Why would you want to get close to the Ship that literally spits fire at you? Where is the logic behind that? They even explode now with a new technology, damage that is impossible to avoid in melee.
On the other hand, why are Fire Ships more resistent to ranged attacks? Shouldn’t the ship with vulnerable burnable stuff on board more vulnerable to being shot at? There is no logic behind this ship being more armoured against ranged attacks.
The current proposed counter system is confusing and unintuitive. Many casual players that don’t read official news posts or watch content creators won’t understand the new balance. I have seen many people post similar concerns here and on social media already.
What counter system would you prefer?
Hulk > Fire Ship > Galley > Hulk (official proposal)
Actually, no triangle would make sense with ships, fire ships are unrealistic and shouldn’t be widespread, and every big ship should be able to have arrows, assault other ship and transport units (cannon galleon would the only different for having gunpowder).
If you did a realistic ship, the major difference between models should be speed, health, capacity and rate of fire, not whether they have a ballista or hooks or a fucking flamethrower.
Ships before the cannons were mostly shoot arrows until we are close then try to assault, not this weird differentiation they tried to make in this game.
And the ships in realistic water shouldn’t be able to be perfectly still in the middle of the sea, the naval units in RTS are treated like land units when water in nowhere as stable as land and you need more maneuverability
Purely from logic, the fireship should be a unique regional variant of the boarding ship for byzantines, the boarding ship (hulk) should have a small chance to convert an enemy ship, and the triangle should be (> beats):
If I would design a counter system from scratch I would do it differently, but I think the AoE2 community will never accept bigger changes in general, doesn’t matter how good they are.
Arrow Ship: Fast, fires volley of arrows, can hit and run Melee ships (garrisoned Archers increase damage)
Melee Ship: A little slower but fast enough to dodge Mangonel Ships (garrisoned Infantry increase damage)
Mangonel Ship: Slow, higher range then Arrow Ship, does AoE damage (not good against buildings)
Arrow ships have a lower range then Mangonel Ships so they can’t really fight them. They might be able to dodge some Mangonel Ship shots but they are harder to micro then land archers. Mangonel Ships also do bonus damage against all Long Range Ships.
Melee Ships should have a better time avoiding Mangonel Ships because they can just get into Melee range where they are undefended. As a Melee Ship they don’t receive bonus damage from Mangonel Ships so they can survive a few hits.
I know it’s similar to Chronicles, and I also know that it doesn’t really work like this in Chronicles, but that’s how I think it should work.
Other ships (not available to all civs):
Demo Ship: same as now (weak against Arrow Ship)
(Elite) Cannon Galleon: same as now
Scorpion Ship: slower and heavier version of arrow ship, damages units in a line (weak against Mangonel Ship)
Fire Ship: Regional version of the Melee Ship
Hand Cannon Ship: Gunpowder version of arrow ship, less accuracy but more damage, similar to Organ Gun attack (garrisoned Hand Cannons and Janissaries increase damage)
Rocket Ship: Regional version of the Mangonel Ship (available to all civs with Rocket Carts)
Trebuchet Ship: Replaces Cannon Galleon for all civs that don’t have Bombard Cannons (and that don’t have regional replacements yet)
Canoe: Cheaper and lighter version of the Arrow Ship
All regional and unique ships: same as now
Other ships are there to mix things up. Scorpion and Hand Cannon Ships are good against massed Arrow Ships but bad against Mangonel Ships. They are only available in later ages.
Trebuchet Ships are basically the same as Cannon Galleons. The range of Elite Cannon Galleons, a little more damage vs. buildings but worse accuracy against ships. They mainly exist so none gunpowder civs don’t have this one random cannon in their tech tree. And yes that includes Vikings, they weren’t particularly well known for their cannons.
Even more realistic RTS don’t make ships much more realistic because it’s just annoying to play. Only games like Total War have relatively realistic naval warfare but those games are very very different compared to AoE. That’s like comparing Forza Motorsport with Mario Cart.
Water was super boring in AoE3. It looked cool but there is essentially no counter system, who ever has more ships wins.
I generally agree with that. But I feel like it’s now such a core part of AoE2 that it can’t easily be removed.
That could be a cool feature that is locked behind a technology. Giving some civs stronger Hulks.
I think using one time use units in a counter triangle is a very bad idea.
At least we are getting rid of the demolition ship in the triangle, now we need another rework where they nerf/remove availability of the fire ship and add a catapult/mangonel ship. Within the unrealistic limits of RTS water, widespread fire/exploding ships is the most ridiculous thing in medieval naval warfare.
Technically, current galleon is a very fast scorpion instead of arrow ship like it should.
it depends. in a way it’s like paladin vs halberdier, The halb being the counter dies in a 1:1 yet he trades cost effectively. If we look at history, I think the fact that byzantines dominated near everyone else on water was due to them having greek fire which burned on water. So there would be no counter
Hmm maybe instead of the demo, there’d be some fast raiding vessel that could defeat the fireship/hulk by kiting? Like your arrow ship
My suggestion is basically a split of the Galley line. One line of small nimble ships like the Galley and then one line of bigger slower ships that fire bolts.
If you have enough of them to kill a Paladin most of them will survive.
I’m surprised that they made the Fire Ships explode instead of giving them a lingering flame after death. That would be more fitting.
Same take tbh. It mimics more close to Chronicles and much better way. I still dont know why not just copy paste that.
For Fireship I would give it to Romans, Byzantines, Chinese civs, Saracens, Armenian. Rest gets melee ships. Historically Byzantines used it only for defense mechanism.
light arrow ship : counters boarding ships as it’s fast and ranged, so it can stay away from boarding ships. Also useful for light raiding.
heavy ranged ship : heavier presence, with elevated castles for archers and upgraded to ballistas for higher damage output, will punish the light ship heavily but as it’s slower, will be caught by boarding ships. Quite suitable for ranged support for units on the shore.
boarding ship : will beat most ships it can catch, if it can. Slows down ships it attacks, allowing a good synergy with ranged damage dealing ships. Have the option to convert enemy ship (not a random chance, you’ll need to press a button to order it to do so) : upon conversion, it will cost half the remaining hp of the ship, that will be transfered to the converted ship (but it loses all its remaining hp), to represent the crew splitting between 2 ships. So you’ll have to repair both (refill both crews) to take full advantage of that.
Those are the mainline. Other ships are situational as they were rarer
Siege ships : cannon galleon or equivalents, great vs fortifications, okay as fire support from long range, hopeless if caught alone.
Demo ship : it shouldn’t be part of the main triangle for the sole reason that it never felt like a reliable investment as it’s single use. High risk high reward, in situational cases
Fire ship : make it different unique/regional units. For some civs it’s a shorter-ranged light ship, throwing fire pots (fire & bomb kobayas from Shogun II TW), while for others like the Byzantines it’s a mightier boarding ship using the flamethrower, serving as a more premium boarding ship.
(+ other unique ships, some may replace the mainline if it feels like a straight upgrade, for example the longship to replace the light ranged one)
No, it’s entirely logical that siege engineers affects siege that have siege weapons mounted on them.
So these new cannon designs and new mathematical methods to calculate how they work, it magically no longer apply when we mount the cannon on a ship, too bad
(we know it’s about the Turks losing an advantage their bombard towers used to have against civs that only have the cannon galleon but not the elite, and their elite cannon galleons being comparatively not as good over regular ones, as they used to be, making them no longer accidentally OP in situational cases)
It would be logical if Fire Ship attack would ignore armour because it’s literally fire, how would armour help against that? Make Hulks the heavily armoured ship (both Melee and Pierce) and make Fire Ships low armour but higher HP and higher DPS with an attack that ignores armour negating the Hulks main advantage.
There are 2 completely different ships called Hulk, one of them is a ship that can’t move without assistance, and the other is the name of a medieval ship that indeed can move.
They are from the Netherlands and were mostly for inland waters and costal seas. Also manly for trade not for warfare. Also called Holk.
There is no real logic behind them being melee and the Galley line being ranged. Both were used both ways. And also all were used for cargo too.
Also obviously doesn’t make sense for Asian, American, African, Arabic or Indian civs to use those ships anyway.
European medieval navies didn’t really have warships. They just took normal transport ships and put soldiers on them and then started shooting or entering other ships with them.
In the end they just choose an arbitrary ship and made it a melee ship. They could have made the Galley Line melee too but that was already in the game so that would have been strange.
In general, medial naval warfare is not so prominent or complex as other eras, and that makes it difficult to make make it compelling in a game without making up a lot of forced mechanics and limitations.
For example, it is funny having the vikings as naval civ with a unique ship than can’t transport, when in reality they didn’t really do naval battles: They made good and fast ship for moving fast, disembarking, raiding and flee, but no fight ON the sea.
