I recently saw some screenshots from the early alpha versions of AoE2, and the ships looked noticeably bigger compared to the units and coastline. Personally, I think increasing the ship size slightly in DE would make naval units look more impressive and realistic, without changing their gameplay.
Would you like to see ships increased in size by, say, 15–20%?
I’d love them to be as comparatively big as AoE3 ships, even if the hitboxes had to be increased as well.
I heard that naval combat is much better in AoE4 than in AoE2. Is that true? If so, why? And why can’t AoE2 move in that direction after the naval overhaul?
Ships are already unnaturally cheap and weak for their size. A Galleon is way larger then any land unit but only costs 90 Wood and 30 Gold. A trebuchet that is half the size costs 200 Wood and 200 Gold.
Ships should cost twice as much and be twice as strong. They just feel so wrong currently. Well besides the fact that most ships in AoE2 are just behaving completely wrong like a Galleon without cannons or a Galley without oars.
Some examples for users unfamiliar with the screenshots mentioned by the OP:
The following image is one of the earliest AoK ones ever released (February 1998):
That water looks really nice, especially for the time
Love the hull shapes, but they are not really medieval era, it’s more age of sail era style.
Yes, after the naval rework, it improved a lot… before it looked like the one from AoE 3, but after the rework, they made it like the one from AoE 2…
Yes, the water looked deeper and more realistic, similar to that in AoM and AoE 3… in AoE 2 it’s all light blue and looks a bit fake…
Yes, perhaps at the beginning AoE 2 focused more on the Renaissance and then they moved it further back towards feudalism…
No it was actually going to cover the same period as AoE1, then they extended into the future, then “delayed” the beginning of the timeline
I’m probably getting the details wrong, but it’s a fact it was gonna start sooner than the dark ages.
Wow. Those early screenshots are amazing. As for the boats, yeah I agree. They would look so much better bigger. I think they devs should actually consider this for a continuation/update/patch of the previous Dock Update.
edit: Also, the ships water reflections is nice as well. Consider adding that into the game as well.
But if they already had AoE 1, why would they set it in Antiquity again?.. I know that after AoE 2, between 2001 and 2004, they planned to set AoE 3 in WWII (because it was a very popular period after Saving Private Ryan) (basically like CoH), but then they reversed course (WWI, Industrial Age until reaching the Colonial Era after AoE2 TC and setting it there, but in reverse from the Colonial Era to WWI). The only thing is that in 2004 they planned to set it in Europe and Asia, hence the files that show China and Japan were going to be launch civilizations like in AoE 2, but then they discarded everything and set it only in America, just as the game came out in 2005…
Nah, it’s just extremly difficult to know what ship where what infact. For example … A Frigate…Depending on the era, and the nation, it’s not the same definition. So they just started with the easiest shape. And then they probably found some better sources for shapes so it ended to become what it is now.
I think ship sizes are fine. The bigger they are, the more they could block out and make things harder to see. You can make a bunch more boats now compared to early 2000s, too, in terms of higher pop count maxes… So higher propensity to block more stuff.
But I just don’t like the thought of bigger ships. I think they’re fine 
They’ll look too big, clunky, and ugly, imo
Probably because I’ve played and loved AoE2 for years, I don’t mind ships looking too small compared to units. Unlike building proportions in AoE4, which I really dislike
PS: I really wish AoE2:DE water was a deeper darker blue like that, and could be modded with more deep shades. It helps the world feel more real and treacherous, with deep oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. It’s impossible to make the 3D water look like a really deep blue. However, 2D water is a step in right direction with coloring and saturation, just not nearly close enough. I recommend disabling 3D water.if you want darker blues.
I had a thread/posts about water here with some AoC and AoK water screens at bottom of post, too:
And more water talk, if curious → Improve water look, effects, and animals possible for AoE2?
That’s new to me (for AoK), do you have a source?
Anyway, since AoC, it actually covers events before the European Dark Ages. And more recently, certain base game campaigns are chronologically set before Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century…
The disadvantage in those early builds was that the reflections would also cover land terrain if ships were close to the coast.
It was properly done in AoE DE, I wonder if they could also realise something comparable with the 3D water, if they wanted to.
Yes, anything is possible…
Yes, but we all pretended that the 3K isn’t part of the base game…
I mean, I worked on a naval game, and honnestly it’s easier to get real info on the Trojan War rather than having historical authentic ship shape classifications <.<
Ships and cannon names and classes are just so wild.
Ships just slowly evolved over time and there weren’t many big jumps. Also people just had a bunch of names that they used for a lot of different ships. One name could mean one thing in one country and a different thing in a different country. And then you get things like the English building smaller Galleons then the Spanish but they are both surely building Galleons.
I wonder how historians will talk about current day cars in the future. Now we have so many different categories and they somehow managed to make an SUV version of each of those categories so double the number of car types. And in the end they all just look like blobs anyway.
Definitly, name changes from nation to nation, classification too.
For example, some ships are known for their Sail Plans, like “Ketch”, but a Ketch is not a ship type… It’s the type of sail… And you have the “Ketch-Built”…And when you’re trying to figure out in other language what is is… Then you start to be crazy ahahaha.
Galleon is one of the rare case where we exactly know what it is. It’s using a specific rigging style with 4 mast instead of 3. That’s what make a galleon a galleon basically, the two rear masts with triangular sails.
Oh damn, or computers xD.
What I think si the most crazy is how they made a reflective part on all ships. If you pay attention to all those old screens, you can see a distinct reflective layer of the ship in addition to the shadow..
What’s crazy about it, is that it’s semi-transparent pixel. AoE2 shadows were solid blacks on AoK release, but those reflective parts are litterally semi transparent. It’s not the water making reflection, you can see it on the big screen with the docked ship, observing the wodden docks where you’ll see the hull reflection rendered above the wood part.
This means the base engine supported semi-transparent pixels before its release in 1999, and that is INSANE for the time.
