Potential ideas to improve gameplay on water

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
22

What about adding a “treasure island”. Which is just 1 tile of sand whith a small treasure trove and also a palm on it.
You can trade with these treasure islands, but instead of the standard trade, they actually “generate” ressources (Gold and Wood) slowly. Each trade cog only can carry a limited amount of Gold and Wood.
The ressoruce income is similar to half (2/3) a vill on gold and half (2/3) a vill on wood when you use 1 trade cog and the treasure island is away like 1-5 tiles from your dock. Idk how many trade cogs should be supported by a single treasure island. I wouldn’t make it more than 3 on a 5 tile distance though. The less cogs can be supported, the more easy is it to adjust the intended effect with just changing the amount of treasure islands on the map. After that you would need more trade cogs and their efficiency decreases also.

This would add sime snowball to the current islands lategame at least. Also a way to make the Feitoria less abnoxious on this kind of maps.

On the other hand I would like to see a nerf on the current early game fish economy. It’s too snowbally imo. Just decrease the gather rates of fishing ships and vills on free fish.

23

I still don’t why other RTS still doesn’t implement it

24

so they not gonna rework water in next big patch?

25

nope. i think any major change to water would be super controversial

26

The biggest problem with water is that it should supplement the land battles, not be an isolated theater of conflict.

1 Like
27

I actually started to make a general concept how a new water design could look like some months ago.
But it’s really complicated without the ability to test the stuff, so it stayed very shallow.

One part of it was that most of the ships can be “converted” to land units. Not all of them (demos can’t) but basically all others. The reasoning behind that is exactly what described, that “winning the water” often can’t be translate to an advantage on land. So with that it’s then possible.

The concept for ships was to give 7 ships that are supposed to fight agianst each other for water superiority and ofc then the Cannon Galleon against defensive structires.
It starts with the basic triangle in feudal, in castle age (inspired by the Romae ad bellum mod) there come Ram ships and Bording Ships. The Ram Ships kill the entire Feudal Triangle but lose to the Bording Ships. And in Imp there will be Ballista and Mangonel Ships. Whilst the Ballista Ships are supposed to be overall the strongest, they are hard-countered by the Mangonels. It’s a quite sophisticated system, that gives every type of ship a place in the meta but should overall lead to relatable stable compositions. Usually consisting of 2 ships that synergize quite well.
The probably strongest comp is ballista/demo, but it has also the least value for land transition. Followed by Mangonel / Ram ships and lastly by the classic Galley/Fire combo. The boarding shups don’t give a good combo, but they can be used very effectively agsint the mango/ram combo, a bit less effective against the galley/fire combo and… well against the ballista/demo combo you need probably absurd numbers.
As you also would expect the strengths of the combos is balanced by their gold ratios.

I can try to break down the individual Ships and their interactions:

Galley Line

There’s a notable change to the Galleay line. It now caost 85 W / 45 G. Also it shoots now 2 projectiles every 2 seconds that deal less damage. The reason for that is that it is now more associated with Archers. It’s also their land transition unit: You get 1 archer out of a Galley. Their shouts have a secondary effect on opponent ships, they slow down a bit after being hit. This is especially relevant for the interaction with demos. It’s also intentional that this line has a benefitiary effect to each comp it is added to, as the damage outpuit is low.
The Galley line is unique in it’s interaction as it is the fastest ship class (tied with fires) paired with a slowdown effect. Meaning you can in theory outmicro every other ship class with it. But it may take ages. At the same time it only “hard-counters” demos. All other ships beat the galley line in general if the galley player doesn’t micros like a god.
With the slowdown effect they are also ideal to help your fishing ships escape from enemy raids.
35 % Gold Ratio

Fire Galley line

65 W / 90 G. Land transition unit is 2 skirmishers. (yes trash units). Fire galleys also have the secondary effect of disabeling hit opponent ships from attacking / slowing down their fire rate by a huge margin. They are also as fast as Galleys and have overall the best armor stats. They are supposed to be good against Galleys, but exceptionally good against Ballista and Mangonel Ships. Bording Ships soft-Counter Fires and fires are coutered by both Demo and Ram Ships.
60 % Gold Ratio

Demolition Ships

35 W / 95 G. Basiclly the same as atm. A bit brought down as now their damage is split between melee and anti-ship damage. Don’t have a land-transion. Hard-countered by Galleys, Rams and Ballistas but also counter Fires, Bordings and Mangos very hard. Chose your targets well and you will be revarded. In theory probably the worst of all ships, but they pair very well with the Ballistas which are the best. They also are the best counters against the Bording ships which a lot of others have problems dealing with.
75 % Gold Ratio

Ram Ship

The first of the new Ships. 70 F / 125 W. So it’s actually a trash unit on Water. Land transiition units are 2 spearmen. Counters all 3 feudal ship classes (galleys softly, fires good and demos very well as they don’t have the “ship” armor class even). Rams are also immune to the Galley-Line movement debuff. As they are slower they still can’t catch up to the Galleys, but at least they don’t get slowed down. On the other hand they are countered by all the three other non-feudal ship classes in Bording, Ballista and Mango Ships. So the powerspike is kinda short-lived. This is achieved by having high enough attack to one-shot the feudal lines but not enough to one-shot the later ones. This paired with a pretty slow ROF makes the Rams very ineffective aginst the later unit lines.
0 % Gold Ratio

Bording Ships

Bording Ships are special as you don’t need to have a Dock to make them. Instead you can order 2 or more milita units to build a boarding ship. 2 will then be disbanded once the ship is build. But you will get these militia back when you make the land transition. You have to pay an additional 70 W to build the Bording Ships. Bording ships immobilize their targets like they do in the RaW mod. They are also inaffected by the Fire ships debuff. They perform well against the Galley and Fire Galley Lines and counter Ram and Mangonel ships. But they are countered by Ballistas and even hard-countered by Demos. With the ability that they can be made without Docks they are probably the only options to have a comeback on water when you already completely lost it. But they also need very good micro, as they are basically “melee monks on water”.
20 % Gold Ratio

Ballista Ships

120 W / 120 G. As mentioned intended as in general the overal best ships in the game. At least when it comes to mass battles. Very well balanced between damage output and Survivablitly but also with pierce-through projectiles that can hit multuple targets. ROF is notably higher than with current scorpions (which are the land transition unit), around the same as the Galley line. An “improved” Caravel if you want to see it that way, as it has also higher base pierce damage. But it still also has weaknesses. So it is Hard-Countered by both Fire Galleys and Mangonels. But on the flipside it counters Rams and Bording Ships and hard-counters Demos. Ideal for “water control”.
50 % Gold Ratio

Mangonel Ship

The final ship class. Super pop efficient with 200 W / 150 G cost. But slow and comparably frail for the cost. Has insane Splash Damage output though, can absolutely devastate clumped-up enemy ships and even deal a lot of damage to land units from a safe distance. Counters Ram Ships and Hard-Counters Ballista Ships but is countered by Bording Ships and even Hard-Countered by both Fires and Demos. Land transition unit is a Mangonel aswell, which is a very high value. But ofc with the various bad matchups it’s probaly more a situational choice against mass Ballista Ships of the opponent.
40 % Gold Ratio

I’m still kinda working on this, but the progress is very slow. I am not completely satisfied with it yet. The issue I have with it that the bording ships counter the other combos so diffferently. They feel like completely useless against the most desirable but gold expensive ballista/demo combo, but way too strong against the Mangonel/Ram combo. And I don’t see really how I could fix this without a complete rework of all the different counter mechanics. That’s one of the reasons why I chose the Gold ratios and land transitions as they are, so the ballista/demo comp has the big downside of having a super high Gold ratio AND a bad land transition. You might secure the water with it super well, but it gives the opportunity to the opponent to make something happen on land.
I also have currently an issue that with the stats I have the demos actually DON’T counter the Bording Ships as intended (as bording ships have quite high HP and demos not so high damage to one-shot them), so I have to look for a solution for that. I probably will just give the bording ships lower HP but higher armor to fix this.
Ah and lastly I got too many “hard counters”. IDK why this resulted this way, but I got 6 “soft counters”, 7 “counters” and 8 “hard counters” which is for my taste too many hard counters. with 7 different ships it should be less than 6 imo. But maybe I’m also too picky here. But I would like to have more soft- and standard counters.

What do you think?

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28

Cannon Galleon got a small overhaul.

29

just no. this might be a decent idea for a different game, but i really hope the devs won’t change a 20 yo game we love this drastically

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30

Water play is way too stale so I think at least two more ships are needed.

I know people like the game the way it is but theres a reason barely anyone plays on water. Either way I would keep the current umits the same

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31

I tried this, but I couldn’t make it work with the concepts of the other units.Maybe there’s a different way than mine that can keep them as they are.

But honestly I would like my concept better at least for ^the galley line as these galleys would necesarily keep the upgrades be microable “the same” as the feudal variants. And from this it actually doesn’t change that much except for the difference that it then shoots 2 arrows which it does for balance reasons as it allows tp design the other new shipclassses better in their interactions with the galleys and fire galleys.
I just haven’t found a way to make this work with the current design. The current design in general is unnecesariyl twisted for the desired effect.

And with only 5 units I couldn’t get such a “sophisticated” concept with different unit compositions as I did without braking the “basic” triangle.

32

Here is what I think the main weaknesses of the water game are and what I would do to fix it and what people could try and experiment with…

I don’t think the power structure between ship classes is an issue or that the number of ship classes are too limited. The problem is that a player will generally pick one class to focus on, mass produce it and either loose or gain naval superiority over their opponent. Depending on the type of map, a huge amount of map control can be granted to the one who gained superiority, potentially for the remainder of a game which leads to the following problems;

As casusincorrabil pointed out, winning on water doesn’t always translate to an advantage on land or you can’t make use of your advantage immediately because all of your population / techs / resources are tied up in naval units. Having to then transition into a land army makes games prolonged and usually delays the inevitable.

There is very little opportunity to make a comeback against naval supremacy. Once a player has gained superiority on water they can sweep most enemy docks/production away and with good scouting can prevent a resurgence. The player who lost is hard pressed to re-mass enough ships to make a serious challenge. On land TCs, towers and Castles can slow down a push, but on water these are limited in usefulness due to range and warships can’t garrison making them vulnerable in low numbers. Even leveraging ranged units to ward off naval aggression to build back up seems pretty limited as ships can hit and run effectively using the water.

To make things more interesting I would propose the following changes;

  1. Allow warships to transport land units and use these garrisoned units to increase the ship attack and/or total missiles fired. This would allow a player to use pop and resources committed in land units to increase their naval power or try and catch up if they are behind in water. Also they can then disembark these land units if they are successful in a fight to keep the pressure on an opponent.

  2. Make intentional catch-up mechanics. If you are pushed off water then you need a way to get back into the action. One idea I had is allowing certain civs to build ships directly with vills instead of needing a dock. This allows them to commit any amount of villagers to building enough ships in mass to be valuable in a fight. By bypassing the dock a player is more likely to get their ships out before being discovered as well.

  3. Have viable shore defenses that can deter Naval Aggression. Most siege units can’t out-maneuver a ship and their projectiles are slow enough to dodge. Archers and other ranged units lack the amount of HP as ships have. Giving siege units projectiles that can make hits and allowing archers to do considerable damage to ships would make a combined arms strategy for naval invasion more important and interesting.

  4. Limit the amount of water on maps. Island maps are fun, but offer a very slow paced game. Perhaps for ranked and fast game modes limit the amount of water so that there is more interplay between land units and ships. If water ways are limited and narrower it would force more conflict between land unit and ships as the ships have less room to maneuver or run if they are in conflict. Also the balance of power is no longer just between ship classes as considerations have to be made for any land unit/building encountered as well.

I’ve already tried implementing a couple of these ideas into my very unpolished mod No Age Total Conversion. If anyone wants to give it a try, it’s in the mod section. See if it makes a noticeable difference to the naval dynamic.

1 Like
33

Nice ideas, but

  1. Fails due to requiring too much micro in practice. Also, losing a ship with units garrisoned hurts a lot more.
  2. Fails due to requiring too much micro.
  3. Shore defenses already exist. They are called castles and towers. They do allow for a comeback, but need to be constructed in time (not when the entire shoreline is covered by opponent’s ships.
  4. The amount of water on most maps is already extremely limited.

Personally I don’t understand the complains about water and hybrid maps. I like them a lot. What makes them interesting in my opinion is exactly the fact that you have to balance between water and land investment, both w.r.t. economic units and military.

Nearly all water maps (with the possible exception of water nomad) allow early land aggression, which can be very successful if one is sneaky enough and the right timing is hit. On the other hand, they usually require to invest into the navy at some point.

34

Thanks for the critique. Yeah some of my ideas are pretty radical. I don’t hate water wars necessarily, but I do think they could be more dynamic and offer some interesting choices. I’ve done my fair share of sneaky land invasions and sea wars so I get where you’re coming from. Consider these points.

Clearly you’ve never played Starcraft. People do drops with transports and other high amp strategies frequently. What constitutes as too much micro is relative based on the player. And yes, if your transport filled to the brim with dudes is shot down it very much hurts, but that’s because its a high risk / high reward strategy. Players have to decide what they are willing to risk in any engagement.

Well, there’s this button on your keyboard you may have seen called “shift”. You may not be aware, but when you hold it down it allows your units to queue multiple tasks after their immediate task is completed :wink: . Another alternative is that you can use the click and drag wall building feature to place multiple down with modding.

That’s a good point and heated shot improves Castle / Towers attack vs ships. The problem is that both generic buildings have a max range of 11. A maxed out Galleon has a range of 10. Docks take up a 2x2 space so you can still destroy a dock while being out of range and cripple ship production. Not to mention if the civ has cannon galleons which have a range of 13 and upgraded 15. A player has no reliable shore defense against cannon galleons if they can’t get back on water and the opponent has sufficient map awareness.

That is true. There are a ton of maps with none whatsoever plus I’m sure lots of people ban water maps on ranked. Its possible some people don’t want to switch up their land strategies to make navy fit into their playstyle. Personally I ban them in ranked because I know the game will likely go much longer and be drawn out. That’s why I think if it’s done in moderation it could give an extra dimension to the action instead of being an all or nothing proposition.

35

water is fine the way it is

36

Sorry I don’t have time to reply to everything in detail. Just to clarify: With “too much micro”, I always meant “relative to what the opponent has to invest with a basic approach”. That is the critical factor, and fairly independent of the skill level.

Further, I’m a little bit surprised that apparently two “problems” are brought up at the same time:
On the one hand, water apparently is too snowbally, comebacks are hardly possible, etc., calling for better defense mechanisms. But on the other hand there are complaints that games drag out for too long. Since complains pertain both extremes, it looks like the balance isn’t that bad after all.

37

I don’t think the complaints are contradictory. It does snowball too easy and when one player takes water it’s very hard to redock. The problem is in order to end the game the winning player must then transition to land to finish off the loser.

I once played an FFA (4 player) on crater lake (gold rush meets Baltic). We all boomed and being the faster player I walled the sides and took control of the water and central island gold before minute 45. They ran out of gold soon after (only 8 tiles starting gold). But finishing the game too over 3 hours because I had to hold water and kill on land. Granted these were niche settings and we all made a lot of mistakes but I think the idea remains.

38

Again though, play some startcraft. You have to invest far greater amount of mirco just to play zerg vs the other races, but people still enjoy them at all levels. Loading up warships would require the same amount of micro as putting dudes in a battering ram. Also catch up strategies should be sub-optimal to an extent as it’s leveraging resources already committed in other areas towards something they weren’t intended for.

I personally don’t like long games unless they are team games, but there is a big difference between playing a balanced long lasting game and a long game that everyone knows was lost over an hour and a half ago. Depending on how much water is on the map, a player can gain a majority of the map control and be uncontested, but not have the means to finish off the opponents for quite some time.

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39

Good point. How often is the garrison feature in rams actually used? Maybe for some initial push to dive under castle, but otherwise it’s just too tricky to distribute, let’s say, 20 pikes/halbs on four rams. And there you have a situation where you would (a) pair the units anyway, and (b) don’t lose the garrisoned units when the ram is destroyed.

It is true that such situations can occur, but they are rare. Never happens on Islands, mostly on a map like Baltic, where, when you have the water control (and wish to keep it), and you fail to kill the oppponent early imp, then you may not have enough pop space to win outright on land when both sides are maxed out, so it requires slowly draining the opponent of of resources.

However, I’d say it’s good sportsmanship to then just resign when the eventual outcome is clear due to map positioning. At least I do so.

40

I think the best way of balancing water is to look on what units exist on land.

Having a suicide unit as part of the rock paper scissors system does not feel good.
Also having a “melee” unit (Fire Galley line) counter an “archer” unit (Galley line) is strange and often doesn’t work as well in practice.

And then we have the historical problem of Greek Fire actually not being a thing most civilisations used at all.

Main Ship Types

Arrow Ship (Galley)

  • Pierce attack
  • Medium damage
  • Medium melee armour
  • Medium pierce armour
  • Affected by ballistics
  • Carry up to 5 units
  • Stationed archers do not add arrows (this can be a civilisation bonus)

Ram/Melee Ship

  • Melee attack
  • Medium damage
  • Hight melee armour
  • Low pierce armour

Mangonel/Onager Ship

  • Long ranged melee attack (Does not outrange coastal defence)
  • High damage with AoE
  • Low melee armour
  • High pierce armour
  • Not affected by ballistics
  • Minimal range

Arrow Ships counter Melee Ships since they can shoot at them from afar and Melee Ships have low pierce armour.

Melee Ships counter Mangonel Ships because they can dodge the shots while Mangonel ships are very weak in melee.

Mangonel Ships counter Arrow Ships since they outrange them and cause a lot of damage to them while being resistant to arrow fire in return.

The fact that Arrow ships can carry troops makes them useful for early aggression, It makes it easier to land unit on the enemy shore.
Transport ships are still useful because they can carry more troops and don’t cost Gold.

Secondary ship types

Those ships are not available to all civilisations.

Fire Ship

  • Replaces Melee Ship
  • Fast rate of fire
  • Also has low pierce armour now
  • Basically a better Melee Ship

Having access to the Fire Ship is basically a civilisation bonus. Not only the Byzantines have it but most civilisations don’t.

Demolition Ship

  • Suicide ship
  • Situational use against most ship types

Most civilisations have access to it but it’s not part of the core rock paper scissors anymore.

Scorpion Ship

  • Shoots bolts instead of arrows
  • Larger and less microable as an Arrow ship
  • Much higher damage then Arrow ship
  • Not affected by Ballistics
  • Low melee armour
  • Medium pierce armour

Bigger and more pop efficient Arrow Ship. Does struggle against Melee Ships though.

Trebuchet Ship

  • Inferior Cannon Galley for none gunpoweder civilisation
  • Only useful against buildings
  • Misses most shots against units and ships

It’s kinda stupid how many civilisaions have no gunpowder units on land but do have access to Cannon Galleons. This unit would fix that strange design.

Cannon Galley

  • There is just the Elite version now
  • Stats don’t change

Since there is a Trebuchet Ship now there is no reason to have a separation Elite and none Elite Cannon Galleon.

Hand Cannon Ship

  • Gunpoweder version of the Arrow ship
  • Higher damage but no Ballistics
  • Mutually exclusive to the Scorpion Ship
  • Medium melee armour
  • Medium pierce armour

Good late game ship option. The lower accuracy can be made up with numbers.

Unique Ships

Longboat

  • Can also carry units now
  • Elite version carries 10 units

Turtle Ship

  • Stays the same

Caravel

  • Stays the same

Thirisadai

  • Stays the same unless they want to change it because it’s historically wrong

Shipyard

Military ships are build in the Shipyard now.
The Dock just trains civilian ships.

Maybe the Arrow Ship is also available at the Dock starting the Line with a Scout Ship.

Thoughts

I know that would be a lot of changes but I took most of the inspiration from AoE2 land units.
You need at last 3 ships for rock paper scissors but a pure rock paper scissors is boring so you need 1 or 2 more ships that can mix things up.
Also gives more options to make civilisations more unique on water. Water plays mostly the same for most civilisations atm.

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41

I’ve used the garrison feature since it was rolled out in AoC (wow really dating myself). Its handy and it doesn’t feel too micro intensive even in more high pressure situations. It can also be done preemptively before an engagement. I’ve had more intense micro in League of Legends controlling one character.

As far as loosing units go, it is a war game. Your deathball of Arbalasters is only one well placed onager shot away from tragedy. This is a game about taking calculated risks after all.

I would disagree that this is a rare outcome and Islands are particularly susceptible to this happening. The distribution of land in Islands is the smallest and a player’s eco and production are most exposed to naval aggression if the opponent has sufficient scouting. In maps like Mediterranean you have a large central lake that you can somewhat retreat away from and regroup, but in either scenario it’s unlikely you will be able to produce a fleet again without being discovered.

You actually bring up a good point about the population and I think that is something that holds this back as well. If the population was separate for naval and land population it would allow a maxed out naval player to pivot more quickly into preparing a sizable enough land invasion to finish off an opponent so you don’t have to engage in as much of a war of attrition. I think that may be a feature in AOE3.

I’m all for being a good sportsman and gging when I’m beat, but that doesn’t mean my opponent will. It’s a little frustrating too because in land wars you usually you have to shut down or heavily raid a players economy to force them out. On water you just pop their docks as they show up and no matter their economic engine they are going to struggle to retaliate.