Sorry, but your wishes seem unrealistic to me. I really enjoyed Yodit and Sundjata campaigns and would love to see more content like this, but if we’re being realistic, it’s not possible. We clearly see that all the DLCs (except for the disastrous and almost fraudulent V&V) were strictly thematic: 1 about India, 1 about Caucasus, etc. There have never been two DLC releases about the same thematic region.
Yes, you can argue that Africa is very large and represents more than 1 region, but in popular culture it is not perceived that way. It will be impossible to convince players from all over the world to pay money twice for content that they will see as the same. I mean, if we were talking about free campaigns, then people would go through 6, and 10 and 15 of them. But when it comes to selling it, different rules apply.
Personally, I see the best case scenario like this:
1 DLC specifically about Africa
1 DLC about Islamic peoples, which affects Africa partially
some historical battles as part of some other content
And this is the best scenario. In reality they will hardly create even 1 good of them as quality of content obviously decreasing last years.
There were also 1 about West Europe and 1 about East Europe.
As we had divided Europe into 4 sub-regions, we can also divide Africa into 2 sub-regions.
Those would be 1 about West Africa and 1 about East Africa, then they are not “the same thematic region”.
Is pop culture the only factor? Not really. The market is what matters.
Players of AoE2 may be less likely to be influenced by so-called “pop culture” when deciding whether to buy.
I’m not trying to say that the dev will definitely make and people will definitely warmly welcome 2 African DLCs. It’s just that there are many who buy DLC without knowing anything about the culture and history of like India and Southeast Asia.
I feel that the DLC about the Saracen split doesn’t necessarily have better chance than the second African DLC (excluding The Africa Kingdoms).
Having said that, in my concept, all 3 civs in the West African DLC and 1.5 civs (Somalis and Swahili Bantu) in the other one are Muslim so what you said is not necessarily wrong: 1 DLC about Afirca (Nubians, Somalis, Bantu) and 1 DLC about Muslim (Soninke, Songhai, Kanembu/Kanuris).
Man, I totally get your point and even agree with it. But I am saying not for myself. This is how pop-culture and marketing work. A lot (if not the most) AoE players live in Europe, so for them there is very significant difference between West and East. But almost no players live in Africa, this will be foreign content for most of community. They still want it because exotics but when it comes to selling it, this will not work twice. When element of money comes, it changes the rules very serious.
I truly like your concept but in reality they will make 1 Africa, 1 Far East, 1 Middle Asia, 1 America, 1 Balkans. May be 1 Rus (after “the situation” irl is over). And this is the best case we can hope on. In the worst we will have more weirdo experiments like V&V whom nobody wants. And will be getting it till the game gets hated and closed. In another topic there is a guy who is seriously asking to make Age of Chivalry the free mod into a paid dlc. And this is again about Europe…
Yes, for me they could port the Kings of Africa custom campaign as an African version of TC or VaV, but at the same time give campaigns to the respective civs: for example a campaign for Songhai and Somali and another for Kanem or Sennar as happens with TAK…The Forgotten African Conquerors xd…
Too broken for open maps. Civ can skip mill due to getting food from gold, get 2 ranges up while on the way to feudal and get fletching so early and snowball the lead. French drush into ranged units, double ranged opening will be too powerful with this civ due to these 2 bonuses combined.
well I understand conscription but how is Sappers relevant. Not opposing this as a bonus but just questioning its relevance to the history of large military.
Like hussite wagons or they take the damage instead? what happens if there’s a mangonel hit or a scorpion projectile?
Overall I like Soninke but needs some adjustments to balance the range play potential. My recommendations:
Gold miners generate a trickle of food, initially 1 food per 8 gold but improves to 6 after gold mining upgrade (you’ve mentioned no shaft, so no need to worry about it)
Remove one of these 3 - plate barding armor, camel line or halberdier upgrade.
I’d limit it to either 10% faster work rate of buildings or firing arrows or generation of resources. Any one of the three and not all.
A decent advantage for castles
Should exclude palisade walls, gates, houses and farms.
Shouldn’t be a team bonus.
Way too overpowered. Someone can monk rush, build 4-5 weaving workshops for monk defense, use the market and go imp in no time.
Interesting unique unit concept.
Really mediocre as a UT. I’d probably make this a civ bonus and have this UT to increase the weave workshop gold generation rate to something reasonable, while keeping it very low initially.
Except for the weave workshop monk clown play being overpowered, rest of the civ looks good. Mostly well balanced bonuses, bonuses encouraging good practice like putting buildings near mines.
Don’t understand what it means by directly adding to stockpile. If its meant to be like Khmer farms, then the concept of drop-off becomes undefined because each food is going into your stockpile. I’d recommend keeping either one of the two. Either 15% more dropoff or directly adds to stockpile(which I feel like is quite mediocre on most maps and settings with the dropoff feature being available)
Very interesting and yes this should be restricted to eco upgrades.
Great idea but should be restricted to some units. Maybe just spear, skirm and Cima or militia, crossbow and Cima.
Base Lifidi cavalry should have 70 hp 7 or 8 attack, the upgrade cost to get Mailed Lifidi Cavalry should be 250 250 and available in castle age. Cuirassed upgrade should be 500, 500. But otherwise great.
Desert warfare - I can see you’re trying the camel version of forced levy but its not the same. Especially negligible purpose given the unique unit. Camels without heavy upgrade aren’t a generically good unit and its going to extremely pop inefficient to get UT and spam a ton of camels. I’d recommend an effect where camel units/gunpowder take -1/-2 damage from projectiles or -20% from melee units.
Rest of the civ looks great wrt balance, bonuses, UU and UT. Very refreshing and new ideas.
Love the range bonus but hate this relic one. What happens when relics are garrisoned. I’d instead give the civ 5% faster firing rate for foot archers per relic, limiting it to 3 relics in castle age and 4 in imp.
Please no. This type of returning after getting killed is a terrible non-bonus. Ideally you have to get value in some form while protecting your units, not by losing them. Please replace this with some other bonus that ties monks with economy instead of giving back when killed.
Going to make them better for defending against raids but otherwise the unit itself should have great stats because the ability is not the greatest in general.
Excellent UT and techtree. Just the villager and monk return cost on death should change to some decent but not very powerful early game eco bonus. Another great civ design imo.
Another interesting effect. So the unit that chases a Malassay receives 25% of the damage it does but that doesn’t happen in a static battle?
Rates should differ for towers and castles. I’d prefer having either one of the effects with a little higher value than both.
Appreciate not making it a weak on land infantry and naval civ.
Just when I thought there can’t be anymore farming related bonus, a new one arrives. This is so cool.
Throws knives meaning its ranged? Technically its unique but feels like a combination of gbeto and ghulam. Would definitely prefer something different but otherwise this unit can work. Should have low food and high gold cost making it not scalable for later stages.
Another great civ, terrific balance. I’ve come across so many new civ concept posts, some youtube videos but yours is by far the best one. Loved the designs and most of the balance of all civs. Hope some of these get picked for an actual DLC some time in the future.
I can see your concern. However, your suggestion of the rate of 8 gold : 1 food is equivalent to 12.5% food in addition to gold, which is even more than the 10% in my concept.
The main reason is that I think only affecting Conscription is too little, so have another castle tech accompany it. But it was clear that the African kingdoms and empires could mobilize ordinary people for war.
It means, if the absorption rate is 25%, when a crossbowman nearby the UU should take 4 damage, the UU will take 1 damage and the crossbowman will only take 3 damage. But I also wouldn’t mind it acting like a Hussite Wagon.
This is why I recommend using them to accompany Arbalesters who lack ring armor.
If I had to remove one, I would choose the Heavy Camel upgrade. (Not the entire line.) It will be a special thing that there is a civ in West Africa having weak camels.
I hope they have basically decent Cavaliers to represent the Sosso people, and they also deserve a decent spearman line, as one of their keys to empire-building early on is considered to be the widespread use of iron spearheads.
Songhai
Buildings are natually unable to be benefited all at once. Monasteries and Weaving Workshops cannot fire, TCs and Castles cannot generate resources, towers can only fire, Universities and Blacksmithes can only research, and other military buildings can only train units and research.
I don’t think it’s too much to boost all of those by only 10% (no stack) at the same time. Remember it requires at least 100 gold and 1 population space to strengthen just a single building.
I’m assuming it excludes Palisades (wall & gate), Farms and towers.
Why not. This is an effect that is almost exclusively beneficial to drush.
Ha! You seem to have the opposite opinion than @TungstenBoar. He considered it almost useless and not worth building it in the Castle Age.
I have nothing against lowering Weaving Workshop’s base rate and letting the UT increase it. Although I would prefer to see the way to increase its rate is by reducing population usage rather than directly increasing the value.
One problem is that, if the effect that Docks, Markets, and units and technologies in there cost -10% is used as a civ bonus, it may overlap with other civs and make the bonuses of this civ too much.
Thank you. I think cavalry with Supplies and Gambesons is interesting and can be balanced, and think Gambesons could cost +100% if necessary, but these ideaes had been challenged.
Kanembu/Kanuris
Means not only directly adding food from livestock to stockpile but also get +15% more from livestock.
I was reminded that either effect was mediocre. Livestock are usually slaughtered just at TCs, and the +15% is equivalent to only about +10 food per sheep in practice. I think having both of them is enough. If villagers accidentally kill a sheep outside the TC, or encounter a sheep far away from the base, they can just gather the food and still get more.
Shepherds adding food directly to the stockpile is also a novice-friendly design.
I want it to be built at least often on trade routes to give Carts shelter in an emergency. Therefore, the units that the Ribat can train should be suitable for driving out units that are commonly used to raid trade.
Is 250 food and 250 gold too much for upgrading to Mailed Lifidi?
The role of Lifidi Cavalry in the Feudal Age should be somewhat similar to that of Camel Scout.
I’d still like to try the trash camel concept if possible. Wonder if trash Heavy Camel would make it any better.
Given that they have an awful spearman line, once they run out of gold to train Cima, trash camels should work for it.
Nubians
When a Relic is garrisoned, its aura is naturally centered on the garrisoned Monastery.
The Relic bonuses I designed are to encourage competition for Relics. Even after fighting for the Relics, they encourage players to put the Relics on front lines that is in a state where they can be easily recaptured by enemy. It is not required to control as many Relics as possible, but to pursue controlling a Relic as perfectly as possible. It will be difficult and allow high elo players to show off their skills.
This is not to encourage you to let units be killed for profit, but to help you reduce the loss when units are killed. You should still train and use villagers as normal but at least you can recover faster from the horrors of a surprise attack. The same goes for the part about monks, which is especially useful since this civ is going to encourage monks to carry Relics and follow the archers on front lines.
I did state that it is going to be the most expensive and powerful foot archer so definitely the stats should be good.
Somalis
If a melee unit attacks a Malassay, it takes an additional 25% of the damage it dealt to the Malassay whichever the stance of the Malassay. The Malassay will still take 100% damage instead of 75%, and if the Malassay also attacks the unit at the same time, the unit will take 100% of the damage from the Malassay + 25% of the damage it dealt to the Malassay.
This effect will be very effective against high damage and low HP units, such as the Ethiopian Shotels.
Towers are much cheaper than Castles, so making them equally efficient means encouraging players to build towers, especially near shore.
Bantu
Well if you didn’t notice, I also gave Nubians a UB about farming.
In the fact, the Mbeba Ngao, instead of the Gbeto, is historical to throw blades.
Basically, I made it similar to Gbeto but sacrificed some speed and some attack for high pierce armor and bonus against archer units. Because its elite upgrade is free, the improvement the elite upgrade brings should be limited.
The Nubian archer removing Los should also remove range I guess? Cause otherwise you would have enemy archers able to shot accurately what they can’t see. Would it be too strong? Basically they would force enemy archers to get closer to them with every shot to be able to hit them.
Sorry I was a bit vague before due to the fragmented review. I didn’t mean the eco benefit itself was the problem but rather range being available in dark age along with the food generation. My suggestion in detail is to remove range getting unlocked in dark age and keep it to just stable but give a better effect from the food generation bonus. This way, team game 2 range archer and 1v1 french drush into ranged builds will be a bit more balanced while the economic bonus will still be substantial and competitive to other top tier civs.
Gotcha. Its quite a decent bonus.
The former sounds interesting if the uu has a very high hp. But how does it work when there’s a whole bunch of uu and the incoming damage is high. Like lets say an elite war wagon projectile with 11 damage or janissary projectile with 15 damage. Does the 25% distribute over multiple adjacent unique units?
I think there’s one more civ with cheap camels that doesn’t get heavy camel in your list but this is fair enough. My perspective was to not give full upgrades on cavalry, as well as potential to play camel crossbows in castle age. Just felt it might be too many options but fair to open with a slightly stronger new civ rather than take the Tatar/Dravidian approach.
But I think in your original post you mentioned the bonus as “Monks can garrison inside buildings that can train units”. So that leaves blacksmith and universities. Castles can do all of these things - produce units, fire arrows and research technologies. Most of the production buildings have 2. Which buildings are meant to generate resources in that case, just their UB and market?
Yes I get that and think its a cool 1v1 bonus. But in tg, especially 4v4 this can be quite a big bonus since the team with this civ can get 4 extra militia for free and begin the attack before feudal. Quite overpowered in many kinds of maps.
Perhaps he never considered forward monk rushes
I think that’s fine considering its a smaller bonus. Once you limit the potential of their unique building, the rest of the civ has very mediocre eco with negligible benefits. So a small % discount on units and techs used only in certain settings is fine. 1v1s dont use trade carts and most of the market techs, land maps don’t use docks. So the net potential of its benefit will be limited to water, hybrid maps and team games.
I can see why they’d do that. I think people don’t consider eco and early feudal bonuses at all when they see bonuses like this. Most of the times they see from the perspective of how strong units can be handled once they’re massed without considering the feasibility of getting there. Its always strong eco weak military, weak eco strong military. OG Burgundians, Georgians and current Bulgarians, Sicilians are solid proof that civs with weak eco bonuses but strong cavalry won’t break the game in any way.
Yes the convenience of not needing a dropoff center for herdables is just a mediocre and situational benefit for Nomadic maps. 15% more dropoff alone should be sufficient. Not that I’m against the continuous drop-off but don’t feel its much of a bonus in the dark age.
Yes I think the spear line and skirm will be useful for that. I just don’t want CA, knight replacement units in that building. That’s a very big advantage for late castle age/early imp imo.
Its won’t be the opening unit but after clicking castle age people will start making a lot of these units. If upgrade is 50 food 50 gold, there won’t be any delay in getting it and this civ player will have a lot of pseudo knights with 4 p.armor even without researching chain barding. And second look at the amount of benefits it gives, an extra p.armor, a solid increase in hp. Its much better than cavalier and eagle warrior upgrades. I think even at 250 250 the upgrade is very high value for cost
That could be very interesting.
I get that, but civ gets 0 benefit from this if they don’t lose important units like vills and monks. That makes it a pseudo bonus. Like something benefits you in a situation you shouldn’t have let happen in the first place. And the only other eco benefit for the civ is discount on range techs which is something impactful from castle age onwards. Archer civ with too weak eco won’t be usable. Like no one would prefer Nubians over Ethiopians or Mayans on most archer based maps because of the early game. And to deal with that you might have to make the mill charge mechanism produce extra vills quite often. If you do that builds will be adjusted to make a lot of mills and get many free vills and it could get overpowered. Instead of struggling with a complicated situation like that, you could simply replace this 50% returning resource with some dark age eco benefit and just let the unique mill spawn a cow every few minutes.
Solid, I like it.
yes and thereby should have a smaller effect which can probably add up with more towers but should be relatively smaller compared to castles imo
That doesn’t do much to the farming though. Its more of an effect to make farms not die soon when they get raided and the occasional extra cow to reduce the burden on wood temporarily. But this one is so cool since its going to improve food gathering rate from farms built farther away from tc.
Currently I assume that every projectile of Archers of the Eyes reduces the light of sight by 2-3 and it cannot reduce again on targets having been reduced already. When the enemy archer cannot see the target, of course it cannot fire at the target even if the range didn’t be reduced, unless the target unit is revealed because like it’s attacking something or in the light of sight of other units or buildings.
As long as it can be balanced, I don’t mind to allow it to reduce the range, or to repeat the reduction of light of sight by multiple arrows.
The training of cavalry and archers still having to wait until the Feudal Age, so I think just allowing Stables and Archery Ranges to be built after having a Barrack in the Dark Age should be no problem.
If any change is needed, I would like to change it to only allow up to 1 Stable and 1 Archery Range respectively buildable in the Dark Age.
Only allowing Stables may push the civ to go feudal scout rush when it is mainly an archer civ.
Well maybe yes. When a unit gets damage, it transfers 25% to the UUs whose aura covers the unit, and those UUs evenly share the 25% damage. I guess that there should be a limit X, that is, if those UUs are more than X, then only the closer X ones can share that 25%.
Well maybe it should change the statement to make my thought more clear.
If only buildings that can train units can be garrisoned by Monks, then not only the Wall, Palisade, Gate and Outpost but also the Tower, University, Blacksmith, House and Wonder cannot. The reason why I stated that in the original post may be because I thought that except for towers, buildings that cannot train units inherently have no quota for units to garrison, so they technically do not allow garrisoning of units anyway.
I originally want Monks can boost a single building by garrisoning into it, making it work (training, researching, generating, and firing) faster by 10% (no stack). In this way, the buildings that can be actively garrisoned by monks should theoretically include University and Blacksmith in addition to the UB Weaving Workshop, Tower and buildings that can train units. However we can still limit the effect as stated if needed, so they cannot be garrisoned in University and Blacksmith. I personally don’t insist on this.
Btw, the resources dropped off at buildings by Villagers and trade units or bought at Markets are not included, so only Weaving Workshops and Monasteries with Relics are generating resources. In addition, your Monks still cannot garrison into other players’ buildings that usually cannot be garrisoned by Monks, and those buildings of yours still cannot be garrisoned by other players’ Monks.
Maybe add a limit that the extra Militias are not spawned until hitting the Feudal Age if the Barracks are built in the Dark Age.
I’d like to keep the both for the novice-friendly design. Also, if an economy technology is researched and the building like Lumber Camp spawns a goat, you can just let nearby Lumberjacks pause logging and gather the goat on site instead of sending the goat to the TC.
I will classify it as a kind of defensive bonus rather than an economy bonus. Just like, if you playing Byzantines are not be sieged by the enemy, you get no benefit from the extra building HP.
Building a lot of Saqiyah will not really easy to get more free Villagers, since a Farm which a Farmer is gathering food on only works for 1 Saqiyah that having its aura cover the Farm. If there are no many Farms and no Farmers are tasked on those Farms in the aura of Saqiyahs that you build a lot, the Villager spawning will not be so faster to be broken.
Songhai was more relevant than Hausa. Actually Songhai was not just a short lived empire, they existed for hundreds of years and they peaked during Askia The Great’s reign. His campaign would possibly be one the biggest one in Africa.
On the other hand Hausa was mostly smaller kingdoms that were unified time to time. I think they would also be a great addition, but Songhai and Kanem are more important from that region. They are definitely more plausible than Soninke tho.
The ideal would be to include Songhai with an Askia the Great campaign and Hausa with a Kanta Kotal campaign which would be the continuation of the Askia campaign, simiar to the Dawn of the Dukes campaign.
Some Hausa states were forced to pay tribute to Bornu.