Dogs

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Why are there no dogs in AoE2? Can be a military unit, aswell as a lookout and a herder of huntable animals, attached to a human leader. Without a leader nearby it should have more of a random behaviour, but with the leader it should be able to attack enemies efficiantly. I suggest the dogs should be available in dark age, trained in a kennel and a villager should be able to control about 5 dogs.

I think hunt should be scared of dogs and you should be able to click a location where the dogs are to swarm around, thus pushing deer away from that location and towards another location. It shouldn’t be as exact as pushing deer with the scout, but you would be able to push patches of deer, rather than just one at a time.

As military units dogs should be effective against militia and villagers, but not so much against buildings or any of the options which are about in feudal age. Dogs could revolutionise combat in dark age and wear out in efficiancy as the game progressed.

Dogs should also be weak against wolves and similar animals, thus making them a bit risky to use for aggression at maps like arabia, where there are wolves. It would also be hard to control their exact movement as they would run around their designated leader, which means they would be likely to attract the attention of wolves nearby.

Leaders of dogs should be able to perform any action a villager provides. As an example you should be able to designate a dog to a woodcutter and it would run around, randomly scouting, while the villager was gathering resources. Especially handy if you are expecting a tower rush, since the dog would see further than a villager. You could either use one dog as lookout or several in a pack, so that you can easily kill a group of villagers before they can build a tower.

Suggested cost for a dog: 25 food (half of a villager).

Speed of a dog: Very fast.
Eyesight: Relatively good.
Attack: High, compared to other dark age units.
Armour: None.
Health: Relatively low.
Bonus: Does not take up population space.

Suggested cost for a kennel: 50 wood.

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Yeah the lack of dogs is really weird the more time passes

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I think the Alans could have an Alaunt unique unit at the Stable or something. It’s an extinct variety of hunting dog bred by them.

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image

Hunting dogs are looking at me as if they want to be friends.

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What I’m suggesting is a little more sophisticated than just a tech you can research to make villagers work faster. The whole game mode Empire Wars emerged from the fact that people find Dark age boring, so why not spice it up a bit?

I imagine the kennel to share the characteristics of a house, in terms of size and health meter etc. It just has to cost a little more wood because it’s a production building.

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We had hunting wolves since aoc days as editor units,I doubt adding these type of unit to the main roster really adds more to the game.

But if there are infiltration units such as spies or assassins the dogs could be a way to identify them similar to how it was done in C&C or RoN.

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I think training Alaunt at the Barrack, TC, or even House still makes a bit more sense than training at the Stable.

Have Alaunt not take population and let the civ start the game with 1 Alaunt.
It can serve as a scouting unit. Only need a single command, it can continue following a deer which will always run toward the nearest TC.

It has the same attack power as Scout Cavalry, starting at 3 and increasing to 5 in the Feudal. After hunting is completed, it can serve as a military support.

Another similar but more difficult question is how to implement falconry in the game.

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Those systems sound way to complex for a game like AoE2, even for more modern games like AoE3 or AoE4.

Dogs could work as a unit that ist just controlled like any other unit. AoE2 lets you directly control sheep so why not dogs? AoE3 does use dogs for scouting and early game battles.

Dogs could be a regional North American unit and replace the Eagle Scout as the Dark Age scouting unit. In the game Empire Earth dogs are simply the main early game scouting unit, but in that game they have the unique ability to walk through forests, which might be a little OP for AoE2.

It could be interesting to give them the unique ability to scare huntable animals like deer though, maybe by giving them a “bark” button that scares away deer in a certain radius.

I think they should cost 50, do cost 1 population and be trained at the Town Centre. They should benefit from melee blacksmith upgrades (even if that technically doesn’t make any sense) and also have a Caste Age upgrade that makes them a little stronger at fighting. This way they could be used as trash units in the late game and somewhat take the role of Hussars when it comes to raiding enemy villagers.

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I think the role of a dog should remind of its’ role in human civilisations and I don’t think the game lacks viable options in the late game so much that we have to put up with some kind of mutated super dog. The whole idea is to make the early game more interesting.

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Why would you keep dog in stable?

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You are going to get a lot of hate for being able to kill dogs…

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I suggested the dog as a regional unit for North America, so it’s for civilisations that don’t have a stable so no Hussars to fill the same role in the late game.

The dog would be a weak version of the Hussar that is only strong against villagers, maybe even with anti villager bonus damage in late game. Using dogs in combat wasn’t that rare. Even if they were never particularly efficient war dogs were certainly a thing. So I would give them low HP and no armour but decent attack. This way they can be used to hunt down villagers and trade carts in the late game without being all that useful in actual combat against military units.

They probably should take bonus damage from Spearman. Maybe they should simply have Cavalry armour class or maybe negative Shock Infantry armour so they take bonus damage from all Infantry. Then we can give wild animals like wolves 0 attack vs. Shock Infantry so that dogs take bonus damage from them.

So the dog would mostly be useful in Dark Age but have some niche usage in Imperial Age too instead of becoming completely useless.

Maybe they should cost 25 Food and 0.5 population with a fast training time. Units with 0 population just don’t belong to AoE2.

I have never seen anyone complain about dogs being killable in AoE3, and believe me I have seen many pages for complains from people about AoE3(DE).

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Yup, was about to mention, the Spanish explorer can train dogs.

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Attack dog armor will have spikes so its not that bad.

This is a war game,humans have used dogs for war and many would have died.

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My idea:

Stats Dog Wardog
Trained at Town Centre Town Centre
Age Dark Age Castle Age
Cost 30 food 0.5 population 30 food 0.5 population
Train Time 12 seconds 6 seconds
HP 20 35
Attack 4 7
vs. Monks +4 +7
Armour 0/0 2/1
Shock Infantry -5 -5
Speed 1.1 1.3
Bonus conversion resistance conversion resistance
Other Only benefits from Blacksmith attack upgrades, not armour upgrades Only benefits from Blacksmith attack upgrades, not armour upgrades

Milita get 0 attack vs. Shock Infantry so they do 5 bonus damage vs. dogs.

In Dark Age they would lose against a villager with Loom and heavily lose against Militia. In Feudal Age they can somewhat be used against Archers and Skirmishers but die against Spearman and Man at Arms.

In Imperial Age the Wardog would be like a worse version of the Karambit Warrior.

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there are apparently people who avoids watching films where they are harm in any way

I don’t care about dogs, just saying they may want to be more “family friendly”, but I believe it unlikely they would add anyway.

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Because they would benefit from cavalry upgrades.

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I think a lot of people fail to see the versatility of a dog and how it interacts with villager life in general. It has a place in the game as a cheap unit in the early stages of combat, when building up for a future economy and an army, but there is absolutely no need for armour with spikes and to make it some kind of absurd counter unit. I don’t see dogs being particularly attributed to mezo civs. Mideivil Europe used dogs a lot and not just for military reasons.

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war dog seems absolutely broken. trainable from any town centre with only 5 seconds creation time and 25 food cost, with 7 attack and 35 hp

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There used to be a hunting dogs tech early with Forgotten, that increased hunting speed. The tech didn’t last long.

Just a buff to villagers, no visible dog.

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