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I played a water maps with navies, and I have mixed feeling about that compare to previous AoE games (especially 1 and 2)
What do You guys think?
I hate water maps. In most of them, lossing the water equals to lose the game.
And if you don’t go water you are in clear disadvantage.
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Naval combat seems like an afterthought to the devs. I do love the new Dromon unit though
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I feel water is just in a bind.
If fishing isn’t powerful, no one would bother. But because it is powerful whoever loses the water loses the game. Which makes the whole game devolve into being about the water rather than anything else. It supersedes the general interplay of rush/boom/tech.
In turn, combat on water is this simplistic rock/paper/scissors system and one where if you are not paying attention (and we see it happen to the pros every other week) demo ships can wipe out a whole fleet and effectively end a game in a few seconds. But then if you change it to a slower tug of war, that just devolves into “who’s economy can pump ships faster”.
So I’m not sure there is an answer. I feel they had the same problem when they tried to make feudal trade work last year or so. “Okay so now every game is either trading or trying to stop trading, this isn’t that fun…”
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I think they need to rebuild the whole system from scratch. The only fun way of remaking water I can imagine, is to make it so controlling the water is not a matter of better food source, but a matter of tactical advantage. For example making the ships really slow but very powerful against ground units. Somewhat like a castle that can be moved on water.
At the same time to make more maps where transport ship attacks from water are actually working.
Or the safer solution is making docks more expansive to make early docks high risk, high reward.
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Agree with most of your points.
The current pace of naval battles in AOE4 is too fast. It’s fast enough that you can use spam ships to win naval battles. Just like a land battle, except with fewer troops and no terrain obstacles. There are also no natural or artificial defenses that interfere with the ship’s water control map.
Makes ships more powerful, like castles, but slower and more expensive to produce. Build ships that resemble castles on the sea. This will give extra focus to land combat, rather than having to choose just one control between naval or land combat.
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Basically, water maps reduced to 6 words.
Water economy is too overpowered
The battles are too basic
Imo even well balanced water gameplay is always going to be unpopular. Water in general is hard and requires learning additional openings, and more multitasking.
In both AOE2 and AOE4, water is WAY more popular at the professional/top level than it is with the average player just because it is so much harder. If water maps were so bad, we wouldn’t see them be super popular in tournaments.
The only real issue I currently find with water is that the civ balance is really poor. It’s not as bad as launch French on water, but water/hybrid maps in general drastically favor only a handful of civs, even moreso than other map types.
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I like water maps but as said above they’re more complex so I get why they get some flack, among other things.
Right now water battles are more balanced then ever but are also kind of stale. At lauch there were many nuances and differences that made the Civs unique on water also, but it was completely unbalanced, so whatever.
Water needs to be made more interesting and there are a lot of ideas to be considered, from the simpler like changing numbers around to more unique techs or units, builder ships with everything that could bring (there was supposed to be a Scout boat, why not?), more units to spice up the rock/paper/scissor system, more interaction between land and sea…
In my case, I like the water maps and naval combat in AoE1 & AoE2 + Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
But in AoE4, I want to like it, but there is “something wrong” with that
I agree with points here
I agree with @Tyelacoirii that combat is bad with rock/paper/scissors system and demo ships “dominate” the seas,
I feel like ships are too fragile and combat is too fast
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another case is the size of the map, I guess that water maps or the islands are a bit small
I made a screenshots for comparison EDIT: both are 4 players map size
this is classic AoE1 islands map
and this is AoE4 islans map
In AoE1&2 water maps, You have enough space to build Yourself, in AoE4 You are bit crowded
Another thing will be adding of Art of War mission - for naval combat and for Water maps
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Anything that simulates a 2TC shouldn’t be cheap, the deep sea harvest rate is incentive enough
I love water map because it’s more about creativity and less about build orders.
My win rate is much higher on water.
Many people say ship battle are dull and or poorly designed, and in my opinion the problem are the archer ships.
Archer ships need a big rework. They are too good against land unit and too bad against ship. They need faster shoot animation so the ship don’t stall while shooting and be more flexible to shoot in any direction. In exchange they shouldn’t do aoe damage and should shoot one target like actual archers, and should have less range than springald ships. This would make them naturally better against demo ship (easier to kite if you can shoot any direction and don’t need slowly rotate) but bad against springalds ship because less range. Against land archer they should trade equally at equal resources instead of completely destroying them, remove aoe damage. Allowing you to fight ship in feudal with your land army.
Springalds ship would keep the slow attack animation that rotate ship sideways , which makes them unviable against demo, but the higher range + bonus ship damage would make them good against archer ship. They should do low damage to land units. Only in castle or imperial age should some ship be good against land units (either with a tech or ship like the carrack).
Water maps suck because of the massive advantage of deep water fishing. They need to either lower the amount of fish from 1000 to like 750 and the gathering speed as well. Because like what everyone says on water maps if you lose the water. You lose the game.
Fishing should just be an alternate food source if you run out of sheep, berries, etc. Not come with massive advantages. Deep water fishing should have a lot slower gathering rate than any food source on land. Only shoreline fishing should have equal gathering rate.
The only reason of “if you lose the water, you lose the game”.
Is because land units cannot fight ship in feudal.
If they could then you could just send archer on the shore to build and protect your dock.
So you wouldn’t immediately lose.
That’s why archer ship need big rework like explained in my other coment.
cheap docks are the problem, if each TC cost 150 wood you are not going to blame the villagers’ 38/min rate!
Cheap dock is what makes water map different and i like variety in the game otherwise all maps are the same.
Dock should stay cheap so the dynamics are different on different maps and the strategies are different which is what is fun.
