Some opinions on improving water I’ve seen in recent years:
From a Discord discussion:
"the problem is that the only viable water meta is deathball.
"I think the solution is fleshing out the water unit lines and make a trash ship (only wood) and a ship killer that is mostly gold (some wood still) so that you can build 5 expensive units to counter 10 cheaper ones or 15 trash ones.
"lets say you had a cannon galleon that fired broadsides, and could shred the trash ship and really do a number on normal galleons, but was also really expensive (in gold, to break up the reliance on wood).
“AoE has always been a rock-paper-scissors balancing style, but people forget it also balances strong vs cheap at the same time. the water meta doesn’t have that strong vs cheap balancing loop, really.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/70u5ft/analysis_of_what_makes_aoe2_fun_and_water_reworked/
A thread where the OP made some long-winded posts which they later deleted, though they boil down to this:
water triangle is dumb
return aoc feudal galley wars
add heavy ships in castle like knights
add buffed fire+demo+cannons+unique ship/tech in imperial
(Most importantly, they want separate “light ship” and “heavy ship” lines. An Imperial tech removes the gold cost from the light ship line, making it the water trash unit.)
Another poster notes that for a number of reasons, at least on a casual level, the one-unit water game in AoE1 doesn’t feel as bad as AoE2. Unfortunately the analysis didn’t go much further.
(One reason is that AoE1 has no formation, which makes micros more flexible. Naval units in AoE2 have been affected by formation starting from The Conquerors.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/u4hdmr/overhauling_naval_warfare/
A thread where the OP offers this analysis:
- I think one big problem–and the reason it is so difficult to add new ships–is that all naval units are trained from the same building. You want water economy? Dock. You want want melee ships? Dock. You want water siege ship? Dock. This is a problem because (a) unlike other units, you can’t tell what’s coming based on the production buildings, and (b) since one building trains everything, all naval units compete with each other for production time. Docks therefore have to balanced around the fact that you can’t know which naval unit will pop out and around the fact that good ships too easily crowd out the production of worse ships.
- The Dock isn’t the only problem. The other weakness is that water control doesn’t have much intrinsic value after the fish are gone. After that, (depending on the map), you control the water to control transports and maybe bombard shorelines. Compare this to the rich zone-control of land warfare, where taking down a castle means gaining access to new resources, or opening up a raid on your opponent’s economy. Water post-fish is really just about keeping your opponent’s military off, not damaging them directly or seizing new resources. And that’s why naval warfare so often feels like a chore; you’re not winning something valuable for its own sake.
- Together, these problems make it hard to improve naval gameplay just by adding new ships. If all ships come out of the same building, and ships exist (post-fish) to advance your goals on land, then it comes down to just which ships are better at beating other ships.
Their solution is a second water building that produces powerful ships and itself has a powerful anti-ship attack (in their proposal, it has limitations like costing stone, can only be built near deep water).
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/vsgyul/water_wednesday_9_my_ideas_for_successfully/
A discussion on adding water fortifications.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/v6g1vh/what_if_we_got_some_kind_of_onager_ship_available/
A discussion on adding more varied ships inspired by the dynamics of land units.