Ok first of all, I downloaded and played the new DLC last night, and to be clear I really liked it. I generally like new things being added to the game, and I think it keeps things fresh and generally makes things more interesting. Its part of the reason I’ve been playing this game for so long.
Having said that something that doesn’t sit well with me is that with all these new civ specific mechanics and unique things that are being added to the game I sense a growing divide between how the old civs play and how the new ones play. Almost to the point where they feel like they are from different games and it really ruins the cohesion of the game.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind these things being added, I actually find it impressive that things we thought were impossible to do in this engine are being added. I just wish that we would get adjustments to the old civs so they keep up at least aesthetically.
So with that, here are some suggestions for somethings we could add to the older civs and the game in general to make things more cohesive. I know most of these probably won’t get added but whatever, here goes:
Each civ to get unique castle
ok so it has now been a trend for the past few DLCs that all the new civs are getting their own castles. Ideally I would love each civ to have its own architecture but I am not holding my breath on that, but can we at least be consistant and make a new unique castle for each civ?
other civ specific unique buildings
Feitoria, Fulwark, Krepost, Harbour, Donjon and now Caravansarai. It would be cool to give the older civs each a unique building. There is so many potential things and people can add their own ideas but some things that come to mind would be:
- Mongolian yurt instead of houses. Could just be a visual upgrade. Maybe its built faster than the normal house.
- A sacrifice altar for the Incas. The incas used human sacrifice as a way to subjugate the people they ruled. Maybe we can have something like the ability to “sacrifice” a villager by garrisoning it in the building and permenantly losing it, but giving a small boost in villager work rate or something to all villagers working nearby. Obviously would need to be balanced properly but I am just riffing here…
-Palace for Persians. Persian architecture has been iconic and influential throughout their history, specially their very ornate Palaces and gardens. Not sure exactly what the purpose of this could be. Maybe gives some sort of boost to military units fighting within its radius of influence? - British Inns. The Britons could build Inns. A cheap building that could be a drop off site for food but also can heal garrisoned units. The healing could be done at a faster rate than healing inside a castle or tower for example, but with the trade off that garrisoned units do not fire arrows from the building, so its purely a civilian structure.
- Library for Saracens. A building that can speed up research time for techs at the university.
- Courthouse for the Franks. The Franks are already a pretty powerful civ, so not really sure what to give them without making them completely OP. Maybe something that’s not too crazy like, monks recovering their faith quicker within the building’s radius. Or monks being able to garrison inside to recover their faith quicker after a conversion and being automatically ejected when their faith recovers. (so they can’t just camp in there to avoid enemy units)
- Imperial Court for the Japanese. Military units within its radius cannot be converted. Or they are killed when converted.
- The Knight’s Hall. A building that makes military units take 10% less population space. Effect doesn’t stack with aditional buildings. Essentially meaning every 10 military units counts as 9.
- Toopkhane for Turks. A kind of fortified castle which shoots cannons balls instead of arrows. Needs to be very expensive for balance purposes. Basicaly a bombard tower on steroids.
- Boathouse for Vikings. A building that replaces the docks. Has all the normal dock functions but also allows warships to garrison and repair over time. Must be slower to repair than a villager repairing but have no cost. Also please give Vikings a unique architecture set they deserve it.
Anyway they are just some ideas for buildings, I am not saying they are all good, but hopefully something to work with.
More unique abilities for old units
Now it seems with every new DLC there is always a unit that does something different. The Serjant that builds buildings, units with charge mechanics, units that change their attacks, mounted units that fight after their horse dies and so on…
We can expand on this by giving some older civs similar unique abilities. Again this isn’t an exhaustive list but somethings that come to mind are:
- Giving the swordsman line the ability to parry melee attacks from other infantry units. This could be a chance thing determined by RNG.
- Giving all heavy cavalry the ability to charge as mentioned above. It just feels odd that there is one unique cavalry unit that knows how to “charge” into battle and somehow none of the other cavalry units learnt to do this in cavalry school? Can we at least make the heavy cavalry line in all the civs have this charge mechanic? Obviously will need to be balanced properly but I’ll leave that to the devs.
- Giving foot archers the ability to change weapons when they are forced into melee fight. The new chariot archer unit now has dual attack mode. Fantastic. Can we at least give some other ranged units this option as well? Historically even dedicated archers would have had something to defend themselves with if they were forced into melee combat. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy but just something that targets melee armour instead of pierce armor would be great.
- Giving all villagers the ability to garrison in houses. Because why not? Did none of the other civs realise they could hide in their houses?
- Giving new animation to units attacking buildings vs units attacking other units. All the later Age games have this alrady with melee units using torches to attack buildings. For a long time we assumed this was impossible to implement in this game, it appears that it isn’t, so why not implement it?
Again not an exhaustive list but something to consider…