Making water more interesting

I know a lot of users want to make water more “interesting” but it’s hard to make changes without massive rewords to balance or changing the core structure of how water works.

AOE3 has whales incorporated into it’s water combat, allowing players to take gold by holding water. I think that adding whales to AOE2 does have a lot of potential without messing with anything that is currently in the game. OP’s idea to make it dependent on gillnets could be really neat as it would allow mapmakers to choose when water becomes relevant, making it more important in castle age onward and less or no advantage in dark → feudal.

I like that the idea because it doesn’t change any of the current balance or way that water works in the current meta, but allows a lot of flexibility to change how the windows open up on hybrid and water maps.

Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/exch4r/idea_new_gold_source/

3 Likes

It’s an interesting idea, but isn’t it kind of anachronistic?

That’s a very good point. However, I don’t think so, civilizations have been whaling since BCE. It wouldn’t make since as a massive industry maybe, but 400 gold or something whale sources wouldn’t seem too out of era.

Japan has had a whaling association since the 12th century according to wikipedia: Whaling in Japan - Wikipedia

2 Likes

Finally a solid suggestion on this forum in a while.

To add to the idea, they can implement different animals as gold sources depending on the map.
Narwhals and clams for scandinavian and northern european maps.
Crabs and lobsters for mediterranean maps.
Whales and eels for asian maps.
Spondylus oysters and sea turtles for american maps.

2 Likes

Hunting whales was something on aoe 3 timeline, before that it wasn’t that simple, their oil was used for lamps on aoe 3 time line, not for aoe2, so this suggestion belongs to aoe 3 sir, we don’t want more aoe 3 features.

If you want to make water more interesting, then nerf the collision size of the ships so they can’t stack 40 galleons in 2 squares giving them the ability to destroy their counter(fires).

Reducing heavily water bonuses for the top water civs seems more logical rather than buffing 35 civs.

1 Like

Good luck getting something like this added to a game in this time and era.

Adding sources can be unblanced because who win the water win the game but adding mixed sources to control can be good like port or harbor. If a player control workshop in port. He will get exra resources; with this way players can control the port from land or water.