I dont know if any of you were C&C fans back in the day, but if you were then I’m sure you have good memories of a fully ranked up mammoth tank casually blasting scorpions out of it’s way, and that you were furious when some stupid stealth bombers murderized your oh so precious vehicle.
Could a veterancy system have been useful for a UU in AOE? Maybe say that if a specific unit causes X amount of damage to combat units or 3X damage to other units they get their individual statistic boosted.
I definitely do not think that applying veterancy as a whole to regular units would be a good idea. However, to your point, the idea of having a specific UU that gains veterancy over time would be an interesting proposition that would provide for some very unique situations.
Currently though, I really struggle to think of how such a unit would fit into any existing civs. Additionally, the lifespan of each unit is normally very short. Apart from heroes in custom scenarios/campaigns, a normal multiplayer game does not consist of attempting to keep specific units alive for extended periods of time. Accordingly, I struggle to see a practical use-case for a UU like this that wouldn’t be overpowered or irrelevant.
Not all units are created equal tho. Racking up ranks on mangudais or camel archers would be quite easy, while for spam units like Karambit warriors, I don’t think even Viper vs a potted plant would manage to level them up. (well, I guess that’s what you mean witht he “OP vs irrelevant” line)
The closer we have from an unit that gets more profitable the longest it stays alive is the keshik, and I’m pretty much sure 99% of keshiks won’t generate more than 5 gold before they die.
Long story short, I don’t think it could work well in AoE.
I had wondered specifically about the Keshik. Where its unique skill just doesn’t bring in that much gold, could it have worked if instead an individual Keshik got boosted statistics for every say 300 combat unit HP it took?
The jumping statistics would have to be capped at some level of course.
Suddenly it’s super important to keep that specific army alive… I’ve wondered if it wouldn’t bring a different element to the game.
i mean if there would be a way to implement and test it then in several manual test it would see for example the keshik upgrade pro (lets say gold cached or villager hp reduced)
Could work for a unique food archer unit.
Like, lets say Genoese crossbowman:
For every 100 damage dealt (or since probably easier to code for every 15 shots fired) gain +1% attack speed (up to 10% max).
The bonus isn’t too strong. A food archer does not die as quickly as a melee unit, but also cant be kept alive up to infinity such as a cavalry archer.
But then again it would more bring in the element of: Units get stronger over time within a fight, instead of: Keep this unit alive because it is stronger. Because honestly unique units cant be kept alive like that. Armies are too big at that point.
If you want to bring in the element of making a unit more valuable to keep alive, it should be a civ bonus affecting Knights or Mangonels, or a unique tech affecting Bombard Cannons or Trebuchets.
But honestly this effect already exists due to monks (heal up weak knights in castle age), Berserks (send low Berserks back so they regenerate), and free Herbal Medicine for Teutons. While you already can repair the siege, which is very costly.
aoe2 is very pure in terms of qimmy mechanics. there are no aruas, aillities, veterancy, attack switches. i would hate to see this honestly. these things ruined AOE3 in my opinion. the base vanilla game had nothing like these and then in the expansion all these were added and it sucks
Would make monk healing more valuable potentially. For low turnover units you could make the XP requirements higher vs. high turnover units like pikeman
That being said, this feels super unlikely to happen
