I second that. Water game play is not good in AoE2. But the reason is not necessarily that we have only 3 navy ships. Fishing ship provides only food and then early fishing ship with 75% extra multipliers make it too one dimensional.
Fishing Ship vs Land eco is like Goths vs a versatile civ. Goths is all about infantry and nothing else. And Fishing Ship is all about Dark Age food and then almost nothing unless you have a secured pond (BF, Cross/Four Lakes).
Adding Oyasters gold can be a good option to test in some maps.
Also make naval units its own population space. I have lost the amount of times turtling the game only because I spent too much effort on the water. Extra 50 pop for every naval unit is more than enough. There is a reason why everyone simply queue dodging if water map is picked.
Also being able to garrison in docks when you face enemy attacks.
Even if you argue that Mangonels have little bonus damage against buildings, they are still siege weapons with attack bonus against buildings. They still threaten buildings other than Castles far more often than Rams.
If necessary, it might be enough to make Bombard cannon ships and Dromons have their blast radius more or less useful against massed and dense enemy ships while with siege capabilities. Otherwise, to me it would look like splitting the Spearmen into one against cavalry and another one against cavalry archers.
Frankly I don’t think this is necessary for the triangle of counters as I have chosen Boarding melee warships, Arrow warships and Springald warships to form the triangle of counters. In fact, the role that kind of ships plays in your theory is already played by Springald warships in my idea, being good at countering Arrow warships and being countered by Boarding warships. You may also notice that I don’t think Arrow warships should be the trash equivalent of Springald warships.
Of course this all may just be my personal taste.
By the way, I feel that ships equipped with catapults were not the mainstream of medieval naval warfare. They did exist and had launched stones to enemy ships, but were not the majority of naval vessels and seemed to be used more for controlling coastal land. Usually, people still filled the decks with archers and volleyed at enemy ships, destroyed the hulls with ballista bolts, and fought directly after approaching.
Ow… I thought I made it very clear. Didn’t I express myself clearly enough before? I have emphasized their slower speed.
Not against it. If ths Springald bolts had penetration capabilities, they could be more consistent with Scorpions and more effective at destroying Arrow warships that tend to form in dense formations. However it is also more likely to be stronger against Boarding warships.
Um… I still like having explosive ships as emergency means for ports. Explosive ships can threaten the small number of enemy ships harassing Ports and Fishing ships in the early Feudal, but as time goes by they tend not to become the main force in naval battles.
Additionally, according to Wikipedia, the career of the modern fire ship, as a naval vessel type designed for this particular function and made a permanent addition to a fleet, roughly parallels the era of cannon-armed sailing ships, beginning with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. For most of the Middle Ages, these were typically ships that were set up with combustibles on a temporary and emergency basis. I guess, ships used for fireship tactics were sometimes surplus, obsolete or levied merchant or fishing vessels.
On the other hand, Boarding melee ships, as one of the three types of ships that make up the balance, would definitely be used frequently, so being in Shipyards with the other two types can more effectively allow Shipyards to focus on naval warfare and Ports to focus on water economy.
If a UU ship is conceptually close to one of those three types, or act as one of those three types better, it can be directly replaced.
Um… No, especially for the last 2 items.
As I said above, I personally don’t want to have more than two kinds of stone-launching ships at the same time. Also, what kind of civ would put Mangonels on ships but not Ballistas/Springalds on ships?
More importantly, I don’t think there has to be something to fill the void for a civ that currently lacks Cannon ships and Dromons. Sometimes a civ is designed this way. They lack certain tools, but that is fine.
That would be pretty inconsistent with AoE2 logic.
My suggestion is to make most sips big an expensive so they are very population efficient.
Ships are currently way to big compared to their price. They cost less then some siege units that are like 1/5 of the size.
Catapults were generally not very common in that time period.
I know they used trebuchet ships during the Crusades. Generally trebuchets kinda replaced any other type of catapult.
Give Boarding ships the dodge ability. The multiple arrows from Arrow ships would easily remove the whole dodge and make them vulnerable.
Alternative make them just take like 1 damage from Scorpion Ships.
Dodging seems very unpopular among AoE2 fans.
I kinda get what you are going for.
I think there is good arguments for Arrow Ships, Melee Ships and Demo Ships to be the one trainable at the Port.
The ship at the Port doesn’t have to be the trash ship though, that could be a Shipyard ship.
Arrow Ships because they are currently on page 1 at the dock and it also seems to be most “basic” ship.
Melee Ships because they don’t have range and therefor can’t project power beyond the water.
Demo Ships for the reasons you mentioned.
Sometimes already happens like Vikings not having Fire Ships.
Having them replace Demo Ships makes more sense I think.
Demo Ships use gun powder so they are already out of place for many civs and Mangonel ships also do AoE damage.
Also the problem if two Stone Throwing ships being different could easily be fixed by making the Dromon be different. Make the Dromon the Mangonel Ship replacement and give those civs Trebuchet Ships.
One reasons why I want the Trebuchet ship is because there are a bunch of civilisations that have no gunpoweder units on land, so it feels out of place from them to have them on water.
Vikings being the best example.
The Trebuchet ship doesn’t need to be made available to all the civs that currently have neither Cannon Galleon nor Dromon.
Maybe they could even have a pack and unpack mechanic like the Trebuchets on land. That would be an interesting mechanic. Make them anchor in place before they can fire.
Original Ensemble devs themselves hated their own naval system. Sandy Petersen himself said it. It was always a dock and few fishing ships and just totally ignored any outcome from the water matchup after wards. Sure they added few naval units but it was more of a campaign thing than something actually serious competitive game. AOE2 started as targetting singleplayer games. Not multiplayer. So no proper balance was ever made. Techs like Cannon Galleon was removed for a reason.
BTW, Ensemble did learned from their mistakes and actually tried to change in various ways. At final release they brought ramming ships, siege ship, generic war ships and civ specific mythic units. Altho Retold touch upon that a bit in some format.
However, in Beta it was actually going to be even more different. Every civ was going to end up with only one big huge ship. You could board units on top of boats. Having infantries in ships will make it move faster, bringing some archers to make it a war ship, adding some siege will turn it to siege ship. You can see cutscenes somewhat following same traditions. Ofcourse we didn’t ended up getting that perhaps due to system limitation or coder’s knowledge at that time to solve critical problem.
However, Rise And Fall Civilizations At War, an unfinished game made by ex-Ensemble dev finally did it. I would say concept is done right there but needed more tweaks. To make it a proper reality then again we talking about unfinished game.
Even AOE2 Viking Longboats could’ve docked on shore and could create units. Programmers at the studios revolted that idea for being too complicated in the short deadline to met. So ditched that idea but yet again many ideas were still there like boarding ships to “convert” boats and off map trading boat(idea brought back in AOE3) to explore and we ended up what we have now.
Alright history talk is over now let’s get to the main point.
However after Forgotten Empires took over the AGE scene, we had new dynamic in the Feudal water game when it past it was just Feudal War Galley and nothing more. Today we have demos and fire ships. Even tech tree went serious changes. Even after all that we still see water is just bad and no real good solution on sight. Casters like T90, Pros and even generic/noobs like us admits that water is just bad with no redeeming quality in sight. Players simply just queue dodging if they see anything close to Water maps.
My personal experience: Even if I won water at early game, due to difference in map generation, you can lose those game later on too. Because you overspend water lets say you have 50 warships but now you have 30 land units to defend youself. Then enemy suddenly comes with 80 army strong. Now you have to turtle the game and transition your entire eco. You can delete all water units and then focus on lands. But you dont have enough production buildings. So you just lose the game. Another scenario is you somehow stabilized but now your main base is targetted from water again and once again no navy to defend yourself. Your fishing traps are at risk now and goodbye to that eco. You lost the water and a good chunk of water. So you need to requeue villager which’ll take a lot of time while half the base is gone.Then his land army comes to attack you. Unless you managed to do some miracle its just the repeat of square one again. Don’t forget about scarcity of wood too and that creates different level of hell.
Giving separate naval pop is just a solution to avoid turtling and making water side of the game as more of a bonus thing than serious part of the game. 200 land units and 50 water units are good enough to make water bit more better than now. Sure some game code modification will be needed for UI and DAT file but end result will be worth in the long run. It wont make water as painful as it is now.
If possible giving more utility to fishing ship. If I am not wrong, Rome At War mod allowed building water towers and walling on shallows(initially all across the water). Perhaps it can be brought back as real game mechanics.
Also a 3rd page if possible for villagers. Entirely dedicated to water buildings which both fishing ship and villager shares. Even allow fishing ships to build docks but at slower speed. Also being able to garrison inside Docks when attacked for protection instead of leaving them to fate,
WHY DOES NO ONE EVER THINK ABOUT THE SCENARIO EDITOR??? NO ONE EVER CARES ABOUT THE DIFFICULTIES FACED BY THOSE TRYING TO CREATE EPIC CAMPAIGNS!!! :(CRY CRY)
I do.
I suggested that the Dock is turned into a scenario editor only building that can train all ships.
The Port and Shipyard become new buildings that can each only train half of the ships.
Not sure if that is possible but my idea was simply to make both buildings link to the same pages.
Dock Page 1 = Port
Dock Page 2 = Shipyard
They just have to remove the arrow on Port and Shipyard somehow.
Or they just update the engine to support multiple train locations so they don’t need to have Huskarls and units like that exist twice.
Just want to say I dislike the idea of giving American civs Trebuchet Ship
Instead, we could go more creative by giving them something like “Raid Canoe”, a mid-ranged ship that throws torches, weak against all ships, but deals anti-building damage, and complete immune anti-ship damage since they don’t have long range
Imagine an arrow ship with Obsidian Arrows, but weaker in combat, and maybe having armor of land rams
They already have Canoe in the game but it’s untrainable unit, so why don’t make it a regional navel unit? Also things less boring and have a better reflection of history (maybe)
I’m thinking of it more of a ship that could replace the Cannon Galleon for ships that currently have it but where it doesn’t make sense.
Like civilisations that have no other gun power units.
I can especially think of the Vikings.
I like the idea of giving different ships different buffs depending on the different water types.
Like big ships being faster on deep water and small ships getting additional armour on shallow water or something like that.
My point is since American civs historically doesn’t have such advanced siege and ship technology, so we might need an alternative ship/regional unit that fills the “siege ship” role but also makes kind of sense in terms of history
Still, I think it’s totally fine to just give them Trebuchet Ship for balance purposes. I don’t really have a strong opinion actually
Since we agree that Boarding warships and Arrow warships are far more important to naval battles than Explosive ships, having Boarding warships and Arrow warships belong to Shipyards to focus on naval battles should be more in line with the original intention of Splitting the Docks.
A long time ago, in Feudal age only Galleys could be trained so among military ships they are displayed at the first, and they are appearing on the first page since there are only three types of non-military ships. That’s it, not a special reason.
If Longboats can replace the generic Arrow warships for Vikings in Castle age, I personally wouldn’t mind allowing them to at least have Boarding warships in Feudal age if needed. The details of practice may not be discussed at this stage.
But, but, but, Demolition ships and Mangonel ships are so different, except both have Blast radius. They have almost different ways of use. I don’t think they are equivalents.
What’s more, Demolition ships don’t really mean using gunpowder or even exploding (although I call them Explosive in my ideas). They do visually explode in the game, but essencially they represent ships laden with combustible or flammable materials rather than necessarily being explosive. There was no gunpowder in antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, so obviously the Demolition ships used by the Carthaginians, the Vandals, the Wu Kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period of China, and the Crusaders were not explosives.
If it were just some bundles of kindling, dry reeds, and fatty oil on ships, then even Native Americans should be able to do it (although historically inaccurate but in any case makes sense than Mangonels).
I don’t really go against it. If civs with Dromons are going to use Trebuchet warships as alternatives, then I feel the adjusted Dromons should be better used as alternatives to Springald warships. Both are siege weapons, both are influenced by Siege Engineers, both have range, and both are good at fighting dense ship formations.
However, stone-launching obviously doesn’t benefit from ballistics, but nowadays Springalds (Scorpions) do. It’s also a bit strange to see a civ that makes heavy use of stone-launching ships unable to use bolt-firing ships. I’'d be conservative about this change.
If you consider that the Kalmar Union is represented by the Vikings, it is not unreasonable that they have gunpowder. You can also see Goths having Hand Cannons.
However, even having siege ships is not a requirement for being a good naval civ in the game in my opinion. On the other hand, historically, the Viking naval strategy was always to raid rather than siege a base along the coast.
Agree. I already said that in another reply in another thread. Dark Age navy will make fishing ship completely useless. Although if there are 2 different Dock, I can see everyone gets Gurjaras bonus and can garrison fishing ship in economic Dock. I can even see Malay Harbor at small scale.
