Early exploration is valuable. However, with higher stats, the explorer with higher stats can melee you to death. Also, some civ has one more scout / helper. That doesnt make any sense too.
AOE3 will never be great with such poor balance / design.
The small differences between some explorer hit points and number of helpers is such a small problem it does not impact the game or gameplay in any major way
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Let’s take for example France vs Germany. France has Explorer + Scout which both combined can bully Germany’s explorer. But does it means this match up is France favoured? no. Because Germany can outmass France by a lot of units and it has an even stronger and scarier fortress age push.
Honestly is not a big deal if one player gets more treasures or better treasures because they’re a small income that doesn’t break the economy of one player and I tend to get a lot of good treasures with Spain for example but it doesn’t mean they’re going to make me win because this game is more strat oriented and if I have a good eco but I execute poor strats or make mistakes or poor decisions the other player is going to take advantage of it and there’s no treasure to save you.
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Also Brits > France and Spain. And they’re only 1 explorer. But Brits only has one explorer because it would be too OP with a companion when they’re currently the best civ of the entire game.
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“Oh no, the enemy explorer took down some of my hp, time to resign”
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It can be quite important if you lose your explorer, because as germany for example you won’t be able to build your tp and of course won’t be able to scout much but I guess it’s just a certain advantage some civs have.
But the question is, is it so important that a civ with a slightly better explorer is going to be OP just because of that stronger explorer? Probably not, I would argue the only time there is an advantage is that civs with more than 1 explorer or companion on maps with livestock, and even then it’s not game ending to get a few more sheep than your opponent,
No it’s not op, the warchiefs explorers have some amazing passive buffs though, iro warchief is basically a daimyo, the aztec xp aura is amazing as well especially when they have a warrior priest on xp dance too really helps get all the unit shipments in a rush.
Typically the civs with 2 explorers have much weaker explorers so yeah only real advantage is getting livestock.
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Agreed, the Auras ( and for usa flags ) are the main thing rather than the stats.
You still having vills to build it even if you do it slow you can still being able to do it. If your explorer died near your colony it will revive after aging up. Also you get uhlans with your first shipment so you can scout with them.
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That’s efficiency problem. The building speed or village cant compare with the explorer. Dont mention you lose gather time.
This is a fast pacing game dude.
Snow ball effect counts
germany need to get the tp up asap in transition to age 2 because they recieve shipments slower, any delay in building the tp causes all your shipments to be delayed.
Building it with vills wastes a ton of villager seconds when they could be gathering.
You don’t lose economy by sending one villager to build ONE trading post. You can do it and still executing the same build perfectly fine. The XP you might not get earlier you can get it by raiding. Also Germany needs more XP to send shipments for a reason. That’s a nerf because they were too OP massing uhlans and they still being able to do it but not as broken as before.
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villager build TP much slower than explorer or just explorer build tp fast
It usually age up with 14~15 villagers. Losing one villager meaning your income lower than 1/15. Thats a big deal
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Well, I guess the asymmetric balance that characterizes AoE3 is hard to understand. Cherry picking a specific bonus of the civilization without looking at the whole picture is not much helpful.
Some civilizations do have the advantage of having a extra unit on the exploration age, but this also have weakness on other areas.