If there was a fifth Age in Age of Empires 2. For simplicity sake let’s just call it Grand Imperial Age. Age up cost: 5000 gold and 3000 food. This would never be seen in 1v1 games or even team games in ranked. Only in scenarios with lots of resources and triggers.
What kind of technology would you like to see in the Grand Imperial Age?
I’ll start with one. Grand Champion. 1000 gold and 800 gold cost upgrade cost. Upgrade for champion, 30 extra hit points, 18, plus 4 over champion. Receive 25% less bonus damage. Can completely block 1 melee attack every 30 seconds. Is the Grand Champion upgrade to weak, should it be stronger?
Congratulations you are the millionth player suggesting a 5th age for AoE2!
Jokes aside. What is this suggestion really about? Just suggesting an entire Age to add another upgrade to the Milita Line and then giving all of it a super generic name?
You should check other threads and also think about your proposals a little longer before making yet another thread with a half baked suggestion. Not every suggestion needs it’s own thread, you created almost 400 topics in here already.
The logical move would be moving into the european 16th century, possibly early 17th given the climax that was the Thirty Years War. However, the war style changed considerably compared to medieval warfare, to the point it’s called a military revolution :
infantry became dominant thanks to the pike & shot which was devastating to cavalry (imagine charging a pike wall while some arquebusiers fire at you). Also cool zweihander troops with a glorious hat, as mad men who charged into pike ranks to deal massive damage and disrupt their formations.
this relegated cavalry who for a time switched to hit and run tactics with pistols instead of charges
even for ranged cav the trade was brutal, Muscovy managed to break the Tatar Yoke then conquer all Siberia up to the Pacific in 100 years.
artillery was progressively developped to be more mobile on the battlefield, with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden getting the right recipe with horse artillery.
rams mangonels and so on ? Forget about it unless you’re really desperate, it’s the age of various types of cannons
overall combat became more ranged. Armour became thicker against bullets but that meant sacrificing parts of it to keep the weight reasonable, usually keeping the arms & lower legs exposed to reinforce the breasplate and helmet
castle walls were made obsolete, star forts were designed for artillery
at sea, the line of battle got developped, once more to accomodate artillery, as opposed to boarding (which AOE2 is moving toward with the hulk)
did I mention the clothing & beards style of the time was absolutely glorious ?
So to portray it well it wouldn’t be “just keep the same units but buffed further” (as AOE2 already reaches peak medieval tech, stopping around 1500 in Europe) but a complete meta switch.
Too far of a departure for AOE2. An alternative mode such as Chronicles, sure why not and you could have fun with different religious denominations (EU5 pushed the calvinist concept of predestination to an insane degree), but it’s too radical for base AOE2, if you want to portray the period more accurately than just “boring buffs go BRRRR”. It was a blindspot for AOE3 who focused on the colonies and was a mess historically (getting both hussite chariots from the early 1400s and gatling guns from the 1860s in the later ages of the game…) so it would technically be new content, bridging the gap with Cossacks.
I mean, let us add flagpoles, statues, fountains, arches, marble/gold embellishments, cobblestone paths, decorative moats, waterfall features, reflection pools, flags on existing architecture, and such
There’s a mod that does something like this – see the thread here:
I haven’t played this mod and the description in the thread is not very clear – I think it originally had just an extra 5th age, but now 7 ages in total, with essentially no regard for historicity (e.g Bronze Age between Dark and Feudal Age). It seems to be roughly what the OP is suggesting, and if not, it at least demonstrates that something like this is possible with a mod.
If you care about ages representing historical periods, another option would be to split the Imperial Age in two. Since trebuchets don’t become available until Imperial Age, it ends up representing something like a 500 year period (whereas Castle Age is probably only about a 200 year period). Splitting it in two, with Imperial Age essentially as it is now but without gunpowder, and a fifth Gunpowder Age in which, say, castles become easier to take down and non-gunpowder siege weapons become obsolete, could make some historical sense without really stretching the timeframe.
On the other hand, it’s too radical a change to happen officially. It would have to be a mod, and some civs (e.g. those that currently get gunpowder early) would have to be substantially reworked.
Another thing AOE4 did quite well when it comes to authenticity. Non-gunpowder siege are all available in the castle age, while the imperial age unlocks gunpowder.
On the other hand for the trebuchet, there is no equivalent as extreme-range pure-siege weapon that has to be deployed, while the logical gunpowder equivalent would be a great bombard. Besides, the treb is unlocked earlier than gunpowder, immediately upon reaching castle age (assuming you have a castle, but chances are you do), while gunpowder units need chemistry which is quite slow to research.
Having an upgrade to the treb : siege bombard, for at least some civs may fix that. Some civs like the Turks having the great bombard, an even more outrageous one.
The exact time period may not be that wide for “normal” civs. Counterweight trebs were first used by the Byzantines during the First Crusade, I’m not sure how long it took for them to be adopted by other armies but it was by the time of the Third Crusade a century later. And the Byzantines hit their imperial age earlier while having lackluster gunpowder.
This is not really true anymore. Even ignoring unique units, only half of gunpowder units need chemistry. (Including unique units it’s less than a third of them.)