A rework of the natives prior to the definitive edition: Catalog of proposals on minor factions/civilizations (AOE-3 BASIC + TWC + TAD)
Some new concepts to give more variety to the maps, such as emerald mines or water mills. What concepts could work as treasures, mines, infinite resources, or captureable objectives on the map?
Of course, that would be good too…
Another Naval addition:
Flagship
A tech/ability available to all civs from the Dock and equivalent. The Flagship ability is a button with resource cost that upon clicking gives you a a Wonder-esque global ability to target any of your Military ships and designate it as Flagship (or Head for Native American/African canoes).
What the does the ability do?
Why?
To a little more fun and room for tactics within the naval side of gameplay. Adding some utility (the default abilities of Flagships are rather defensive, for example) gives more nuace to ship fights.
You’re trying to cram way too many unrelated features into this. What makes chain shot something unique to Flagships or stealth unique to a Head Canoe?
Head Canoe also clashes with the name of a potential type of Canoe used by PNW tribes:
I would love to have Flagships, but I’d take a simpler approach.
Any ship that your Explorer boards is designated as a Flagship. To indicate this it would hoist a very visible flag and get a hero selection aura around it.
Ships designated as a Flagship essentially become an Explorer on the water. They slowly heal when idle, and have some kind of ability for taking out treasure guardians. They would also become invincible like heroes and only partly capsize when defeated and could be righted by friendly ships when they recover enough health.
That would make going out to get water treasures actually viable instead of just being ignored like they are now.
For the reason Explorers can Sharpshoot - it’s not unique to that unit in real life however gives some more interesting options plus it is something they would do, though not exclusively of course (again, like many hero unit abilities).
But anyway, yeah, that’s a lot crammed in though it was in my mind that they’d only have one ability by default like most hero units, plus the ability to ship other abilities in to enhance them further, again like hero units (Counting Couple for Lakota for example). Basically as long as they serve the purpose of being an improved version the ship they portray and are great against guardians, it’s not pivotal to have abilities. (Really just idea bouncing here!)
To keep it simple,p erhaps just an inherent ‘fleet leadership’ aura that makes having a hero ship worth keeping within your fleet long past the earlier treasure hunting stages is all we need. It is a flagship after all - the biggest, baddest, most well armed ship of that type, which is the ship to follow in battle.
That’s fair (but also hypothetical 
), though it would be a case of using an appropriate term for what is essentially a chief’s war canoe - I guess it could be basically just ’ War Chief’s Canoe’ . Or just to completely streamline it to Flagship as well. Even more broadly it could just be Command (not a fan of that though).
I agree and disagree with this. Hero auras and visibility - absolutely, I share the same thoughts, however I think it’s too high stakes and convolutes things to put the hero unit into another unit to make use of it. You need your land exploring unit early on so you are very unlikely to shun land treasures so you can garrison it in a ship and potentially lose it, making you not only lose an explorer (that you’ll have to ransom if at a contested location) but also the resources you spent on the vessel.
We both agree that Flagships should be a hero vessel optoon, though I feel having it either as an ability via Dock or even on a ship itself (almost like a very limited version of the AoM Atlantean hero system) would work better as it’s less confusing for a new player plus it ties in with the fact that however polished and reworked water maps ever get, the naval aspect will always be peripheral to the land action (we are afterall building our settlement mainly on land). We shouldn’t have to take our main hero out of play to utilise a more limited area.
I like the idea of them capsizing and not dying though I think in practical use it’s easier to have them be destroyed and reappoint another vessel to be Flagship. Why? Well if a hero ship has been designated (whether it be via upgrade action or by explorer garrisoning it) you are stuck with that ship type. It may be early on in the game and you’re rolling with the Caravel however later on you may have shipped a Battleship in and want to make that the Flagship (that would be awesome). If we go with the garrisoning method it does work, however as a player I don’t want to have to insert an explorer in and out of ships like a helmet crab and it’s shells 
(plus also lose both at the same time!)
I think there’s a lot of disagreement over unstated assumptions about things that need to be hashed out first.
Simply do “Flagship” + “Ship Name”. So “Flagship Frigate”, “Flagship Canoe”, “Flagship Catamaran”, etc. It’ll be obvious what they are from the big ol flag on them.
This really depends on the map. There aren’t too many maps with early boats that would cause you to take this approach. And those that do generally have water treasures that would be advantageous to go for. Taking a shortcut across the water could also be beneficial to your land exploration.
That all depends on how ransoming works. If there is a water shipment point available I think it would be most appropriate to have the Flagship spawn back there. Ransom cost could scale with the value of the ship so 100 coin Battleship revives wouldn’t be possible. If there is no water shipment point then yes, you’d be out the cost of the ship. But that’s no different than if you had a normal ship sunk. I’m not totally sure how this should work with the African mechanic of auto respawns since it could have the potential to automatically recall your hero and delete a ship when you actually wanted to go out and revive them.
It’s also a lot less risky than you imply. Right now taking water treasures requires you to either tank damage and then go all the way back to a dock to heal, or have such overwhelming force that you kill the guardians immediately. But with a Flagship you could have an ability to snipe guardians and whittle away at the treasure. Or you can run when your health gets low and regenerate without the need for a Dock. If you do go down, there’s a chance you’ll be close enough to shore that land units could revive you, especially on the river maps that have water treasures but no water spawn points.
Your focus is also going to be on where your Explorer is, so water treasures will always be neglected while your Explorer is on land. Moving your focus to the water could shift it from the periphery. With separate land and water heroes, you’re still going to neglect water.
I don’t see how it would be confusing. Lots of the maps where this is relevant require island hopping and you’re very likely to put a hero on a ship in that circumstance. Where it’s relevant, players will discover it naturally.
How do you deal with this in your proposed method of designating a unit as a Flagship? Do you have to wait for it to sink? That would be very frustrating and wouldn’t really work if they just capsize. With a hermit crab Explorer this is a non issue.
Going with a Flagship that’s a garrisoned hero has a lot of advantages.
There are other bonuses or mechanics that could be further hashed out. In addition to health regeneration, a charged attack, and capsizing instead of dying, there could be perks like faster movement or more LoS. Maybe some more cards like Ethiopia’s *Land of the #### card could be added. Or the existing Explorer cards could get some Flagship bonuses.
My favorite part of RTS games has always been having singleplayer content that provides a significant challenge, carefully balanced within unique scenarios requiring a full use of skills where finding and using the right strategy and tactics is much like solving a puzzle (though the puzzle is fighting back against you). This was what I enjoyed in Company of Heroes 2’s Theater of War, Age of Empire 2 DE’s new DLC campaigns, Call to Arms: Gates of Hell Ostfront’s campaigns, etc. Really, a real challenge mixed with an intriguing setting is a hard-hitting selling point for me; or, otherwise put: more campaigns (preferably with a good story to follow along with) and well-crafted singleplayer challenge missions.
Welcome to the forum!
Yep, I hope we get some single player attention in this DLC. I don’t expect Campaign (though would love one!) but hopefully we’ll get some historical battles/scenarios at the very least.
Yes, surely the DLC will bring new historical maps (if it is in Europe) or historical battles (if it is in Asia or Africa)…
Give me revolutions for everyone, european, american, african, asian, everyone should have the joy of a good revolt
The most likely thing is that they will only maintain the revolutions for the European civs and for the Federal Americans (USA, Mexico, later Brazil, Argentina, Great Colombia and Haiti)…
I thought that in yesterday’s presentation we would know more about what the DLC would bring apart from civilizations. It is not clear to me if it is an expansion like TAR and Knights of the Mediterranean did, or it is simply a package of 2 civilizations and nothing more. If it’s the latter I would be somewhat disappointed.
Rev decks should be viewable within the game.