1000000% absolutely for any Naval Improvements!
We’ve got a game which covers the entire age of sail, empires settling across the oceans. the golden age of piracy and some of the most famous naval leaders and their landmark battles.
Naval A.I. and pathfinding is number one for me followed very closely with a sensible Counter system.
The counter system I had in mind would that of the RTS game Rise of Nations which consists of:
Light Vessels - Strong against Fire Vessels. Weak versus Heavy Ships. Great LOS and Speed.
Fire Vessels - Strong against Heavy and Bombardment ships (i.e slow ships). Weak versus Light Vessels. One-Shot - very strong to anything they can get close to, with best use against Heavy Vessels.
Heavy Ships - Strong against Light and Bombardment ships. Weak versus Fire Vessels.
Bombardment Ships - Strong against buildings and ground units (i.e everything that’s not a ship). Weak versus all other ships. Reasonably good against anything at long range however incredibly weak to anything close-up.
As you can see Fire Vessels are a typical unit type rather than available to one or two civs and this is how it should be in AoE3. Historically Fire Ships were used a lot to cause signifcant damage and chaos to warships. Its one of the easiest naval ‘weapons’ to create as long as you have access to a boat/ship - whether it be Native Americans settling ablaze a canoe and sending it infront of a European ship, or the British converting a sloop to a fire ship, filling it with flamable material and powder barrels and sailing it into a cluster of ships.
In game that means that everyone should access to them. Native Americans can use cheapers, weaker but faster to train fire canoes and Euros/Asian/Fed States can train Fireships (i.e whichever ‘exploration’ vessel available to the civ, on fire). The only different to Rise of Nations is that their health degrades very slowly as they burn, so they cannot be hoarded - the main use being to train them up quick to get you out of bind or to deal with Bombardment-type ships.
How the counter system could translate in AoE3:
Military Vessels:
- Light Vessels - Small boats and ships - ‘Exploration’-type ships (Junk, Sloop, Caravel, etc)/canoes/boats (including Chincha Raft & Tlaloc Canoe).
- Heavy Vessels - Warships - All ‘Galleon’-esque and ‘Frigate’-type.
- NEW Fire Vessel - Fire Ships, Fire Canoes, Fire Rafts, Fire Junks
Incidently, all Fire Vessels use their Civ’s Light Vessels as the base model. - Bombardment Vessels - Monitor, Ironclad
Economy Vessels:
- Fishing Boat/Canoe - Weak versus everything
- (Possibly) Whaler or Whaling Boats as a Whale-only hunting Eco vessel that extracts Coin quicker)
Now, you may see that and think Native Americans (and any other Civ that doesn’t have Heavy, Warship types) are hard done by as they will not have Heavy Vessels, however the reality would be that whilst Light Vessels are weak against the aforementioned, they are all cheaper and faster to train than Heavys and would still have their nuances, i.e some will have good siege attack or resistance - they just share the same tag of [Light Vessel] which covers all the light, military vessels which are strong against Fire Vessels (and Bombardment ships). The weakness against Heavy Vessels can be overcome by numbers/resources. Even within the [Light Vessel], you could have a Civ’s best canoe having some sort of slight multiplier against [Heavy Vessels] as a ’
Natives could also overcome Heavy/Bombardment types by way of Capture/Hired versions much like the Mortars later on in the game.
As mentioned with the Light Vessel tag, all other categories still can have their respective nuances within their tag, for example a typical Galleon would still be very resistant to Ranged Attack and be able to train units, though as it is a [Heavy Vessel] it has a natural disadvantage against a Fireship, but great against Light Vessels.
New Ships / Replacement Ships
India - Whilst the Mughals did very much venture towards European-style Warships later on, they did use their own vessels such as:
- Ghurab - Light Vessel - the ‘exploration’ sailing ship
- Ghanjah Dhow - Heavy Vessel - Large Dhow cargo/warships - similar to Galleons
British
- Race-Built Gallleon - [Heavy Vessel ]- A slimmer, cheaper and faster Galleon (one of the ‘lightest’ Heavy Vessels) that whilst not as tough as the standard Galleon in HP and resistance terms, can use its speediness to hit and run the tougher ships.
- Rocket Ship - [Bombardment Ship] The mention of rockets in the US anthem actually refer to the rockets launched from Rocket Ship, Erebus. The British Rocket Ship is a Bombardment Ship (about Sloop/Schooner size) that fires a long range broadside of multiple rockets. Faster than a Monitor but less HP. Fires a barrage of rockets rather than a single mortar bomb, however takes longer to reload.
General Changes
- Monitor - Change name to Bomb Ketch. Monitor is a nonsense name, based on shallow-water armoured small ships - Bomb Ketch or just Bomb Vessel is historically correct and is instantly obvious what it does.
- Fireships - Available to all in Canoe and Ship form depending on Civ. Counter-measure to the most powerful ships, with the disadvantage being weakness to Light Vessels and slowly depleting health.
- Armoured Frigate - Euro Civs get an incredibly expensive additional upgrade to the Frigate line to enable (ocean-going) Ironclads - the Armoured Frigate. Uses French or British Armoured Steam Frigate (such as HMS Warrior - 1860) as basis for the model. Euros should have Ironclad representation!
- Wrecks - Sunken wrecks added to water-based maps - finite source of XP and Coin
- Outlaws/treasures added to water maps - Essentially those before (original + Warchiefs) and after (DE) the Asian Dynasties expansion
- New Naval-based maps - For example a King of the Hill style map with the ‘hill’ being a Sea Fort (Suomenlinna Sea Fortress and Fort Boyard as examples).