Heated shot is a pretty useless tech. Water maps have pretty low diversity. What if heated shot gave archer units bonus damage against ships? Not sure about the number, maybe just 1-2 extra damage, I’m not sure. That way, land military has a better chance of defending against naval units, which is pretty much impossible otherwise.
Say that to my Korean Keeps-lined shoreline.
But otherwise pretty useless tech, correct.
3 Likes
Heated shot affect bbc/cannon galleon dmg against buildings and ships?
2 Likes
Right. I mean, I’ve beaten a campaign scenario by stonewalling the entire island and building a wonder from the get-go, because I couldn’t be bothered doing any work, so I guess I can’t talk.
Let the Heated Shot, Arrowslits, Murder Holes and Tower upgrade researchable at Tower itself too.
Perhaps make the Heated Shot also add the attack bonus against buildings and siege weapons for Towers and Castles.
5 Likes
Heated shot is actually quite good at doing at what it’s supposed to do. It shouldn’t affect land units, it’s already pretty easy to change a water map into a land one with a landing so you’re not really increasing diversity on water maps by not buffing the water specific stuff.
Water player here.
The problem with heated shot is the timing when you get it compared to when you need it.
It would be most useful to protect the own docks with towers when the early water fight starts to get sour.
However, you need to be castle age, then you need to have a university and you need to invest 300F,100G. By that time, even if you haven’t lost water completely yet, it is always more effective to build a castle for shore protection (or re-docking) rather than to rely on a few towers, simply because a castle cannot be destroyed by castle age ships.
If heated shot was supposed to work, it needed to be available in the dock, in feudal age, at a reduced cost. You still needed 2-3 towers (=stone investment) to make it pay off, but I think then it would be used in the way it is intended.
Of course, this entails the danger that it suddenly becomes OP, but given the how fragile towers are nowadays, and given that the tech affects only immobile units, it seems unlikely to me.
7 Likes
Maybe heated shot could be slightly more expensive and also give bonus damage against rams. That way it wouldn’t just be a water map only tech.
2 Likes
Icicle’s suggestion sounds legit, + it wouldn’t be OP cuz it would use up dock time.
1 Like
I’m more inclined to UpmostRook9474’s suggestion - having it researchable in a tower makes much more sense.
heated shot should give bbc a little bit of bonus damage against ram. +8 maybe.
Is Heated Shot defensive or offensive technology? What’s the possible reason for Byzantines to not have it available? Koreans (the other defensive civ.) have it available.
In April 2023 major patch, Byzantines are getting an adjustment to their unique tech Greek Fire, which will affect their Bombard Towers. Is Heated Shot totally irrelevant by nature to a development towards that direction?
There is a general balance policy, to prevent civs. from having access to techs that are similar to their civ. bonuses. What’s the possible Byzantine civ. bonus, that prevents them from having Heated Shot available, while Koreans do not have one such?
1 Like
Actually, if anything, I would like to see some of the Heated Shot bonus dmg go to the Towers as part of the Tower’s base bonus dmg vs ships. I think that would make using Towers initially vs ships more of a worthwhile investment.
And then make Heated Shot cost -150F.
Defensive, as it’s usually more effective for your own island, but it’s also basically useless, and should basically never be researched.
3 Likes
Yes or make it have bonus damage to any unit with wood cost
it should give archers bonus damage vs ships and buildings.
I think heated shot can be reworked this way. Split siege engineer into 2 parts, the +1 range for siege units will remain for siege engineer, but the +dmg vs building is given to heated shot. Of course, siege engineer price should be reduced to compensate.
But that would also buff all civs Siege units that dont have SE but have heated shot(turks for example) and nerf all that have SE but no heated shot (bohemians for example)
Also heated shot is a castle age tech and while IMO battering rams could use some more damage but mangonels are already doing more than enough.
How about adding more technologies?
Siege Engineers split into range and damage upgrade technologies (Cost and research time split too).
Second Heated Shot technology for Siege units and maybe even archers.
Splitting Siege Engineers gives more options to balance civilisations by giving some civilisations only one of the two technologies.
Heated Shot for Siege would make Siege more useful in costal defence.
Heated Shot for Archers might be more debatable. It’s not really realistic and not sure if it’s balanced.
But the craziest idea:
Ballista Tower
New Tower Building with a long range and huge bonus damage against Ships.
Unlike Bombard Tower it would be affected by Ballistics.
The simplest way to buff heated shot is to play more maps where it is potentially relevant.
Here, it should be understood that it is not a tech for pure water maps, but rather for the hybrid type. For this reason, I’m looking forward to playing continental in the next rotation.