iirc doesn’t the Chronicles fire ships lose to the Trireme-line as well? Like, completely the wrong end of the stick.
I partially agree on that, but I’m not sure reversing the Galley - Fire Galley relation that has been in this game since forever is a right choice.
Chronicles doesnt really have any fire ship to say. Rather it just throws a fireball and very slowly. Good against Siege ships mainly. Galleys simply gets bonus damage but not enough to kill it.
Fire Ships should’ve melee ship replacement for Byzantines, Saracens, Chinese, Koreans. Rest gets melee ships and in this case Hulk..
I agree that fire ships and demos are strange for most civs. So you prefer no new ship for dock? I think boarding ship is representative of most medieval water fighting.
The big difference is that the “Fire Ships” in Chronicles are weak trash units that attack much much slower then Fire Ships in AoE2.
For most of the AoE2 history the Galley Line effectively countered the Fire Ship, that only changed after African Kingdoms.
I agree. That would be the best solution, but that would require a 2nd new Ship. Something like a Mangonel/Onager ship.
My line up would be:
Dock:
- All current civilian ships
- Builder Ship
- Scout/Arrow Ship (trash, no Imperial Age upgrade)
Shipyard:
- Melee Ship (counters Mangonel Ship)
- Scorpion Ship (counters Melee, Arrow and Demo Ship)
- Mangonel/Onager Ship (counters Scorpion Ship)
- Demo Ship (counters Melee and Mangonel Ship)
- Cannon Galleon/Trebuchet Ship (counters Mangonel Ship and Buildings)
Regional Ships
- Fire Ship (replaces Melee Ship)
- Dromon (replaces Cannon Galleon/Trebuchet Ship)
- Canoe (replaces Arrow Ship)
- Rocket Ship (replaces Mangonel Ship)
- Hand Cannon Ship (additional Lategame Ship, attacks like Organ Gun)
So the ships would mainly be based on the existing Siege units:
- Ram
- Scorpion
- Mangonel
- Petard
- Bombard Cannon
- Trebuchet
Generally ships also get regional skins like a Junk for East Asia.
4 Likes
My idea
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Change the power balance: hulk (as cavalry) wins galley, galley (as archer) wins fire galley, fire galley (as infantry) wins hulk.
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Demo ship get more power as same as the today patch.
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Hulk-line attacks reduce from 5x3, 5x3, 5x3 to 5x1, 5x2, 5x3.
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Meso civs get the unlock technology for cannon galleon (because they would get that by stealing from invaders).
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Careening and Dry dock also give +1 melee armor for ships.
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Siphons is deleted (it can be some Byzantine unique tech, maybe).
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Incendiaries gives more power to demo ships (not fire galley).
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Circumnavigation for Portuguese gives only revealing map (deleting +33% training).
2 Likes
How about moving Clinker Construction and Carvel Hull to Blacksmith? It will free up some space in University and allow researching the speed upgrades without having to invest wood to build university.
2 Likes
How about removing Siphons and Incendiaries? Seems too much when the main reason for the water rework is not having a good counter to fire ship.
1 Like
The main reason for them is that the Fire Ships don’t benefit from Blacksmith upgrades while the Galley and Hulk line do.
That is at least my assumption for why they exist. They want to be able to give civs more differences in their navel compositions by being able to take away or give certain upgrades to them.
3 Likes
I haven’t watched any of the Thalassocracy games.
What are your thoughts on the rework? Do you think it’s working as intended, or does it still need some tweaks?
idk what the intetion behind it is.
Some people say to remove the Demos. But Demos are still there and maintain the volatile interaction with (now low-hp) land units. I did never see such a big issue in which they interact with the other naval units. Except for silician fleet demos, but that’s special to armenians.
I personally would like some changes to the ships interactins with timings, land units and buildings. For me this is currently not well designed and only leads to “mirroring” strategies. I would like to see counterstrats as they are possible on land combat.
I also think that - as the demo is still there - there is currently a missed opportunity to bring in “naval unit compositions” into the game. If demos would be tweaked accordingly we could get eg galleys + hulks vs fires + demos or something like this. Which in my opinion could make naval battles much more interesting.
2 Likes
Now that you mentioned this, it would be nice to get a ship that reduce the enemy damage, similar to the hussite wagon but for water, something like this would introduce more complexity to the water bringing naval unit composition to the battles.
I tried to elaborate a concept for new Water balance that I think could lead to interesting dynamics. At first I want only to post how the goal of this concept is to achieve in balance and not how to practically achieve that. I think this is generally more important.
Especially as this is just an example of how I could imagine new water balance to look like. I don’t need it to be exactly like that - I only want to give an example of one that I think could work out to get interesting dynamics in practical games.
Counter Wheel
Galley>>Demo>>Hulk>>Fire>>Galley
Galley>Hulk
Fire>Demo
Speed
Demo, Hulk>Fire>Galley
(Start with Hulk>Demo,Fire,Galley in Feudal)
Stone Defences
Fire>Demo>Hulk>Galley
Other Buildings
Hulk>Galley>Fire>Demo
Ranged Land Units
Galley>Fire>Demo>Hulk
Melee Land Units
Demo>Hulk>Galley>Fire
Raiding
Hulk>Demo>Galley>Fire
Timings
Feudal
Hulk>Demo>Galley>Fire
Castle
Demo>Hulk>Fire>Galley
Imperial
Fire>Galley>Demo>Hulk
Lategame
Galley>Fire>Hulk>Demo
American Petards: “Am I a joke to you?”
2 Likes
These are supposed to be sappers.
I think it’s a translation error. They meant to be called Pete Davidsard.
And instead of walls they break people.
They should use the opportunity of this rework to add ship destruction animations for all the ships that don’t have them. Sort this out once and for all.
5 Likes
A simple counter dynamic. In this case the chair is sitting on 4 legs. The Demos are the main counters against the Hulks, but both Hulks and Demos only counter one unit, which should help establish that the more general choices are fires and galleys. And Hulks and Demos should complement them in the two basic army “comps” of Galley + Hulk and Fire + Demo.
It’s important that the less ranged units get higher speed. Similar to the interaction between archers and Knights this allows using the mobility as a form of counter. It’s even imaginable that Hulks stay ahead in speed over demos at all stages of the game, but I think at later stages whoever is using hulks should also have galleys and therefore doesn’t need to run away the hulks to “survive” them.
This is mostly already achieved by giving the Fires good Pierce and [ship class] armor, So the stone defences do way less damage to them. Demos could receive special anti-stone defence damage, making them “weaker” petards on water.
An Important tweak here. The Hulks should be able to erase docks (and especially fish traps) in short time. They are the primary raiding units - but currently you can just hide the fish in the docks and even shoot the hulks that have less pierce armor than other naval units. And have to come close to attack.
So with this tweak hulks can do that job better, also forcing the opponent to actually get a real defence up (when you make enough of them they can destoy the docks).
Also important to differntiate here. The Galley line is one to lay on the shore, Fires at least can tank a lot of ranged damage (with their armor). Demos and Hulks can actually “fight” melee land units (the others die to them), but those two need to be careful against ranged attacks and utilize their mobility to dodge them.
For me it’s important that we have an interactive balance between land and naval units, depending on the dispersion of shoals. If the map is an entire shoal, ships need to be manouvered very carefully to avoid being killed by the land armies.
To set an order for “dealing eco damage” rather than trying to engage with the opponent armies. This order is actually quite the inverse of what effective power level the ships will be seen as in fighting other ships. Which is an important aspect, as you then have to make a decision whether you want to try kill the enemy navy or just deal damage to their eco - and depending on that choice would prferrrably opt for one or the other unit.
Also one aspect. Each ship class gets their specificy timings where they are the “strongest”. Ofc we still should have the counter wheel and some of the timings are possibly the easiest to achieve via making specific techs for these ships the cheapest. I also intentionally kept the “fast fire powerspike” as it is so iconic for water balance. And Hulks now are the most desirable in the early game, but falling off a bit in early castle and imp. Demos only get one good powerspike in early castle age, so their powerspike isn’t long-lasting, allowing other ship classes to retake water control later on again.
This ofc would need several tweaks to ships. Including to re-establish different armor classes for the ships again, so they all can receive the amounts of bonus damage that are intended against them. And I don’t think it’s an issue to have these armor classes there. It’s only important to communicate which ships should counter what others. And the other interactions as listed above. And let people figure out the specifics on their own, though it should be helpful if they would be kind of consistant. So Galleys should be able to deal with basically all archery type units and die to melee ones (when attacked). What would be confusing if ships eg died to camels but kill knights or whatever, this could indeed lead to confusion within the community.
The biggest change in terms of the balance wheel is probably that here fires are “semi-countering” demos. This is an important change though and can possibly be achieved by giving fires a charge attack from the getgo, that deals especially bonus damage against the demos. And this is ofc necessary to establish the fires as one of the two “main power” unit lines in naval battle. But also should be explainable that the burn from the fires can ignite the explosives so the demos explode before they can engage. Ofc if the demos are in high enough numbers, the fires could get in troubke because they couldn’t explode all of them in safe distance.
But demos would be established as the main counter against the hulks, which in theory are also countered by galleys - but this would be more of a “soft counter” and depending way more on numbers. (Hulks could be made “stackable” similar to steppe lancers, which would allow them to be used in micro-intensive battels even against galleys. But also make them even more vulnerable to demos.)