This game certainly has the potential to have the best naval experience of all AoE games. But sadly very few in depth discussions focus on the navies, often it is just reduced to: naval maps boring, naval balances bad etc.
While it is evidently true that in a water map whoever wins the water wins the game, it’s also true that even on land maps whoever wins the siege shoot-out wins the game, at least for a long period of time before the newest balance updates. This doesn’t seem to have bothered people at all.
Naval battles SHOULD play a decisive role on water maps. In those maps, fighting on land is more focused towards controlling woodlines to win the water. There is absolutely nothing wrong in this. ‘Naval map boring’ is just a lame excuse for not improving naval gameplay skills.
The issue with naval battles now is a lack of variation (all civs are essentially the same, which is not just boring but also historically inaccurate.). Hopefully devs will bring back variation into naval games and don’t just give up on it. The water of AOE4 has huge potential to be fun.
I have a few suggestions:
- Historically speaking, carracks should have an edge in 1vs1 against ships from non-European civilizations, but should also be more expensive.
- French galleass is now hardly used by players. It’s not cost-effective and should be buffed.
- Sea trade should be more lucrative than land trade, as they were historically.
- Ships should be more resistant to arrow, but less to fire torch and cannon.