How to properly nerf gunpowder

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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So before anything else, I am not calling for gunpowder to be nerfed as of now. In fact, I think all cannon galleons and bombard cannons should be firing projectiles that are as fast (if not faster) than the spanish cannon galleon. However, if this were to happen, gunpowder would become the exclusive go to unit. That said, gunpowder would need to be nerfed. And the mechanics to properly nerf gunpowder are simply not in the game today, and THAT is what this post is about.

In the real world, gunpowder units do not have infinite gunpowder. However, given good foraging after a battle, an archer can replenish their arrows. In modern times ammunition trucks accompany military forces. In world war 1 and world war 2, same thing. In the civil war it was powder trains. In the napoleonic wars? Again, gunpowder was carried with the army.

The gunpowder train was well guarded, and when an enemy scored a direct hit on a gunpowder magazine, it blew the army to kingom come. Like a large demo ship explosion. The gunpowder was sourced from powder mills and given to individual units and powder magazines which gave the powder to individual units.

This could translate quite easily to a powder mechanic. The gunpowder units have a set amount of powder charge, and every time they fire, the powder charge lowers until it runs out and they can no longer fire. It could also translate to a powder train unit which has to refill occasionally at buildings that can stash gunpowder.

This makes gunpowder slow, cumbersome to use, and only useful for quick hit, run and recharge raids, or in the context of army that if you destroy their powder magazine, they have to retreat immediately. Also, it creates the situation where powder magazines have to make the trip from the powder production building to the front lines. And if powder production builds up slowly, then simply making new powder production is a significant investment. It slows powder down, and now people have the choice between expensive slow, delicate armies, or weaker armies of xbows that can go forever?

The second way to balance gunpowder is their hit/miss rate. The cannon fire should not be dodgeable if its going to hit you on the launched trajectory. It should also not launch on the right trajectory most of the time.

The third way to balance is misfires. Yes you heard that right. Many ships had unfortunate accidents with their powder magazines and simply exploded in the middle of combat. Having cannon galleons have a 5% chance to explode like a demo ship on being hit by an enemy is a fairly big nerf. Even more so if they have a .5-1% chance to go boom every time they fired their gun. This is in the game somewhat already, but it needs to apply to bombard towers, cannons, and cannon galleons.

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I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but… Do you actually like AoE2? Because you frequently post suggestions for such major changes to the game, that it seems to me that you can’t be very content with the game as it is. Have you considered making a mod?

I’m really not keen on this suggestion. Gunpowder units become super weapons that are very heavily RNG-dependent and require fiddly logistics mechanics to keep using them. That doesn’t sound like my idea of fun – either to play with or against them – and I can’t see how it could possibly be balanced either.

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At this point its coming across as spam. I might report you as such if you post another outlandish post that shows total disregard for the game.

Are you SURE you’re not a ban evader pretending to be a newbie?

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Yeah, I agree. The sheer quantity of low-quality posts this user has posted in a short amount of time qualifies as spam and should be punished in some manner.

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I suggest you do a balance/datamod of your own and try playing it that way you can help expand the game and keep it fresh, also to do what you like with it and get to test first hand how it plays out

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11 cannons needing nerfs? You clearly haven’t seen the Mangudai.

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Where do I learn to do this. :frowning:

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I don’t think it’s spam. All the suggestions are different and (I think) independent of each other. I think it’s just a user with lots of ideas, and no restraint about posting them.

“Low-quality” is quite subjective, and a bit hard to judge in this case. It seems like a fair bit of thought has gone into some aspects of this suggestion, and none at all into others.

The thread title is misleading, and honestly should be changed. The first step of “how to properly nerf gunpowder” is to buff gunpowder to the point that it needs to be nerfed.

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in your steam folder where it is installed, go to “Steam\steamapps\common\AoE2DE\Tools_Builds”

in there, theres a program called advance genie editor which can modify stats, cost, technologies and effect. I’d start there and explore around

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The funniest thing about this post is that Gunpowder only became viable when they increased the projectile speed some time ago.

Ofc it would nerf gunpowder again to the state before “Hand Cannoneer bad state confirmed”.

I doubt devs wil undo one of their best perceived changes (if you don’t hear any complains, it means people like it) just because one doesn’t like Gunpowder in the game.

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Why are you making suggestions that fundamentally change the game? These changes would make Turks, Italians and any other gunpowder civ very weak. Gunpowder units overall are late game units. They require the Imperial Age (in most cases) chemistry and are expense.

Why are the Huns and Mayans decent civs even though they have no gunpowder units?

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It’s subjective to OP, of course, but that goes without saying. To nearly everyone else involved, we have some solid evidence of low quality. Nobody who has participated in this thread has shown that they like/value/are interested in the ideas being put forth. OP has 0 likes or positive comments here, and in several other threads. Most comments, like yours (with 12 likes) push back against the idea as well as the pattern of frequent, seemingly random suggestions with little or no follow up (both a sign of low quality and low effort). High quality posts don’t leave people wondering whether the poster likes the game.

Of course, OP is free to do whatever he wants that doesn’t break the forum rules, and his posts don’t fit a strict definition of spam (but I agree with @DynasticPlanet5 that they come across in a similar way). But I hope he will internalize this feedback and be more judicious about what and how often he posts. Or at least make a dedicated thread where he can organize his thoughts, as most of them seem to relate either to hypothetical balance changes or new units. Or make a mod as others have suggested.

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The most memoarable thing is that this wholt thread tries to be “evasive” as I call it.
So it is trying to set up or actually try to “not” set up a regular discussion discussion basis which neglectets the primary quedioning. It deon’t even question wether Gunpoweder should be nerfed. It just preemts the needed nerf for gunpowder.
It’s an absnoxious tendency we have to fight against as society to counteract - it’s basically the discursical equivalent of the sugestive quuetsion. By repsonding to the narrative you already concede to the preliminiary narrative without knowing.
Happily the guy who does this isn’t really inttligible with this “peterson” tactic as i call it. So it’s very obvious what he tries to do and the community in the forum isn’t having it. But we need to be generally aware of this threat.

And I’m generally proud of this forum members reacting so well to this topic, i’ve seen different forums where this kind of stuff acutally worked.

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Agreed the whole thing is a disingenuous post coated in a lot of words to sound more prolific and important than it is to boil it down into “ i want to turtle and play later game no micro winfests”

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Not really. Warbows tend to send arrows out with lots of force (as in over 100 pounds), so arrows will often break on impact. Even if they didn’t I wouldn’t bet on the arrow being safe to fire a second time. Also, arrows should be matched to the bow, or they might not shoot properly (that’s not the case so much these days as bows and arrows tend to be standardized, but I suspect that would be more of a concern in the middle ages)

I’m not an expert on the subject though. I do think that there would still be value in retrieving arrows from a battlefield, as the arrowheads could be resmelted, but the same would be true for bullets.

hand cannons have already been buffed by improving their hit rate (admittedly years ago) and projectile speed. BBCs and cannon galleons have a little blast radius, which currently only works if a unit has 100% accuracy (which is why Briton trebs gain 100% accuracy after warwolf is researched). And cannon galleons are anti-building more than they are anti-ship. Bombard cannons can be used against buildings (often by civs with a bonus to them, like Italians or Turks), but tend to be best as an anti-siege weapon.

There are plenty of ways gunpowder units can be rebalanced. Right now, though, it isn’t really necessary as they’re in a decent state (though I wouldn’t call gunpowder strong - more usable). There is a saying: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

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No. If you introduced 60% miss rates on gunpowder, along with powder supply lines, and a very very low powder supply per unit, gunpowder would become unusable.

But the current balance of having cannon galleons fire what look more like balloons than cannon galleons is stupid.

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Can you not. I want cannon galleons to fire proper cannon balls. The devs cant balance the cannon galleon because they dont have mechanics in game, because the game is 20 years old.

And instead of properly adding mechanics that are capable of balancing gunpwder so it has equal strength to what it has now, they have taken the stance of oh lets just have the cannon galleon fire a balloon that looks like a cannon ball. Its not. its a balloon.

The proper way to do it would be for cannon galleons to miss 75% of the shots they take with cannons against all non building targets. AND for the cannon galleon to have to go back to base to resupply its powder.

In addition, once gunpowder has actual limitations that surround real gunpowder, then the artificial weakness it has right now can be lifted. An elephant irl cannot take a musket ball to the face. It is GG. In game, the elephant can shrug off musket balls and even tank cannon ball hits. That elephant is not going to be fighting anymore if you tap it with a single musket shot irl. But if that musket requires powder management, keeping the pwder dry, and making everything work just perfect, its still very hard to deliver the final shot. But its hard from a logistics/apm standpoint, not hard from a unit firepower standpoint.

THAT is the point of this.

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Who cares about that? Normally you make cannon galleon to destroy building not units…

It’s a game you know, not real life.

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Because the apm of microing gunpowder units should be spent on supporting their logistic train not microing the actual unit. In history, gunpowder units had far less movement than say cavalry or spears or swords units. Roman phalanx. Marched all day to get to battle, formed up, and marched in, spears at the ready. Gunpowder musketeers? Line up in rows and fire at each other.

The gunpowder forward front should be unassailable except by gunpowder directly. But their supply line should be easy to cut with conventional units. Without powder magazines and expendable resources for firing, there is no supply line, hence no weakspot to exploit.

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Look if you dont want to micro, other games exist

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