The Most OP Naval Civ (Based on SotL's Video)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

SotL recently came up with some ideas for the most overpowered infantry, cavalry and archer civilisations and I just wanted to showcase my idea for the most OP naval civ possible.

Tech tree: Spanish
Team Bonus: Galleys +50% line of sight
Bonuses:

  • Ships +10% HP
  • Warships cost -15% Feudal Age, -15% Castle Age, -20% Imperial Age
  • Galleys attack 20% faster
  • Cannon Galleons benefit from Ballistics (fire faster, more accurately)
  • Lumberjacks work 15% faster

Unique Unit: Caravel
Unique Technologies: Carrack, Greek Fire

I am gonna let you guys pick a name for my civ and if you think anything on my list should be different let me know.

1 Like
2

Sounds like a pretty OP civ for late game water battles and it’s not useless early on either.

For this one I would favour the Italian tech tree, because having heated shot on your towers sounds more useful than having heavy demo ships.

Pretty evil idea of mine:
Italian tech tree

  • Fishing Ships 2x hit points; +2P armor; work rate +5% Dark, +10% Feudal, +15% Castle, +20% Imperial Age
  • Fishing Ships cost -15%
  • Buildings cost -15% stone
  • Can build feitorias in imperial age

Unique techs: Thalassocracy, Perfusion

Unique units: I have no idea for a land one, but drakkar on sea for sure.

Team bonus: can train condotierros

So the purpose of this civ is to have OP fishing ships to out eco everyone early on, and if this isn’t enough you can switch to the Portuguese playstyle of camping with feitorias, which is helped by their lower stone cost and the ability to spam both harbours and cheaper bombard towers.

Perfusion and condos make the civ adept at landings too.

Speaking of which you can make a pretty bonkers landing civ by only using bonuses from non naval civs: (EDIT: ooooops Malay are a naval civ. But hey you wouldn’t say no to those OP eles right?)
Tech tree: Khmer

  • Hunters work +40% faster
  • Forging & co free
  • Scouts are 15% cheaper
  • Battle elephants 33% cheaper
  • Cavalry moves +5% faster each age starting from feudal age

Unique techs: Chivalry, Manipur Cavalry

Unique unit: Arambai

Team bonus: Scout cavalry has +2 LoS

Yes this also doubles down as an OP cav civ, but it’s because those are the better landing units for early game.

So faster hunting + cheaper scout + free forging + more speed + more LoS = your opponent will be dead for sure in feudal age. But it wouldn’t be fun if it stopped there so let’s pile up even more OP bonuses. And who would say no to spamming elephants with a discount, faster stables and a speed boost?

Having arambai (with all archer armour upgrades) gives the civ more options if for some reason “more cavalry” isn’t the answer.

3

150 F instead, to gain the early access + snowball

Feitoria instead for long-term water superiority.

Turle ship as tank gives more value and is more pop efficient.

4

If you like galley micro you can make the ultimate hit and run civ.

Something like faster hunts and Persian faster working dock (to get the galleys out fast) + Berber speed boost + Sarracen better galleys + drakkars + Japanese TB sounds like fun (not for whoever would have to try and keep pace with that tho 11)

5

i think this is a wasted bonus honestly.

i’d go with
Tech Tree - Italians

  • Docks and Univ techs 33% cheaper
  • Fishing Ships 2x hit points; +2P armor; work rate +5% Dark, +10% Feudal, +15% Castle, +20% Imperial Age
  • Warships cost -15% Feudal Age, -15% Castle Age, -20% Imperial Age
  • Galleys attack 25% faster
  • Lumberjacks work 15% faster

Unique Unit Caravel
Unique Techs Carrack

Team Bonus - Galleys +50% LOS
so their galleys have more los, they have more armor, they research techs cheaper, and they have two eco bonuses to the civ. their fishing ships are pretty much unraidable and they still get shipwright on top of cheaper ships.

yeah that’s why we see the turtle ship all the time. don’t get me wrong, when its good its good, but caravel sees use a heck of a lot more then turtle ship does

1 Like
6

Ok here is mine:

Tech tree: Italians

Bonuses:

  • Dock techs costs - 50% (it’s the old one, but since SotL used obsidian arrows…)
  • Ships cost -15/15/20% in feudal/castle/imp (vikings)
  • Ships moves 10% faster (berbers)
  • All units cost 20% less gold (portos)
  • Lumberjacks works 15% faster (celts)

TB:

  • Docks cost 15% less (vikings)

UTs:

  • Carrack +1/1 armor to ships (portos)
  • Crenellations +3 range for castles (teutons)

UU:

  • Genoese crossbows (Italians)
  • Longboat (vikings)

Basically all revolves around super cheap longboat, that cost 80w and 24g, backed by faster wood gathering, and with the elite upgrade and other dock techs costing less. In feudal, before having LB, you also get fire ships that cost less gold than a galley and are faster.

They also get more armor, are produced at cheaper docks, and you have 15 range castles to build in the coastline and middle islands. The GC is for maps like bog Islands, since they have a bonus vs ships, and work nice with crenellations.

7

tech tree: Spanish
team bonus: docks cheaper (viking team bonus)
Bonuses: Ships -15% / -15% / -20%
Galleys attack faster
cannon galleon benefit from balistics
docks and tcs work 5/10/15% faster
chemistry free, gunpowder units +25% hp, researching gunpowder techs - 50% (for almoast instant cannon galleon in imp)
UU: longboat
UT: carrack and Sultans (for faster gold from relics in imp) or Thalassocry (harbors)

8

its too expensive right now to be unit of choice, but with feitoria eco, turtles become much more viable in lategame ;).

1 Like
9

Longboats are great at Micro (Kipchak of warships) and great against buildings (multiple arrows). So I prefer Longboats over the Caravels.

However, Turtle Ships overall, since they provide a 4th dimension whereas Longboats and Caravels are similar to Galleys.

1 Like
10

Caravels are amazing in large groups and most late-game battles feature at least 50 ships facing off each other.

11

two castle age unique techs, that’s cheating :((

12

It’s the water UU limited to the tech tree of choice?

13

That’s what I used to think, until I realised all the times I’ve seen caravels winning, o used them to win myself, were against longboats. If you’re up against a civ that has fast fire ships caravels can become useless real fast. Heck even in that RBW map that looked set up to make caravels OP they would still only beat longboats.

Since we can choose UUs independently of the base tech tre (or at least that’s what I feel) you don’t need to pick Vikings to have longboats, you just have to decide it’s your water UU.

14

Yeah but that was for the castle UU, or maybe I misread it…

In that case I have to change my tech tree…

15

Base Tech Tree:

  • Italians

Civ Bonuses:

  • TCs and Docks work 10%/15%/20% faster in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age. (Persians) good for getting the early eco, extra fishing ships, etc.
  • Lumberjacks work 15% faster (Celts) obvious choice, ships cost a lot of wood, so this is neat
  • Warships are 15%/15%/20% cheaper in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age (Vikings), goes well with your faster dock production, just keep pumping out more ships
  • Cannon Galleons benefit from Ballistics (fire faster, more accurately) (Spanish), this is just too good to not have
  • Wheelbarrow & Hand Cart are free (Vikings) throw in an eco bonus, just for getting to your mass ship spam stage a bit earlier

Team Bonus:

  • Docks are 15% cheaper (Vikings) synergizes well with the earlier bonuses, get your dock out early, which then works faster…

Unique Units:

  • Fetoria (Portuguese) (so you can last forever, if you’re somehow not winning this)

Unique Techs

  • Artillery (+2 range for Bombard Towers, Bombard Cannons, Cannon Galleons) (Turks), now your cannon Galleons are real monsters
  • Scutage (Sicilians), gives you a nice transition between gold piles and the fetoria
16

Still missing 150 f, it’s such a strong early bonus, you’d miss a lot of snowball potential without it.

17

My list is focusing only on the post-imperial power and not Galley rushes because I hate Galley rushes, trying to take down a dock using a Galley is like watching feudal age archers take down a Byzantine wonder.

18

What you really want is the Viking ship discount and the Korean Wood discount and the Portuguese Gold discount and the unique unit to be Turtle Ships :wink:

6 Likes
19

That’s actually the best idea so far since the Turtle ship is the tankiest water unit in the game and making them cheaper would completely break everything, it’s like an Elite War Elephant that just costs 80 food. Thanks, T-West! :wink:

20

but that doesn’t leave you much in the way of bonuses to get to the point where you can start snowballing those turtle ships. even then its still going to be insanely expensive. sounds fun on paper but is it actually practical?