Make Docks TCs of the Water?

I played a few ranked games last evening and ended up on Boulder Bay for one of them. My opponent was Rus and I was French. My opponent was able to mass attack ships, but I could only produce a limited number of Hulk ships to defend my docks. What do players think about docks being able to defend themselves like TCs, where you can garrison in fishing boats which increase the attack of the dock against opponent ships, sort of like how TCs full of villagers work on land. I’m just brainstorming here. Once my defending ships are taken out my docks are left defenseless and feel they should have some attack against ships. Perhaps I should have used a different strategy.

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It’s not a bad idea, but would make Delhi less unique. I read that viper built a castle by his dock immediately after FC age up and that worked well. But that’sa pretty hard play

Water defenders advantage is already big, with the auto heals. It would be even harder to kill the opponent’s docks, specially with arrow ships.

I believe that yes, you should’ve used a different strategy. I don’t know which landmark you aged up with in feudal, but my common build order on boulder bay is Chamber of Commerce, which I use to trade excess food from fishing into gold, and use vills to get a lot of wood, so I can almost instantaneously field 2 hulks (2 docks needed, ofc) as I hit Feudal. The idea of the strat being to guarantee water and yield trade resources in the long run.

Against Rus, which we all know can zerg our boats very early, you can use a fishing boat for scouting, to see if the opponent is actually moving for a very strong water push transforming his ships. Use the fishing ship because hulks can’t really run, and can’t fight back when running. Keep them near your docks, where they will heal as they fight. Remember: if you can hold without losing fishing ships beyond your scouting one, you already won the feudal wars, because the Rus had to transform all of his, so no water food eco.

Keep massing hulks before moving out. You don’t have to deal damage, because the Rus’ strat damages itself already. When you feel you have enough, start moving out, with the main objective of killing docks and protecting the entire shoreline. Against Rus you’ll then have to sweep the entire bay, otherwise one fishing ship he might still have can transform into an explosive one and sink several ships of yours.

After water is relatively safe, build a good trade dock and start trading. By this point a lot should’ve happened on land, so don’t forget that. With the economy fishing and trading can give you, I recommend trying to build a strong castle age push. You’ll want keeps to protect yourself on land, so use them to also discount your production. Age up with Royal Institute to get 300+hp cavalry in feudal and machine gun Arbalétrier, if necessary, and spam units until the ends of the earth. And don’t forget your trebuchets, to break enemy defenses. No point throwing units into the meatgrinder if the only objective is to kill fortifications.

Weak points are that 1- the opponent might not even try to fight water, so that’s why scouting is important. In this case, build one, mostly two hulks, kill docks and move to land. But continue patrolling to spot any new docking attempt; 2- if the opponent do not go heavy water, his land push might take you by surprise. Again, also scout on land. If he is using wood on land for production buildings he can’t be using that same wood on water. Not in a fast paced match.

But, generally, that’s the strat, and I think is solid, actually.

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I like this idea and it’d make early water raiding pretty useless which I’m all for

I’d also solve the problem of there currently being no defensive buildings that are effective against ships, even castles are really effective until they have cannons.

I feel like this was already done in age of empires 3, correct me if I’m wrong