As you know, the monks are absolutely out of meta. Although they would be buffed, they would remain being useless. So i propose some ideas for rework them.
For example in AoE2, monks although healers they had others choers, as taking relics or convert units. I propose for european civs a new mechanic for which monks could been used to generate experience.
My idea is that the monks could been used to pray in church (similar to greek villagers in AoM) and in native settlements. So when the monks pray the player would earn experience.
This new mechanic too could be useful to give the native settlements a new utility and it would simulate the tendency of the colinizers to spread their religion to the lands they reached.
I have this idea, if you have more propose it too. Which is sure iss that europeans monks must be reworked. If the revolutions was reworked when they was useless, monks could be reworked too and so the game would have a new interesant mechanic that give the gameplay more dynamism.
I was thinking of giving them the ability to convert treasure guardians. The only issue with that is that it could undermine the warchiefs from the native civs.
We must also lower the limit as a result of these possible abilities. Currently you can create 30. I would say that they could stop costing population, but have a creation limit of 5.
This would have 2 ways to generate experience:
Being garrisoned in their respective temples.
Another could be evangelizing native villages as they have suggested.
But how much experience should each priest generate?
I hope this is not offensive in any way. Although only with the prayer in the church they would already have a useful function.
Yeah monks are among few things that I’d love to see receive improvements, along with balloon and surgeons.
Balloon itself is such an awesome period-related unit. They should be available to more civs, and have some cool powers or passive effects, like units (even just from artillery class) withing range of it’s sight could recieve some buff to their range, accuracy-effectiveness etc.
Adding early submarine warfare would be a very huge stretch, but some balloon warfare? History of military ballooning - Wikipedia
Yeah it would require them to be available to everyone, but hey maybe there is some mercenary workaround… Just the idea of these slow ■■■ balloons roaming the map and dropping grenades is so stupid it becomes amusing.
AoE III had fountains of youth etc. Playing fast and loose with history when it comes to small elements like a balloon, so late into the game’s lifespan, could work and prolly wouldn’t be met with a negative response from fans of the game.
I like the idea of them not costing pop space, I would just like to use them as tanks tbh, they have massive HP and have range resist. They also have HP upgrades in the church. The russian monk rush is a meme strat that exists.
Currently Griots are very good for that.
Yes I am advocating that we use religious leaders as meat shields
Also maybe boost their heal rate for monks and surgeons now that we have healing units that are more multipurpose for the African civs
After several researches/cards they could be able to convert non-siege and non-mercenary units (aoe 2 is a good example - one research for the ability, one for range, one for the cooldown, one for the speed of conversion and one for the ability for monks to work together) WHILE some of these researches/cards would also buff their ability to generate XP while garrisoned inside the church as described by OP. This way the player could use them either as an eco unit or a battlefield support unit.The reason why conversion would not harm game balance as it is way too resource and micro extensive to be at least somewhat profitable, but nonetheless the opportunity to use them like this would make AOE3 much more fun and lets be honest you can’t have enough WOLOLOLOLO.
Priests should be able to build churches, trade posts, and embassies.
Envoys should be able to build trade posts, and embassies.
Priestesses should not be able to convert. I’m pretty sure the Inca became Catholic, not the other way around.
Missionaries should be able to convert and should be accessable to the Spanish and Portuguese.
Priests should have a counter aura to clear and defend from the different debuffs that can be inflicted on your units. Having a priest nearby should prevent things like enemy griots lowering your attack speed or Chinese monks converting your units.
Healers could have their experience bounty when they are created doubled or tripled to increase the incentive for building them even more.
Priests and healers need to have their Healing rate increased automatically each age like the community did in the fan patch to compensate the amount of HP upgrades you use every age.
Their heal rate is bad. I do understand the goal of not turning them into heal devices like in AOE2 but healing is the only thing they do in AOE3! They don’t convert enemies, they don’t heal moving units and they don’t have tons of techs.
10hp/s should definitely be 11hp/s in Fortress and 12hp/s in Industrial and 13hp/s in mperial. Or gives a tech to do so.
I like this idea, and to keep it from being too broken and consistent with the USA’s experience mechanic, these book would generate as bundles that need to be collected by the settlers to actually cash in on the experience.
