Italians New Building and Team Bonus

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I’m sharing this idea more for fun than for suggesting an actual balance change, but still it may be useful for the future.

The new bonus would be the following:

  • Trade Workshop is available for all allies in feudal age. It unlock the condottiero in Imperial age.

  • Trade Workshop: it act as a market, but cost 50 wood, and have all technologies unlocked since feudal age with a 80% discount.
    When built it unlock the condottieri at the barracks.

The building use the old trade workshop skin present in the game, the Italians would get the mediterranean one, then each civ get the skin of their regional area.

So basically, it wouldn’t change anything for the condos, they would still be the same in game units, but it would be trained inside its own building other that the barracks, in imp like now.

The main advantage would be that the Italians and it’s allies would get a facility access to exchange resources in the early ages for 2 reasons:

  • the building cost less (125 wood saved) of course for this reason the Italians wouldn’t get access to the standard market
  • you could get guilds in the feudal age (instead of imp) with would cut the trading fee in half, getting better prices, for a really cheap cost (it would cost less than other feudal age techs).

How it would interact with other civs:

  • Saracens: the building wouldn’t be free. Even if the trade workshop is a market-like unit, it’s not a market, so it’s not affected by the building discount. It would however be affected by saracens exceptional fee, so basically they would be able to save even 25 wood more.

  • Bohemians: trade workshops are a market-like building, so they would work 80% faster.

  • Portoghese, spanish, indians and Italians (silk road): all those bonuses affect trade carts and gold generation, so they would work the same with the trade workshop.

  • Burgundians: the techs would be available from the dark age, but that would hardly make a difference…

  • Chinese: they would get even cheaper techs, and they would be free in imp.

What do you think, considering that this is more for theory crafting rather then requesting it for real?

4 Likes
2

Would that mean you can build a Condottiero in Dark Age, if that unlocks the unit?

3

No, for condos it doesn’t change anything.

I see now that I wrote it wrong, I’ll fix that…

1 Like
4

I think it’s completely OP as a team bonus, like any building where all techs are available two ages earlier and with an 80% discount would be, even if it’s only the market. I’m also not quite sure why you need to use a different building for this. It sounds needlessly confusing. I would definitely end up often building a market before realizing I had an Italian ally.

But theorycraft away. Why this bonus? What’s the cool interaction you’re getting out of it? Just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean you didn’t have a great idea.

5 Likes
5

Oh boy anyone who wants to abuse slinging would be picking Italians like mad 11

6

Sorry but this would be broken as hell. Leave it the way it is. No need to make it needlessly complicated.

7

Cool idea, but I think this is the only thing it should do.

It’s a smaller market that’s cheaper and (LESS LIKELY)in the dark age.

No discount, and certainly no early tech.

I would like to see silk roads changed to help 1v1 though. I hate TG only tech.and with the new Indian civs they just make the “boring” civs look even more mediocre to play

Condos could maybe still do with a tweak, maybe an unit upgrade tech that is unique to Italians, increases damage and bonus damage or something

8

I think probably devs will take it for new civs like free archer armor or cheaper monasteries

1 Like
9

i think it’s too strong and unnecessary complicated tbh. to help italians in regard of their trade theme, one could simply tweak the Silk Road tech to actually do something in 1 vs 1, like maybe adding a unique market buff, or a guild effect to have better rock-bottom values

10

What can the market do that the trade workshop cannot do ?

  • buy/sell resources ?
  • train trade cards ?
  • act as a trading point for gold generation ?
  • unlock cartography / team vision ?
  • can it act as a dark age building requirement to ahe up ?

Do you mean players can buy and sell resources in the trade workshop ? So sell stone and buy 300 food in dark age ?

1 Like
11

Meh… it’s a pity to not use the trade workshop, and it fits the historic theme.

Also, there isn’t a unique building for a team bonus yet.

I don’t know, it just came to me.

I was reading the bonuses of the new civs, and there was some unique building related to trede (I don’t remember for who now), and then I thought, “italians really prospered on trede, and yet they don’t have anything about it except for the imp UT” so I started theory-crafting and I came up with that.

Didn’t thought about slinging, just about the advantages of an early guilds.

Now I want the bonus even more :joy:

The price of the building and the discount of the techs are purposely OP, but are also just a raw idea, of course it should need tuning, either costing more, less discount, having just guilds in feudal and so on…

But making just having a small market and a bit cheaper seems useless, like a worse saracen bonus.

That’s why I wanted to give them a trade bonus that was unique and helpful in 1v1 too.

It’s enaugh to give the Italians another bonus, like condos have “that more stats”, but that’s a boring buff.

Well, they changed the old Indians too, so maybe there is hope for the Italians in the future…

Complicated how, it’s a building that you have to use instead of the market, that’s it.

Yeah, let’s give Italians a buff in the super late game when they are already strong and lock it behind a castle.

Nothing, the Trade Workshop is a better building, and Italians don’t get access the standard market.

As I said earlier, the bonus is purposely OP. The building can be unlocked in feudal too, or only the Italians get access to it in the dark age.

Ideally, I thought that it could work nicely with the cheaper age ups, so you have spare gold for guilds.

But as it is, yes you can sell the stone in the dark age, but then you need to mine it for the TCs.

The bonus can be tweaked a bit, but the substance should be:

  • it’s shared with allies
  • it make easier to access to a better exchange of resources
  • it give better exchanges thanks to an early guild, which also needs a discount because spending 500 resources in the feudal age for some extra resources when buying selling would be stupid…
12

The idea behind it is that often maritime republics in trade deals asked to be payed by giving a residential district for it population of traders, which often established there permanently.

13

If it’s cheaper than a market and in dark age it opens up potential to be way too OP

Build it, sell all your stone, cut wood/stone/gold(all much faster than sheep) buy food. You have over 400g the moment the game starts due to selling stone, which can be converted into food. Don’t know the math atm but guessing it’ll be over 300, maybe 400 food worth. Age up blindingly fast. To archer/trush someone who is stuck in the dark age.

So even if it’s a cool addition for diversity I don’t see the sense of adding something so OP unless it’s single player only

You would have to have almost a Chinese start, with minimal Res? Or some other civ penalty.

That being said. I wish there were more civ penalties, it would allow for more interesting additions. Like Chinese and Huns. Even if I think Chinese should have a slightly easier start for lower elo players.

14

Then make it a feudal age building.

Onestly, the dark age thingy was just a residual feature from another idea that I had.

You can also increase the cost the cost to 100 wood, decrease the discount to 75%, I mean it’s not necessarily OP…

I mean, you don’t have extra vills, with your build order you are betting everything on feudal pression.

Chinese are simply still better.

15

Generally speaking, there are two types of unique buildings.

  1. Unique buildings that do unique things (feitoria, caravanserai)
  2. Unique buildings that do similar things that other buildings (krepost, harbour, donjon, follwark)

Even the second type have enough differences with the not-unique counterpart to justify their existence. Krepost are cheaper castles that cannot research techs, donjon replace towers, are expensive and can train sargents, follwarks are better mills with a 3x3 layout instead of 2x2 (needed for the farming bonus) and harbours… are an upgrade for docks (that is the less unique, but it is important for the rival to know if the docks fire arrows or not).

Your trade workshop proposal is like making markets and market techs cheaper and that is it. So there is no need for the trade workshop because it would do the same as a market. You could write exactly a civ bonus like your proposal but replacing the trade workshop with markets (and condottiero being trained in markets) and nobody would miss anything in the bonus.

So, if we want use the trade workshop, it should do at least one unique thing that cannot be done through the current market. Given the similarity between market and trade workshop, maybe it should be an upgrade, like the harbour, that is unlocked through the imperial UT.

However, in my opinion, trade workshop have already one function, in the battle royale mode, and we shouldn’t replace that function in other modes.

1 Like
16

It have 3 things different than a market, and it looks cooler.

I mean, the krepost is a cheaper castle, this is a cheaper market, donjon can train the UU in feudal, this one can research guilds in feudal.

Otherwise, the bonus would be: markets are cheaper and their techs are cheaper… that’s boring… this looks cooler and are compressed into one bonus.

Yeah, because Italians are so weak in imp and so strong in feudal… no seriously what do I need a cheaper market and a cheap guilds in imp.

Yeah… no… mine is better.

17

Its literally a lamer Saracen bonus which would make Italians OP for slinging. Its just a bad idea

1 Like
18

It’s a team bonus, so of course it’s weaker than the saracens one. It’s like the huns TB and the franks chivalry UT.

As for the slinging it would be enough to tune the discount a bit, or to have it applied only to guilds and caravan techs.

Anyway, this was mostly theory-crafting for fun out of boring… I like the historic touch of this bonus though…

19

Just having the techs on feudal would be too much

20

I’m for it, this idea is really interesting.

1 Like