I think that’s difficult. When the one in the rock-paper-scissors is a self-destruct unit, the triangle relationship isn’t actually easy to balance. The melee ship represented by the Hulk has its own significance.
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Honestly, I’d still wish to see the flame-throwing ship not as a basic unit, but as something more special.
It could be available only to a few civs, such as the Byzantines and Chinese. It burns down any approaching ships — essentially the naval equivalent of the camel rider.
Its role within the triangle could perhaps be replaced by a ranged warship with slightly shorter range than the Galley, but with a faster rate of fire, and which still shoot arrows after upgrades.
I know this would be hard to pull off, but still.
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Other civs still deployed staff sling in warships to throw incendiaries on enemy warships. I think fire ship somewhat represent this.
Perhap a reskin is enough, a ship with two towers for archers as historically as it can be, with the animation being multitude of little arrows shot in a really close range, like the fireship range but instead of fire, arrows, that would make logical the hole “hulk>ranged warship>galley” thing
Very reasonable suggestion to minimize the number of icons. Will also make CG keep up with the new Dromon and the newest Lou Chuan as you will save some time from not researching the ECG upgrade. CG is already locked behind Chemistry unlike those 2.
Hulk? Except it fires hook instead of fire.
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I don’t get this part. Yeah the Dromon and Lou Chuan don’t require Chemistry so they have a huge advantage on timing, but what I’ve suggested is to make the Elite Cannon Galleon requires researching Heavy Warships first, not to make the upgrade become a part of Heavy Warships. It’s still need to be researched, so there should have nothing to do with saving time.
I mean, a ship with the range shorter than Galley line and longer than Hulk line, so that it can replace the current Fire ship.
Okay. I misunderstood. Now that will make them even weaker. They will be even more behind Dromon and Lou Chuan.
Yeah. Make hulk a 2.49 range ship.
In practical they won’t really delay since you’ll have Heavy Warships before Elite Cannon Galleon usually.
And still, we can ask the Dromon and Lou Chuan to require Heavy Warships too. They’re big vessels. That make sense too.
Sorry, do you mean to it or just get me wrong? The point there is to make the fire-throwing a special thing in the game as they were special in the real history, so I just mention a kind of arrow ship to take over the Fire ship’s role. That’s all. The range of Hulk is 1 in stats so it’s already shorter than the range of Fire ship and this arrow ship.
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Well i consider warcraft the frozen throne also as a very good game and has alot of cc and stun in game. I mostly am for things that are balanced and at least try to make sense.
I meant it. It is not official yet. So it may have 2.79 range when they become official. Anyway, I don’t think Fire Ship is going anywhere.
I like WarCraft III as well, but it’s a very different game, and features from it won’t necessarily translate well to AoE2. If I recall correctly, in WarCraft III the stun and CC effects are limited to hero abilities and spellcaster units that are comparatively weak, and almost always have a mana cost and cooldown. Also, military units are way tougher than those in AoE2 so can usually survive a stun, plus there’s counterplay in the form of dispelling, healing, and your own abilities. Thus such effects fit much more comfortably into WarCraft III than they would in AoE2 – and even so, they’re still often annoying to play against.
I really don’t think a stun effect would work well in AoE2. And the reason I’m being so insistent about this is that recently, AoE2 has gained all kinds of new mechanics – auras, weapon swaps, bleeding, life steal, etc. – none of which work well in the context of the game. It’s very plausible that the devs will implement a stun mechanic at some point, and I really don’t want that to happen.
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I’ve stated that I know it’s an unlikely dream.
I think this has always been a recurring topic and will keep coming up in the future. After all, a fire-throwing unit has a certain uniqueness to itself.
What if the Trade Cog could not only choose the gold-wood ratio, but also the gold-food ratio?
It should be quite unlikely but if also the gold-stone ratio (maybe with a exchange loss)?
The UI could be:
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 | Column 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% gold | ||||
| 75% gold : 25% wood | 50% gold : 50% wood | 25% gold : 75% wood | 100% wood | |
| 75% gold : 25% food | 50% gold : 50% food | 25% gold : 75% food | 100% food | |
| 75% gold : 10% stone | 50% gold : 20% stone | 25% gold : 30% stone | 40% stone |
And what if not only the Trade Cog but also the Trade Cart could choose the ratio of resource types it carrying?
That way, we can build a trade empire in the game by focusing on expanding trade and protecting trade routes, even without much space for farms or fish traps.
I partially agree. I think it should be possible to trade for Wood on land too. Wood can run out on land maps too.
But I don’t think we need to be able to trade for Food because we can simply use villagers to turn Wood into Food using farms.
Trading for Stone could also throw of the balance. Stone is the most limited resource on purpose. Stone is the resource that slows down the game. Stone means Castles, Walls and Towers, which are being used to prevent the enemy from winning but without really helping you win (You can’t Tower rush in Post Imperial). The market price of Stone only goes up indefinitely so it gets increasingly hard to build Castles over time so eventually the game will end.
I think it would be cool if they’d implement those features but they should be off by default and disabled in ranked, besides Wood trading on land, that’s fine.
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I agree with the following.
The wood trade for Trade Cog makes sense because water maps are boring and usually have way less wood than necessary due to all ships costing wood. Also trade cog is 10 times worse than trade cart as there will be multiple docks on the shore which trade cog will use as trade route. Even in pure water maps like Islands or Team Islands players still stick to market as trade cart is simply way better.
I agree the stone trade might be disabled by default.
But I would hope that food trade could be enabled by default. Maybe with some exchange loss, but still.
A Trade Cart costs 100 wood and 50 gold, so in the early game, having villagers farm is definitely better.
In the late game, you’d usually reduce the number of villagers to make room for military and trade units. Then, once your food starts running low, you can simply have the Trade Carts trade for food instead of spending more food and time training villagers and waiting for them to farm. Of course, players would also have to be more mindful of defending their trade routes.
In addition, many historical trading powers — such as the city-states of northern Italy and some in Central Asia and North Africa — were not large in territory and lacked extensive farmland, yet they were still able to sustain sizable populations through trade. Or imagine a medieval city or fortress whose food supply depends on carts transporting grain from the surrounding countryside. With the food trade, these can be reflected in the game.
I agree with alot of what you say, but I think those mechanics don’t fit because they make no sense. Bleeding should be done by all units, all elite units should have auras, life steal is for vampires, slow should affect all wounded units. But i get it these things on random special units actually don’t change the way you use them that is why they are just a gimmick you mostly don’t even notice. But the hulk would be a unit almost all factions would get and could be a counter to galleys with slow and high pierce armor. and boarding grappling hooks do make sense for me.
balance:
i would leave fire ships as they are now, soft counter to galleys in small numbers. But reduce their pierce armor as fast fire ships. and then make hulk ship to counter galleys but lose to a fire ship.
I have another idea based on your idea:
New unit Supply Cart:
- Allows to trade for Food/Wood
- You can set any ratio between Food and Wood
- Cost 100 Wood 100 Food
Normal Trade Carts can only trade for Gold.
This way you can’t easily switch from Gold to Food and Wood. Which would be too much of an advantage and make Trade Carts too flexible in my opinion.
For Stone: Ox Cart
- Half the speed of Trade Cart (0.625)
- Half the capacity of a Trade Cart
- Trades for Stone
- Cost 100 Wood 100 Food 100 Gold
More expensive and less efficient. Making Stone harder to get and Stone trade easier to intercept. Even with Caravan they only have 0.75 speed which is slower than any none siege military unit.
Do you think it’s fun to have your units killed?
I prefer a generic tech that allow relics to generate stone which cost no pop space
For the trade cogs why isn’t it just 100% Gold or 100% Wood (i don’t think stone is very important and just promotes longer game). I don’t understand why 25:75% or 50:50% exist when you could just use two buttons (100% wood or 100% gold) and achieve the same thing