Water combat needs more variety. Spamming the same attack ship the whole game is just boring. I have seen some people, including Aussie Drongo, ask for standardized ships, but that would make naval combat even worse. I’d go as far as saying the only interesting thing about naval combat is that different cultures have unique ships.
So instead of asking for less complexity, I ask for more. I ask for a new type of ship that improves the counter system by giving more viability to demo ships and archer ships, while being a good counter to the dominant attack ships and warships: the boarding ship.
I am not sure how this type of boat would exactly work, but I have some ideas:
- Fast and cheap melee unit that is especially strong at dealing with powerful and slow military ships
- Gets wrecked by demos, similarly to fire ships in aoe2
Cultural variants:
- Regular boarding ship (available to English and French? maybe HRE?): can lock onto a specific target, rendering it immobile and dealing dmg to both ships over time (boarding ship deals more than takes obviously, otherwise it would be useless)
- Fire ship (available to Abbasid, Delhi, maybe China and definitely the future Byzantines): similar to aoe2 fire ship
- Lodya Boarding ship lmao
- Other ideas: ram ship (I don’t think this fits the time period but hey I’m just brainstorming ideas), transport and boarding ship hybrid that deals more dmg the more units it transports (for mongols, probably a dumb idea)
Any thoughts?