They could have…I dunno, gone with something more American for the 6 American civs?
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Agreed. That would still leave the Cumans needing a siege ship, though.
Also, there’s a problem with having a “Carrack” unit in game, not to mention looking like this stumpy monstrosity below…
…Namely, a classic AoK unit already looks very much like a carrack, with tall arching fore- and aftercastles. That is the Galleon.
4 Likes
I see it now. Yeah that’s not really what I was getting at. they made a couple tweaks, as I assumed they did. Foundational design choices that failed to achieve the stated results haven’t been addressed.
because dock techs are in the university, it’s a critical building to get, so everyone get’s it immediately, reducing viable strategies.
because all of the main unit lines are upgraded together, and cost similar resources, switching between units is extremely easy relative to land, reducing the strategic costs for picking unit on water.
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I HATE this metal thing. They could have designed a bigger forecastle!!
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As Careening and Dry Dock both add +1 pierce armor to ships, they can be moved to Blacksmith. University feels too crowded.
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university makes more sense to me, it’s not really armor, but what I do like about moving it to the blacksmith is now the university isn’t the be all end all of upgrading ships. Maybe that makes the university NOT and auto build on reaching castle.
Not only is it ugly, but it’s historically inaccurate too lol
I understand they wanted a melee ship, but the wider and more compact the sailing vessel was, the slower it was. That’s why longships and caravels are slender and long.
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If they had made it a new generic water combat ship with weaker anti building capabilities than cannon galleons it would have been fine, but this doesnt please anyone
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The cogs looked a bit goofy irl tbh
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Melee ship should be ramming enemy vessels, not throwing hooks at it 
I made a topic asking for an opt out to this stupid change:
keep commenting on it so it stay near the top in this forum
Finally a very bad rework
Very bad rework because some civilizations ((Vikings, Portuguese, Koreans) loose access to demolition ship because of the IU. We say them that it was possible to keep access to all the ships without changing the IU see below.
Also we must to go to another building (university) to research the naval technology.
Here a proposal to keep access to al the ship line and having all the naval technology in the dock :
Also the new Catapult Galleon only available to Aztecs, Cumans, Inca, and Maya is very bad because many other civilizations before gunpowder era can benefit from him, see the list here.
No new sail type for south asian civilizations and south american civilizations.
The good things :
Hulk line and Catapult Galleon are good. Trading for wood also. Garrisoning fishing ship is also good.
He may be better to merge the upgrade of the demolition ship line with the upgrade of the other ships line.
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- “Careening and Dry Dock tech icons didn’t make sense anymore”: they have now a new icon.
- “Demos were nerfed too much”: they made explosions “bigger”, but we don’t have the details yet.
- “Ships are now too fast when fully upgraded”: move speed when fully upgraded has been reduced.
- “Those changes are not enough to make water play more rewarding”: now there’s deep sea gold in the form of whales. They can be “whaled” by Fishing Ships (they turn into “Whaling Ships”).
- “American civs should have a siege ship without gunpowder, not Cannon Galleons”: Catapult Galleon introduced. As generic as Trebuchets. Not exciting, I’m afraid.
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exactly. all tweaks around the edges, but really don’t address the fundamental shortcomings.
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What are the main complaints not yet addressed?
I’m not sure if I’m getting the full picture:
- University have now too many Warship technologies. It already had 3 techs (Ballistics, Chemistry and Siege Engineers), while Blacksmith had 3: Fletching, Bodkin Arrow and Bracer. Now there’s 7 more techs at the University that improve Warships, for 10 in total. With the melee upgrades affecting the Hulk-line there’s 6 upgrades at the Blacksmith, but they don’t affect almost all of the Warships like Unique techs do.
- Hulk-line graphics are ugly, have too much metal parts, are too short or are not easily distinguishable from other ships in a big battle (I think that’s the more relevant point).
- Some civilizations lost access to Demos without an explanation, the only reason that is being inferred is the new UI limitation.
- Some civs have gained access to Fire Ship-line (this and the Demos deserve at least a Dev Note in the official patch notes).
- AoE2 shouldn’t get a naval rework. Well, most of the community is in favor of a naval rework, but not necessarily the changes previewed with Thalassocracy 2.
Overall, if I’m not missing a point, I think it’s very likely that the water rework will need multiple patches to be complete, similarly to the Infantry/Militia rework.
I would not be surprised if some techs were moved to other buildings (existing or new ones), some availabilities changed and some graphics tweaked in one or two years from now.
3 Likes
do we have data for that?
even if that were the case, it’s important to recognize that any vote that’s “status quo” vs “unspecified changes” is not a fair vote. eg the people whoa re in favour of a naval rework will want drastically different things. I’d be surprised if any specific rework would find more support than the status quo, let alone get a majority
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basically the stated goal was to make naval gameplay better, but there are two fundamental problems left unaddressed by the re-work.
Firstly, even assuming we have a proper water triangle and the newest tweaks to the hulk work, it doesn’t matter that much as switching between the ships isn’t difficult. all ships cost the same resources in similar ratios, benefit from largely the same techs, especially in the early game. Basically it’s not like scouts and archers. you can’t tech into one, without the strategic cost being you aren’t teched into the other. and even if do then re-tech, you’ll have to re-balance your economy.
Secondly, having so many naval techs at the university made it a must build first thing in castle age. so viable strategic options were limited.
so we have a triangle for which there is little cost for choosing or switching ships, and forces you into some specific strategic choices.
The whole point of the rework was that naval combat was not strategically interesting, but for the reasons laid out above, it’s still not strategically interesting.
Admittedly there is some good stuff here. It’s like if your car didn’t have an engine, and steering wheel, or wheels.
I absolutely appreciate that we have an engine now (a…hopefullly…functioning water triangle) but without a steering wheel or wheels, all the work to install the engine is pointless.
It almost seems like they intentionally tried to determine what would be the most work that they could do while still yielding the fewest results, and then did that.
But I mean, what could you expect from a rework where the most important consideration was UI.
3 Likes