House of Learning Ideas

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Jan PUP unveiled new Landmark ideas among many other changes. Specifically the Delhi’s House of Learning went thru several changes.

Reinforced Foundations went from +5 pop increase on houses; keeps; and TCs to 50% HP on all houses, 5 garrison space with garrison arrows. So basically a cheaper faster building outpost without the LOS and emplacement upgrades (not bad). If nothing else this tech is a functional option against Raid since it’s very common to have your houses near your gathering points and it doesn’t require making an additional (plus long building time) building that MAY not be used (a tower). Also the benefit to this house option as oppose to a tower is after the resource in that location is depleted a tower in that location may completely lose its value, were as a house is still providing function thru population space. Overall I think the original potential to save a max of 300w on houses vs this budget outpost is a GOOD change.

Tranquil Venue will heal for +2 OUT OF COMBAT instead of +1. Personally this ability being an OUT OF COMBAT function is weak because this civ is ALREADY the mass healer civ but at the same time it makes sense that it shouldn’t have the same level of aoe healing as a Landmark!. Hmm, while it has its niche function it isn’t something pivotal to your stratagem. We could completely lose this ability and it would not be missed.

Lookout Towers gain + 1 attack range to towers. This tech is actually really good for vision purposes alone which is twice the vision bonus of HRE’s relic towers. The +1 attack range is neat; nothing crazy. The only negative side to this tech is that it’s the standard 5min research time. Overall a good tech!

Hearty Rations +5 carrying capacity moved from Imperial to Castle. A “okay” eco buff which would marry well with villager booming affording you about +2% gathering efficiency; nothing crazy, but cool lil tech.

OVERALL The PUP House of Learning IS better than the current season 2 House of Learning… but… that’s not the issue here. THE PROBLEM IS THE PUP COMPOUND OF THE DEFENDER FREAKING BLOWS THE NEW HOUSE OF LEARNING OUT OF THE WATER!!!

PUP Compound of the Defender: Retains the 25% stone discount; PLUS the ability to research Village Fortress at the landmark at a faster research rate; PLUS taking 2 Imp upgrades and bringing them to Castle: Slow Burning Defenses +10 fire resistance to towers/keep (hugee impact in Castle) and Court Architects +30% HP for all buildings (if only this DIDN’T take 18min…but still a good tech). Everything about the PUP Compound displaces everything about PUP House of Learning except Honed Blades. So you’d only EVER go House of Learning over Compound IFFF you had a specific Honed Blades strat???

So I said ALL OF THAT TO SAY THIS:

The new PUP House of Learning SHOULD reduce the research times of Lookout Towers from 5min to 2min; Next return the +5 Pop aspect of Reinforced Foundations while also keeping the budge tower idea. Also keep the Hearty Rations in Castle And last DELETE Tranquil Venue… and add THIS new tech:

Built-in Efficient Production:
60s research time
Grants all military buildings the benefits of Efficient Production WITHOUT the need of housing a scholar!

This tech + Honed Blades WOULD give Delhi an extremely attractive alternative to Everything Compound of the Defender. Why? Because of MOMENTUM; You’d get your veterancy upgrades and Grease Axles extremely fast (this tech + 1 scholar in the building offering 4+ times current influence research rates). Commonly in Castle you’ll have 6-9 scholars in mosques and 1 scholar in each type of military production which offers you 4 times the research rates on veterancies. But with this tech you’d get the same effect with just this tech and 1 scholar in each military production. AND each of your military production effectively become half the cost of everyone else!

Imagine: Hitting Castle, getting this tech, getting veterancies faster, grabbing relics, creating knights/maa + support super fast, then getting Hone Blades and putting ultra ultra pressure on your Opp; then getting the other House of Learning techs on the backdrop which will help secure and steadily grow your eco?!

Lastly THIS version of House of Learning gives Delhi TWO distinct playstyles into Castle Age: ultra aggressive timing!! or Defensive/Keep-drop booming!

What do we think?

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I hadn’t realized that the changes to Reinforced Foundations got rid of the +5 pop increase. I don’t think there’s any real reason to get rid of tranquil venue (not every bonus needs to be strong to be included, and it pairs nicely with the idea of building a mosque next to a forward/far-out keep). Tranquil Venue might not be a tech I’d ever prioritize, but having free techs means that you still always get it eventually. I don’t like the built-in efficient production idea - it makes efficient production rather redundant, de-emphasizes the versatility of scholars, and doesn’t seem to fit Delhi thematically to me. 60 seconds would definitely be way too fast for the benefit that it provides (especially if you have garrisoned scholars speeding it up). I also think that if Reinforced Foundations were to receive the +5 pop back that it might need to have its research time increased a little (though that could be balanced by a research time buff to Lookout Towers and Tranquil Venue)

Personally, I think that if the Delhi castle-age landmarks do need a change (which I believe they almost certainly will) that I’d start by removing Village Fortresses from the compound of the Defender. It would still support Village Fortress spam through the reduced stone costs and the ability to research boiling oil immediately (in addition to the two imp-techs). As I recall, Village Fortress’s reduced tech time isn’t exclusive to Compound of the Defender, so it would still be faster (with a base 3:45 time, which could be even further reduced if removed from Compound of the Defender).

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Redundant means it does the same thing with zero add? How is built-in efficient production consisdered redundant when it stack multiplicatively with regular efficient production?

My idea was attempting to find a way to improve HOL to contend with COD? In the live build you only go HOL for honed blade strats, period. None of the other perks are even collectively worth NOT having 25% discount on all stone costs? And even when you go HOL for honed blades, you put yourself on a timer (1 to get the honed tech and 2. To cause an impact before +3 doesn’t even matter given everything else going on).

More on my idea of built-in EP; hitting castle for delhi is about yoinking all the relics asap while queing all your castle techs for a timing (you’re still raiding and responding to raiding while you wait for the optimum push). Built-in EP would noticeably shorten that waiting period because you could afford to put more scholars on the field without suffering in your research/production times AND the production aspect would continue to benefit in an impactful way for the rest of the game!!

Example: you need 6 scholars in mosques to get twice the research rates on all techs; likewise 1 scholar in military production facilitates that same twice the research rate. So having at least 9 scholars (6 in mosques and 1 each in stable archer barrack) would make all your standard veterancy upgrades go from 5mins down to 1min 15s ish. However with 9 scholars pre-occupied that means you need more to yoink the relics and or recapture sites (hence the synergy of dome of faith…but what if you went TOV?). With the built-in EP you would instead need JUST 3 scholars (1 in each military production type) and whatever more scholars you have would NOW be optimally available for god’s work in the field!! It wouldn’t matter at first that you’re not getting the 2 times speed on your BSM and eco upgrades because those are NOT as impactful in that window of time as are veterancy and production speed.

Lastly built-in EP does NOT have to give twice the rate; they can dumb it down to something weaker but yet noticeably valuable (50%+ which is worth 3+ scholars). Having the effect if faster veterancy and production of even 50%+ is better than anything Tranquil Venue can offer in its Out of Combat state.