so besides the extremely limited number of viable factions, it seems the meta is generally to rush a couple fire ships and then mass galleys, once a critical mass of galleys is aquired, the only counter is yet even more galleys or better micro…
wtf was the counter system for naval fighting ignored? land has a hard counter system(skirms decimate archers, pikes murder cav) and a soft counter (archers can kite ifnantry, but with enough tech the infantry can corner and kill them) but why is the naval system so skewed? what is the logic behind a galley being faster than a fire ship and having 0 frame delay?
the terrible way models regroup when giving a move order is literally the only reason a crit mass of galleys cant 100% kite fire ships… if they didnt regroup and mvoe towards the enemy when told to move away, it would be a joke to kite them, but as it is its far too viable…
There are low amount of civs that excel on water but besides that I really enjoy playing water, and I think there are many strategies to try out. I love for example going full fire ships (which is a very underrated strategy imo) instead of war galleys in castle age, and I often manage to completely destroy my oppenet’s navy, without even entering to imperial age.
Agreed. I find water gameplay in AoE very sterile and simplified compared to ground gameplay.
In mid to late game, it boils down to whoever has the bigger mass of galleys and that person will win the A-Click fight.
In early game it’s either fire vs fire which is pretty dumb, or fire vs Galley where it’s just a simple matter of kiting backwards, or galleys vs galleys where the higher number wins.
There is no positional fights and unit counters complexity like you can find in ground units gameplay.
Water maps have always been boring because there aren’t too many options or civs capable of put a good fight on water plus the resources doesn’t last, fire galleys have been nerfed in 2 patches, war galleys will take the crown again, once in castle age +10 galleys destroys fire galleys with minimal efforts.
Really hard to balance water units, galleys are too strong massed and there can be 40 units in 2 tiles when patrolling, that is really dumb considering the size of the unit, i know those are aoe 2 old mechanics, but it should be changed, same like xbows. I know a lot of players would refuse that change but it is actually balancing something for the good.
I don’t know how that’s possible though. Did your opponent not kite you? Or make even a couple demo boats?
So the opponent surrendered before you even touched their base? Since tc, twrs, castles, mangos can all far more easily defend off fire ships then galleys?
I have no idea why this wasn’t an auto include. You have two “navy” races without one of the most crucial techs. The berber fire ship is literally the only one that’s possibly viable in these kiting fights.
I think water games in rts are less favoured in general so get less attention from modding in general. I would like to play water maps, and if galleys weren’t so easy to kite against fire ships i wouldn’t want to ban islands.
Agreed i like hybrid maps where both water pr land are viable. Makes for some cool strats and makes civs like Italy a lot more viable than pure land
Most times I split and they can’t get out much value.
Most of the times they surrender because I completely deny them from making docks. They can make a castle to defend and etc but that requires lot of investments and in this case I go fast imperial and just take them down with cannon galleons while he has just made some docks in front of the castles. But most times they surrender before.
On islands vikings aren’t as strong as italians because they can’t open fire ships and backdocking isn’t as effective as on team island where they can pull off fc into longboats.
As i already said in your other thread, having fire galley is a must in the water meta if you cannot have a safe back dock, reason why italian is the strongest 1v1 pure water map civ rn
Yeah, there are always exceptions. That’s why i said mostly and not only. Like Vikings going long boats.
I still can remember my last islands games (havent got this map many times). In all games the water was already decided before Imperial age was in the picture. One player won the water and landed. So there was no way for the enemy to come back on water. Sometimes the losing player will drag on the game, so the game hit imperial age. But it was never about controlling the water. The winnin player did control the water for ages.
Water combat needs a lot of rework to be interesting. needs more units, more mechanincs (roaming, boarding ships) and maybe it can deserve a dlc in its own.
The counter system is there though? Fires counter galleys. Galleys counter demos. Demos counter fires. Seems pretty cotton dry to me. That galleys would be so OP that nothing can counter them after a critical mass I don’t agree with either. You could say fires are to galleys what skirms are to archers.