Community Balance

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
15

  • Allows Manors to be deleted or “sold”. Apparently the British should still be not able to get more villagers by repeatedly deleting/selling and rebuilding.

  • Change the Aztec livestock from sheep to turkeys.

  • Aztec and Inca buildings no longer fire with guns.

  • Reskin the Village from yurts to Chinese brick houses. (There is already a mod for this but it deserves more widespread).

  • Split the War Academy, like moving the Old Han, Standard, Ming, Mongolian Armies and the upgrades of their units to new building that could be named “Banner Camp” and used the current Village skin, and moving the Black Flag Army to the War Academy that could be renamed “Banner Garrison” or “Banner Barrack” and available from the Fortress Age obviously.

  • Rework the military improvement cards for the Chinese.
    Can refer to this topic: China Rework 🐲

  • Move the improvements to elephant hand attack and cavalry training speed for the Indians from the Monastery to existing or new cards, or to new techs at Stables.

  • Rename the Ashigaru Musketeer to Ashigaru, as long as its roles of musketeer and pikeman would not be separated.

  • Rename the Morutaru. Odzutsu (“big pipe” literally), a generic term for large-caliber matchlock cannons of Japanese origin, still works for the new name of Morutaru, but should probably be “Odzutsu Mortar” for distinction, while the card needs to be renamed from “Odzutsu Mortars” to “Odzutsu Cannoneers”.

  • The “Odzutsu Cannoneers” card should enable the unit “Odzutsu Cannoneer” in Castles, instead of giving Samurais grenades. The Odzutsu Cannoneer can be simply a Japanese variant of the Grenadier or the Middle Guard with a grenade launcher.

  • Similar to the Mysore Rockets, add some new cards to ship “Red Coat Cannons” (Falconets or Culverins), “Weiyuan General Cannons” (Mortars), and “Great General Cannons” (Heavy Cannons) for the Chinese, “Mughal Bombards” (Great Bombards) and “Shirazi’s Volley Guns” (Organ Guns) for the Indians, “Bronze Two-pounders” (Light Cannons) and “Kunikuzushi” (Falconets or Culverins) for the Japanese.

  • Replace the Shrine Goat with the Shrine Deer. Sacred animals of the local religion should be trained at Shrines themselves rather than in a European building. Remove the Livestock Pen Wagon from the Dutch ally and replace the Meiji Restoration with a new technology that enables Shrine Deer at Shrines.
    I used to hope the Meiji Restoration can provide a revolution-like effect to replace units with modernized or Western ones, but I now think it might be better to focus the civ on the time period before the modernization that would be accompanied by lots of changes.

  • Add an infinite shipment for every consulate European ally, allowing Asians to pay export to purchase single artillery unit (type varies by ally) instead of an entire army.

  • The Portuguese ally provides a Battleship instead of an Ironclad that the Portuguese themselves could not access.

  • For the Japanese, it would be more accurate to have the Portuguese provide Cannoneers, Church Wagon, and Arsenal Wagon, the Dutch provide Bank Wagon, Merchant Marine, “Komo” Trade (name swap with that card), and the Spanish provide Bullionism, Caravel, and Battleship, but such a change would affect the Indians as well.

  • The “Rangers” card now also ships 1 Ranger for each shipment sent thus far in this game including this one, in order to make it useful even when the Queen’s Rangers has been researched first.

  • Rename the “Ranger Combat” card to “Royal Green Jackets” or “Royal Rifle Corps”, and move the +5% resistance from the Imperial upgrade to this card. Meanwhile, rename the “Royal Green Jackets” card of Indians to “Gurkha Regiments”, “Gorkha War” or “Gorkhali Army”.

  • The “Viceroyalty of New Spain” card no longer allows Haciendas to spawn Soldados but instead allows Forts to train consulate Soldados with probably a train limit and Livestock Pens to train Cows.

  • The “Nassau Regiment” card and the “Blue Guards” church tech provide consulate Blue Guards as same as the Dutch ally at the consulate, instead of regular Musketeers. However, the Nassau Regiment would also make the unit have only +30% HP and attack in the Imperial upgrade in addition to enable them at Forts. This way, we can simply have just one version of the Blue Guard in the game without affecting the balance.

  • Give the amazing unique Halberdier skins of Spanish and Swedish a chance to be accessed more. For example:
    The Royal Alabardero becomes a variant of Papal Guard, and the “Royal Alabarderos” church tech also allows every future shipments to ship 2 additional Royal Alabarderos from the Home City (as the card is called Royal Decree to Claim the New World); The Gustavian Guard becomes a consulate variant of Halberdier, and the “Gustavian Guards” church tech also enables the units at Forts.
    The Carabinieri and Redshirts of Italians also deserve the chance to be accessed more.

  • For the Portuguese, The Logistician in the Commerce Age instead provides 1 Military Wagon and 1 Cannoneer and enables the Cannoneer at the Tavern, since no one will use TCs to train military units instead of villagers. Meanwhile, The King’s Musketeer in the Industrial Age instead ships 9 Musketeer and gives Musketeer the additional range, and The Papal Guard in the Industrial Age also gives Crossbows and Pikes the additional range.

  • Make the Envoy no longer able to build Native Embassies but directly able to train native units as if it was a humanoid Native Embassy, increase the cost and make their train limit reduced to 3 and shared with Native Embassies (due to the “Belanda Hitam” card); the “Dutch East India Company” also allows them to build TCs; the “Orangists” card changes its effect to a new one.
    Having to train Envoys before building Native Embassies is a disadvantage compared to other civs, so I try to make the Envoy itself an equivalent to the Native Embassy directly. Maybe games no longer start with 1 free Envoy.