One of the options when aging up to Feudal is Abbey of Kings, which I find useless. I think the landmarks should be swapped between Feudal and Castle ages. Here is a rundown:
Feudal
Abbey of Kings heals all nearby friendly units that are out of combat by +6 every 1 seconds.
Council Hall produces Longbowmen at +100% speed and contains Longbowmen upgrades.
Castle
Kings Palace acts as a Town Center with all the behaviors, technology, units, and bonuses.
White Tower acts as a Keep with all the behaviors, technology, and bonuses.
In my opinion, Abbey of Kings is useless. I have never seen it built. Maybe Abbey of Kings and King’s Palace could be swapped? It makes more sense as you can build a Town Centre in Feudal and it would give English a lot of economic power earlier in the game. And the swapped Abbey of Kings could act as a Monastery perhaps? It could additionally maybe produce Monks and/or give some bonuses? Maybe it produces/researches faster, or all monks can now heal faster? A monastery for Castle Age up and a Town Centre for Feudal Age up sounds a lot more natural than the one we have to be honest. It would also give the English more options instead of forcing a strict build order.
What are your thought? What could the new Abbey of Kings grant?
Maybe the Abby of Kings should stay Feudal but work as a Monastery allowing England to get early monks.
Starting in Castle Age you can also deposit Relics there that will increase the range and speed of the healing aura up to 3 times.
I had thought about early monastery, but it would feel weird as no civ can produce monks at that age. HRE prelates have a purpose, so I’m not sure what would early monks accomplish other than maybe sending monks early to the relics.
It would be a landmark and landmarks are meant to be powerful. Even then I do agree about the early TC being too powerful though.
Monks can heal.
Maybe make the Abby of Kings buff the healing of monks. Give the monk heal a small AoE. This would be more flexible then just having one healing building.
I would like Abbey of king still have healing aura around him, but also have an activable ability with 60/90 sec cooldown for a slow global heal like 1,5hp/s for 10sec, Maybe we can see more Abbey of Kings
Abbey is thought to be a very defensive building, healing your units that just have fight.
But in the end, the other one acts as more defensive cause you get 2 archery and you can create lots of longbowmen, that performs very well against everything in feudal.
I’ve seen some pro players using Abbey of kings, they just massed MaA, archers and horsemen, then after harass enemy base, he micro so the unit lose is minimum, and get those units healed at the Abbey of kings.
I have seen Abbey of Kings used in a few pro games. What you do is go double stables into horsemen, and behind that go for a second TC, you’ll have saved up a lot more wood even though you had to make stables. This allows the English to apply pressure while expanding. I usually only see this against Rus or Delhi.
The Abbey of Kings is used to heal the horsemen, and for possible future defense. But it is a micro intensive build and not necessarily better than going for Council Hall.
I agree it does need a rework, but I think it should stay feudal. Imo it should offer out of combat healing to infantry affected by Network of Castles.
I agree they need to either change Abbey of Kings to make it more attractive or remove it altogether and give us a new landmark that can offer us some more unique gameplay with the English.
I understand that the Longbowman is the specialty for English, but they have to give us a second option as a landmark to change our playstyle a bit at times.
I personally only used Abbey of Kings in the tutorial that you first play when you start the game for the first time, that should tell the developers that this landmark in its current state is close to useless.
One rework of abbey could be: it acts as a mill allowing the surrounded farms to double the gathering rate bonus, OR the surrounded farms have an early weak emplacement bonus that scale according to the age (- / 50%/ 100%/ 150%).
I like the idea that it offers healing to out of combat units which are affected by Network of Castles. I believe that way the landmark would be very viable and not the “best choice”.