Since some time I think about conceptional ideas how the early to midgame could offer more strategic choices.
We have figured out the “meta” and it becomes more and more appearant that the timing advantages are so overwhealming you HAVE to play around them and there is basically no strategic ouplay potential (situational) by staying longer in dark or feudal age. Mainly because the potential economic gains can’t outweight the benefit of just having the higher numbers and timing with your initial rush.
Whilst I’m ok with dark age, as it doesn’t offers much to play with anyways, the issue in feudal is, that despite having several strategic options all of them are necessarily built for the same basic concept: Damage the opponent before he can, force him to deal with the military at his base. Use this to built up your farming eco and go up to Castle age asap. Potentially add skirms/spears or scouts as much as you need to survive.
Whilst we have now a good variety of units/openers, they all have the same strategic concept. There is no strategic outplay potential, especially when you are the one “behind” already. The other way around is hard to tell, but it seems everybody choses to take the advantage they got and just roll with it in the meta gameplan. It seems to be gnerally acknowledged as the best way to “snowball” the early lead.
So here’s my idea. Every Civ gets access to additional Feudal TCs. BUT the Feudal extra TCs are more expensive. Precisely: 75 % more expensive: 480 W, 175 S. Only exceptions are the Civ inherent bonusses, like Britons (debatable, potentially just 35 % cheaper), Incas or Bulgarians. The Cumans Feudal TCs though remain as they are. Same Cost, but longer to build.
I also would star with only allowing a second TC in feudal. But if it shows necessary even limitless.
This would at least open a potential strategic outplay in Feudal with adding eco then, potentially getting that eco lead over an opponent who is a bit too greedy with his Castle age. Or other strats.
It is worth to mention with this high cost most CIvs wouldn’t be able to place a TC right after reaching feudal with a tight Dark Age build. Which is absolutely intended as contrast to the Cuman TC, which allows this play. So cumans can keep their special feature and we don’t make all civs just like Cumans. The other feudal TCs are there for a later addition in mid feudal, not necessarily for a full feudal boom. Ofc there would be some exceptions like Dravidians which could use their extra 200 W to immediately place that second TC pretty much like Cumans. But it would also be more risky as Dravidians don’t have the cheaper production buildings and would need more Stone to add a tower in case the opponent pressures.
I prefer testing with any siege option in feudal and/or buffing MAA with arson moved to feudal.
Or another idea, add a proto castle that cost 300 stone, only shoot arrows when garrison (like fortified churchs) and you can upgrade it to castle with a 350 stone cost.
I wonder what would happen if you could just build more TCs and Rams in Feudal Age for everyone.
No increased cost, no increased build time.
Maybe lock it behind a building like the Market to delay the 2nd TC a little.
Like how would the Meta change?
It could increase strategic flexibility and make Feudal Age a lot more interesting that it is now.
It would allow to choose between Fast Castle, Feudal Age Aggression or Feudal Age Booming.
TC drops might be a little too strong in Feudal Age though.
First, you’re absolutely right that the extra TCs isn’t the only option to increase the strategical variety.
Any type of advantage can theoretically make it and it’s mostly a matter of preference which we want to chose.
Ofc every has it’s positives and negatives also.
I’m not so sure if this concept will work for the intended purpose.
I’m totally for buffing infantry in late feudal, but here I see the issue that MAA is already a solid opener. I think when going this route we will necessarily run into the issue that many “fast” civs will open then mostly with MAA as they could then upgrade them and use them to get even more ashead.
What would work is a new Infantry unit with high pierce armor and Bonus against Cavalry that requires a tech to research first. It would be quite Gold intensive. With a good numbers advantage this could potentially be used to go forward against Knights and Xbows and try to bring the aggression to the opponent, in an attempt to turn it around.
Siege isn’t a good idea to solve this imo. Because for me it’s pretty clear it would be almost exclusively used by the one already ahead to further ######## that advantage. Interesting idea, but I don’t see it tbh.
Then I prefer looking into Towers and think how they could be tweaked better.
I didn’t wanted to go that far, cause for me it poses a potential threat for a complete meta shift. I wanted to start on the “safe side” and then potentially incrementally go to the “sweet spot”.
But for sure it can also be an option to do it the other way around.
Why is everyone always trying to reinvent the wheel? This game’s fundamental gameplay has not changed for over 20 years, only receiving quality-of-life and balance changes, and it’s been popular and fun all this time. Changing the core mechanics drastically would change the game as we know it completely.
Well that is what I’m curious about.
Would be cool if we could make a trail run for it somehow.
It could be made into a mod relatively easily I guess, but would there be enough people with high enough skill to try it.
I mean it would mean a potentially massive Meta shift and it would certainly make some civ bonuses suddenly a lot better or worse then now.
Like having +200 Wood in Feudal could be a big advantage or maybe not.
Maybe one thing they could do is make it a lobby setting as a test run.
TC unlock in Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age or even never.
One interesting setting could be 1 TC per Age:
Dark Age: 1
Feudal Age: 2
Castle Age: 3
Imperial Age: Infinite
That would make the growth more spread out between ages and not as much booming in Castle Age. Currently it’s not uncommon to immediately build 2-3 TCs in Castle Age.
AoE1/RoR is a lot worse in that regard though since TCs are so cheap that people basically spam them in Bronze Age.
I actually like the infinite TCs in Castle age. It’s an interesting choice you have to try overboom your opponent who’s on a Fimp build. It just seems that some civs like Vikings can get very competitive Imp times with the standard 3 TC builds, so it’s atm not even a very compelling concept.
Also some time ago I calculated that it doesn’t even make sense to go over 5 TCs in Castle age whith a 200 Pop limit. The 6 TC would only be valueable when you have to make extra Villagers cause you lose a lot to raids. But in this case it’s almost always better to do something against the raids like walling off or Castles. (Exception are lategame Elephant builds, where you intentionally overboom to like 160-170 vills)
What I would actually like to see, bringing down the amount of extra Tcs you can build in Castle age without stone mining to just one. The 3 TC builds have a lot of practical adantages already and don’t need to be encouraged by the starting res. 2 TC builds on the other hand have a lot of disadvantages as they are “in between” the all-in military and the optimized balance with 3 TCs.
With this change the concept of outbooming the opponent in castle age who tries to go for the imp advantage would be a more interesting strategic choice, albeit probably with like 4-5 TCs and not 5+ as it needs to be atm as against 3 TCs being just on 4 doesn’t give you enough eco advantage for a castle vs imp play.
In a different thread I think I made a suggestion to increase the stone cost of TCs in an exchange for better protection (more garrison space) for Tcs and Towers. This would naturally lead to less TC additions in the core meta.
AbuzzJam4677680
I think Cumans is currently getting punished if build 2nd TC in feudal age with early aggression. No need to punish Cumans further.
What? Its extremely hard to punish cuman boom with a proper map.
2 TC play is situational for Cumans and you shouldn’t try it on a map that is hardly wallable or has exposed resources.
I think he tries to refer to that other civs could then match the cuman Boom on these maps.
I’m not entirely sure if this is true, but there are definitely civs that have some potentil there.
But the point seems quite constructed to me. The Cuman boom is still one of the maor imbalances in the game, it’s so powerful that it forces the Opponent to become aggreissve, which is in my opinion not a good design. At this earrly stage there shouldn’t one specific play available to only one single civ have such an impact on the strategic choices of the opponent.
And ofc there is always also the possibility to adjust the Cuman TC again and make it built faster, so Cumans maintain an advantage on these Maps, but the other civs would come a bit closer.
I said with early aggression, so this comes with the assumption in maps with early aggression. Punish further as the poster proposed to even further lengthen the construction time of 2nd TC for Cumans.
And fish in general is no alternative for that concept.
@Biz5985 have you ever thought why I specifically place it in feudal age and also increase the cost of the TC to 480/175?
It’s actually very well explained in the very first post. It’s called balance. I want to make it a situationoal play, a different strategic option to at least have one there cause atm there is no alternative to the meta gameplay that is even losely competitive.
When there is fish you basically HAVE to take it cause it is so extremely snowbally. Even in BF we see fish added in the ponds, and that’s so much more expensive with the needed fish traps.
And as @NastyHigh already said. Most water / hybrid maps don’t offer more strategic variety than the land maps. And a big reason for that is the super valueable fish and the snowball you can get with winning that. It’s challeniging, cause there is way more to do on especially hybrid water maps (why the very best pros love them, cause they can show there how good they are mechanically). But these maps don’t offer more strategic variety, actually right the opposite.
Though I have to say, that @Martinurello made me think about the idea of using eco for this. In general we have atm the concept: When you’re behind, you try to get aggressive to get a comeback. Which leads to dynamic gameplay, as it’s also usually better for the player who’s ahead to take the lead and convert it to an economic advantage.
The issue with that here is the practical application, as naturally you can’t really fight against the tech advantage (except you have much higher numbers, but for them you again would need an economic advantage). Also I think at this stage it would be fine if this tendency was reversed. It’s only in that transitioning phase to castle age and wouldn’t change that dynamic in the continuation of the game.
But when somebody has an interesting military concept I would be eager to hear about it.
The difference I find between Feudal Age vs Castle age and Caslte Age vs Imperial age is that at least, in the last scenario you still have siege. In feudal you haven’t nothing to keep pushing with, and times are fixed.
Another idea that comes to my mind is think a mechanic that let you sacrifie something in order to make the age researching faster. Like in Aoe4 where you can use more or less vils to build the landmarks.
I proposed in another thread this as a bonus. But could be applied to all civs:
What if during age transition, each vil garrisoned in TC make it work 3% faster. This mean that with a full garrisoned TC you would reach castle age, in 88 sec.