Early defence for water

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I bought RoR recently, and played a few games. As many of you, the “Town Center” in that game doesn’t shoot arrows, or provide any form of substantial protection. This leads to extremely short, and often unsatisfying games. The Vietnamese player base has come up with an entire different mode to make the game more viable.

The devs learned from this for AoE2, and added some early defence in the form of TCs firing arrows. This is not a trivial change, this early defence makes the experience substantially better. Firstly, this makes less mobile armies more viable. Without this, your aim would be to make the fastest army you can, rush to your opponent, and take them down. Second, this reduces snowballing due to death of early eco units. Third, it reduces the need for walling in mid-late game. Lastly, it provides a fallback position and prevent you from getting wiped early. If you have less army than your opponents, you can fall back to your tc range, especially in dark age.

AoE2 Water game, on the other hand, is a relic of 1990s. Almost every single water game goes the same way in AoE2. Dark age, you make dock, and a few fishing ships. While aging up, make 1 or 2 more docks. On reaching feudal age, make galleys. Nothing else is as good. Now, repeatedly micro those while taking down your opponent’s fishing ships for the next 10 minutes while you desperately try to get to castle age and pumping out more galleys and fishing ships. You need to do this, or you just lose. If you lose fishing ships, you just lose the game.

This has turned away most of the player base from water maps, and rightfully so. People have been talking about water overhaul, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about just 2 changes to the water game.

  1. Docks can garrison upto 5 fishing ships. Gurjaras have this bonus, but it should be made a general thing.
  2. Docks can shoot arrows that do 1 damage, but bonus damage to ships, if you garrison villagers in them. A dock fully garrisoned with 5 vils will take down a feudal age ship in 2 -3 shots.

I believe that this will substantially improve water game, while not fundamentally changing water play. With these changes, players will have a fallback position if they are outnumbered, and can save their fishing ships in a pinch. This does not negate the need for military in water either, as you need to garrison vils to fire arrows, and that will set you back in resources. That is not even mentioning the cost you incur by your fishing ships not working.

A full water overhaul seems to be out of the picture, at least for now. This change just might improve water play to make it tolerable by more people.

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I think this is a good idea overall. I didnt put much thought into it, but is there a specific reason you think it has to be villagers to be garrisoned for it to shoot arrows? Why not fishing ships? As long the arrows are like you specified (bad damage vs ground units) then it should be fine. The fact that you have to retreat and stop the fishing should be enough, no? Also, i believe towers already fill the niche of water defence building that can be improved by garrisoning villagers.

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Malay Harbors would also need some tweaking I think, but yes, I generally agree.

I don’t play aoe, AOE2, or AOE2 ROR competitively, but I agree that I like TCs firing arrows.

I think over time more and more land concepts have migrated over to water and that’s improved water. The feudal unit triad, fish trap re-seed, even the dromon as a water mangonel is very interesting.

I’d also like to see water walls, gates, and towers, though I think those should be saved for castle and imperial age. If you dark age civilization can’t manage to build a stone wall on land, I don’t think they’d be able to figure out how to build a wall of any type at sea. So even if those were added I don’t think those would be available in dark age and fedual age, when TCs firing arrows is most helpful.

So yeah, docks garrisoning fishing boats and some arrow fire makes sense to me. The land game in AOE2 is great and the more features/concepts we can port over to water the better.

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Regarding Gurjaras bonus, i guess maybe give then the Teuton treatment then? I mean, more garrisoning space and more arrows as a consequence?
As for Malay, dunno what to do. One idea would be to make harbors be a new/separated building that costs stone. Then it could have much better stats.

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There are a few things to consider also.
Should the docks receive range upgrades from the blacksmith? My guess is probably not, so when you get to castle age, fully upgraded war galleys can outrange a dock, just like mangonels outrange TCs.
Also, should other ships also be able to shoot arrows? Probably not, because if, otherwise it would create this incentive to run away from fights to garrison your galleys.

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I know I brought up the harbor problem, but it might not be a problem actually. a dock would only fire arrows when garrisoning fishboats like a TC only fires arrows when villagers are garrisoned. harbors shoot arrows all the time. somewhat like the difference between a TC and a castle. Maybe that’d be enough of a difference. If it needs a buff give it one or two more arrows than it has currently.

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They do, but they are also expensive stone buildings, and generally aren’t good till you upgrade them and get heated shot. Like 5 fire ships will destroy everything you have even under a fully garrisoned tower.

There are a few maps with very tight waterways where fishing ship garrisoning would be far too powerful, I think. It would also be far too good in maps like nomad where the dock is far away from your TC. I want this to be something till early-mid castle age. After that, something else should be needed for defence, just like land. To be clear, docking fishing ships to fire arrows might be fine, but that’s too much of a change to evaluate right now, imo.

Yeah, I agree. Gurjaras can just get the teuton bonus. They could even get the bonus that fishing ships fire arrows instead of just vils.
Harbours fire arrows even without docking, so they have that. They could also get extra HP and more anti-ship damage.

This is the difficulty here tbh. There should be some way to take down docks in castle age, but galleys cannot outrange docks. That’s because that messes with the usual logic of AoE2. The range upgrade applies to all building and units, so it would be weird to make this an exception.

On the other hand, I don’t think this would be a huge issue as long as only garrisoned vils fire arrows. This is the point where you start moving to fish traps from deep fish. If you need to garrison vils to fire arrows, you’d need a lot of micro. You’ll have to move vils away from resources into docks and back. That is much harder than just garrisoning your fishing ships.

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I like both ideas, garrison of fishing ships and arrows from garrisoned docks. I don’t think villagers should be required for the arrows for 3 reasons:

  • Garrison limit would be complicated. Would villagers be unable to enter if 5 ships were already inside? Would there be a cap for vills and another for ships?
  • Villagers should not be able to hide from scouts/archers by jumping inside a dock. This would be too strong for lone fishing villagers.
  • Some maps will result in villagers far from docks, and make arrow defense impossible. The fishing ships idling is enough of a downside, so they should be able to fire arrows instead of needing vills.
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9

You forgot about TCs… their range are not increased by the blacksmith range upgrades. So, maybe docks should be the same way.

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Great work on the observation. I myself came to a similar conclusion. The worrying part is that after DE the new civs seem to make whole of AOE2 very snowballing. Comebacks are possible against only bottom tier civs like Bengalis, Scicilians, Dravidians and Vietnamese.
Yup! Agree that the Gujjaras bonus could become a regular feature for all civs. I would refrain from adding arrows to docks though.

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Hmm I think it’s unnecessary. You can build a tower next to your dock for a similar effect in the early game. One of the reasons aoe1 is so brutal in the early game, other than the mentioned shortcoming of the TC, is that the towers are also kinda useless early on since garrisoning villagers in them doesn’t shoot extra arrows and also you have to tech into the tower before you can even build it which takes additional time.

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This is simple enough, yes. 5 vils and 5 fishing ships. Just remember that it’s 10 eco units you are idling, and each minute of that costs you like 250 resources.

This is the only valid argument against the vil garrison I’ve seen. However, I think that the trade-off is worth it.

I hold the opposite opinion. I have explained why, in a comment above.

I thought ######### does increase the range of TCs. Bracer doesn’t, and not sure about bodkin.

Pardon me for the bluntness, but I don’t think you play many water games, because you have no idea about what you are talking about here.

Just as an example, can you tell me that last pro game you watched where one of them made a tower in the feudal exclusively for protecting fishing ships?

I have watched several dozen water games recently, and I can’t remember a single instance. Even one. The last time I tried this, I got destroyed, because a tower just doesn’t do enough to protect your ships. But more importantly, it’ll severely hurt your 3 TC boom. Meaning it is always better to make ships than to make even a single tower.

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None of them do. The only way to increase the TC range is to research Hill Forts as Lithuanians. The archer attack upgrades just increase the TC damage output, not the range.

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If you’re desperate to protect your fishing ships you can do it. If you are at a point where you have to “garrison” your fishing ships and rely on docks shooting arrows to protect your fishing ships then you’ve probably lost water anyway.

I think water should be kinda unforgiving and hard to control in a way that your land eco shouldn’t be.

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I think OP is saying thats the reason water meta is boring.

I would prefer if the dock HP was turned down to 1200 and docks garrisoned upto 5 fishing ships. You have enough time to put up towers and shoot down enemy ships from safety of shore. The opponent if he had scouted could tech into galleys to prevent that. This makes water a dynamic play like land.

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I hate water map but I force myself to play any kind of maps. So when I fall on a water map or hybryd I make fishing ships only to age up faster. Then when opponient war ships are coming, I stop make fishing ships and I go full land (and forget about water).

On Island it doesn’t work of course because too much water (I banned Island in rank) but on Nomad it works well. Opponent spend ressources to constrol water but I don’t care coz Im not in water and I destroy him on land.

Anyway, all this to tell that I would like to garnison my fishing ships in the early game. Excelent idea !

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No, maybe you’ve sent away your navy to raid. This happens far more often than opposite. You might have built 20 galleys, but they sneak in 5 fire ships while your navy is away.

Why? It leads to garbage gameplay. If you really believe this, take away the TC garrison and arrows. Why not, the exact same logic follows.

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It’s not the same logic cause you can still survive on land if u lose water.

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You need to play a ton of water. I’m not going to bother convincing you at this point, because it is clear that you don’t know what you are talking about. I’m not even talking about Elo or whatever, just play more water. Then you’ll know why most of what you’ve said so far is nonsense.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/158mae1/is_it_true_that_folks_dislike_water_maps/

People echo the same sentiments on reddit too. Just saying.

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