In my opinion, and as many would agree, team games in aoe4 aren’t as fun as in other age games. Civilizations simply lack any clear synergy mechanics. I know the idea of team bonuses has been around since the beginning of the game, but I wanted to picture what team bonuses and techs would really look like. First of all, I created some rules I believe would make sense.
every civ must have a single team bonus and a single team tech (with a fun exception that you’ll see later)
team techs are unique techs (e.g. wheelbarrow cannot be a team tech for any civ)
team bonuses are bonuses that are already in the game that now affect the whole team (no need to come up with entirely new bonuses); the same goes for team techs
any auras/influences generated by specific units or buildings (e.g. Khan arrows, warrior monk blessing, english farm influence) do NOT affect the whole team, but only the player that owns those units or buildings, UNLESS it is clearly stated in a team bonus/tech that it affects the team (monks still heal the units of all allies, though)
team bonuses/techs cannot be focused on naval gameplay
team bonuses/techs do NOT stack (i.e. if multiple teammates pick the same civ, once one of them researches their team tech, it becomes unavailable for the rest of the team)
All of that being said, these are my suggested team bonuses and techs per civilization
English
Bonus: network of castles affects allied units (however, aura is only generated by english defenses)
Tech: network of citadels
French
Bonus: 20% more trade resources
Tech: gambesons
Mongols
Bonus: +15% cavalry and trader speed around mongol outposts
Tech: additional torches
Abbasid dynasty
Bonus: access to 4 team Techs (1 per house of wisdom wing)
Techs: agriculture, camel support, medical centers, armored caravans
You are basically giving some of the best bonuses of certain civs to each civ in your team. I don’t think is a good idea, to provide camel archers with 50% more attack speed and even more movement speed given by mongols, for example.
This will be as the user above said, completely impossible to balance.
Your arguments are feeble. Everyone will have access to team bonuses, so it should be reasonably balanced. Also, 1 team bonus and 1 team tech per civ isn’t hard to balance. The only real issue I can see is a small power creep in team games; but would you rather have team ranked be a popular and fun game mode with a slight power creep, or have it be a boring ■■■ game mode that no ever plays?
Firstly, team bonus is 10/10
But your ideas can break balance, need to think more.
I would suggest only economic bonus, cause it will be strong but wont broke balance.
Smth like 50% of original civ bonus.
For example: English team bonus: +15% for farms.
Strong - yes, but full cost of farms.
Rus:
50% of bounty collected by Rus player.
any bonus i can think of is food-bonus. Need think harder)
I agree that these bonuses could be a bit weaker and that perhaps they should be economic bonuses only.
Nevertheless, it’s important that civ identity and uniqueness are preserved, so I would be against rus bounty being shared with other civ, for example. That said, my suggestions weren’t very creative, and I purposefully avoided changing already existing bonuses for the sake of simplifying the discussion
Everyone having access to it doesn’t mean is not unbalanced. Everyone can pick french or mongols in 1v1 ranked when they were broken and that doesn’t mean it was fine.
Imagine the situation I described, yes, everyone can pick english+abbasid and turn camel archers in a semi tanky gun machine, but that will derive in a situation where everyone wants to pick that combo, because it will be broken.
I think some sinergies between civs would be ok, but not things that completely can break the balance.
Furthermore, someone said it doesn’t exist right now any sinergy, but I can think some, for example, abbasid can put a mill near berry bushes of allies to increase the total food given.
You misunderstood my point. With “everyone has access to it”, I meant that every civilization has access to it. Just like camel archers, units like streltsy, horse archers and zhuge nu could also benefit greatly from network of castles. Maybe English+Abbasid would be a particularly powerful combo, but so would be English+French (knights+longbows is simply great), or Delhi+Rus (i suggested a palisade bonus for both). All civs, if balanced correctly, would benefit a lot from team bonuses.
I agree that some of my suggestions could be broken. That said, it’s all about balancing, which is Relic’s job.
I kinda disagree. Putting mills near your allies’ berries to increase food feels like a gimmick, not synergy between civs. I’d argue something like royal knights+longbows can be considered synergy, but I just feel like it’s not enough
it does not share.
The Rus working for the team, collecting bounty. If Rus get high bounty → everyone get bonus depends on Rus Bounty.
The ingame mechanic “to kill animals” is purely for Rus.
May be team will work to help Rus to get more Bounty.
In my opinion, team play is not bad, because there you can make strategies and research technologies that you usually can’t do in 1v1. Also produce units that are not profitable in 1v1 but are, in large quantities, such as: mangudai, granadier, fire lancer. About team play bonuses, I prefer to keep them simpler.
I appreciate everyone’s ideas and feedback <3
Perhaps, if team bonuses were to be introduced, they should be brand new bonuses just for team games that are weaker than those I picked. I tried to choose only small bonuses, but I guess civ bonuses in aoe4 are all very drastic