Does anybody else think it would be a good idea to take away the ability to delete units/buildings while they are being converted by a monk? I know this will be controvertial but hear me out.
I generally don’t like how people can just delete things willy nilly, but I get that it is part of the game and would make things too complicated to not be able to do it. But at the very least I think we should take this ability away for units and buildings that are being actively converted. I think if you cannot physically get to the monks that are doing the conversion and kill them then you shouldn’t be able to stop the conversion process. I have always felt that this is kinda cheating the converting monk from getting conversions. Monks are already a generally underused unit and I think this might be part of the problem, it is simply too easy to deny them the ability to do what they are supposed to do, and this only gets worse the higher the ELO of players and the higher their APM. Also this kinda makes the Heresy tech kinda less important, since people can apply it “manually” without actually having the tech, I get that obviously the tech automatically doing it makes it easier but still, if you don’t have access to the tech or haven’t researched it, the game shouldn’t allow you to manually apply it yourself.
Also another consideration is we rarely ever get conversions of buildings when it is another way monks can be useful. As it stands buildings already take a long time to convert, and allowing a defending player to simply delete a building means it almost never happens. So we never see units like Xlotol warriors for example because it is just so rare that a building would ever be allowed to be converted by another player.
This would also give the game a bit more strategic depth, where in you can’t just leave military buildings around the map in places you cannot physically defend and if you are forced to retreat from a position and worry that an enemy monk might approach your buildings you have to make the decision to eaither leave your buildings exposed or to delete them preemptively giving that decision a lot more weight in terms of risk vs reward. If you leave the building standing you might be able to use it again, but also you might lose it to a monk, if you delete it you deny your enemy the opportunity to take it, but also deny yourself the possibility of using it later.
Have you played Arena, or watched any high end Arena games? Sometimes, being able to delete the unit is the only counter to monks, and it isn’t even guaranteed you delete the right unit in time. Monks are not underused, and don’t need buffs like this, they can already turn the battle easily.
Yes please, monks are already underpowered in most setting as it is
Also, it makes sense, because the unit is being talked to by the enemy, and the unit is getting pulled into their religion/ranks.
We therefore shouldn’t be able to delete him because he is currently listening to the enemy side (even if he didn’t fully switch yet)
Arena is very situational. Most games are not on Arena. And I think it is also a bit hyperbolic to say that deleting units is the only way to counter monks. I mean scouts can already do a pretty good job at taking out monks. If you didn’t make scouts to counter monks then its kinda on you. Also I suspect that if something like what I am proposing was implemented, play styles would change to adapt. It’s not like its something that would completely break the game. It would just make people less careless with how they send their units into a territory defended by monks. As it stands it might seem like the only way to counter monks is maybe because players are just relying on it as a crutch. They know they can just delete their unit in the last minute so they don’t bother taking any other measures against the monks. The whole point of this post is to push people away from that kinda play style. If you want to kill a unit that is being converted you either have to physically kill them with other units, or have Heresy researched.
Another interesting idea might be adding the ability to target a unit that is being converted by your other units and kill them that way BEFORE they are converted. So it’ll be kinda like deleting them but not as instantaneous and it’ll at least give you an opportunity to take that unit out before the opponent has control of it and is able to attack you with it. Although I don’t know how easy implementing something like that would be.
The deal is that there are upsides to forcing the enemy to delete buildings with monks: first they still lose the buildings, which is good for you obviously, and you get to keep your faith so you can go convert something else right away, including another building, which is especially good against building walls.
I think it’s a good idea. Could at least try it in the pup
I wonder if it is a similar legacy idea that is not necessarily the best for the game, like foundation scouting.
We’re just so used to it we assume it is the better mechanic.
But at the same time I think the monk RNG should be reduced, increase min conversion ticks by 1 and max reduced by 1.
Coupled to the lack of deletion means you potentially have incrementally more time to deal with the monk, even if it is a more reliable conversion (aka less likely to completely fail)
I think this change might also be good for the new elephant civ balance, since it gives your eles more time to do damage, while at the same time keeping them from being unconvertable /overly oppressive when stacked with faith and /or teutons
I can understand your point but I think I have an even better idea. Why not let Heresy also apply to buildings. Meaning you cant delete a building that are being converted but if you have researched Heresy the building will instantly fall when converted, just like all units are. This will mean that it is not impossible to defend from monks but it will cost you 1000 gold.
If people think this would somehow make Monk play OP, a way to offset it could be to add a random chance that units DONT get converted. That would be interested, and more realistic as well IMO. That way also units that resist conversion could have a higher chance of not getting converted at all.
I like your idea, but I’d like to bring one correction:
Heresy does not automatically delete your units when they would otherwise be converted. It’s stronger than that. If you lose a unit to a Monk and you have Heresy, the Monk still loses its faith, while this is not the case if you would have deleted the unit yourself. Because the Monk can immediately continue to convert something else after you delete a unit, unit deletion is not that strong; nonetheless, it is situationally useful, and I agree might be better to not have in the game.
Sure its not exactly the same as you point out. But still I think the biggest value of Heresy is not giving your unit over, the faith thing is a secondary consideration I would argue. In that case for all intents and purposes I would say deleting your own unit is a cheaper alternative to Heresy in most scenarios.
Love this idea, and this is totally addable to the game, not contrversial
In fact I would go a step further and say that if a unit is being converted, and you do attempt to take its life (by manually deleting it, without Heresy), then the unit switches to the other side Immediately and fight back
To save his life!
Not only is this realistic, but also gives a much needed buff to monk play, and doesn’t make any civ broken either, since you can always move the unit out of range.
But be fair I can’t tell for sure if your post is sarcastic.
But anyway: There’s definitely no need for a buff to Monks. They’re in some way one of the best units in the game - it’s just that most people are not good enough to use them properly.
Also “you can always move the unit out of range” is just wrong - you can try, but most of the time you’ll be too late, especially if you’re not a high APM player.
Leave Monks how they are, because that’s just right and I wouldn’t touch a unit as swingy as Monks, because they can very easily become completely overpowered or completely useless. Just be happy that they’re neither of those right now!
My posts on this thread are 100% legit, I really love monks but never see them, we rarely ever see them
And why not just disallow deletion of units currently being converted, it makes total sense… pls devs
Yea but even so we rarely EVER see conversion of buildings. And there is a simple reason, it takes too long and most people get to delete their building before it happens. It is a shame that we don’t get to see something that was clearly intended to be a part of the game, that is monks converting buildings. We even now have units that you can get access to ONLY when you convert enemy buildings (Xolotol warriors) but still we NEVER see this in a game because currently its pretty much impossible to convert an enemy building unless your opponent just lets you.
I guess the thing that really inspired me to start this thread was the issue to do with converting buildings. I just really want to see if happen more often because clearly it is supposed to be a feature. I guess the only other suggestion I can make, if we think that messing with Monk conversion mechanism is too risky, then we create a completely different mechanism for converting buildings. Like being able to garrison them with some infantry or something if none of your opponents are around it or something… but I think that would be even more of a deviation from the core mechanics of the game.
The thing is: Forcing the opponent to delete something to not get converted is still a win for the Monk player. The opponent loses something and the Monk is still at 100%. It’s not the very best case, but it’s still pretty good.
Building conversions are not that problematic in higher level play, because you need a lot of time and to be right in front of it, as you mentioned. So not being able to delete buildings under conversion I would not see a big problem with (still I’d prefer everything to stay how it is, but it wouldn’t be terrible). Deleting units under conversion is pretty important though.
Also Xolotol Warriors are more of an easter egg rather than a valid unit. They’re not good, even if you get them and there are absolutely no strategies based on them - and that wouldn’t change, even if you could get to Stables reliably. So I don’t think they’re a good reason why it should be easier to convert buildings.
Well firstly not everything has to revolve around the needs of “high level play”. All sorts of people play AOE2. Secondly I just don’t like that there are “features” in the game that are just never used or seen. Obviously if a feature was added by the devs it was meant to be experienced by the players. I like to be able to experience all of what the game has to offer regardless of how competitively useful a particular feature is. I doubt that when the devs were initially creating the game they thought through every single feature properly and how it would get abused by the players. And AOE2 is full of these features. I mean I know they are not all going to be changed/fixed but this is one that I think could get changed relatively easily and not really break anything in the game.
But at lower levels people definitely don’t delete buildings in time, or outright let you convert them if you’re meso because they want to see xolotl too. Heck recently in rage forest (high level) we have seen xolotl spam from seven stables!
Well, this is only partly true. Not every change has to help high level play. So a change, which is helping at lower levels and doesn’t affect higher levels is fine.
But something that helps lower levels and is bad for high level play is a terrible change. Because lower levels always have the “get better”-option to fix their problem, if it’s a problem on higher levels, it’s an actual problem.
Now you might say: “we, the lower levels are the majority though”. But there comes the next problem: You very likely lack the knowledge to actually judge what a good change would be. And even if the change was implemented, soon people, even on lower levels would realize that something is to strong now, start abusing it and then cry for a change in the other direction.
In addition to that I think basically all of the proposed changes of lower level players are not actually supported by even the majority of lower level players. They’re just a wide mass with all kinds of opinions - and that’s to be expected, because, as said before, they lack the knowledge to actually judge what a good change would be.
Just ask yourself, if you wanted to improve the rules of football or whatever. Whom do you ask? Professionals or some random guys you just saw kicking a ball a few meters away from your house?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t get ideas from random people - you can and you can also get good ideas for AoE2 from low level players. But the people to judge whether an idea is good or bad should always be the professionals, not the random guys, even if they did come up with a good idea. Because they know the details of the game you’re trying to improve and the low levels don’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be low levels (and by that I don’t mean knowing numbers, but knowing what you can do and why it works).
And don’t get me wrong - this is not some “I’m cooler than you”-elitism just to feel good. I don’t even think I would qualify to give a final judgement on whether a change is worth implementing. I was top 500, but didn’t play for half a year, so right now I’m probably quite a bit worse. I just think it is A LOT better for every game, if balancing is done based on high level play/opinions and I think discussions here would be a lot better if people understood this and presented their ideas with more humility and were more interested in the opinion of players rated way above them (in AoE2 mechanical skill makes maybe a difference of 100-200 elo, basically all of the rating is game/strategic knowledge, so please don’t come with “I just click too slowly”-excuses ;D - and better understanding also does make you faster, because you need to spend less time thinking).
