Since DE we have some common patterns in civ designs.
All UU have a new special ability/gimmick. (Except Kipchak)
One civ will have multiple things one age earlier. Cumans - TC & Ram, Burgundians - All eco techs and Cavalier, Bohemians - Chemistry & HC.
This one is the topic of this thread. Another civ will have an unique building. Bulgarians - Krepost, Sicilians - Donjon, Poles - Folwark.
These are some of the unique buildings that I’ve thought about before -
Mini TC - I think this is one of if not the easiest one to think about. It should cost less while also have less HP and attack. And also make it balanced slower villager production rate and not being able to research any tech or advancing to the next age.
Common drop off building - This one should have some other features too. Like some decent pop and garrison space, or used as a fortification. Otherwise I don’t think this will be an useful building.
Super TC - More expensive than TC and provide more fortification. Extra HP, Attack and most importantly Range is required imo. Maybe need to work faster than regular TC as well.
A full wooden defensive building - All defensive building in the game cost stone. I’m thinking about a tower line equivalent building with no stone. I understand this will be hard to balance due to the scarcity of gold and stone in late game.
University + Monastery - This one I was thinking a lot lately. This building will have only university techs, no monastery techs. The civ won’t have a monastery either. Relics can be garrisoned in this building, and a new monk type UU can be trained from this building and will also have an Elite upgrade. I was also designing this unit. They will have better stats than a regular monk but without Redemption and Atonement they won’t be that strong.
I will also write regular monk stats in parenthesis to make the comparison easier. My proposed stats is like this
Elite upgrade cost- 1000 gold
Elite upgrade time - 100 seconds
HP - 40, 50 (30, 45, Upto 95 for Aztecs)
Armor - 0/0, 0/1 (0/0)
Speed - 0.75, 0.8 (0.7, 0.77)
Range - 10, 13 (9, 12)
Healing range - 5, 6 (4, Teutons 8)
LOS - 12, 15
Training Time - 45 seconds (51 seconds, Lithuanians 42.5 seconds)
Faith Regeneration Time - 50 seconds, 30 seconds (62 seconds, 33 seconds)
Healing rate - 200 HP/min (150 HP/min, Byzantines and allies 300 HP/min)
Super castle. We have a building like this in scenario editor. It has 10 base range. Will be great if a new civ can build this.
Common military production buildings. The civ won’t be able to build barracks, range or stable. Instead they will have these 2 buildings :
Military Camp (cost 225 wood) - Available in dark age. Can train and upgrade all foot units, Militia in dark age, spearman, archer, skirmisher from feudal.
Horse Barn (cost 225 wood) - Available in feudal age. Requires Military Camp to unlock. Can train and upgrade all horse units. Scout cav in feudal age, knight and CA in castle age.
civ bonus that allows production of infantry AND ranged units in the same building. For example, you don’t need an Archery Range, since you can make archers and skirmishers in the Barracks. This would affect build orders and allows easier switching to produce another type of unit, among other things.
Improve the blacksmith to let it upgrade unit lines in the blacksmith instead of their respective building, i.e, upgrade knight to cavalier, archer to crossbow, pike to halbs.
Sea walls and gates let’s gooooooo
Fire towers for byzantines for anti rams with greek fire.
For the mini town center, have it available from feudal age, built as fast as a barracks, unable to create villagers until castle age however is able to research all town center techs. Give it the same pop space and garrison/ maybe less attack than a regular tc, perhaps a little less garrison. Maybe don’t give the mini tc the ability to research the ages, but for sure everything else - at least until castle age.
Though I’m not interpreting this the way you intended, I think it’d be an excellent unique building:
A universal gather point where you can research Hand Cart, Town Watch, Loom, etc. (But can’t make vills. Ever.)
Then it would be a general resource drop off point in dark age, perhaps able to secure a lumber camp or mine and may cost a little stone as well as a little more wood and only able to build one at a time. I believe 10 garrison space would be good, and it might even be good for farms. As for if it would fire arrows, perhaps, but make it have less range than a town center, or make it so if you were to build it in range of an enemy town center that your villagers would be in range of the enemy town center arrow fire. Build time for the structure in this case would be around half the time of a regular town center, and have weaker arrow fire, mostly due to less garrison space, but also due to a more limited maximum arrows able to be fired from the building as well as making it have, perhaps, one less damage then a town center.
I think you misunderstood. The whole point of a mini TC is to produce vils. I proposed two different buildings, both can be used as an universal drop off point but one can produce vil and other can’t.
Yes. Exactly like this.
I think we should give it some other features instead of gimmick. For example being able to research TC techs there will be fine imo. WB + HC will save your TC time by 5 vils.
Barracks, Range and Stable are unavailable for the civ. Instead have 2 unique buildings.
Military Camp (cost 225 wood) - Available in dark age. Can train and upgrade all foot units, Militia in dark age, spearman, archer, skirmisher from feudal.
Horse Barn (cost 225 wood) - Available in feudal age. Requires Military Camp to unlock. Can train and upgrade all horse units. Scout cav in feudal age, knight and CA in castle age.
The civ needs a very strong early wood bonus to balance this.
And what if you get team bonus units? You have Italian ally, what will be the Condo hotkey? I assume the tech tree will be very limited so there’s no Camel/Battle Ele/Steppe Lancer (or any Hand Cannon for Military Camp) to make space for them. Any future civ with team bonus units will run into a space problem though. (Which might also be true for several other civs though)
All of this veers too mcuh towards asymetrical balance. Age of Empires 2 is great because it stays clear of it. Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3 aren’t nearly as popular because they didn’t.