Changes to feudal age walls, towers, market and the militia-line

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

There’s been a lot of discussion about the state of infantry, market based all-in strategies lately. Attempts to make the militia line more popular through the introduction of gambesons, have still failed to achieve their purpose. Here’s some of my thoughts as to why this is the case and suggestions to change this situation.

  1. Militia-line requires way too many upgrades. Not only are those upgrades way too expensive in terms of food spent for that stage of the game, but also they don’t fetch value right away.
  2. Walls are extremely cheap but don’t go down for quite a while against maa making it easy for the defender. And repairing is cheap and easy.
  3. Tower rushes which used to make archer play more difficult has become very unpopular. Two reasons - Compact base where mines, berries and wood spawn very close to town centers. Poor accuracy and damage output of ungarrisoned towers against villagers when compared to the damage dealt by villagers against towers.
  4. Relative rate of gold collection compared to food and the market usage for eco balance, early castle age, buying stone for towers etc.

Here are some of my suggestions to these:

  1. Cost/value balance for usage. Either one but NOT BOTH of these two sets of changes.
  • Remove maa upgrade - Miltias directly get 45 hp and get +2 attack, +2 bonus damage vs buildings, +0.1 speed upon reaching feudal age. Scouts get +2 attack and +0.35 speed for free. Supplies moves to the dark age, costs 60 food 40 wood. Barracks cost reduced to 150 wood.
  • Base cost of scouts raised to 100 food, tech added to reduce it to 80 (could also help with knights, elephants balance), feudal version of husbandry to increase speed from 1.4 to 1.54. Base accuracy, movement speed and projectile speed of ranged units lowered. Tech which precedes thumb ring costs half the resources added to make them as good as now. Loom split into 2 upgrades (one in feudal) to weaken self-defense of villagers.
  1. Towers centric changes to give maa more utility. At least one but preferably any two of these changes.
  • Villager bonus damage vs stone defense reduced from 6 → 3, Militia get +3 bonus damage vs stone defense.
  • Towers do +2 damage to villagers (+4 for guard towers, +6 for keep)
  • Cost/speed of repairs improve with number of existing militias (further improves in castle age with longswords upgrade)
  • Minimum, maximum and average spawning distance of gold mines, forests and berries increased by 4 tiles. Size of forests near the player base reduced such that players have 2 medium sized or 3 small forests. If one of them is blocked with towers, the other(s) should hold good enough only until mid feudal and not till castle age, 2 mangonels, tc.
  1. Wall centric changes. At least one but preferably two of these changes.
  • Hitpoints and armor of palisade walls: 100 hp 0/3 in dark age, 150 hp 1/4 in feudal, 200 hp 2/5 in castle age, 300 hp 3/7 in imperial age. (Currently it is 150 hp in dark, 250 hp in feudal with fixed 2/5 armor)
  • Base build time of walls and gates increased by 50%. Tech added in town center from dark age that takes 25 seconds, costs 50 wood, 50 food that gives +50 hp to walls and gates and reduces their build times to current value.
  • 2x the repair costs and 0.5x the repair rate for walls compared to now.
  • Hitpoints of house in feudal age reduced from 750 to 600.
  1. Market and gold gathering related changes (also useful for balancing other all-in strategies).
  • Default market rates reduced to 40/160 for wood and food, 60/220 for stone. A tech in castle age which precedes guilds, costs 200 food 100 gold increases them to 65/135 for wood and food, 85/195 for stone.
    Saracen market fee 25% in feudal, 15% in castle and 5% in imp.
  • Default gold collection rate reduced from 0.38 to 0.35. Upgrade raises them by 20% successively.

In my opinion, at least 5 and at most 7 of these changes are needed to make militia-line, towers more common and can also handle gimmick zero eco all-in strategies. Please share your thoughts.

1 Like
2

If you buff towers, there is no need to nerf walls but a LOS buff for outpost to check incoming tower rush is more reasonable.

Cant agree more for + 0.1 speed.

2 Likes
3

The saracen market fee bonus is very important to their identity, it should not be nerfed. It can result in creative strategies.

In the very late game Mamelukes are maybe too strong. But I am not convinced Saracens should be changed at all.

4

Yes. If towers are buffed with more than 2 tower centric changes, wall changes might be unncessary.

Its not getting removed, like many other overpowered bonuses, % is staggered. The difference is actually going to be better. Other civs will pay 100 wood to get 45 gold or pay 155 gold to get 100 food while Saracen will get 30 more gold or pay 30 less gold. Today the difference is 25.

Its not for Mamelukes at all, those are too expensive, unnecessary and rarely used. Creative means something different but is balanced and equally difficult to execute. Saracen market is not like that, its dead cheap, easy and offers too much flexibility. You can use the market and go 3 range archers or fc-xbow-ballistics, fc-camels-forward castle drop, monk-siege, 2 stable knights+monks+siege, the possibilities are endless. The 5% fee is too overpowered in terms of resource balancing, wood to food conversion and lets them completetly skip feudal age gameplay with minimum risk. The resource collection rate for wood is 25-27 wood/min in feudal age depending on whether you used 1 or 2 lumber camps. Gold collection rate is around 22.5/min. Whereas food comes after farms are built and pre-wheelbarrow gather rate is 19/min, gets worse when you add farms farther away from town centers. The initial market rates of 70/130 is only a little advantageous and if you use it more than 5 times, buying food from gold will become worse than a proper balanced farming economy. However for Saracens you can buy food upto 20 times and have advantage over a balanced build. That’s a huge amount of flexibility and imbalance.

5

The resource collection rate for wood is 25-27 wood/min in feudal age depending on whether you used 1 or 2 lumber camps. Gold collection rate is around 22.5/min. Whereas food comes after farms are built and pre-wheelbarrow gather rate is 19/min, gets worse when you add farms farther away from town centers. The initial market rates of 70/130 is only a little advantageous and if you use it more than 5 times, buying food from gold will become worse than a proper balanced farming economy. However for Saracens you can buy food upto 20 times and have advantage over a balanced build. That’s a huge amount of flexibility and imbalance.

Imbalance is the point of civilisation boni. It is balanced by the fact that all civs have boni.

The alternative is that all civs are the same, what is just very boring.

1 Like
6

Its not. Civ bonuses should be different but still balanced relative to others.

To simplify you have Ethiopians getting 100 food 100 gold per age, Lithuanians get 100 food per tc, Hindustanis -4, -7, -9 food per vill etc. Those are all different bonuses leading to different gameplay choices and still well balanced relative to each other making them more suitable in some setting. But you cant make it something like 250 food 250 gold per age, 200 food per tc or -15, -20, -25 food per vill. The individual bonuses they get shouldn’t be too high relative to others and almost guarantee a win in some settings. It should just make them more suitable but not broken.