I don’t understand why the 1st row cannot just be the same as before, and the 2nd row simply a copy of the 1st row from previous 2nd page? The layout change means default grid hotkeys are also changed, and requires either adapting to new hotkeys or keeping old hotkeys and overcoming the anti-intuition of UI-hotkey mismatch. I hate this change.
American civs getting cannon galleons
They 100% should get something equivalent, like a reskin that throws rocks maybe. But giving them straight gunpowder? This breaks immersion too much.
Overlapping demo ships with UU ships
It’s funny this is a balance change that’s a result of UI design, rather than balance reasons. By moving certain techs into university, they barely squeezed everything into 1 page, but still having to overlap these 2 ships. Not saying this is necessarily a problem, because we had Koreans having no demo and it was fine. Just a bit sad to see demo playing a much more insignificant role now.
Instead of removing Demo ship access from civs with UU ships (which doesn’t seem to include Dravidians), I wish they added one more row or column to the UI
Also make a regional Cannon Galleon variant to NA civs instead of giving the regular one.
Honestly they should just keep the techs at the dock but put them on the second page. You only ever have to research the techs once so its fine to put them on the second page and navigate there just for pressing the key once but keep all the production on the first page.
There are still some technologies on the Dock they could all be moved to the 2nd page.
I mean the overall best solution would be to rework the UI to just have a separate units and technologies section that are displayed at the same time for all buildings, that would help other crowded buildings like the Castle or Archery Range. Monitors are big enough for that and they are certainly enough keys on the keyboard for hotkeys.
Give the Portuguese Fast Fire Ships, free Chemistry, Artillery, Gold Shaft Mining, +50% HP for gunpowder units, +25% HP for all other ships, Hoardings, Heavy Cavalry Archer, Sipahi, Hussar, and Siege Ram.
It’s funny this is a balance change that’s a result of UI design, rather than balance reasons. By moving certain techs into university, they barely squeezed everything into 1 page, but still having to overlap these 2 ships. Not saying this is necessarily a problem, because we had Koreans having no demo and it was fine. Just a bit sad to see demo playing a much more insignificant role now.
I think it’s bad. The best thing is to add a 6 th column in the windows
Another idea is to keep the red arrow and put the naval technology in a second page because building an university to search dock technology is not the best thing. I prefer to search all the naval technology in the dock.
There was the same problem in AoE1 we can have either catapult ship or incendiary galley, they fix this in AoE2 in the dock with the addition of the red arrow. Please no revert this change after 26 years.
Also there is the problem of having more and more regional units, because there is overlapping in all technology tree mode. With a 6 th column or a red arrow we can have more technology and units in a building.
Because there is more and more regional units there is overlapping buttons. In all technology mode we don’t have access to fire lancer (hidden behind eagle warrior button, heavy fire lancer upgrade available after researching elite eagle warrior upgrade), hei guang cavalry (hidden behind knight button, heavy hei guang cavalry upgrade available after researching paladin upgrade), rocket cart (hidden behind mangonel button, heavy rocket cart upgrade available after researching siege onager upgrade), we loose access to traction trebuchet after researching chemistery. We have no access to Lou chuan.
Conclusion
Please keep the access to all the ship lines, we are not in 1999 with little 4x3 15 inches screen, now in 2025 we have all 16x9 screen.
Just add more columns or keep the red arrow. Put all the naval technology in the dock.
