The damage output of galleys and fire ships makes NO SENSE

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

So, galleys can sink a transport ship in like 7 hits? Idk. And there goes the group of twenty paladins sinking into the water, lost forever.

But then the paladins unload, and they take DIRECT hits from a ten foot long log/spear, that flying at them at high speed, and is usually on fire. And it barely scratches them.

Also, while we are at it, ship battles usually end up as these massive affairs of 40+ ships vs 40+ ships, and the ships are so tightly packed that the ships hulls are overlapping. Again… massively lame to look at. No thought goes into fighting on the ocean, you just spam ships for the win.

I really think it needs to change. First, from a game prettiness/balance point of view, controlling fewer units is nicer than controlling hundreds or even dozens of units in one go. Especially when the units have to sit in formations that fill half or more of the screen, which makes it really easy to miss them when clicking to issue commands.

Second, from a design standpoint, the galleon line costs 90 wood. The little ramshackle hut called a lumbercamp costs 100 wood. The galleon is BIGGER than the lumbercamp. Where did that extra wood come from? :frowning: Bad design… but lets continue.

Third, from a historical standpoint the construction time of the galleon was historically 5 years. For a person taking 1 riding lesson per week, it takes 2 years to obtain competency. If you divide that by 14 (taking 2 riding lessons per day on average) you get .142857 years. If you divide 5 by that number, you get 35.00175. It takes 35 times long to make a ship than to train a horsemen in real life. Galleons are made in 36 seconds. Hussars are made in 30 seconds. If you wanted to be accurate in the construction timescales of galleons, then you should take 1050 seconds or 17 minutes to make each galleon. Now, this is obviously gamebreakingly long (it takes longer than a wonder) But the point is made. 36 seconds of training time is unrealistically short, and it contributes to a ship vs ship gameplay that is as alien to real life as if the ships floated around midair, and were levitated by monks. >:(

So, points made, here is what should happen.

  1. The cost of making a galleon should increase. Drastically. Siege rams cost 160 wood. Galleons should probably cost something in the vicinity of 300-500 wood. They should probably even require some stone. Repairing them should not cost stone ofc, but as far as gold… they should cost a pretty penny to. anywhere from 300-1,000+ gold is warranted. The higher the gold cost, the more realistically accurate they are. Cannon galleons should absolutely cost stone. Also health and armor need to go up. WAAAAAY UP. A bunch of knights with swords should not be able to dent a ship.

  2. Cannon galleons should be fearsome. The cannon ball should move much faster than it currently does. It should splash. And furthermore, they need bonus damage against structures, and against all units except ships. If you get hit by a cannon galleon, your dead. The turtle ships should be like normal cannon galleons but with higher rate of fire, higher armor, shorter range, and should have bonus damage vs ships. Also, accuracy and rate of fire is the only levers used for balancing here. Damage is devastating.

  3. Galleons need to be fearsome. But their reload times need to go up by alot. The bolts should be like scorpion bolts, and they need to deal high damage against all units. Slow fire rate, and lower accuracy rates is how balance is handled. Also, slower movement rates so that seige engines can hit them.

Sigh…

But this will never happen. People will take one look at this, and scream that it would break the current game balance. And the answer is yes, it would. Butt here are major gains to be made by actually fixing the underlying economics and units in ship v ship combat. Because right now its broken, its unrealistic, and its not appealing. Its not worth saving. Galleon and ship balance in general needs to be broken and redesigned from scratch.

Edit: The USS constitution took 2000 oak trees to make. The victory took 6,000 oaks. The Royal george took 2300 oaks. If this were to be multiplied by the amount of wood per tree in game, each galleon should take 200000 wood. Obviously gamebreakingly unrealistic. :smiley:

6 Likes
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I agree, ships could be more awesome.

A solution which would actually work within the game would be to make galleys 5-pop units. Increase the health, dps, cost and training time approximately 5-fold. The same could happen to fireships, but demo rafts should ideally cost less than a galley.

Balancing it properly would be tricky, and my suggestion isn’t likely to happen either.

5 Likes
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Yes. It would break it by making ships ridiculously costly. Save this sort of thing for mods. Don’t change what is not broken. Almost nobody cares about water. So leave it alone please. 1V1 Arabia is where the game is mostly balanced around. Water is just an after thought and should remain as such.

Water is nice for an Europe Diplomacy game to spice things up. But other than that, land is where the main combat takes place. And galleys already beat nearly any land unit with ease already on a map like water nomad.

4 Likes
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Cannon galleons should be fearsome. The cannon ball should move much faster than it currently does.

Spainish.

And furthermore, they need bonus damage against structures

They do.

The bolts should be like scorpion bolts

Caravel.

Its not worth saving.

Why do you even play this game?
You come here and keep posting about how everything is poorly designed and you make no effort to learn about the game.

5 Likes
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500 wood for a galleon 111111

I can’t even reply to that. But I agree ships should do a little better against cavalry

1 Like
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No, people would look at this and tell you it’s ■■■■■■■■ and that this is the biggest reason why SP boys should leave the balance aspect of the game alone. If you want to play a totally different game go play somethong else or make a mod

1 Like
7

These ideas are pretty out there but tbh water meta is stale, snowbally, and super boring.

I don’t know what a good meta would look like given that we lack unit variety on water, it’s why water maps suck and people prefer land or hybrid maps (where the majority of the fighting takes place on land already)

1 Like
8

I agree that water could definitely use some enhancement, but I think the solution is a bit simpler than this.

Personally, I think the biggest problem with most water fight is a lack of Terrain. Land fights are constantly evolving based on nearby Forest, Cliffs, Hills, Etc.

A good first step would be increasing the complexity of aquatic terrain. For example, by adding reefs, Shoals, maybe even currents.

The next biggest problem is the simple lack of unit diversity. All units are produced at the same building, a building which you can build in the Dark Age. If I were looking into increasing the diversity of Water Combat, I might consider making units that are produced at the dock into trash, and then adding a second building-for example, a dry dock - where the “Paladins” of the water might be produced.

If you were going to do this, you would probably need to rebalance be various water-based unique units, as they wouldn’t fit into the meta very well anymore. For example, you might make longships producible in the feudal age. That sort of thing.

It really is a shame that water is such and ignored aspect of the game. I think it has the potential to add a whole new dynamic.

3 Likes
9

Just wait until you notice the size difference between two stone mines and a castle 11

You do realise that the in-game time scale is not realistic at all right? Just build a wonder to see it for yourself.

Like, many people will agree water could be changed to be as varied as land combat, but with arguments like that nothing’s going anywhere. You should look up some mods that introduce new naval units, you will get satisfaction must faster this way.

4 Likes
10

i have similar examples.
how come an elephant cannot 1 shot a villager without loom ? and how could a monk convert an elephant that does not understand human language ?
This is just a game, relax

11

I agree that the water meta is boring, like really boring, with 2 (maybe 3) dominating and the other ones being clearly inferior, but this wouldn’t make it any better, it would just change for the sake of “realism”, it wouldn’t be more interesting or competitive

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I’m not so sure, I think some of what the OP suggested could well make the water element more enjoyable to play and more interesting to watch. Some of the arguments are invalid, e.g. the ease of sinking a ship that is carrying paladins is obviously not related to the armour of the paladins, but more expensive ships that take longer to make, and are much stronger against most land units could be interesting. Not necessarily the numbers the OP talked about, but shifting things in that direction to get away from the ridiculous spamming of ships.

2 Likes
13

I like the water terrain bonuses/penalties.
Another idea is that Ships could garrison a couple of units, that buff some ship stats, just like rams…

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Why bother with such moronic balance ideas ?? Just state your real wish of deleting the dock and abolishing water gameplay in AoE2 completly :rofl:

It should be clear that a unit that costs 300+ wood could never be build till imp without ruining your entire eco and even then it would need attack stats like a treb/bbc to be worth such an stupid price.

1 Like
15

It would be kinda neat if you could make flagships in castle/imperial, though. Big investment, big payoff sort of ships. That’s a direction the game’s not really gone too deeply.

For example:

Brigantine

Cost: 450W, 150G (5x Galleon), 50 Stone

HP: 1000(6x galleon)
Armor: Pierce Armor: 10, Ship Armor: 5
Attack: 16x3(6x galleon)(Each bolt fired separately, can attack multiple targets)
Range: 8 (+1 of Galleon)
Speed: 1.3(-0.13 of Galleon)

Being large and slow, they would be able to easily handle multiple smaller ships like galleons and fire galleys, but would be vulnerable to siege and cannon galleons. An alternative would be:

Man-o-War

HP: 750
Cost:1000W, 750G, 100S(5x Cannon Galleon+100s)
Attack: 90x3(6x Cannon Galleon)
Range:16(+1 Elite Cannon Galleon)(minimum range: 4, except against enemy Brigantines)(Each cannonball fired separately, can attack multiple targets)
Speed: 1.05(-0.05 Cannon Galleon)

A ship made to attack and destroy enemy cannon galleons and Brigantines. Very vulnerable to short-range attack.

While all these ships would require stone to construct, like Town Centers, they would not require stone to repair.

No idea if these would be at all balanced, just spitballing.

16

Warcraft 3 wants its heroes back …

PS: Would realy appreciate it if you could tell me the type of herbs you consume. Looks like good and strong stuff :yum: Just send me a DM later, thx ^^

17

Lol.

But really, why not? Water combat is boring and almost universally avoided. If you just made it identical to land combat, what’s the point? At that point you’re just dumping a lot of effort into achieving the same thing.

This would give water combat its own unique style that might potentially make players enjoy it for its own merits. They could still avoid it if they only play arabia and such like presently. It would be different from the aoe2 we know, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

:man_shrugging:

18

yeah you get it, fewer ships with more abilities. Expensive but not too much. AOE3 has 400 res basic warship cost and they are really good all round to defend the coast or sea from basic troops. despite their cost are still made and chance the game to a more sea dominated entrance because of how strong controlling the ocean is.

here is how I would like to see naval combat.

You have the normal 2 types of firing ships like they have, the fast turning weaker arrow ships, and the position able fortress type cannon ones. Great for some balanced ranged warfare but is missing some elements. Such as boarding, and fire.

Warships get a boarding/man power rating, its like an energy bar that drains as the ships are touching. This is initiated by a grappling ability where instead of shooting, one can choose to grapple and board the ship. the stronger of the 2 ships energy bar then wins, as they slowly drain and a fight animation takes place. once one ship exhaust itself it is left with its remaining HP and converted to the winning player, but the ship splits the remaining boarding power, so basically that ship would have to be sent to the docks to repair and replenish to be useful, (both would since likely ship would take hits while boarding action taking place and will have no more boarding power) if multiple ships get involved to first grapple and immobilize a ship, then others can come into help board as well, and that can really deplete fast and make it an efficient conversion.

as a defense some ships might have a fire weapon that can take down ships faster than boarding can convert. (but still depletes any boarding power, well maybe not for some civs!) or specialized swivel deck cannons for the Portuguese, have a close shot gun like anti inf cannon that damages the ship a little but depletes boarding power a lot.

Now lets talk about the potential of fire, how it has been used is simply a sustaining HP reduction as long as damage is applied, then neutralized… but what if all a fire ship unit really had to do was start fires on a ship instead of continually pouring fuel onto it, starting out small but as 1 sec goes by goes to 2 alarm fire, 2 sec is three alarm fire that is self sustaining… and then it slowly depletes the HP until would eventually destroy the ship, and possibly spread to other ships if not micro ed away. This would then create ways to put out fires. Such as fire type ships being able to alternately pump water, or actually make a water ship. Each ship could have its own small water pumps that can help put out fires at small range but requires manpower/boarding power rating bar to drop to put it out. Note a 1-2 alarm fire as it grows could be easily put out by a ships own man power if they had sufficient enough of it.

transports. are slower than military units and can get grappled easily if not protected. Unloaded have a very small boarding/man power rating. But as they fill up with units this increases a lot to fully charged possibly the strongest, that would take a few ships to overcome.

Fishing ships, can transport 1 unit.

To help with native balance on water canoes can kind of do it all
canoes, can shoot normally or set fires to ships, they do not have a big cannon attack, but some special ones may have a improvised rock thrower that they stole from EURO designs (think have the Lakota adopted firearms, how these cultures may have adapted had they fought on water)

so basically the strat will be to get close start fires on ships to cause havoc use some to board (their boarding power might not be a draining force, but a punch/ immediate drop. then they start shooting again, if enough ships do this they will overtake the ship like any other) and others in the medium distance to shoot targets. Large ships can grapple and use their man power to quickly overtake canoes but will not send their manpower to fight in them, so native canoes would just sink at that point, and the large ship continues with what it has left.

Docks rejuvenate manpower for free,

Possibly fishing ships can be grappled but have more of a chance to evade, again EURO civs will not fish from native rafts. (helping balance since a large fleet of ships will be stronger, native civs will have to adapt by rushing water and making canoes cheaply to start)

merchant ships actually have a small man power rating to ward off being boarded but can be boarded, however the ship is scuttled and a small prize is awarded the player. They do not get a grapple ability so no worry, merchant ships wont be fighting each other for the lanes.

I feel like mechanics like these would create some really dynamic and interesting tactics, the SEA is a barely touched potential of a secondary type of strategy play. within the same game.

I for one would like to see more agonizing pathing of more realistic turning radius’s, ship momentum,

questions to ask? could boarding power be transferred? say a big battle ensued and more ships are low in HP but have some boarding power, but another ship needs it with HP, so you send that in to tank the front lines with good boarding power, tie up the front lines and the low HP ships provide the range support but are paper to other boarding powers if flanked.

19

First of all, realism is good, too much realism is not good.

  1. If you made the ships so expensive as you suggest, literally not a single person would ever make them. You’d see nothing but transport ships and landings. 300 wood is a pretty big investment until you’re basically already boomed, so you’ve just killed any feudal and early castle water play. 300-1000 gold is just even more insane to suggest. 300 gold is a massive investment until you’re boomed, so if a ship cost let’s say 300w 300g, you wouldn’t even see any before late Castle. For that kind of ship prices, throwing nothing but skirms at them would be an extremely efficient thing to do, just because of the stupidly high ship prices…

  2. Cannon Galleons ARE fearsome. They mean that any shore defenses (Castles, Towers) are now not only obsolete, but also vulnerable. The CGs can even potentially open the way for some landings to happen. They were never meant to be used as an Anti-Ship/Anti-Unit ship, they are made specifically to counter shore defenses (and destroy docks faster).

  3. Galleons do their jobs pretty well. Most units still won’t want to stand around on a shoreline to eat the Galleon fire. Do Paladins take a lot of shots to go down? Heck yeah, but Paladin is a very expensive upgrade, and the Knight line has a high base cost for the unit, so that makes sense. Making a unit have extremely OP stats like you suggest could potentially invalidate my first point, BUT making a unit with extremely OP stats will open up a new can of worms, in that the unit (ship) is simply too strong vs everything else.

20

Idk. perhaps bombard cannons should have a chance to one hit these super expensive ships? Or any cannons for that matter. If you get a cannonball below the waterline as a wooden ship, your done, and all your crew is going to be swimming shortly.