Buffed team bonuses with same idea

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Some team bonuses suck for sure, while some are pretty situational. Rather than redesigning the entire team bonus, we can bump them in the same direction.

  1. Incas: Farms built instantly. - If they were to have such a bonus, why not make it instant anyways!?

  2. Lithuanians: Monasteries work 20/25% faster (where the latter is for Imperial Age). - Monks are useless before Castle Age (obviously) and underused when army sizes grow. So that makes them pretty situational. The Turk team bonus atleast sees some use in Castle Age with handful civs (Turks being one of them), while being one of the most useful ones in Imperial Age. One of the most useful ones (Britons and Huns) have almost the entire game to shine.

  3. Ethiopians: All buildings (except walls and gates) +2 LoS - this may be a slight nerf to towers and outposts, but Ethiopians are not a trushing civ either. As an archer civilization with bottom tier cavalry, they need better defenses, and I feel this one helps them defensively without adding a new bonus.

Partial civ bonuses:

  1. Franks: Heavy Cavalry +2 LoS - this change has no effect on Franks whatsoever. This bumps the heavy cavalry UUs in team games when allied with Franks, like Boyars and Leiciai. Elephant units are not “Cavalry” (horse units), so excluded.

  2. Mongols: Light Cavalry units +2 LoS - so basically includes Steppe Lancers and Magyar Huszars. Minor buff to an underused unit, which should be a staple in Mongol army.

  3. Persians: Heavy Cavalry +2 attack vs Archers - similar idea as the Franks. Insignificant to Persians themselves.

  4. Poles: Light Cavalry units +1 attack vs Archers - similar idea as the Mongols. Insignificant to Poles themselves.

  5. Japanese: Warships (so excludes Fishing, Trade and Transport Ships) +2/+2.5/+3 LoS (numbers as per balance).

  6. Magyars: include Skirmishers too - When Saracens can have an OP (compared to the cost of the unit) TB for the cheap unit, why not Magyars get such a boost?

Unused TB ideas:

  1. Camels extra LoS - maybe Indians, Saracens, Turks or Tatars

  2. Castles work faster BUT Trebs are created equally slower - basically a boost to UUs and other good stuff without landsliding a Trebuchet War. - I know Kasbah works similarly (but it stacks with other Berber allies), but I feel a direct team bonus would be more useful by giving this to Berbers and Genitours to the Portuguese as TB (so 2 team bonuses for Portuguese - one helps in 1vs1 and the other in TG).

  3. Heavy Cavalry attack bonus vs buildings - firstly such a bonus on light cavalry maybe too strong, Elephants are already too strong and Indians already get one for Camels, so only Heavy Cavalry. Heavy Cavalry is often seen as makeshift siege due to much high attack, HP and Pierce Armor, so it helps in this role (not much significant for Paladin, Tarkan, Elite Tarkan and Elite Boyar).

  4. Monks recharge slightly faster (just like Teuton TB is half Faith).

Any good team bonus ideas? Will add in this list.

2 Likes
2

I like most of those ideas, tho I don’t get why elephants don’t count as heavy cavalry,as the in game description advertises them as such. I also don’t think Inca farms should be instant as it means you can’t even start farms at all before horse collar is completed if you want your farms to benefit from it.

3

True, this one gets me already. The answer is paying attention and remembering the Inca bonus, but that is hard. Maybe pair it with instantly researched farm upgrades?

4

I think transports actually count as warships.

5

Overall decent changes, I wouldn’t even call these changes but fixes :slight_smile:

Regarding Incas, we don’t want another meso civ with an impactful eco bonus, I’d even remove this Team Bonus and replace it with something completely different. Besides that, instant farming is wrong in terms of playability, what if I place the farm slightly off - I wouldn’t be able to fix it, or what if I selected “f” instead of “d” with my vill and ended up building a farm rather than a building I wanted.
These kind of mistakes happen a lot, even at current streams of Viper and Hera you can tell that farming-spam is the cause of most misclicks. You dont want to punish these unintentional human errors.

1 Like
6

I like most of the ideas. Maybe Incas’ insta farms is too much, but the other ones seem doable, specially expanding bonuses to unit categories.

7

Nope, and Sicilians get that LoS boost!