Gunpowder units general rework ideas. (Devs pls read this :'/)

When ‘‘gunpowder’’ is said first civs that come to mind is ‘Spanish,Turks,Portuguese and maybe italians’’ all of which has many 1v1 problems.I will not talk about buffing these civs. I will talk about general Gunpowder problems.

Bombard Towers
-İssue : Rarely used and animation and effect is so weird.it is totally absurd for Bombard tower to need 175 shot to destroy single wooden battering ram…And cannon ball speed is also so stupidly slow.I can understand balance reasons but it is so weird to me that watch towers can destroy rams more easyly then bombard towers…(Arrows are faster)
-Solution: Lets change Bombard towers attack type in to melee and lower base attack to 30 or 35 inrease projectile speed equal to BBC also add small blast radius then increase the gold cost for balance. (i tested it in editor results are perfect)

Cannon Galleons
-issue: Cannon balls are so slow pains my eyes.İts nearly impossible to hit anything rather then building.Even if it hits effect is unbelievably bad.
-Solution: Just increase projectile speed according to BBC and add some small blast radius then increase unit cost for balance reasons.

Hand Cannoeers,Jannissaries,Organ guns and Conqustadors

-issue: Their main goal is to counter infantry and they do it with not much trouble (while jannissaries can’t do it like HC’s but they are stronger against other units so its ok and well design.)Arbalesters are quite more effective against infantries. Also arbalest counters Jans and HC’s against Siege rams again Arbalests are much more effective (faster fire rate).Hand Cannon Projectiles are way slower then arrows which is really weird.while Jans and Conqs do very well in castle age theh fell in to very bad position in late game.HC’s are nearly unseen in game after all.(only arena fast imp Turks or sometimes against Huskarls and EW)

Solution: İncrease Projectile Speed equal to arrow speed.Add HC,Organ Guns and Elite Jannissaries +1 base PA.
Or add some upgrades that affect Gunpowder Based Units.
-New Tech Professional Gunners(Univercity) : Gunpowder Units have +2 base attack or/and +1 range (+5 for BBC,BBT range is not applied)
and Cannon Galleons) Avaliable for Turks,Spanish,İtalians,Portuguese,Franks,Teutons,İndians
-New Tech Elite BBC (siege ws) : Allows Elite version of BBC to be created.Which have +10HP +5 Base attack +75 building attack bonus +1 range available for :Turks,Spanish,Portoguese,İtalians,Teutons

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This was done because BBT being able to one shot rams in AoK made them way too hard to destroy.

They do so well in castle age they just can’t remain as good in the late game. And heck if you manage to keep a big mass of jannis or conqs alive when you reach imp it is often worth buying the elite upgrade and keeping producing them

BBC are already a very good unit right of the bat I don’t think any civ needs elite BBC.

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I rarely use much gundpowder, but have really been getting into the Burgs and noticed after massing HC for a defense, that they do ■■■■ squat against rams. I don’t seem to recall it being that way in AoC days (I’m guessing they changed it somewhere along the line?)

Hmm I think changing the BBT that drastically is probably not a good idea. If BBT feels underwhelming against Siege Ram, well, Siege ram is meant to destroy stone defenses, so in some ways it makes sense that the BBT sucks against it. But maybe a small bonus dmg versus siege could make it feel less awkward.

they have not had any changes. they have +2 vs rams making them better then archers vs rams but not by much thanks to the low fire rate

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Capped and siege rams get a small protection against anti-ram damage, so hand cannons and the like aren’t actually good against those. However trebuchets do get the ram armour class without having any protection so HC end up being better against those than normal archers.

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And burgundians. BBC with pseudo siege engineers is not a joke.

You forgot organ gun.

On a side note, this would be interesting to test with koreans (their HC are automatically FU)

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Yea i know that it was made them op but 30 melee attack with very slow rate of fire would balance it complately so they will be harder to destroy with using only 1 ram and they will deal more constany defance against other land units.BBT needs to be far more better option of Keeps.Otherwise it wont do any role in game (rather then island maps)

i agree with you for castle age…at 3rd age They are quite good units but not better than mangudai’s or plumed archers or huskarls…For example elite jans are real garbage unit in imp age because allmost all units are hard counter to them.Elite Skirms erase jans,Arbalest even in smaller number erase jans,Paladins eating Jans so ez 20 paladin wreck 40 jans in just seconds,cavaliers are eating them also, hussars are big trouble,onagers are wrecking them,their low accuracy disables them to snipe some important single units,BBC’s eating them,scorps eating them,Cav archers are erasing them also they cant kill infantry units like arbalest can do …Which means they have no place for imp age.İts little bit absurd.Also Conqs are suffering at imp age maybe not as jans suffer but still they suffer with low range.

yea they are good.But Cavaliers are very decent units while we have paladins which are exactly far better.Onagers are good units but some civs have Siege onagers which is DEADLY with celts and mongols. An Expensive upgrade like (1000 food 600 gold ) can balance this idea and give something exciting to game athmosphere.

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Revamping and introducing entire units is a bit overkill I think.

For bombard towers take advantage of the ram armor class. It’s a little tricky picking a number because you have to consider what happens when the rams hit a stone wall in front of the tower. Some rough calculations show 8-12 ram damage seems like a reasonable starting place. It’s large enough that it requires upgrading rams to capped rams but small enough that capped rams do pretty well even if they have to go through walls. Seige rams would take 6-10 damage and still take a long time to kill. Keep in mind you have to worry about balance of grouped up towers vs rams. 30 melee damage means seige rams get two-shot by 5 towers. Put a wall in front of them and you’re going to need trebs.

For hand cannons, jannisaries, organ guns, conqs they are good units which can each be modified on their own. Don’t really need new techs. For hand cannons especially one thing that would buff them is a shorter training time. You’d probably see them a lot more if their training time was like 20s instead of 34s. After all the point of gunpowder was it doesn’t require a lot of training to use. This affects fast imp though, so would definitely need testing.

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They need to give bombard towards a minimum range so they can’t shoot at their base. That way any rams that get to the base can go to work on them.

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I absolutely agree.

Also agree on this one. BBT definitely needs another counter besides BBC and Trebs.

My suggestion would be to give BBTs a small bonus vs Rams. Something like +4 to +8 maybe. They would still be hardcountered by Rams but at the same time one single Battering Ram would no longer be able to easily destroy 5 BBT.

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Overall, the cannon units, bbc, bbt, cannon galleon are way too accurate at long range. A civ without them is almost guaranteed to lose a treb war, or any kind of black forest wall siege simply because the BBC is so damn accurate. Ive seen people use them to kill individual archers and such with devastating results. Also while minimal the splash damage should not exist at all, this was before the era of explosive shells and the cannon balls would simply inflict INSANE damage but only along a very singular trajectory.

Also i was reading about early bombards and they were basically used like a ram, they would get right up to a target wall or gate and blow a hole through it.

Just thought of something, enemy is close = trajectory lower, maybe the cannons could bounce once or twice if the ground is level enough.

Also a scorpion like pass through attack would be more realistic.

I would say adjustments should be BBC, BBT, ECG at long range = innacurate, but hand cannons at close range = more accurate.

Oh for sure, and it makes no sense, what are they hanging out the little window holding a cannon and shooting straight down? Murderer holes should have no effect here. That would balance them against rams if they did more damage at range, but could do nothing once they got underneath.

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Yea, its just silly. They should also give them splash damage against friendly units so you can’t cheat it by putting a few next to each other to cover each other’s blind spots. That way if your own friendly bombard tower shoots at the base of your other tower then it should take damage. Similar to catapults.

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Yes honestly it makes more sense for the cannon based weapons to act like the current scorpions than the actual scorpions. Scorpions should shoot up in an arch like a bow. They are not fuel propelled missiles to just fly forward in a straight line as they do in the game.

Also while on this topic, how the hell do they just shoot through walls lol?

I agree woth buffing BBTs a bit. Currently, habing BBT in the tech tree means nothing unless the civ has especific bonuses for them (portuguese and turks).

Even koreans that have BBT for free and a stone bonus dont use them. This is because BBTs are overshadowed by castles in defense power.

And better not talking about other civs. Vietnamese BBT? Why should I make one of them when they lack masonry and architecture? They seem been made of paper!

Maybe instead of tweaking damage they could tweak range or rate of fire. But only a bit! We dont need a BBT meta.

This wouldnt solve the mass BBT issue. BBTs still can fire to protect their neighboor fellows.

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Gotta love how the thread went full 180°, from “pls buff” to “pls nurf” 11

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… are meant to be countered by siege ram. Why change that?

… are meant to be trash against anything but buildings. Btw they just got that buff by removing the tech lock.

These are among the best units in castle age for 1tc pushes and are super effective as long as your opponent can’t mass army. They can get pretty ineffective once players have a lot of eco and military but since they work great in low numbers that’s quite balanced imo.

They have their uses outside of what you mentioned. Btw on arena they are more common in other scenarios than fast imp. This trend seems to be not that popular anymore (that’s my impression at least). HC are quick to get to after you have chemistry and don’t really require upgrades. Sometimes they can really save your position. However, …

… ideas like this have been discussed before and I kind of sympathize with these. I’d make it a hc-only tech like parthian tactics for ca and don’t give it to all the civs but gunpowder focused civs could get (like the ones you mentioned + maybe some more). Imo the tech should mainly improve on stuff like frame delay, firing rate or accuracy to make it easier to use vs non-infantry units.

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Stoped here. So that you know, Bombard towers were killing rams easy in aoe 2 the conquerors v1.0; the mass BBT camp fest was terrific. This needed balance, now rams counter BBT, thats actually fine.

Dude u are taking things so BLANTLY generally…I want you to think little more smoother.

İ didnt say BBT’s are going to wreck siege rams.But its absurd for BBT (very expensive defansive structure) not being able to destroy single ram after 274 bombardment shots (which takes hours maybe xD) Your approach is like if skirmisher is counter the archers then skirmshers may tank 90000000 arrows from archer while being able to kill 1000 archer with single shot because it meant to be counter ?! This kinda abpproach breaks the game both mechanically and in balance reasons.
İf u read my proposal i said lowering their base dmg from 120 to 30-35 what it means for you ?And change it to melee type it means still BBT needs nealry 10 shot to kill 1 siege ram.Also BBT are not good against other units as it has so damn low ROF while mostly overkills some other units if it can hit ofc generally it wont.So my proposal aimed to change BBT to more viable defansive option as it can now hit units as it would have more projectile speed and also it wont over kill with 120+4 weird attack now with 30 or 35 but with little blast radius.I just tested in editor results are very satisfying.

again same approach…If its against buildings then leave to be garbage against everything else…I dont want Cannon galleons to be fierece force in game.I just want its projectile to be faster and little blast radius so it will be more sensible.After all u wont use Cannon Galleons against fireships or galleys but now it would be bit more logical.

u said they are amogst the best units which is arguable ofc. Then which one is the best ones ? Mangudais ? Plumed archers ? Longbows ? tell me which of these superior units i counted fell so hard in imp age ? Short answer is none of them . Then why Jans,organ guns or conqs must suck so damn hard at 4th age ??? Also its not some reliable option to go 1 TC unique unit push outside arena …At least in pro games.These units needs to be decent at 4th age too.No matter the odds.Also portuguese and Turks have not much option rather then Gunpowder units in imp age .For example Mangudais work in low numbers also in high numbers in every era even against paladins or siege everything … Lonbows works perfectly in allmost all circumstances not going to talk about Plumed or Camel Archers etc…Rather then spanish,Turks , portuguese generally lack of decent imp army composition just because gunpowder units are fell behind mediaval units in both strike force and sustainablety.They got quiete low pick rate and win rate in +1650 elos
https://aoestats.io/civ/Turks/RM_1v1/1650+

Sometimes…thats what i really want to tell you at all…Just sometimes…Lets make this units for bit more decent .I dont want them to be OP at all.

yea that could work little bit.But these techs at least to be applied to Conqs and Jans as well.

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