Palmaryans were an interesting idea In Aoe1 they cost 75 food and work 25%(not really) This Is a really interesting gimmick and one that is hard to balance since you could have an unstoppable Eco advantage iron age but in reality, you mostly died to early aggression because you are stuck in the stone age and in AOE1DE they gave them +50F and eventually 75. I haven’t played AOE1DE So I don’t know what i’m talking about, but everything about their design is both very interesting and incredibly hard to balance. It would take a miracle to make them equally viable on both Arabia and Arena. So feast your eyes on this Gordian Knot that is my attempt to import Palmaryan Eco into Aoe2 while also being balanced.
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+50/75F starting food
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Vlllager cost 65F villagers
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Villager get +10% Gather rate, carrying capacity, building, repairing, and attack speed. These are all calculated additive meaning after all other upgrades so that they become slightly less Op as they get upgraded
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All food sources last 10% longer
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Insert military bonus here
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Team bonus: villager get +1MA
I also recommend a weaker than average post imp tech tree
Edit: I should of made it clear Im not trying to import palmaryans I trying to make a civ with similiar eco. sort of like how Hindunistas are a more balanced verison of shang.
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The villagers from the OG game weren’t working 20% but actually work rate +.2 which sounds weak until you realize wood for instance has a normal father speed of .303 for instance. So the balancing act is tricky.
Doing a gather rate additive like that would be nuts for this game.
I specified additive because otherwise it would be ambiguous wither FU lumberjack gather at +65% or 60%
We already have aztecs vills in the game that effecively work like 3-4 % faster.
That’s a really stong bonus already. (was nerfed bec of tis and still is kind of op).
There’s 3% and then there’s 56% going from .304
To .5 gather rate
All things considered I’d be for a meticulously balanced villager civ with a bonus with this nature. But be very careful.
If you had 20% better villagers but paid 20% more food per villager you still have a huge advantage with Unchanged train times and pop space so they’ll eventually pay for themselves and then some.
that depends entirely on how (in) efficient your eco Layout and what resource you are gathering and what upgrades you have. and yess +10 percent is very strong but it is hopefully balanced out by 65F which should mean you will by very susceptible to laming and feudal age aggression. We would likely need a lot of play testing to determine if this civ is UP or OP or both.
In the late game anyway. In the early game youre seriously hurting
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That depends. 20% faster farming might be too much? On top of Briton level sheep gathering seems pretty strong. Maybe very early it can be rough but might start skyrocketing faster than it should.
I’ll trust your higher elo judgement and numbers however.
But when your villagers cost 20% more that increase is nullified. Yeah when gou get to the point where youre doing more then judt making villagers it starts to go in your favor but before that youre hurting. Youre also forcing yourself to farms in dark age as you eat up more of your free food for villagers and have less for fuedal.
Overall though i think it would be better as a smaller bonus for smaller increase
This is the gimmick the devs will to add. I don’t mind it actually.
In theory I like this idea, and some of the more extreme bonuses of AoE1, although they were harder to balance. I also like the idea of tradeoffs of higher cost/better performing units, although this is almost entirely absent from AoE2, which is unfortunate, since it adds a whole other dimension of flavor and balance. Villagers are probably the hardest (and most important) unit to balance, but I think something like this could be done.
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Absolutely, I tried to address that by giving them faster attack and 1 MA and 10% longer food. I scraped +10HP but that could be brought back though i dont think it is necessary. And about their late game Bengalis have Manyana which makes there villager cost .9 pop (Which is it own can of worms) so this isn’t unprecedented. and about the faster villager Plus 10% percent is actually decieving because it is additive meaning as they get more upgraded it will become less effective.
I do like the idea of strong bonuses with obvious trade offs though.
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I think its absolutely necessary to keep them weak because in the late game thwy are going to be absolutely dominant
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I agreed I dont want them to actually Implement it though. but I am trying my best to make it balanced they have way to manying bonus which should shows you my struggle.
Maybe the 10% food should probably be removed if this civ is OP. +1MA armor is an absolute FU to militia, M@A I am fine okay with that since M@A would be a strong counter but as a team bonus that is too powerful. I would probably replace it with +4HP
That’s true but also remember with better wood than Celts that might not be a major issue. If you are in this hypothetical situation aging up on 20ish% less villagers then you age up a bit sooner than most.
Maybe I’m missing something here. I don’t think it would take long to stabilize however
Shrug. Doubt such a thing happens either way. Would be blatantly overpowered.
well actually… if it’s indeed 65 food and 10 % higher gather rate it can be balanced.
But withouth food lasting longer bonus. Need to see if 50 more food in the beginning are enough or 60 is a better value. But with the standard amount of food from the sheep, berries and hunt it would mean when you made 20 vills you are behind 240-250 of your free food.
This would lead to very unique buildorders and I don’t think it would be Overpowered (except maybe in maps with a lot of food on).