It’s not marked as “early hulk” or anything. The way naval ships are balanced each age’s ship renders the previous ships obsolete. It just seems like a bug…like the Galleass was supposed to replace the hulk but for some reason the hulk got moved over to the arrow ship’s spot.
Lazy asymmetry, I suppose.
They are broken on water, I was Abbasid on archipelago map and had 4-5 dock in feudal age, my ships do too little damage to Hulks and they kill my ships in several shots, They win 1 to 5. I even got castle age much faster but Hulks kill Baghlah too. When they will fix that ridiculous civ?
4 Likes
after around 30 games, I think French are OP at the moment. Their eco bonuses is too much and military (land and sea) too strong. Probably they will get nerfed a bit in the first patch.
They may be frogs but not even they can breathe underwater. 
Resign and go next, I guess.
I tried HRE, even with Prelates landmark buff seems like not able to compete with the French in the sea map.
I mainly play French on aoe and I gotta agree french on water are definitely so strong it can take the fun out of water maps sometimes cuz you either get a mirror or a free win, but u are kinda forced into pick it anyways cuz its very likely your oponent will pick french too.
Honestly I think they should just have galleys age 2 and hulk either removed since they have their unique ship or moved to age 3.
It is a fun turn of events though cuz on aoe3 french is pretty much the worse civ on water
French right now is by far the strongest civ in water maps, this is due to them having the hulk avaliable on age 2.
I believe this is done since the gallease, a stronger version of the galley being their unique unit.
The problem with this is that balancing a hulk is going be very hard and it could cause the civ to end up on the other extreme where they will be in turn be too weak on water if done wrongly.
It also took a lot of the fun of trying to outplay each other with the arrow ships.
My suggestion is to move hulk to age 3, add the galley on age 2 and have a tech on the dock avaliable on age 3 that upgrade galleys into galleases
This way water games will be much more balanced and they will be fun to play again.
I think a better solution is to just make their hulk an “early hulk” with worse stats like they do for other units.
3 Likes
But this takes to my point that just making it a hulk with worse stats could make them too ineffective for their cost, specially considering how expensive they are early on.
Wouldn’t be just better to give them galleys age 2 like other civs?
Well in the next age they’d upgrade to regular hulks.
There is some point adjusting cost and/or stats where them having the hulk in feudal is balanced.
They could also just make them more expensive and have a tech in castle to reduce their cost.
Lots of ways to do it, but I’d prefer one that still keeps them having three different war ships like everyone else, instead of only having two in the end (not counting demos) .
2 Likes
being able to mass a specific unit an age early (even if its weaker) has massive advantages… you seem to have overlooked this…
never mind that giving the “early” hulk weaker stats is just a matter of tweaking if you want to keep it viable in age 2
1 Like
Oh yeah, they don’t really have to remove it.
But it would be just easier to have the galleys upgrade to galleases on age3 cuz then balancing is much easier too while still keeping the hulk, but on age 3
First off, I don’t expect this strategy to be a good strategy long term, I’m mainly writing this to illustrate a point about how the main weakness of feudal age hulks.
Step 1: build a dock, a transport ship and 3 fishing ships
Step 2: load a scout and the villager that built the dock onto the transport
Step 3: transport to another island and build another dock + 3 fishing boats
Step 4: repeat Step 2 and 3
Step 5: fast castle/imp with spread out water eco Attacking the main weakness of hulks; their low MS.
Obviously this strategy is sketchy at best but given 3 hulks cost the same as castle age, are slow, and scouting water maps is generally difficult I really do think that cat and mouse is the intended counterplay vs feudal hulks.
Still need a nerf tho.
Aussie_Drongo had a similar strategy when playing Rus aginst French on water. Because your fishing boats don’t need to drop of food at the docks he scattered them all out on the map and tried to avoid the hulks.
1 Like
I just watched Grubby play a French mirror on a water map, and, I must say, the naval combat looks ridiculous. Players rapidly turn their Hulks around and around to take advantage of the separate attack cooldown on each side of the ship. The result is a completely unrealistic naval combat experience. Also, it seems that the DPS of Hulks, given this mechanic (which effectively doubles the DPS), is way too high in comparison to other civ’s Feudal ships.
My suggestion is this: seriously reduce the turn rate of ships. Not just Hulks, but all ships. The bigger the ship, the slower it turns. Ya know, just like real ships. Smaller, faster ships could potentially gain a maneuverability advantage in the fights, and the benefit of different weapons (front mounted, swivel, each side - like the Hulk) would really become relevant and interesting.
I think the variety they’ve introduced in naval units is really cool, but without any maneuverability differences, it still all just comes down to DPS per resources spent, and I think that’s a real missed opportunity.
6 Likes
Hi and welcome to the forums! This one honestly reminds me of Sea of Thieves in which the smaller ships are easier to maneuver vs the larger ones. I honestly think this is a great idea, in which demolition ships could be easily countered by the feudal boats, but be able to catch up to the larger ships.
france are so overtuned (overpowered) its no accident. from eco bonus to landmark priced in timing windows (feudal knights) to absurd late game composition (best cav and seige).