Watch HC4 islands games and you’ll understand why.
It was a needed change to make water maps a little bit more playable and a little less obnoxiously campy, expecially when portuguese are involved.
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They removed it because it was expensive, and often discouraged players from researching it in competitive and not games, since most people research it only when they already won water.
This way, you can start adding some CG (Cannon Galleon) right after reaching Imperial age. Considering that the unit itself is really expensive, ad that it needs another expensive upgrade it was a good change in my opinion. Like years ago they removed the technologies before HC and BBC (Hand Cannoneers and BomBard Cannon). It’s also a buff for spanish on water, that can now make effective use of their powerful CG.
Also, abbreviations like CG, or others like CA, BA, SL (Cavalry Archer, Battle Elephant, Steppe Lancer) are really common in the forum, so you need to try to understand them from the context, usually it involves the initial letter of the word of a unit.
Either way, don’t be afraid of asking if you don’t understand those, often people in their rush just use them to be faster.
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I had proposed three changes to the Cannon Galleon:
- Remove the Cannon Galleon tech → done.
- Give Cannon Galleon to all civs.
- Nerf Cannon Galleon. Regular Cannon Galleons should have only 12 range (so they still outrange Castles/Towers with Bracer) and less damage output. This way, Elite Cannon Galleon actually becomes a real plus for the civs who have it, whereas now, it is researched only very rarely.
It is good the Cannon Galleon tech is gone, but I would nerf the regular Cannon Galleons a little bit. More generally, I think water battles should be rethought in AOE2, because even with the improvements in The Forgotten and afterwards, civ matchups are still very one-sided and it remains almost impossible to regain control of the water after you lose it (the Cannon Galleon change actually makes this worse). I think every civ should have bonuses and weaknesses on water, instead of making some civs good on water and other civs bad on water. But I guess that’s a different discussion.
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One side effect of this would be that the Aztec campaign would make less sense, particularly he mission where you have the optional objective to capture some Cannon Galleons; if you can train them anyway, what’s the point?
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Cannon Galleon coud just be banned only for the campaing
Bummer. In my single player vs. AI games, if I’m ever way behind and start clawing back, rebuilding to the point where I can finally afford more techs and cannon galleons, having to research the CG tech was a nice thing on my “to do” list. If I no longer need to jump that hurdle, it just makes the game another step closer to auto-pilot. Easier. That clawing back feeling is less fulfilling. The clawing back duration is shortened. As Spanish, the Cannon Galleons are good against AI ships, so they often help me come back. Without CG tech being necessary, it’s just simplifying and shortening the game
There is actually a precedent for this - the addition of the siege tower in African Kingdoms, which really shakes up campaign play.
Good point. Turks now need some small buff to compensate the loss of their slight advantage of having a cheaper Cannon Galleon tech cost.
As for the tech being removed in general, here are my thoughts: While, yes, as a water-map lover myself, I appreciate the intention to improve water-gameplay by allowing all civs to access the “siege naval unit” faster, there is still some problems:
(1) Chemistry is still a relatively cheap cost, at only 300 Food and 200 Gold. Basically, for the cost of “another Bracer”, you are getting access to Hand Cannoneer, Bombard Cannon, and–now–Cannon Galleon all immediately. Now…back in Age of Kings days, it was a bit annoying that Hand Cannoneers and Bombard Cannons had to be researched with their own techs to get access to them, and I am glad that in Age of Conquerors, they made them immediately available once Chemistry was done. But now with Cannon Galleon being free…that just makes Chemistry TOO good to research.
SOLUTION: Make Chemistry more expensive in resource cost and (maybe) increase the time needed to research it.
(2) What about Bombard Tower? Should that now be the only gunpowder unit to have to have its own tech? Should Bombard Tower’s tech be removed as well so as to make it all equal with all the other gunpowder units? Or shall it be left as is, to stick out like a sore thumb as the “gunpowder unit held back the most”?
Now, as far as Bombard Towers are concerned, they ARE certainly an OP unit, much more so that Cannon Galleons, and Bombard Cannons. But… there is reason to believe that they are as a unfair disadvantage since they still require ONE MORE tech to receive access. Personally, keeping the Bombard Tower tech in the University is a good thing, as it forces players who intend to commit to the Bombard Tower-strat, to REALLY commit to it.
(3) And the Turks. Like already mentioned above: their civ bonus is a bit underpowered now. Now, some of you might say “who cares? Turks are still fine”, but when you consider that Turks original Age of Kings civ bonus has been gradually eroded away, you might understand now that Turks have been cheated. Having free Light Cav and Hussar upgrades is fine…but the Turks do stand out—and always have stood out–as the quintessential gunpowder civ. I recommend the devs give the Turks a slight buff, so that they still stand out as a excellent gunpowder civ (this of course can be easily remedied by my suggestion above to add cost to Chemistry tech, since Turks get it free anyway…making Chemistry more expensive to compensate the “free” Cannon Galleon tech, would also buff Turks, since they would be saving more on Chemistry cost, than other civs)
It is not uncommon to have acronyms have multiple meanings.
Though, for the case of SouMexican, I have no idea what he truly meant when he used the acronyms that he did.
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Hard disagree.
First off, there are good reasons for why SOME civs lack gunpowder units, for both historical and for game-balance reasons. Example: Huns are quite powerful on land, but they are balanced out by being mediocre on water, and lacking Cannon Galleons, which in turn is balanced out with them having the most accurate Trebuchets (except for Britons’ Warwolf)
Second, Cannon Galleons ought to be BUFFED in my opinion, by making their cannon balls move faster in the air. And I do not mean as fast as Spanish Cannon Galleons, nor like Portuguese Cannon Galleons with Arquebus tech upgrade. I just mean FASTER so that generic Cannon Galleons can be somewhat more effective at fight other naval units and land units.
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I mean, if you want historical accuracy within games, this tech removal is historically accurate. In the early 2000’s the developers removed “Hand Cannon,” a prerequisite tech that unlocked the Hand Cannoneer. This, like Cannon Galleon, was a standalone tech that was a secondary gateway to the gunpowder option. They removed it in the Conquerors expansion. So, the Developers are simply making a historical accuracy change and seeing this tech as an exact copycat tech.
If they do away with Bombard Tower research it’d make it so there are no special techs needed to unlock a specific option unit under the gunpowder umbrella. For the record, I don’t know how this could be considered a bad thing. If you’re worried about overly nerfing Turks (can’t see how this is an extreme problem for them, but let’s just say it is) you can make Chemistry an even longer research time that only the Turks get to ignore
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Good points. Since CG tech is likely to never come back, sadly, this would be a good idea. Make it at least double or triple the cost and double or triple the time it takes to research, since it the master key that unlocks cannonballs everywhere
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No. Chemistry already takes a lot of time, making it take twice or three times as much would make hand canoneers even less commonly used than now and even bombard cannons would be much less seen
Just make Artillery cheaper.
And I still dont get why you are sad about a tech that made a unit not practical enough being removed.
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To each his or her own.
It was a stepping stone tech on my way to fast cannons on my Spanish CGs, which are quite powerful and a force to be reckoned with. I’m willing to put in the resources, time, and energy needed to make them, rather than having them spoon-fed to me
They arent “spoon-fed to you”. Chemistry still takes a ton of time and cannon galleons still train slowly and are really expensive on themselves (and if you want cannon galleons to be slower to get into just ask for slower creation time for the non-elite version).
This is just a buff for a unit that isnt enough used in water as showed by HC4. If your problem is that it makes the game too easy theres other ways of making the game harder than screwing over the balance. Spanish are already an slow enough civ on water tbh.
(And I understand liking slow water games too I used to play those as well, but honestly I dont think that its something to get sad about)
Well, maybe now you’ll be less behind, since you can build CG sooner.
Anyway onestly it’s not a big deal, the unit now work like any other gunpowder unit, and that is fine. In general anyway, CG play a minor role on water maps, when is more important to first assert control of water with galleons or FFS, so CG are just the last nail on the coffin.
Also, for multi-player purposes, the devs are trying to make the pace of the game always faster.
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It’s not about making the game easier, it’s about correcting the fact the “water siege weapon” was locked behind two techs before you can even start to train it, which you don’t have to do for any other unit is. And heck if you miss the research time, just train a bunch of units and delete them before making a CG to simulate the research.
Not at all, getting CG instantly thx to free chemistry is better than having to get the CG tech at half cost. Especially since actual water civs will have the eco to pay for the full price anyway.
First not all civs get every gunpowder unit, and second the cannon galleon isn’t that good of a unit. Yes it’s essential to fight defenses on water but it’s still a very expensive ship that is pretty easy to pick of, so you need a big fleet to defend it.
Speaking of which, now not only the Turks get cannon galleon instantly, but they still have 20% more HP, are still trained 20% faster and still benefit from the artillery unique tech. If this isn’t the quintessential gunpowder civ then what is.
Well not always (cough Chivalry nerf cough) But balancing around single player gameplay is kind of pointless. I mean, the extreme AI can be deafeated with a FC elephant archer strat.
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Don’t change tech used in basically every arabia game that goes to imp and has one player going archers just because of cannon galleons that are used only on water maps which are rarely played (they usually aren’t played even on hybrid maps).
And even now it takes ages to research, I am not sure, but I think there is no upgrade that takes longer
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perfect solution, now everyone is happy! Haha.
But yeah I think the reality is that the devs have to focus on multiplayer when it comes to balance changes, and can’t prioritize single player or campaigns. Though I certainly hope that those communities are being looked after with things like the upcoming co-op mod etc.
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In short: because the elite cannon galleon being locked behing four ages, chemistry, the cannon galleon tech and then the upgrade would make it an extremely late game unit unlike any other. That’s twice the number of techs after reaching imperial age you need to reach paladin, as a comparison. And of course when you enter imperial age you can already have knights, while for cannon galleon you’d need three of those four techs before you can even start making and using some version of it. It’s not bad to have strong siege be a late game option, that does in itself follow the design choice of this game to make it very hard to take out buildings early on only for it to get easier and easier, raising the chances of the game being won with each stage of play. But this would be extreme, pretty much taking cannon galleons out of consideration for standard 1v1 random map play altogether.
So basically, it was just one bridge too far to get to the point where buying all those bridges would start to pay off.
But only if you’re going cannon galleon. the rest of the game already was “shorter”. It is weird to have one specific unit that takes so much extra time and resources.
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