There are a few - but very efficient - ways to heal damaged units in the game:
You can garrison them in the Town Center, Towers and Castles;
You can order a Monk to heal them, or better yet, simply move them close to a Monk, who will do so without the need for any orders to be given.
All these options are very pratical, and need no more than a single click. Unfortunately, there is only one way - and a very bureaucratic one - to repair ships: first, by moving the damaged ones away from the rest of the group, then ordering them on the shore, and finally commanding one or more villagers to repair them.
I would like to suggest some new ship repair options that would be more efficient, less time consuming and won’t broke the game.
You can vote for two options at most! If you like the way things already work, please consider voting for a new option that you believe would be less worse from your perspective.
Villagers will continue repairing ships close to them, after repairing the first one selected.
Ships can be garrisoned on Docks to be slowly repaired.
Fishing ships will have the ability of repair ships like Monks do with units.
Fishing ships will gain the “Repair” skill like Villagers have.
AoE is many things, but not a water game. If you want a water game, play AoE # ## Total War: Empire.
Many civs are carefully balanced atm around being weak/strong in Feudal/Castle age on water maps. For example, Byzantines are mid-tier on Arabia, but good on hybrid and good on semi-closed maps, generally. Changing how water works, including repairs, adding new unit types, etc. risks making Byzantines too weak, and for example Portuguese too strong. This cycle would take 4-5 balancing patches before water is fixed with the new improvements but I don’t see water as adding a whole lot to begin with to AoE2: hybrid maps work very well atm, and it’s really only maps like Islands or Northern Islands that are “problematic”.
Like for example you mention the possibility of putting ships inside the Dock (I assume this includes Fishing Ships): this would change hybrid maps like Nomad or 4 Lakes A LOT, where possibly people would start dock spamming and building a critical mass of galleys would matter much less, since you could always garrison, build your own galleys late, and counter-attack. It would make overinvesting into water far less rewarding, potentially removing the “hybrid” aspect where the player winning water gains an advantage, but not a huge one. All of this because reaping the rewards of water (killing enemy fish) would be far harder. Possibly people could start skipping water altogether.
Honestly water play should get a complete rework to be a parte of this game, atm It is (and feels) a Little part added later in development and unfinished
Water play should be made similar to Land, with ships capable of building wall and gates, garrison ships for every civ, and maybe different kind of docks, one for economy and one for military ships, and gold sources in sea to gather
There was a mod that did something just like this but for AOE1 i believe, but It was an amazing improvement
It is already possible to garrison ships, but only when they are trained for the first time. I use this feature as a strategy to gather a sizable fleet inside my Docks before releasing them all at once. The main difference with my idea, of course, is that you can’t man the ships back after they’ve been liberated.
Perhaps this issue you mentioned could be alleviated by imposing a heavy limitation on the garrison limit for Docks, such as allowing only 1 or 2 ships maximum to be garrisoned in the same dock.
However, I admit that any change to the existing mechanics as such would upset the fragile balance that already exists and it would take time for things to get back on track.
I agree one hundred percent. Water mechanics are very limited from the original game. I also hope it gets reworked at some point, but preserving what we already have and keeping it as simple and intuitive as it is!
I’m still skeptical about adding so much, but I confess that everything looks so cool! I like the idea of gold resources in the sea, something that exists in Age 3 and works really well.
Well… ships usually were repaired for own crew even on while travelling, so I find logic that all ships could regen over time.
Maybe faster if they are close to an ally dock. Maybe just can regen in standind stance.
As people already said, if you want to change anything about water games, you need a complete overall. That being said, it doesn’t mean we can’t think about specific aspects of it.
I remember a feature from Empire Earth that I really liked: ports had a square area around them in which ships could go to be healed. It was just the nearby tiles in early ages, but the area got wider with techs. I think AoE2 could get something similar, the repair time should be slower than when you garrison units so attacking enemy docks would not become an impossible task, but it would make ship repairing less micro heavy.
I thought about it too! But people are usually very strident about the slightest mention of such changes (not without making good comments, most of the time) and I gave up. But I think it would be a good solution too!
I believe a good solution for this would be if the ship stopped being repaired if it was under attack or close to enemy ships!
This is the thought that most push me away from water games, I confess. I find this process extremely annoying and, as I said, bureaucratic for no reason.
How about a new stance for ships (in addition to aggressive, defensive, etc.)?
The new stance could simply be called “repair”. When set to repair, ships slowly regenerate their HP but can not move or fight against other units.