A unique tech/ or civ bonus that gives infantry and archers the ability to poison units. The civ is missing both iron casting and bodkin arrow, but has full armor upgrades. So they do low damage initially, relying on damage over time. When a unit is poisoned it loses 2 Hp every 5 seconds for 30 seconds. The effect can stack, the more unit is hit by a poison damage unit.
Siege units/buildings are immune to poison damage. Monks can be used to stop a unit from dying when poisoned.
Since we have so many ignore armor stuff we might as well come up with absurd ideas like this. How would you feel about poison damage in this game? It could lead to the scenario even if you killed their unit, the poison effect will finish them off regardless.
Poison damage has a bunch of things that make it relatively weak on most cases.
For example you will often shoot enemies that area already poisoned reducing the potential damage.
The Jungle Bowman does 1 damage per second for 4 seconds with it’ poison ability.
The poison was added to other units later, the Carib Blow Blowgunner does the same damage for 6 seconds, while the Tupi Blackwood Archer does the dame as the Jungle Bowman.
With higher damage numbers it could be a more impactfull ability (AoE3 has higher unit HP on average).
It’s not really that crazy of an idea, many games do have poison mechanics and many games learned how to balance them so it’s not really a balance concern.
It’s definitely a very nice potential ability for a unique unit or unique technology. I’d prefer unique unit though because it’s always kinda strange when generic unit behave in a very not generic way.
It would be the perfect ability for a South American unique unit. But poisoned weapons where used in a lot of other places too.
The more crazier idea would be to give the poison another effect, instead of damaging a unit it slows the attack speed and movement speed down for a short time. This could be an interesting anti cavalry unit.
I would be ok with poison being included in the game, but I’d actually save different iterations of effects for different units/civs. After all, there’s a crap ton of poisons in this world, and having different effects with different units would be pretty freaking cool imo. For example:
Damage over Time: a deadly toxin would be needed for this effect, so a unit/tech invoking some of the deadliest toxins available would be ideal for this.
Slower Attack Speed/Slower Movement Speed: an attack that slows attack speed would be very useful in actual games, and the poison involved wouldn’t need to be overly strong either. I’m thinking paralysis poisons here.
Temporarily Disabled on Hit: This one could turn out to be a griefing mechanic, but I could definitely see some poisons which revolve around knocking out a person (analgesics?) being used as either a unit or tech. Could end up using the ability charge counter as a timer instead for this mechanic as well.
Temporary Insanity/Friendly Fire: another Griefing possibility, having units go berserk would be absolutely bonkers and would easily be able to represent ############# causing people to go wild on friendly units for a set amount of time. It would be much trickier to use in-game though, as the triggers necessary would be complicated I’d think (not an expert in AGE, sadly).
Disorienting Aim- another tricky one, could cause a unit to miss most attacks for the duration of a timer on Hit.
And these are just a few ideas you could spread between units in multiple civs, possibly making up for the various unconventional civs of NA/SA and Africa. Heck, some could even be used by existing civs I’d think. Either way, it’s just fun to think about the possibilities.
That’s actually a pretty cool idea.
Temporarily make archers miss more often or even reduce their range.
Basically a poison that blurs vision.
Could be a pretty cool anti Archer unique unit, that has to be ranged itself to be useful of course.
Poison was less commonly be used in North America so it doesn’t make much sense to be used there.
Poison usage correlates with the existence of poisonous animals and plants and those are more common in the tropics.
Blowgunners could be a regional unit that replaces the Hand Cannon.
If their effect was to reduce movement and attack speed of food units (so everything not cavalry) then it would be especially good against Infantry making it very easy to hit and run against them.
When I said NA, I was meaning the Meso portion, which is tropical. Though, I would’ve thought the Native Americans at least used some Rattlesnake or Scorpion venoms…