combat boarding mechanics, but no civ actually fits this gameplay logic. We need to wait for Venitian to be added to the game for that.
That would change the core identity of the game. But having fishing ship with a garrison possibility for a specific civ so the ship increase the gather rate is an interesting gimmic. However, no eco unit can actually be boosted by garrisoning, it’s with building aura that they can have better output result.
Naval warfare is hard to make good, even in naval game.
That’s right about the fact those ship style, dromon hulls, were byzantine design of the early middle age. The greek fire too was a byzantine exclusivity but I don’t see the game changing to a point where only byzantin and civs arround them would have access to those units. The only way that could be … Okay is by making a very wide regional civ change. Which is kinda where they’re slowly going, the mounted crossbow is a good example.
The question then is, if you give regional alternative to the dromon, which needs to be a fast attack ship meant for close combat and with a “weak hull” (not built for high sea), you ends up with the rowing galley as best candidate.
Those ships would be very close to the Longship gameplay, fast moving, shooting projectiles, with imperial variant beeing a frontal artillery design. Issue then is that it’s starting to slowly becoming a Galley-Line style unit.
I can easily see a new rowing-ship line to be added to the game, but it will probably come with Venice addition to the game, like the mounted crossbow to replace some cav archer, they will replace some fire-ship.
The other option is to add a shipline that does like the rams do, getting better stats by having units embarked inside. This type of new ship would be very interesting to be added to the game, but may also cause some extreme balance issues. Only time will tell us.
One other major thing to keep in mind when thinking about AoE2 naval gameplay is that we don’t have the Wind at All.
This simple fact makes everything extremly difficult to design and balance properly. It leads to compromise, and unaccurate choices.
We also have no “stamina” stat in the game, land units never get exhausted by beeing in action forever, so ships also never get debuffed due to the hull parasites like benicles etc. This fact too makes the entire ship realism very difficult, and so far they managed to do something pretty solid with what they had.
Even the ship repair is difficult to make, because we don’t have “hull damaging” yet, as in no armour striping applied to the naval warfare. As the HP represents both the hull structural integrity and the crew integrity, it’s very difficult to allow at-sea repair, and “non-villager driven” repair.
I’m personnally waiting for the Viking Sagas patch to see what I can improve on my naval project, but so far I got some pretty cool ideas to work on. Hoping to have some hero ships =P
Oh no, giving Water Towers only to one civ would definitely be game-breaking
Perhaps Fishing Ships could have a tiny attack value like Villagers, allowing them to break down the walls if really needed?
Yeah, but capsizing enemy vessels on purpose was still a thing, and the in-game Hulk model looks like a bulky boi. It’s not the most important change for me however.
Maybe something like throwing axes instead of hooks then? I’d keep the hook animation for a boarding “monk ship” (Corsair).
Careening and Dry Dock are for armor, so they’d fit Blacksmith IMHO Although yeah, two Dock types like in Chronicles would be preferable.
It might make playing water on hybrid maps a little less essential, but I think it would make “water maps” be played a lot more because there would be more possible strategies leading to strategic depth.
Sure, if you kept the same overall design but (@smiki5five) I’m not thinking it would be a few small tweaks: I’m thinking it would be along the lines of a total overhaul of naval gameplay. Individually, these points would not work so well with the rest of naval gameplay, but when taken collectively they could create something radically different that fits better with the core gameplay loop.
Of course it would, that’s the whole idea! Specifically, radically alter the mechanics so naval gameplay is actually capable of accomplishing what it needs to.
Not terrain modified, but usage. Like a villager can only fire arrows while garrisoned (or hunting) so a “sailor class” would have a unique ability only when crewing a ship (“at sea”).
Yet*
And when you’re trying to copy “land-style” gameplay it makes it even harder.
To give an idea for the kind of scale I’m going for: you’d have your big ships and your little ships, and while a little ship could be chased away by a few archers on the shoreline a big ship like a galleon (or maybe a few of them) could go toe-to-toe with a castle. Your little ships might cost just 80 wood and have a crew capacity of 5 while your big ships might cost 600 wood and 200 gold and have a crew capacity of 20, 25, 30, maybe up to 50. A ship would be useless without the crew, but it would massively increase the potential of its crew, it also would take no population itself.
Although those two concepts (ignoring gameplay usage) have very little to do with a blacksmith. I’m not sure if carvel hull or clinker construction would be much better.
Alternative projectile design for specific civ is interesting but the idea of hooks is to represent the boarding parties using hooks to grab ennemy vessels. It’s not as in they use hooks as weapons of course.
My project is abit different, it’s expanding the current naval warfare to a close to vanilla system but with deeper mechanics such as boarding + ranged capability for most ships.
Would require a lot of work on the engine, for maybe not that much output. The idea is cool but is it viable ? Only devs can answer that.
It’s not actually copying the land style, and the land counter-triangle is based on historical writing, but I see what I mean.
Perhaps. But most of the basics are already simulate-able. For instance, if you give an archer unit the ability to garrison a ship and give the ship a garrison capacity and greater max arrows than minimum then when you garrison enough of the archers the ship will actually fire more arrows. And if you take away the first projectile (like a TC, dock, or fortified church) then you could probably make it not fire arrows unless “crewed”. I did a couple tests with that a while back and found it to at least be interesting. Maybe someday I’ll give it another test in the future.
I never tested whether garrisoned infantry would give extra speed, though. But I assume the “garrison firepower multiplier” would also work with ships as it does with buildings, so a “sailor” could have more firepower, in the early test phases, to sort of examine whether it would be worth adding a “crew firepower multiplier” or similar mechanic to help distinguish between “sailors” and “landlubbers”.
Side note: there should be a civ (or several) that gives their units more garrison firepower.
The key is to have enough clear visual cues without making it feel overdone.
Coral wasn’t used as a building material. It was a valuable commodity, so it should be gold.
On the other hand, both river sand and sea sand can be used as building materials. The former goes without saying. Although the latter is more likely to cause weathering and efflorescence in building walls, in ancient times, when steel reinforcement was not used, it would not have caused the kind of sudden structural collapse that can occur when rebar corrodes.
I might be more inclined to introduce a dedicated support ship that can handle these tasks more efficiently, rather than having fishing ships able to do them but at a much slower rate. Perhaps the two could coexist.
Although yeah, two Dock types like in Chronicles would be preferable.