They could make Heroes to give buff to other units (acts like a general).
My Armenians concept from three years ago gives them and their allies a unique building called the Baptistery, a building that slowly heals all nonsiege land units within a certain radius. This was obviously long before the Caravanserai, so my line of thinking is similar to the devs’.
I think that mechanic should be brought to hero units in the campaigns.
At the moment heroes are just a little stronger then normal units.
They still die very quickly when you don’t babysit them. In AoE2DE you don’t usually lose your mission anymore then they die but they are usually not that much of a asset in battle.
Especially more casual players (that tend to like playing campaigns) are not good at micro so they try to not use their heroes because they don’t want them to die.
Giving the heroes an aura that buffs units make people want to use their heroes and it makes heroes feel more like leaders.
Also heroes could have auras that only buff certain types of units, that way the player is incentivised to use certain types of units.
2 Likes
You are correct, I played most of the custom campaigns and I rarely use the heroe to avoid restarting the mission.
I like your idea better.
The best would be if they would manage heroes like in AoE3 where they collapse but don’t die and you can go free them later.
Then it would also be more viable to use heroes in triggers. Like bring a hero into a town to make it follow you and not just any unit.
But maybe that would be to hard to code into the AoE2 engine and would require a lot of new animations.
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I honestly dislike these kind of new mechanics. I was hoping auras would never get to the game. Folwarks, then caravanserais, then celt castles made it obvious it was going to arrive for moving units as well.
Slowly turning into AoE4. Everyone seems to like it, so there’s no point in opposing these kind of things.
4 Likes
I saw it coming because I created a concept for an aura healing building for the Armenians back in 2020. Back then, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but now I’m certain that it would fit right in.
Auras were originally planned for AoK way back in the day.
The idea was that monks carrying relics would boost the combat abilities of nearby units.
Not sure if that idea was scraped because of gameplay reasons or technical difficulties.
This whole concept reminds me of the Goths campaign scenario, A Gaint Falls. I think it had centurions and legionaries around them. It will make up as a nice campaign dynamic and design.
There were lot of ideas, which were suppose to come in AoE2, but lot of them got scrapped and some have come to DE. I personally find interesting that new mechanics come to game it makes game more interesting not same old same.
Tbh doesnt AoE4 have even more aura effects?