New Civ concept: the Venetians

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
283

Well, it depends on how much expensive it is in my opinion.

Of course the percentage can be adjusted, and the blacksmith doesn’t have to be included (even though it doesn’t have that big of an impact)

But no, I don’t think that it would be OP. The civ doesn’t have cheaper ships or siege, and doesn’t have faster gathering wood or such eco bonus.

The bonus just make them reach their mass of units faster, but it doesn’t allow them to outnumber the enemy. That’s the idea at least.

Besides, the main idea is that venetians can’t do a lot of things (terrible cav, no CA, pretty bad monks and just decent siege) so that few units that they have are good.

Close the Italians… yes and no… there were actually a lot of differences on a lot of aspects, that I won’t list since I already indicated them on several post in this thread.

As for the territory, well I don’t know its area, it wasn’t big for sure, but I think it’s comparable to the sicilians, or burgundians for example. I mean, besides their lagoon, they controlled Crete, Cyprus, Eubea several Greek Islands, the Peloponnese, the Dalmatian coast and islands, the Istria peninsula, and later on about half of the north Italy.

They weren’t the franks or the Chinese for sure, but they weren’t neither a nobody.

Could be, there are some images on the earlier posts in this thread if you are interested.

The goths are kind of a stretch for the Italians… yeah they governed the peninsula for some time, but had a little impact on the long term…

The longobards, which are the Italians in game, on the other hand had more of an impact on the history of the Italians, but the venetians were never conquered by them, nor by the franks or HRE.

So, if you have to find a civ to represent them, byzantine are the closest thing… but they are as close as would be for the vikings to represent the sicilians…

284

Closest ingame unit for one of them was this unit with the back shield and helmet. Italian armies always look cool in pics.

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285

Yeah, but the stradiot isn’t Italian, it’s a Greek/Slavic/Albanian mercenary that worked often for the venetians.

286

Here is another small documentary featuring the venetians (even if they are talking about a wider picture here…).

It was thinking of this particular siege that I thought of giving the venetians an infantry UU, that should be a marine of the time, called “fante de mar” (infantryman of the sea) which was an actual venetian soldier.

As always, the problem is that pretty much all infantry unique characteristics and properties are used in the game, so I can’t see a way to make it unique, balanced and historically accurate.

Still, their amphibious warfare was pretty great (like their sea warfare) and it would be worthy of being represented in an hypothetical civ in the game.

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Still, their amphibious warfare was pretty great (like their sea warfare) and it would be worthy of being represented in an hypothetical civ in the game.

This is a uu from the Realms mod, perhaps something like this for venice?

Corsair Ship HP: 200 (240)
Attack: None, sends out Corsair to non-ship units/buildings and converts other ships
Melee Armor: 3
Pierce Armor: 4 (7)
Range: 1
Armor Classes: Ship
Speed: 1.9 (2.2)
Attack Speed: 20 (18)
Creation Time: 21
Line of Sight: 6
Faith regain: 50 sec
Garrison space: 6 (10), can only garrison Corsair
Cost: 40w 65g
Elite: 600f 500g , upgrades Corsairs aswell
Benefits from Ship Upgrades
Trained in Dock
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288

Basically a “monk-ship”, I don’t know, I don’t like too much the idea.

I mean, it took out a bit the struggle that sending toops from transports to buildings has.

I would simply represent that with their good siege, and with an UT that makes both the docks and siege workshops work faster.

289

Ok, so after a long pause from this topic (because of the university and of vacation) I return here with a new design for a potential new civ.
I put together here a couple of both old and new ideas into a brand new design. Part of the design is copied from the duch of Aoe3 *(but I admit that I’m not too expert of the aoe3 mechanics as I’m of AoE2) and part comes from seeing how they implemented the new bonuses in the DotD DLC.

This design is a more unique and less conventional than the old one, and some people may see it as the devil itself of the aoe2 civs, not that I care too much, especially such civ is just at a theoretical level, and most likely will never be introduced…

As always also, I’m not interested into discussing if the venetians should be in the game, or what civs should take priority or not. This design however (both whole or its pieces) can anyway be used for other civs of other cultures.

So here it is:

New Venetian Design:

  • Villagers cost 50 gold instead of food.
    Shepard, hunters and foragers work 50% slower than other civs (like Kmer farmers). They also start with minus 200 food.

  • Have access to the Fondaco building (the unused Trade Workshop), an unique building that can works as a gathering point. Each TW built progressively increases the gold gathering and generation speed.

  • Archer line units move +5% faster.

  • Fishing ships gathering from shore fish also generate a bit of gold.

  • Instead of ECG, they have an unique upgrade for the cannon galleon the Galeass. The Galeass have more armor and HP than the CG, and can garrison units (infantry, foot archers and vills). Similarly to a tower, the last vills and foot archers add secondary projectiles in the form of arrows, which are faster than the cannonballs.

  • TB: Docks gives you +10 population.

Unique Tecs:

  • Castle - Arsenale - Docks and siege workshops works +50% faster. It also makes villagers cost food like other civs.

  • Imperial - Mude - The Fondachi bonus affect the relics gold generation and trade. Fondachi cost 50% less.

Unique Units:

  • Schiavone - a fast infantry unit that cost only gold, but doesn’t need upgrades, except the elite one. In the castle age, is unlocked at the trade workshop. Cost 70 gold.

  • Stradiot - similar to the schiavone, but it’s a cavalry unit trained at the castle. In the castle, the elite upgrade affects both the stradiot and the schiavone. Cost 100 gold.

  • Galeass - have 170HP, 6PA and a secondary attack in the for of arrows, each with 1 damage, and +3 bonus damage vs ships. They also have +10 carry capacity. The other stats are identical to the ECG.

  • Fondaco - The trade workshop (I’ll refer at it as TW for convenience), renamed fondaco for historical accuracy. It have 2000HP and it’s available from the dark age at the cost of 200 wood. It boost gold mining speed. After a UT, it also affects relics and trade.
    It can also be used as a gathering point for all resources, but can’t research eco upgrades. The first Fondaco gives a 10% boost to the gold miners, the second one a 8% boost, the third a 6% boost and so on. After building the 5th TW, the bonus stays at 2%.

Tech Tree:
(listed only the lacking units/upgrades)

Archery Range:

  • Cavalry Archer (and consequently HCA, and PT).

Barracks:

  • Champion, supplies.

Stables:

  • Hussar, cavalier, bloodlines and husbandry (and consequently paladins).

Siege Workshops:

  • Siege onager and heavy scorpion.

Docks:

  • Heavy demo and galleon.

Monastery:

  • Heresy and faith.

Blacksmith and university:

  • FU

Eco upgrades:

  • Crop rotation, gold mining and gold shaft mining.

Everything not listed it’s present in the tech tree.

Let me know what do you think of such civ, if it could work, if it would be weak or OP, or any of your suggestions.

If this new design is appreciated, I might make it’s own topic, so here we can keep discussing the old more traditional design, and there this new one.

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290

Do they really need four unique units?

Also the niche of the UUs doesnt seem quite strong enough.

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291

Well, they can always lose one of the 2 UU, (not the building or the ship). But as a design, it’s always better to have more options available.

Also, they have a pretty bad tech tree, not much flexible, with bad cav and bad champs. The 2 UU are designed to compensate that.

It doesn’t have to be, they get their uniqueness from other aspects of the civ.

Though, it would be the first gold only units, and you could tech into them anytime, since they don’t need upgrades.

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I think the Venetians is a civ that should come after Eastern Europe> India> Africa> Asia> Caucasus> America> return to Western Europe.

It is obvious that the Venetians are a very important civ and at the same time very interesting, but now it’s better to take a break from Europe. I hope there will be a Balkan DLC (or preferably a large Eastern European DLC) after DotD, to finally end at least one region in this game. Then you have to deal with the rest of the world. A civ like Venetians would be perfect for the last DLC for AoE 2 - such a cherry on the cake.

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In the last DLC for AoE 2, Aragonese could appear with the Venetians - after completing all other regions of the world.

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I don’t know about those cultures, so I write about what I know, design civs closer to me, that I’m more familiar with.

That being said, I don’t think that it’s really up to us to decide which civs should be released. It’s the devs that decide it, based on who knows what marketing principles (just look at burgundians and sicilians…).

My goal is to suggest and design a civ, and see if it can work. It doesn’t matter to me if it comes to the game in one month, or 3 years.

I’m more interested in knowing if such civ might work, and be balanced.

I was thinking of swiss, but they could be too…

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Frankly speaking, I know Eastern Europe best, which is why I speak the most about it - some people consider it nationalism…

I really like your civ idea and hope there will be Venetians civ someday - but people don’t want to turn back towards western europe again so this civ should wait and get the best ideas possible.

Nobody was expecting DLC ​​for the Definitive Edition xDDDDD

Maybe hence the selection of civ? First, they released DLC with civs that people wouldn’t ask to check DLC sales.

The Burgundians include the Netherlands, the Sicilians include Sicily - and that’s good.

Polish civ and Bohemians civ sound like the civs demanded by the AoE community. I hope there will be DLC now
Eastern European (with Serbs, Croats, Romanians and Finns) to have Eastern Europe fully completed and not to have to go back to it anymore.

I think so and that it will be a lot of fun :smiley:

I don’t know why people want Swiss. A better civ would be the Bavarians, which would include all South Germans - Bavarians, Austrians and even Swiss. Such a civ could be much more interesting than a civ limited to one particular country - in addition, the Bavarians could have a Landsknecht - a mercenary civilization.

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296

If the devs will decide to wait, I’m fine with it, if they decide to add it, I’m also fine, if they decide to not even put it… I’m fine either way…

Really, it’s more about the challenge of designing a civ that is both balanced and historically accurate.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to play as venetians, now or later, but I don’t have expectations.

Also, I try not to talk about which civ should be prioritized in the next DLCs, otherwise I found here just people who want to push their opinions and agendas for each culture of the world, which would deviate from the purpose of this topic.

Thank you.

Could work too.

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297

It sounds like a huge penalty for 1v1

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298

Gold is collected much faster and this bonus basically allows them to go archers and villagers without farms

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299

Yes, it is a big bonus for the early game. But you run out of gold immediately.

Assume you collect your 12k gold (in Arabia you have this about of gold close right? The other gold is neutral). You pay 150 vills 7.5k gold. It is more than 60% of your gold. It is a huge issue for 1v1.

Basically if your early game fails, then it is gg…

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You dont need to stick with it for the entire game.

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301

Sorry I do not understand the point. What do you mean? You should have a mean to reset the vill cost to food.

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302

Ah, got it wrong.

Thought it was having both options to create villagers
Yeah as it is its a really tricky bonus

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