Hi, a bit of background about me: I’m a veteran of the AoE series and former competitive RTS player (I’ve grinded AoE-series ranked ladders since 2001 back on the MSN Gaming Zone and was ranked top50 globally in both AoM and AoE3). While I no longer compete seriously because I’m old as hell, I am still passionate about the series and want to see it succeed to its fullest. Now to the post…
One update that many people may not have noticed in the HRE vs English showmatch yesterday is that the starting TC hp has been radically changed from what it was in the beta – from 2400hp to 7000! I understand that this was done because the beginning TC is considered a “Landmark” and thus included as one part of the conquest win condition.
However, this change has the (very likely) potential to dramatically stretch out games from 15-30 minutes to the 45++ minutes we saw in this showmatch and hurt both the game’s watchability and playability from an Esports standpoint. It also makes no sense for an Age 1 TC to have 2000hp more than an Age 3 keep.
If the devs are still absolutely insistent on the Landmark TC having more hp than normal TCs, then I would suggest that the Landmark TC scales with Age instead: 2400hp in Dark, 3200hp in Feudal, 4800hp in Castle, and 7000hp in Imperial. This would preserve rush possibilities early on while still preventing easy Landmark sniping with later, more powerful siege weapons and other highly-upgraded units.