I refer to attack and defence upgrades, in age of empires 2, blacksmith upgrades were much more meaningful and could change not only the outcome of the battle, but the entire outcome of the game.
In age of empires 4, with higher damage outputs, adding +1 to a unit that does 35 damage anyway, is much less meaningful and rarely determines the outcome of games
My suggestion would be to change it to a percentage increase to scale for the varied amount of unit damage output
In a sense i agree with you. And the question as to be ask.
But adding 10% to the handcanonerr will bring their damage to 38,5 damage with just 1 damage upgrade.
In the other hand the archer will pass from 6 to 6,6 damage for the same tech. We can both agree here that the archers need more of damage upgrade than the handcanoneer.
So the winner in the end with that change will be the units will already HUGE stats.
I think the actual system stay better because simpler and fairer.
technically starcraft did it better… tech affected different units differently
besides the obvious issue with making things like HC 30% stronger, and archers only doing + 0.6 dmg, how would you balance armour out, how would increased defense work anyway? 10% of 0? 10% ranged damage reduction for a total of 30% damage reduction on the most basic unit? and finally it is pretty clear the intent from devs was to reduce the larger power spike that aoe2 has when reaching new ages.
with tech being considerably slower, and units scaling better, compared to stupidity like the outcome of a game being determined by a single tech.
just because you are used to something doesnt mean it is the best way to do something…
Great points, and i don’t know the answer to be honest!
I’ve played more aoe4 than Aoe2, so I wouldn’t say that I’m used to how it’s done in Aoe2. How was it done in starcraft? Does starcraft have the same variety of units? Maybe that’s the best way that tech gives different upgrades to different units - but would be a bit hard to remember!
but I do find in some cases, adding +1 attack to make it 41 instead of 40, gives no benefit at all.
You really need to look at how damage interacts with armour, and how units that are bad against armour can atleast get their terrible damage significantly buffed with an upgrade advantage.
The university techs are extra strong for high damage units while the blacksmith techs are important for lower damage. Blacksmith techs are still super important for/against archers, horseman, MAA, to an extent xbows and HA. Sure, they aren’t that amazing for knights and HC, but part of the strength of those units is not needing blacksmith techs as much imo.
Every Blacksmith tech in AoE2 gives +1, except for the last upgrade in each line, which gives +2 Pierce Armor and +2 Attack, respectively.
Blacksmith techs are (and have always been) smaller increases on top of other techs. They’re meant to be a supplement, rather than the main course, stacking with unit upgrades and other more powerful techs (such as University and unique techs).