Please participate in my AoE2 Water Warfare survey!

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hello,

As some of you might know, I am currently working on a water mod and I am planning on giving a detailed mod concept document (which will I also release to all of you once it’s done) to the official devs. Keep in mind that it can be assumed that all additions will be balanced eventually and that the focus is on whether you would like them or not.

For everyone who doesn’t care about this wall of text, here it is:

I am already working on the mod itself and so far it is going great, however, I need to cooperate with the devs If I want it to be how I imagine it (and for fewer bugs). I will release the mod regardless, even if that means I have to use workarounds or resort to different mechanics I didn’t intend at first.

To get public opinion about the current water balance, and for me to know what the community thinks of the current state of water warfare, I would appreciate it if you people could help me and spare around 6 minutes on filling in this short survey.

As a little thank you, I am not going to hide the results and you will get an insight into public opinion, as you can view all the data afterward (hover over the chart to see the question). If anyone of you is wondering why some statements/questions are phrased in a biased way. First of all, the way I phrase them does not reflect my personal opinion.

Secondly, It differs when I ask:

“Ships are too good vs Land units”

rather than

“Ships are good against Land units”

When I ask the latter, I know that you agree with that statement or not, but not whether you think it is a good thing or not. Therefore I tried to phrase it in a way that reflects on the current status quo.

Last but not least, you will need to sign into a Google account, as the chances of bots hijacking the survey are low, but never 0. If anyone of you could post it on AoEZone, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks to everyone who participates and interacts in that regard, you can ask me any shallow questions about the mod, though, please consider that I don’t want to leak too much yet.

P.s: This is my first Google Forms so any feedback is always welcome :slight_smile:

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To iterate, I think that about 10-12 civs should be good on water.

Bohemians, Bulgarians, Mongols for example have no place having water bonuses, but

Saracens, Koreans, Japanese, Spanish, Turks, Berbers, Byzantines should be competitive on water, alongside Vikings, Portuguese and Italians. This pushes us up to 10 civs at least that should be making a player think “I’m going to pick this civ for islands” on a tournament draft, not just one of the last 3 mentioned.

Maybe add Malay, Britons, Persians? I don’t know which civilizations historically had navys that are worth implementing. Currently a lot of the aforementioned civs have only economically-oriented bonuses for navy, which isn’t enough.

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For Malay it’s correct, dunno for the other 2

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Definitely Malay. They were given harbors and their dock bonus, as well as the fishing bonus for a reason. I agree with the rest of your list. I think Briton naval power is too far outside the timeline though. I think that Khmer were also a powerful naval civ, so they should be better than they are.

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Just allow double crossbow to affect galley line to offset the lack of Shipwright for Khmer.
Saracens and Berbers need the tech too.
but at the same time Vikings need a nerf on water.
And for more of a historical/design change, Lithuanians navy needs to be more limited because the civ is quite strong on many maps.

In AoE 1 Persians have fast firing trirremes so their navy is really good here, though is maybe because Achaemenid persia had also good control on water, idk about Persians in AOE 2.

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Nice survey. There are many things that could be improved to attract more players into playing water/hybrid maps.
The one thing i don`t get though is “Ships should be able to garrison to heal” option is so popular.?

Now, i`m not talking about “realism” here where a ship is as exposed in the dock as it is in open sea but gameplay-wise the need to repair ships with villagers is a huge reason for land civs still having good chance of beating naval civs on water maps. Imaging how much more water maps will become biased towards water-civs if they could garrison and heal ships in docks. The only good thing that comes to mind is Malay UT being used more often. Pardon my poor English.

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How would you mod to make ships garrison in docks though? I couldn’t mod to make the ships garrison in docks once they were out and thought it was hard-coded for ship class not being able to garrison.

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Hence why I probably need to collab with the dev (but they already said it’s impossible for them too, but I think there gotta be a way)… But what If you don’t use the ship class?

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Forget that, fishing ships should be able to garrison in docks and (DEBATABLE, NOT SURE) deal some small damage from inside range same as war galley without bodkin. It shouldn’t be possible to snipe all the enemy fishing eco with just 2 galleys and a bit of micro, all the while fires are chasing them.

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I say allow fishing ships to garrison in docks, but do not heal automatically, leave that to villagers - however if fishing ships later become able to build sea walls, sea towers, etc - then I see no reason as to why we would keep fishing ships from repairing other ships, sea walls, sea towers, docks, etc.

Adding in that garrisoned fishing ships fire arrows would certainly be interesting

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It would be my a 20 year old dream come true if you built a mod which let us build sea walls and towers. I have always loved the water combat. My biggest want is garrisoning fishing ships, its too punishing when you lose water early.

3 Likes
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Fishing ship also doesn’t need dock to drop off fish but lose gillnets.

Also work. Or can be reserved for a possible Chola or Champa for future. And also maybe given to Persians to offset Bracer and give Mahout as free with Elite WE upgrade.