Shaking up the Imperial Age

[Osprey23103109]

So people have been discussing the Imperial age lately, see for example, @ArrivedLeader22’s recent post Making the imperial age more interesting.

I have been thinking about how the Imperial age can be made more interesting given that these days revolts are more exciting and cheaper and some even allow “imperial” upgrades so are actually more and more viable for long games. Imperial Age and all the unit upgrades are too expensive currently, and most just offer 50% boosts and nothing else.

So here’s something I thought about that doesn’t involve changing the game too much. For now I’ve only thought of Euro civs since the Imperial Age for them is most vanilla. I would love to see ideas for Asian, African civs and American civs.

Here goes:

1. The Imperial Age cost 2000f 2000c (roughly the same as revolting) and the age up bonus be reduced accordingly (say 1 heavy cannon instead of 2 etc).

2. Imperial Age unlocks the ability to make hot air balloons for all European civs from the factory. These can be made by spending food and coin and they can be killed by enemy outposts and forts. They do not die on their own. Remove advanced hot air balloon from HC.

3. The Imperial Age now allows town centers to recruit Mercenaries. It also let’s you upgrade spies to agents and then assassins to allow counterplay against Mercenaries.

4. Imperial Age allows forts to be constructed by villagers for 1000w 1000c with no build limit. Forts now train units slower but in batches of 10. Outpost build limit of 7 is removed, but outposts cost more (500w) and have slightly more hp. Fort and outpost building time increased. The purpose of this is to make mortars a more often used unit.

5. Trading posts in Imperial Age are replaced by Trade Outposts which are essentially outposts on a trade socket. They can be upgraded to frontier trade posts and fortified trade posts.

6. The arsenal gets automatically upgraded to the advanced arsenal. The advanced arsenal card if you haven’t sent it already, now makes arsenal upgrades free.

7. Blockade from the Capitol is now a temporary effect and can be periodically recast. One blockade costs 2000c and stops enemies from receiving shipments for 2 minutes. Cooldown of 4 minutes. The spies tech is now also like an ability that reveals LoS of all enemy vils (and vils only) for a minute. 5 min cooldown.

8. New artillery foundry tech “Crew Efficiency” (Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better name): 500w 500c, Artillery crews are more efficient, making artillery units move 10% faster and costing 1 less pop. However, crew demands more pay, so artillery coin cost goes up by 15%.
   (Now I think Sweden has a card “Kronstedt Reforms” that makes this happen for falcs and heavies, and Otto mosque tech does this for Bombards. The effects do not stack, that is population doesn’t reduce twice. So for Sweden falconets, I recommend that the falconet still cost 400c, and not 460c.)

I am open to having Imperial age cards etc, so many countless possibilities, but that doesn’t seem very likely to ever happen. So I want to make the suggestions as grounded as possible. Obviously I’m inspired by the “Wonder Age” in AOM:Retold.

Thanks a lot for reading!

[MUTYLATOR5553]

@Osprey23103109

• The Imperial Age now allows town centers to recruit Mercenaries. It also let’s you upgrade spies to agents and then assassins to allow counterplay against Mercenaries.
• Imperial Age allows forts to be constructed by villagers for 1000w 1000c with no build limit. Forts now train units slower but in batches of 10. Outpost build limit of 7 is removed, but outposts cost more (500w) and have slightly more hp. Fort and outpost building time increased. The purpose of this is to make mortars a more often used unit.
• Trading posts in Imperial Age are replaced by Trade Outposts which are essentially outposts on a trade socket. They can be upgraded to frontier trade posts and fortified trade posts.
• The arsenal gets automatically upgraded to the advanced arsenal. The advanced arsenal card if you haven’t sent it already, now makes arsenal upgrades free.
• Blockade from the Capitol is now a temporary effect and can be periodically recast. One blockade costs 2000c and stops enemies from receiving shipments for 2 minutes. Cooldown of 4 minutes. The spies tech is now also like an ability that reveals LoS of all enemy vils (and vils only) for a minute. 5 min cooldown.
• New artillery foundry tech “Crew Efficiency” (Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better name): 500w 500c, Artillery crews are more efficient, making artillery units move 10% faster and costing 1 less pop. However, crew demands more pay, so artillery coin cost goes up by 15%.
  (Now I think Sweden has a card “Kronstedt Reforms” that makes this happen for falcs and heavies, and Otto mosque tech does this for Bombards. The effects do not stack, that is population doesn’t reduce twice. So for Sweden falconets, I recommend that the falconet still cost 400c, and not 460c.)

I like these ideas the most.

A long time ago I wrote about my ideas for Imperial Age - I don’t remember in which topic. I think the Capitol should be renamed into Parliament for European civs. Every civ should get something unique for themselves in this building. Building models should be unique to each civ and should be based on parliament buildings.