There should be the ability to build bridges, piers, and docks at the end of piers. Here’s the concept:
Bridges: we have them in the campaigns and clearly there’s historical significance. Make it thru a researchable item at University (say “infrastructure”), make it expensive, and make it Castle+ to allow for later game ability to not drag out games on chokepoint water maps. Make the bridges expensive in addition to the research so it’s not easy to obtain and slow to build. Probably a standard width but custom length, tile-by-tile, like a wall.
Piers: from dark or feudal age, this allows vills to fish in deeper waters. Like bridge tech BUT cheaper and faster to build (see above). More akin to palisade build times, etc. It would allow for more vill fishing aside from ships.
Allow vills to drop fish off at dock in addition to TC and mill. Allow docks to be built at the end of piers and along bridges. This allows faster gather from ships in deep sea fishing and opens up another aspect of the game since no one uses fishing over farming long-term, save Malay maybe.
I know that the forum rules tell that if you agree with something you should show it with a like and that’s all, but I really want to say that I really like your idea and I will enjoy to use the features you mention if they ever decide to launch them.
Thank you for your suggestion, it’s the kind of “small” details that can make a difference.
While that would be a feature you might add to custom campaigns, that’s definitely nothing you should add to the main game, neither SP nor MP games. It would just change gameplay way to drastically. Imagine building bridges on Islands maps, blocking the passing of ships and messing up everything. Thanks, but no.
Bridges would have to have a maximum length or something or should only be buildable over rivers but I don’t know how that could be implemented. Otherwise building a bridge across continents, seas and oceans would become a thing and that would make the game ridiculous.
Also I don’t agree with piers, I think “deep sea fish” is supposed to really be “deep sea” so you shouldn’t be able to build a “pier” that reaches out to the “deep sea”. I think fishing shore fish pretty much already simulates the whole pier idea. You definitely should need fishing ships to go out into the “deep sea” to fish.
But I do think docks should serve as a drop off point for fish when villagers fish. That would actually make shore fishing a bit more viable.
Just like IRL, bridges would be cost exorbitant in the game and that’s why you don’t see bridges across the Atlantic. It’s not that they CAN’T do it, it’s cost-prohibitive. One other aspect in the game, you could have tiles for deep sea which indicate the depth would be prohibitive for a bridge to be built upon. So many ways to design for it. Also, in terms of piers, the same rules would apply: cost, map style, and build time would dictate the practically of building a pier or not.
The only thing I rly like is the idea of allowing vils to drop off fish at docks, everything else sounds way too game breaking.
I’d much rather allow fishing ships to build water walls and gates (the game already has some of those coded in it, they just can’t be built rn), but even so I think there are reasons those aren’t allowed.
It’s only “game breaking” if select civs have it but I would open to all as I’m pretty sure all civs have built some form of bridges over the ages–it’s only ancient technology.
Yea but those deep sea tiles you talk about also exist on rivers in the game so they would have to change the whole way maps are made. I am not saying its a bad idea just saying it would have to be designed in a way so its not silly and there would have to be an ingame mechanism for distinguishing between different water bodies. Medieval bridges should not be buildable across seas it wasn’t just cost prohibitive it was literally impossible to do without deep diving equipment.
Again I don’t see the point of piers being added to the game. If the point is just to let villagers access deep sea fish it definitely should NOT be in the game because you cannot build a pier that goes far enough into the sea to access deep water. In real life such a pier would have to be 10s of kilometers long. For example look at the picture, the “deep sea” as you can see is around a 100 kilometers from the shore and I believe deep sea fish in the game is supposed to be in this area. Villagers ALREADY have access to fish in shallow waters near the shore which is where a pier can be built in real life.
not only all of what PryingIvy454910 said, engine wise it would completely break the mechanic of the game. First of, if something like that gets allowed to be built then it should also be allowed to destroyed, and there’s so many game breaking stuff that can happen for destroying walkable ground I don’t even know how many things would break, but if it was implemented rn, one thing I can say for sure is that every single unit walking on the bridge at the time it’s destroyed would be “stuck on water”, something that could actually rarely occur on classic AoE2 and seems to be much harder now, tho the opposite managed to happen with my friend (he managed to get a single galleon stuck on land somehow, pretty much became a weak tower)
And then what about the docks? literally anyone would be able to build docks at the middle of lakes without any ground unit being able to hit them once the bridges/piers get destroyed, and it gets even more broken if a player abuses this to spam harbors in the middle of the sea, completely game breaking.
Would someone be able to add the wooden jetty you see in this screenshot from AOKHD into the game, it looks more sturdy than the rope-tied piers that are only included at present. It would make port scenes so much richer. I am planning to add the trade goods sprites into AOE2:DE once someone can tell me how to add them in.
