I guess you already find most games and gameplay boring and stale as their interest doesn’t come from water.
But we will see when the game releases its quality and whether water was worth it. Didn’t look good.
I think Water doesn’t need to be the main focus of an AoE game… BUT not having any water at all would be kinda lame. I think water maps were always good at shaking things up a bit (e.g. using myth units in AoM to support landings, or using some sick demo ship shots on massed enemy army walking through shallows in AoE2)
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Demo ships aren’t that great against other ships but man, is it amazing against everything on shallows. It deals even more splash damage than a Ethiopian TE SO.
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no, of course not. It simply doesnt fit to have a medieval building game without water units though, if the focus is on battles.
Also water does already look quite good with different fiting angles for ships and more variety, so I do not get the problem here.
Of course interaction with waves may be optimized, but - thats the point. It may be optimized.
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I’d rather have no water and an incredible game on land but it looks like it wouldn’t even be the case anyway x]
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Not a big fan of aoe 2’s naval game play. You can’t use warships to transport units is very unrealistic and they are doing Same with aoe 4 at least from trailer it looks the same
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Because it leads to more strategic decisions when you have to transport troops on a different ship. I prefer it that way also because it’s clearer that an enemy is transporting units when you see a transportship.
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There also other things like putting Garrisoned flag on the ship. They should have gone for more realistic approach.
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Yeah I know they did that in AoE3 but to be honest I never noticed the flag on top ot the ships. 11
Maybe I’m just blind though.
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my point.
most likely.
It really looks just a reskin of the same ancient stuff. They do not even have the size prominence as in aoe3, no satisfying visuals, no appealing mechanics. Boarding and capturing ships would be one interesting for example as mentioned above. Crews would be another. Ramming another. These of course are things that need more work and money than copy pasting 90’s approach.
They know very well that water is underused but instead of trying to make it better, they’re just putting the barebones together to avoid giving an excuse for critique that it was missing.
That’s the irritating aspect here. If you can’t do a proper and improved naval gameplay then don’t do it at all and go for something incredible in land. But of course, sales and reception is more important for them. Perhaps they even thought that advanced naval gameplay wouldn’t fit into esports well either.
As long as we want to call it “Age of Empires”, yes, it is indeed a must.
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Naval is one of those things most people never use it but if it is not there people will notice
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If they were to get rid of it I feel they would have to do a lot of buffing to naval boosted Civs.
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here is how I would like to see naval combat.
You have the normal 2 types of firing ships like they have, the fast turning weaker arrow ships, and the position able fortress type cannon ones. Great for some balanced ranged warfare but is missing some elements. Such as boarding, and fire.
Warships get a boarding/man power rating, its like an energy bar that drains as the ships are touching. This is initiated by a grappling ability where instead of shooting, one can choose to grapple and board the ship. the stronger of the 2 ships energy bar then wins, as they slowly drain and a fight animation takes place. once one ship exhaust itself it is left with its remaining HP and converted to the winning player, but the ship splits the remaining boarding power, so basically that ship would have to be sent to the docks to repair and replenish to be useful, (both would since likely ship would take hits while boarding action taking place and will have no more boarding power) if multiple ships get involved to first grapple and immobilize a ship, then others can come into help board as well, and that can really deplete fast and make it an efficient conversion.
as a defense some ships might have a fire weapon that can take down ships faster than boarding can convert. (but still depletes any boarding power, well maybe not for some civs!) or specialized swivel deck cannons for the Portuguese, have a close shot gun like anti inf cannon that damages the ship a little but depletes boarding power a lot.
Now lets talk about the potential of fire, how it has been used is simply a sustaining HP reduction as long as damage is applied, then neutralized… but what if all a fire ship unit really had to do was start fires on a ship instead of continually pouring fuel onto it, starting out small but as 1 sec goes by goes to 2 alarm fire, 2 sec is three alarm fire that is self sustaining… and then it slowly depletes the HP until would eventually destroy the ship, and possibly spread to other ships if not micro ed away. This would then create ways to put out fires. Such as fire type ships being able to alternately pump water, or actually make a water ship. Each ship could have its own small water pumps that can help put out fires at small range but requires manpower/boarding power rating bar to drop to put it out. Note a 1-2 alarm fire as it grows could be easily put out by a ships own man power if they had sufficient enough of it.
transports. are slower than military units and can get grappled easily if not protected. Unloaded have a very small boarding/man power rating. But as they fill up with units this increases a lot to fully charged possibly the strongest, that would take a few ships to overcome.
Fishing ships, can transport 1 unit.
To help with native balance on water canoes can kind of do it all
canoes, can shoot normally or set fires to ships, they do not have a big cannon attack, but some special ones may have a improvised rock thrower that they stole from EURO designs (think have the Lakota adopted firearms, how these cultures may have adapted had they fought on water)
so basically the strat will be to get close start fires on ships to cause havoc use some to board (their boarding power might not be a draining force, but a punch/ immediate drop. then they start shooting again, if enough ships do this they will overtake the ship like any other) and others in the medium distance to shoot targets. Large ships can grapple and use their man power to quickly overtake canoes but will not send their manpower to fight in them, so native canoes would just sink at that point, and the large ship continues with what it has left.
Docks rejuvenate manpower for free,
Possibly fishing ships can be grappled but have more of a chance to evade, again EURO civs will not fish from native rafts. (helping balance since a large fleet of ships will be stronger, native civs will have to adapt by rushing water and making canoes cheaply to start)
merchant ships actually have a small man power rating to ward off being boarded but can be boarded, however the ship is scuttled and a small prize is awarded the player. They do not get a grapple ability so no worry, merchant ships wont be fighting each other for the lanes.
I feel like mechanics like these would create some really dynamic and interesting tactics, the SEA is a barely touched potential of a secondary type of strategy play. within the same game.
I for one would like to see more agonizing pathing of more realistic turning radius’s, ship momentum,
questions to ask? could boarding power be transferred? say a big battle ensued and more ships are low in HP but have some boarding power, but another ship needs it with HP, so you send that in to tank the front lines with good boarding power, tie up the front lines and the low HP ships provide the range support but are paper to other boarding powers if flanked.
This sounds great and all but how do you expect me to play both land and water at the same time when naval combat gets this complicated?
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oops! repost please omit.
Great question! I find in my experience watching AOE3 most pros do have to really focus water first (because its faster paced), with maybe a raid or 2 to secure the sea boom, then people can really switch to land.
There could also be default stances, for instance with canoes, you could put them in a stance that would make it want to do its fire attack first, so it would charge after units in LOS while others would shoot at range by default when units are idle and unit comes in view. An attack like that might do ok if other guy is not microing as well, but if hes winning on water you then should theoretically have chance to win land. giving a type of balance, that could avoid going water at all.
I do not see the boarding as much more than targeting a unit with a toggled ability (like broadside) or default stance that would make it want to snare units with its short ranged grapple vs turn to shoot. So if you had really weak range units with a strong raid force wouldn’t just shoot with its weak attack but would go to ram or grapple…
And I didn’t really get to ramming but that would be a cool mechanic as well. giving more damage to side attacks… giving more tactics to snare a ship, then flank it with a strong ramming boat (this is how a weak boarding civ might fight strong ones, that use the rams to destroy the ships before the boarding power is depleted of the ship that got grappled. (ramming should damage the ship, but also deplete quickly a chunk of manpower unlike most other attacks.
it would basically take more melee to the sea instead of just ranged things shooting each other. It would be so fun to watch as fewer but bigger ships would micro for strategic position
The navy in AOE3 De is very powerful, and it is also very strong in attacking land forces. The power and visual effect of shell attack are the best in the Empire age game at present. So the sea battle of AOE3 De is very interesting, and the economy of fishing in the sea is also very strong, and the ability to obtain resources is much stronger than that on land.The powerful navy enabled European colonists to conquer lands and establish colonies all over the world.If it was a medieval naval battle, it would be meaningless. The firepower was weak and there was no visual effect of gunpowder shells. Medieval navy was not necessary, and a game took a lot of time to play. Slow down the pace of the game does not need to have a naval battle. Unless it’s a powerful navy in AOE3 De, it’s fun to play.
Did you ever play age 2 with elite cannon galleons main? these are devastating 
anyways, I wouldnt be against age 3 type ships, BUT they need to nerf the damn canoes. These were just unfair and unrealistic, 12 of them deleted my entire maxed out fleet.
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I’ve played aoe2, but I don’t play very much. This version doesn’t appeal to me. The navy of the Middle Ages didn’t appeal to me…
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