I’m not very knowledgeable in history so I’ll skip the background and jump straight into the civ details, this post is me throwing out bonuses and techs I believe could be fun or interesting and would work well together.
Stone defenses and foot archers civilization
- Farms can be used by two villagers.
- Stone defenses share a garrison space.
- Starting castle age stone defenses have triple garrison space. (unsure of this bonus).
- Each garrisoned relic gives +6% speed to foot archers and war ships (maximum 4).
Castle age unique tech: Archery range units deal 5 dmg to units that killed them upon death. (unsure of this tech)
Imperial age unique tech: Infantry can repair siege (at 50% of villager repair rate).
Unique unit:
Fast cheap archer used to raid. (unsure of this unit)
Base stats for normal → elite:
attack 4 → 5
range 3 → 3
armor 0/0 → 0/0
hp 20 → 30
speed 1.1 → 1.1 (up to 1.375 with 4 relics)
cost 15 w 25 g
training time 5s
Team bonus: Economy buildings +4 line of sight.
Tech tree:
Range: missing last armor and possibly thumb ring if archers with relics are too strong.
Barracks: missing halberdier as speedy crossbowmen/arbalesters are more than good enough to handle cavalry.
Stable: missing paladin, camels, steppe lancers, elephants and last armor.
Siege workshop: missing siege ram, siege onager and bombard cannons.
Explanation and thoughts about bonuses and techs:
Farms can be used by two villagers :
I strongly believe this should be the next eco bonus used in the game due to the fact is has clear strengths yet isn’t insanely powerful and is an eco bonus that requires you to adjust your macro (wood management) therefore isn’t passive and requires a little thought at least.
Pros:
- Two villagers per farm (each gathering at the normal rate) will initially save you 30 wood per farm (temporarily better than Teutons). This gives you more room to go for other buildings if you wanna be aggressive or just simply a smoother boom.
- Seeding less farms can allow you to get better value out of farm upgrades, for example you can build 5 farms to have 10 villagers on food then afford horse collar before they refresh letting you have 5 normal farms and 5 horse collar farms as opposed to a normal civ that might have to build 10 farms before horse collar (the numbers are hypothetical but you get the idea).
- You need far less space to setup the same food eco which means less space you have to defend, villagers are closer to the towncenter and far less exposed on open maps. On closed maps like arena it can help if you get rushed and pushed back and have less room to work with.
- The drawback however is your farm to food conversion ratio isn’t actually better than other civs and therefore you aren’t actually saving any resources (setting aside the value you get out of well timed farm techs), all the bonus is doing is smoothing out the wood demand required to sustain farms and long terms civs with better bonuses will gather more resources (Celts, Slavs, Khmer etc.).
Cons of this bonus:
- The first issue is the fact that farms generate a set amount of food per minute independent of villager gather rate (SOTL covers this). I don’t know how hard it would be to code farms that generate food twice as fast or what bugs that might produce (should be doable?)
- The second issue is the pathing, will the 2 villagers keep bumping on the farm? will they look natural on it? (again shouldn’t be too big a problem)
Stone defenses share a garrison space:
What I mean by this bonus is that villagers garrisoned in one tower can be ungarrison from another, (only the tower they were garrisoned in shoots arrows for balance and displays a flag for clarity) the same can be done with towncenters and castle (each building type is independent from the others).
Pros of this bonus:
- Versatility: If you tower rush and drop towers on different sides of an opponents base and he decides to vill rush the side you’re not on you can use this bonus to garrison, ungarrison where the opponent is to quickwall, or ungarrison to an adjacent tower to the opponents target and regarrison to shoot his villagers. If you build a defensive tower back home you it to reinforce your aggression with more villagers, retreat if things are going bad or simply swap out weak villagers. if you decide to add archers or spearman you don’t need a forward building you can build it and mass back home then use the defensive tower to send your units forward. You can of course hotkey the key towers to achieve all of this smoothly.
- Relevance throughout the ages: You can use it to tower rush in feudal but its uses don’t end there. In castle age and imperial you can use it to make your castle drop less risky. You can send a few villagers forward to build a tower first, then using the tower, reinforce with villagers from home to castle drop and if things go south you can retreat via the tower. This also mitigates some of the risk of collecting exposed resources late game (random golds and stones).
- Relevance in team games: In 3v3 especially one of the decisions a pocket has to make is what side to support and when. In the later stages of a 3v3 you can use castles to transport the pockets cavalry from one flank to the other allowing him to swing the fights in his teams favor. And while having the pocket (using his cavalry’s mobility) switch focus from one side to the other to catch the opponent off guard is hardly a revolutionary concept, the time saved is fairly useful. This also rewards teamwork.
- Skill requirement: while you don’t have to be a micro god to utilize this bonus it would still require some skill, additionally it it has a high skill cap especially when tower rushing or in messy situations (lyx would have a field day with this bonus 11).
- Tangible weakness: In a messy prolonged feudal age scenario (which tower rushes tend to achieve) you might face the problem of not having enough garrison space. Your towncenter only fits 15 villagers, and your towers collectively fit 5 which adds up to 20 villagers you can garrison. if you get attacked in 2 different places you’re going to have move villagers around which can make macroing hard as opposed to a civilization that can garrison 10 villagers in 2 towers or 15 villagers in 3 towers. This is mitigated in castle age by the next bonus (I’m not sure I like that) but more about that later.
Cons of this bonus:
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The elephant in the room, it might not fit the game thematically:
Visually, garrisoning units in one tower and taking them out from another should look fine, but essentially you’re teleporting units (I’ve been avoiding the word “teleport” to sell the bonus as much as possible 11). Personally I started playing aoe2 around the same time de got released (I started with forgotten before switching to de some 2 months after release). I don’t have the same nostalgia and attachment some of the older players do and I don’t mind the new civs and features at all (auto everything, regenerating shields, ignore armor). But veteran players make up a significant part of the player base and it doesn’t make sense to pretend everyone is gonna like this bonus. That said I have no change to make it fit better. -
It’s too strong:
I’ve already covered its versatility in tower rushes but I’ll add to that that part of the setbacks of tower rushes is the risk you take sending villagers forward. Since your eco falls behind you absolutely must deal damage and that means you have to be aggressive with your villagers and you will likely lose some of them and they definitely won’t be working. But with this bonus you can almost guarantee you never lose villagers, and whenever you feel you’ve done enough damage you can cut your losses and retreat instantly. Not to mention it’s fairly restrictive that the opponent can’t vill rush built towers effectively. Even if you’ve gone home so long as you keep your eyes peeled you can defend them the moment he approaches them. A potential way to nerf it is to have a range limit on which towers you can teleport to (like 20 tiles). This would maintain its effectiveness when defending your tower with your forward villagers but prevent you from shuffling vills with those at home. -
It’s Obnoxious:
Koreans, Incas and towers in general were nerfed because players hated trushes (Incas were op too but whatever). And while I’m sure some players out there like trushes the majority don’t want them back (probably I could be wrong). This problem and the previous one can be fixed by making the bonus apply starting castle age, eliminating its trush potential but maintaining its other use cases.
Starting castle age stone defenses have triple garrison space:
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Could make guard tower rush a thing. 15 villagers in a guard tower should have a lot of firepower, then again 15 villagers idle is horrible.
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The main reason I added this bonus is because I was told it wasn’t a good idea to have a civ that can’t garrison more than a collective 15 villagers in all their towncenters as you can’t defend as well. This bonus mitigates that. Alternatively this bonus can be removed and the “stone defenses share a garrison space” can be changed to only towers and castles as it doesn’t serve too much purpose with towncenters. Personally, I think this bonus should be removed and towncenters should remain a part of the “stone defenses” bonus, to encourage you to go aggressive and keep the fight at the opponents base. And if it comes to your base the you should be required to spend time moving vills as a trade off for the power the shared garrison space bring to your aggression or ability to relocate to other parts of the map.
Each garrisoned relic gives +6% speed to foot archers and war ships (maximum 4):
I honestly feel that the “relics = military boost” is a great mechanic and shouldn’t be exclusive to Lithuanians. It rewards taking initiative and map control and allows for varies levels of balance depending on player performance (2 relics knights in castle age are moderately strong and likely to happen, 4 relic knights are super strong but unlikely). I added the warships to the bonus because I thought it might be nice to have another civilization to compete with the stale water meta, but they can be excluded if it’s too much (or simply clashed with Berbers too much). If the bonus is too strong the numbers can be adjusted.
Castle age unique tech: Archery range units deal 5 dmg to units that killed them upon death:
This is unfortunately where my creativity ends, I added this tech because I had no other ideas. the issue I find with this tech is in fights between equal numbers of arbs or skirmishers you just win straight up and while I’m having trouble picturing it 100% I imagine the fights would snowball a lot. Whereas with fights against cavalier, if you lose an army of 60 arbs (that’s a lot of arbs) then you deal 300 hp worth of damage which is like what 2 cavalier? 3 hussar? so the bonus is potentially op vs squishy units while being worthless vs tanky units. Maybe that’s alright, your archers with the speed boost are already very strong vs cavalry (even generic arbs aren’t bad vs cavalry). Alternatively if it’s better for the bonus to be decent all round it can be changes to a percentage like 5%.
Imperial age unique tech: Infantry can repair siege (at 50% of villager repair rate):
Pretty self explanatory. I stole this from other posts. 50% to not have halberdier ram or champion ram pushes be lethal. Percentage can be adjusted if over/underpowered.
Unique unit: Fast cheap archer used to raid:
Not intended to win most fights or be your main composition, is intended to be a small part of your army used to raid and harass. The idea with the stats is like a Krambit but archers.
Team bonus: Economy buildings +4 line of sight:
Helps with of awareness of raids on open maps.
Synergy and overall strategy:
Generally speaking I feel tower rushes have some synergy with archers because they share the blacksmith attack upgrades and are both strategies that require low eco (towers with a few archers make more sense than towers with scouts). The main goal with this civilization on open maps is to either trush or use the flexibility of your eco bonus to go aggressive in castle age and secure map control and the relics. On closed maps try to secure relics and use the eco bonus to boom. That said I feel this civilization should peak mid to late castle while having ok options late similar to Malians (late game they have farimba cavalier and champskarls but not much else).
And that pretty much sums up my civ. Let me know how you guys feel about it (is it OP, UP or just not suitable for aoe2). And let me know where I could improve it (replace the UU or UTs?) or any other details I should include (how much should the UTs cost?). Also feel free to suggest what historical civilization can be suitable for these bonus and what the UU and UTs should be named.