The naval rework improved things very much. But mostly only in feudal and castle. It all goes to poop in imperial. The player with the most cannon ships wins which is a little boring. The springald ships become the only unit in the game that become obsolete in imperial. Furthermore, it seems the research for the bottom left six techs (arrow column, springald column, and demo column) don’t get used much because if you hold out for imperial you just get cannon ships. i.e. it is rock paper scissors lava.
(1) How about Springald ships beat cannon ships instead of the other way around. Just like horses/archers/pikemen simply evolves into a more complicated cycle with trebs against buildings and springalds against trebs, and horsemen against both, etc… Currently, the dynamic of cannon ships and buildings and the shore is perfect. Nothing more satisfying than floating on the river blowing up peasants, knights, mills, fishing ships. But if this is a bombing run, the bomber should be escorted by fighter jets, or cruisers escorting a carrier. e.g. you would protect 2 cannon ships with maybe 3 springald ships. You would make a handful of springald ships specifically to hunt more expensive cannon ships (in addition to demo boats). Finally, since springalds beat bombards on land, they should on water too. Furthermore, on land, bombards don’t make springalds obsolete.
(2) Demo ships need some work. They don’t seem to auto attack, but rather you have to hit Q to detonate.
(2a) At least change the grid hotkey because if you select with springald ships, Q is also Man-the-Sails and Q will prevent your springald ships from being able to attack!
(2b) One thought is perhaps people don’t like suicide units like the petards in AoE2. You could switch all the demo boats to fire boats though I suppose that would be weird.
(2c) Preferably, what I think everyone would appreciate is to have them auto-attack like an archer. If they see within their line of sight a warship or springald ship (broadsides), they automatically rush up and when the target is within the inner radius, it automatically detonates. No need to micro this too much, and they won’t auto blow up fishing ships, just broadsides. *** Very important is that only enough demo ships (2-3) should detonate as needed.
(2d) Finally, one awesome idea came from those torpedo drones they have in Ukraine. Perhaps have demo boats be STEALTH like the mustafadi! e.g. Imagine all of a sudden your cannon ships and springald ships just explode. You would be very paranoid. And of course you would protect them with a few arrow ships which would defeat the stealth like scouts and mustafadi. And then the other guy would try to use springald ships to take out the arrow ships and then send in demo in the darkness to take out the expensive broadsides. But you would expect this so if all your arrow ships get wrecked, you high tail out of there, etc… It is just a few tweaks from being perfectly balanced like on land.
*** Note that perhaps the Russian/Malian boats could cost between the springald and cannon and be both, shooting one cannon and one springald. I think right now they just transform into cannon ships but count as springald ships?
(3) The Galleas is confusing. Perhaps just have it instead of the hulk, and in feudal a weaker version of it comes in. It is kind of is unclear what the decision matrix is between those two for the french. It does not fit.
(4) Please make transport ships 1 pop. There is no reason such a ancillary unit needs to take up 2 pop.
(5) Grand Galley: I know it is already expensive, because it presumably includes the cost of a military building (though with no stone), but one issue is it is slower regardless of whether it is near a blacksmith or dock or something. How about increase the cost by another 150 wood which would include the price of a blacksmith and just have it have the same rate (per age) as the other military schools? And 60% if you build the observatory.
- Thanks for reading!