Alright, I thought that this could be a weird unique unit from castles, but then I thought it could work better as a replacement of the initial scout, like the eagle for the mesos.
The unit I am talking about is an eagle. But not the eagle warrior, I am talking about the bird. It could be a hawk, doesn’t matter.
Do you know, when you control the animals with the cheat code, that you can control the eagles? They don’t have attack, and they rotate in a circle area unless you move them.
I think it could be a nice scouting unit, as it provides vision but it can not be attacked. A civ could start with that one instead of the scout.
As an unique unit from castles, I don’t really think you will need more than one, do I don’t see it.
As an unique technology it could work, on the other hand. You research the tech, and you receive the hawk, only once per game. It is like a mobile outpost, not op but very useful.
Who could have it? Mongols used prey birds for scouting, I don’t know about other civs. Sioux?
Pretty good idea, could be great for scouting, and no one could kill it. However, I see this idea only limited to Nomadic(like Tatars) or Native American civs( Mongolians are already pretty strong, no need to buff them the slightest)
I think this could be interesting. But I do have a few stuff about which I have doubts.
1 I’m not sure if I want the bird to just give vision. I know that falconry was popular in bygone times, especially under royalty, but I don’t know how much military use it had. I know even pigeons with their tiny brains are visually smart enough that they can learn to distinguish works from different artists better than first years art students. So it’s certainly not impossible for a bird to learn to distinguish an enemy column from a peaceful village, I just don’t know how you would train them for that. Not a lot of enemy columns around for peacetime practice.
2 I also don’t know if flying units are a good idea in this game overall. They’d be invulnerable to melee attacks.
So, I think maybe we should think in the direction of not the bird being the unit, but the falconer. The falconer can send out the bird and gain vision over a certain amount of terrain/in a certain pattern. This allows vision past walls and other obstacles, but when the falconer dies you lose the bird as well. The bird itself is invulnerable, because have you ever tried shooting a falcon flying hundreds of meters above you? It’s a bit like scouting with monks and their huge field of vision.
I’m not sure if the game needs this, but I think that could work.
Leeel so you contest someone else’s recommendation by simply going against a horde of aoe2 logic and saying aoe should change as a whole
Slow clap for the troll
This sounds cool i wanna try the cheat just to see if it works. But if they ever add another American civ they could maybe add it there. Any current civ would be broken.
Not sure how balance will work though, they’ll either need to change it so you can shoot a bird with arrows or the player will have a permanent LOS unit. Which would need to be balanced with some serious handicap for the owner (and thus the American civ)
O yeah, I think that’s one of the standard functions in the scenario editor too these days, that you can make any unit trainable from any building, including stuff like (wild, non-rider) camels.
Nice to see that birds fall under the same principle.
Pretty agressive civs too, they don’t need additional scouting intel.
If some civs could use it, it would be defensive/counter civs like byzantines, koreans (indians/but they are already strong) and viatnemese. This could help them to adjust their play to whatever the enemy is doing.
Would be interesting, but I don’t think it will be implemented.
After giving it more thinking, I think it works as a castle technology. It provides very strong Intel, as a mobile outspot, but in a late stage of the game.
A hawk in dark and feudal age is very powerful, specially if it cannot be attacked. It couldn’t be used to attack villagers, but I think it is too strong
