Age of Empires 2 has the bombard which is a solid unit with ideal characteristics that should remain as it is, I’d like to make the recommendation of adding additional gunpowder units that complement but don’t take away from the main character of bombard.
- MORTARS need a short range canon that lobs large cannon balls over a short range over walls, perfect for destroying siege at short range or large blobs of infantry but can be threaten by archers. completely ineffective against buildings or ships.
- BOMBARD already exists; No modifications required.
- SIEGE GUN are large scale heavy guns that are purpose built for destroying walls, towers, castle and buildings, like the TREBUCHET they’d have to be unpacked and additionally be very weak their benefit is damage and range. If your TURKS for example you might GRAND BOMBARD mass oppose to TREBUCHET due to beneficial range or PORTUGUESE accuracy unique tech.
Justification for Siege Guns “Grand Bombard” for Turk.. Etc.
This functions like an onager honestly.
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I’m assuming he’s suggesting them as alternative to onagers and trebutchets
Also, Bombard Cannons and Houfnices look too small. I’d want to see them enlarged.
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Yes, They would function like this historical niche. Powerful but pricey.
Mortars are used to fire over obstacles that would otherwise block a shot : terrain, walls… but it’s so uncommon it’s an issue in AOE2 that its use would be situational at best (such as bypassing the effect of the hussite chariot).
In M2TW mortars are only useful in siege defence to destroy incoming enemy siege towers, as they are ineffective otherwise. Remove the necessity to fire over the walls and weight that with how commonly you face siege towers in AOE2…
Another type that could be added in the Serpentine : accurate, small-caliber cannon that is great at countering enemy artillery, very weak vs walls though.
The size of medieval bombards was all around the place. These would still shoot projectiles of a 200-300mm caliber, for a gun usable on the battlefield it’s very respectable. Sure it’s short-barelled but most medieval guns were, unless you looked at massive siege guns that would be far too impractical as field guns.
For general-purpose siege units, their size is fine. But I do support adding siege bombards as a treb alternative. But they weren’t exceedingly massive, the gun used at Constantinople in 1453 had a caliber of a bit over 600mm, but was quite long though.
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A bombard counter is an intriguing idea. It would effectively stop Bohemians from becoming too powerful in the late game with their unique cannon type, allowing you to counter them naturally by sniping. The Turks to an extent already do this.
