I suggest, Microsoft to add attack and defensive Stance for the Monks.
Attack Stance- the monks usually will 1) Convert enemy units and after that 2 ) Heal allies. The Monk will convert the nearest enemy unit and after that- Building( if researched Redemption).
At Defensive Stance- the Monks will usually 1) Heal the Allies and after that 2 ) Convert enemies.
At a War, when a king send his soldiers to the battlefield, they not need to tell them for every enemy to attack or not. So the Military Units have attack and defensive Stance. The same is with the Monks. If a king send a Monk ( or doctor), it is not needed to tell him to spread religion or to heal allies, for every enemy unit or ally.
These units are different than the villagers, because the villager MAIN task is to collect food, wood, gold and stone. But, if the king( the player click over enemy) tell him to attack enemies, they may change their main task.
The Main task of the Monks is- go at the Battlefield and help us to win. With these 2 Stances- Attack and defensive, the game will be much more REAL.
I may agree if somebody want to increase the PRICE of monks, if they become overpowered with not need to click them for every enemy or ally.
Also, the RANGE of the monk may be decreased to 7- 8.
Disagree. Monks are fine as is. I don’t want easy to micro monks that are more expensive. I prefer them as a “difficult” unit.
However one change I do want to have for them.
“Faith” should be shown above them, when you turn on health bars. Similar how you can see how much food a dead animal has left.
I think that having to remember which of the identical looking old people has how much faith and can convert again… that’s just a bit too much to ask. With Missionaries especially, sincne they can move faster and they might change positions too quickly.
I hope Muslim monks and Buddhism monks could get their own looks. In my opinion, every unit and building should have their appearance for each civ.
BTW. Is it possible in the future to introduce a kind of monks that is able to “attack”? They still heal the friendly units, but attack the enemy units instead of converting them. If the answer is Yes, that would be wonderful to look forward to the warrior monks like Japanese Sōhei, Aztec Warrior Priest or Chinese Kung-Fu Master in the game.
Yes, you can have a unit that both attacks enemy units regularly and heal friendly units in AoE2. You can’t have a unit that can convert and attack though, since the Monks convert is technically their attack.
Monks right now are in a very good state in my opinion. They are probably the best unit in the game if managed well, but are pretty bad if managed poorly (or not at all). So it’s a unit that benefits a lot from the player’s skill level - which I think is a good thing to have in the game.
giving them a way to auto-convert would not only ruin that aspect, but also create a balancing-nightmare. Converting is just incredibly strong. Not only do you remove a unit from your opponent - you also get it to fight for you. It’s such a strong mechanic that I think it would be very bad to make it that easily accessible.
Yeah, we could increase the cost of monks and start to figure it out in that direction. Yes, players could start micring against it and send scout-line into range first and then other units. But I think it would still be very hard to reach a balanced point using that and also I think the player with the strong mechanic (=conversion) should be forced to micro, not his opponent.
But that biggest reason to not make such a change is just that Monks are in a good state and an interesting aspect of the game - so why should we ever get rid of such a good thing and create a whole lot of problems, just because a unit (that can easily be avoided if the gameplay is not on a very high level btw.) is too hard to handle efficiently for weaker players?
Playing since the last update I noticed my monks moving automatically to heal some units near them. I never witnessed this behavior before and do NOT like it. The monks I was adding were just for healing and they kept getting too close to the fight. Did this previously happen? This is the only reason i read this topic. Was thinking my monks needed a stand ground stance.
But yeah auto-convert aggressive stance would change the game extremely… it would also make the group mana technology pointless. Monks have pretty incredible range so I think if auto convert units in LOS was added then everyone would make tons of monks and monk races would dominate
I think an attack stance would make them way more powerful, but the group convert tech for monks would still have use: multiple monks can still convert things faster than 1 monk. Being able to use a bunch of monks to convert and have only one lose faith would still increase conversion efficiency.
I like the thought and have felt the same a while. But as I think about it just now, this could easily make them way overpowered. Imagine a decent sized army of monks set on auto-pilot with conversions. They’d easily wipe out large swaths of enemy units. And if their auto-pilot also has them set to convert enemy buildings, too? Wow, watch out; quite a force to be reckoned with. All without you doing anything except one-click sending your monks over to the enemy and then sitting back and relaxing. Maybe take a few sips from your cola as you binge-watch Mandalorian while they do the rest
I don’t disagree that it would make them over powered initially, but that could be balanced by cost. Perhaps you could have a unit upgrade - a priest to elite priest. It would add a really interesting strategy to the game. Do you hoard gold to purchase the death before conversion buff, upgrade to elite, or do you instead buy more standard priests of your own, or invest heavily in archers or suicide light calvary. Man oh man that’d be great fun.
I agree though that the monks are in good shape as is, and changing it would be a major fundamental shift in game strategy. Honestly though the best of both worlds would be platform that kept it as is for campaigns and standard multi-player, but could allow you to tweak the option for solo play or certain multi player matches. Imagine if the game ever grew to large numbers, you could have different multi-player destinations - competitive, standard, co-op and random specialized queues with each game introducing a random tweak (priest buff, no calvary units, no castles, a build buff, worker limit, etc). I think that’d be amazing fun… In fact I’m going to start a thread on the random tweak idea.
Sorry but terrible idea, the whole point with monks is that they are only worth it when they convert high value units. As it stands the player with the monk gets to choose the unit to be converted which is usually a knight or a unique unit or a siege weapon etc… if the monk just automatically converted whatever was near it then that control would be handed over to the opposing player who could easily exploit this by sending in some trash units towards the monk to be converted and then follow through with his stronger units when the monk is out of faith. It is wrong to think of an attack stance for a monk as giving the player with the monk more “control” of the monk by reducing his need to micro, it is simply relinquishing control of your monk to the opponent who will decide which of his units get converted and which don’t.
Yes, it can be exploited to some degree. But it would still be ridicolously broken.
For one, if it’s implemented as “stance” it can be turned off, when inconvenient.
Also, if monks start converting and switch targets, their conversation progress is carried over to the next target (that’s how you can insta convert any unit, by making the monk yell at a House for twenty seconds).
And you could much more easily defend yourself against knight rushes. You can’t take trash with you on those, because they can’t keep up with the knights. Scouts are expensive and decrease the number of Knights you can produce.
Hello David from the past who didn’t think this through. I’m David from the future, who did.
Your suggestion looks reasonable on paper, but take my word for it (because I’m from the future (one where I’ve considered all I know about monks and thought it thru, not one where that actually happened shudders)). Showing the Faith-level above the monks is a terrible idea, as you’ll soon learn.
[In other words, I changed my mind and am mildly horrified by my earlier suggestion and hope noone takes it seriously.]
The Shaolin Sect was founded in the 10th century by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The monks had fought for saving Prince Li Shimin, later Emperor Taizong of Tang, and against the siege from the warlord. In the Ming Dynasty, they had supported the officer and organized a troop to resist the raid from the wokou pirate.
I don’t regard that there are any big problem about Kung-Fu Masters in the scenario editor, just an interesting opinion.
The monks have 4 healing range and 11 line of sight. But I think that 4 is very little, it would increase to 6, sometimes they don’t cure anyone and they are very close.
