Italians (my idea)

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Good comrades, how are you? I hope so, well I’ll get to the point, I have noticed that a lot has been said about the Italians and here I will honestly put the ideas I have to create a civilization (it may be horrible, but hey, the laughs are not lacking xd).

The Italians, well it has been one of the most requested civilizations since age 3 vanilla (myself included) these aspects that I will put here is simply the way I would like to see the Italians in the game (it may have several similarities with others posts, I apologize for that).

The Italians:

Cradle of the renaissance, being thus also a land of innovation and conflict, its rich regions have created powerful city-states, with a powerful navy and a most flourishing economy.

Civilization Bonus:

Its Villagers are merchant, who are able to collect resources from any source 15% faster, architects are the only ones who can build buildings, Italian buildings have anti-siege armor.

Unique Units:

Condottiero - Mercenary infantry, good enough at killing mercenaries and capable of defending well against skirmishers

Merchant: Italian villager who can collect resources 15% faster, he can also work in the merchant guild (unique Italian building),

Architect: Italian unit capable of constructing buildings at high speed, it can collect wood and collect crates of resources and take shelter in any building to defend itself.

Bersaglieris: Musketeers who have resistance from ranged attacks, and who have a ranged bonus against light cavalry

Unique Buildings:

Merchants Guild: (Replaces the normal market), provides a gold collection aura of any type (Mine, farm, whales etc) is capable of producing resources of any type (2 food, wood and gold respectively, which can be improved with letters or improvements, it is like a mini factory), its resource changes are made with drawers and you can get drawers of books as well. (Build limit 4).

Basilica:

Building that produces experience 40% faster, and with the ability to heal units around it, it can garrison units so that they can fire from it, it can produce gold (2.50 per second) (Construction limit 1)

Guard units:

Crossbowmen of Genoa (Unique upgrade for crossbowmen)

Serdeña Bombers (Upgrade for Grenadiers)

Papal Guards (Buff for Halberdiers).

Historical Character: Cesare Borgia or Victor Emmanuel II.

Type of age advance: you can integrate other Italian city states that give you unique bonuses (you advance slower with them) or you can advance with politicians who advance faster in age.

Trade age:

The Architect: He gives you a wagon from Basilica and gives you 10% More HP to your buildings.

The Inventor: Allows you to build advanced aerostatic balloons, and improves their line of sight (10 LOS).

Savoy City-State: Gives you 3 bersaglieris. It improves the damage and HP to your bersaglieris (15%) and the speed of gathering the mills (15%).

Milan City-State: Gives you 2 Drawers of Books, gives your villagers 15% more speed and improves their resistance to attacks by 15%.

Age of fortresses:

The Grand Master: He gives you a group of halberdiers (6) and gives them area damage and increases their speed by 10%.

The Painter: It gives you 1 shipment, and all shipments will arrive 35% faster.

Papal States: Gives you: 300 gold and wood. Upgrade your halberdiers to guard status, and all units of archaic character train 30% Faster.

Republic of
Genoa: Gives you a Caravel and a fishing boat, improves the collection of fishing boats and caravels by 20% and the ships improve their resistance points by 15%

(And so on, I know that I missed more city states but I have still been thinking about it as the age advances)

Now some unique cards:

Shields of Paves: Improves resistance against ranged attacks by crossbowmen (15%) and grants them a melee armor (15%). Age III

Equipment card, rebirth: All upgrades are investigated faster and are cheaper (-12%).

Our sea: The attack of the buildings against the boats increases.

Reggata: The speed of the boats increases (25%)

Reasoning: Buildings have more HP, and can be collected faster from mills.

Sartiglia: Spindles are 15% cheaper and with better line of sight (4 LOS)

These are some aspects that I had in mind, I wrote this in the wee hours of the morning, so they probably have a lot of bad things, I hope they have other ideas friends.

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I was never a fan of such mechanic for 2 reasons:

  • Having just few of a special vill that build is a huge risk. If that for some reason is busy or killed, and you need an emergency building (like an outpost, a TC, or simply a house) you are in big trouble because you can’t use vills.
  • French have vills that gather 20%. Now that isn’t just unoriginal, but more importantly it’s OP. You get vills that collect just 5% slower that CdB, but are also cheaper (CdB cost 20% more food and are trained slower).

Now, I get that overall, these 2 seems balance themselves out, but they really don’t. The mechanic goes from UP to OP. UP is when you are rushed, and the enemy will target you architect, OP, when you can safely boom, knowing that your vills doesn’t just gather faster, but they’ll also won’t have idle time from building.

The mechanic can be used, don’t get me wrong, but it needs adjustments. Like, the merchants can build, but doesn’t gather faster. Instead they can work at markets, TPs, and docks to boost their efficiencies. While the architect can be a special vill that build faster, but can be sended only from HC.

Bersaglieri should be available only from age IV, since they were a late unit, so they can be a unique guard upgrade.

And be careful with muskets with ranged resistance, you don’t want a carolean 2.0 even more broken.

I’m intrigued in this design, elaborate more.

I’m trying too to design a special commercial building for the Italians, so I would like to exchange ideas.

The faster XP is nice, but the gold generation already belongs to the US.

Instead, I would suggest that taking inspiration from the swedes’ arsenal, the Italians church don’t need a HC shipment for unique upgrades.

Maybe pavise crossbowmen could be better, more generic, and that includes more Italians states.

GC could be a HC card, or a new mercenary.

Either one or the other. You can’t give them too many options for age up to just one civs.

The second would fit better the pikes, not the halbs. The first instead would be better to be substitute with the bersaglieri.

You given them a lot of anti-ranged units (condos, muskets, xbows with more range resistance) while you don’t have much anti-cav. Yeah, you have halbs and pikes, but the more common counter lack, since I suppose that a musket with ranged resistance lack its anti cav bonuses.

Anyway, apart from something, it can work as a civ.

I too designed something for the Italians, here are the links, I would appreciate your feedback too.

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Interesting ideas, but it would be strange for the Merchant to extract raw materials - after all, he was selling them. Unless it would make the Merchant a unit with which Settlers would increase efficiency. Additionally, this unit could build Markets and Docks. It would be possible to train in the Market. He could also automatically walk through the Markets of allies, thus generating Coins or XP. There could also be a maritime counterpart of such a unit - a Merchant Ship (analogous unit - increasing the efficiency of marine resource prospectors, generating Coins and XP when automatically visiting the Docks and ability to build Docks) which would be trainable at the Docks - 3 Units limit.

An architect could be an economic unit (like the Settler Wagon in Germans civ). This unit would build buildings faster, but it would not be able to mine resources. It would be an expensive unit with a limit of 3. It would use a dagger to defend itself.

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I like this idea.

It seems unnecessary to me. The churches of all European civs are visually unique, and that’s enough. A fun idea could be to train the Pope (1 limit). This unit could convert enemy units to our side and impose Excommunication (reducing the enemy’s HP by half - Treasure Guardian too). He could train the Swiss Pikemen. It would be a defenseless unit.

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The Merchant and the Merchant Ship would be available after choosing Venice or Genoa during Age Up. Both States would offer the same but would differ in the second thing, e.g. Venice would offer a unique Warship but Genoa would offer an upgrade for the Crossbowman.

It would be available after choosing Florence during Age Up.

It would be available after choosing Papal State during Age Up.

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Merchants in the Renaissance was a broad term that could also indicate artisans that sold their goods, so it wouldn’t be that far fetched. But if the only difference with standard vills is that they gather faster, I agree that there wouldn’t be much difference.

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Entiendo amigo, aunque hice a la rápida mi idea xd, se que tiene muchos inconvenientes y cosas, pero tenia ganas de compartir un esquema general, había pensado mejor a Austria y Prusia que los publique hace tiempo aquí en el foro pero nadie los vio xd, gracias por el aporte!

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Yeah, I guessed that it was just a raw design, and while I think that some part of it won’t work, I like very much some other parts.

Like the merchant guilt, I’m intrigued on how it may work.

As for the design of Austria and Prussia, I didn’t saw them, but I’ll look up to them now.

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Well, Genoese crossbowmen, as they were called all over Western Europe, weren’t necessarily exclusive to Genoa. Many “Genoese” Crossbowmen came for several other northern Italian city-states like Milan, f.e.

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Había pensado en el comerciante de wars of liberty, en donde no construyen edificios pero recolectan recursos mas rápido, y el arquitecto era una unidad que hacia vagones de edificios que construían mas rápido, y los arquitectos podían ser reentrenados en el centro urbano por 50 de alimento.

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Exactly. It was a misconception that all Italians pavise crossbowmen were genoese.

Pavise crossbowmen would be a more accurate name for the unit itself, while genoese crossbowmen could be the name of a specific mercenary unit.

But even if the standard unit would be called genoese crossbowmen, it wouldn’t be a huge problem.

I know WoL, but I don’t like that mechanic very much.

If you lose the architect in a rush, and you need to build, or more simply you are housed, but your architect is busy building some other important building, you are helpless if your vills can’t build.

On the other hand, if your vills already gather faster, don’t cost more, and never stop gathering resources for building, and you face a slow civ, your eco will be way too strong.

The architect-merchant mechanic as you suggested make Italians super vulnerable to rush, and super strong in slow games.

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le deje el link en donde hablaba de Prusia y Austria buen señor, espero le gusten mis ideas

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