What do i do with torps?

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Hi there!

So, i have been thinking about what torps are and what are their uses, and there are a few things that are bugging me. Lets look at the raw data here:

-Torp costs 125 wood (in the current patch)
-It has 1500 hp.
-It provides 10 pop.
-Can collect any resource. - It collects resources as long as they are not exhausted and as long as the Torp is alive. It can collect all recources at once. Gather rate is substantial and with cards it is very high. Best case scenario as three settlers. Worst case as almost one settler.
-Comes with free 150 guaranteed food berry bush. (Upgradeable via HC cards)

Now lets compare to its ‘equivalents’.

-Normal houses cost 100 wood, has 1200hp and provide 10 pop.
-Indian house is 70 wood to help with its villager cost in wood. - Comparable to normal house
-Iro longhouse costs 125 wood, has 1800hp and provides 15 pop. More cost effective, but having to chop more wood can be annoying. - Comparable to normal house
-Chinese village costs 200 wood has 2500hp and provides 20 pop. It can also garrison villagers and serves as a livestock pen. - Quite powerful, but you are forced to buy additional upgrades, as build limit of 6 vill not provide you with maximum pop cap. Personally i think it’s better than normal house, but nothing too crazy.

Now the infamous ‘houses’

-Incan kancha house costs 135 wood, has 1500hp, provides 12pop and has guaranteed food gather rate. Upgraded it is equal to one villager on food. Lastly it has large model so it’s good for early-game walling. - Overall quite powerful. 35 extra wood for 2 extra pop and unraidable one villager on food. Luckily it’s just food.

-Japanese shrine costs 120 wood, has 1600hp, provides 10 pop and has guaranteed small gather rate of any resource you choose. The gather rate is subsequently raised by nearby huntables or even more by herdables, Toshogu wonder, and a HC card (which also makes them cost 95 wood) - Very powerful. Just for 20 extra wood, (or -5 wood with the card) you get a powerful early economy able to support your ashi-spam. This is where a term Japanlamer comes from. Only somewhat redeeming quality of a shrine is the need to seek out huntables close to your enemy, making them an easy target for pikeman squads and it gathers only one resource at a time.

-Manor house costs 135 wood, has 1200hp, provides 10 pop and spawns a settler. You can decrease the cost of manor house via HC card to 87. - Only 35 wood for a settler, or with a card -13. The british manor boom is a scary thing and can easily get out of hand, when unchecked. The ‘free’ settler can gather any resource, construct buildings and benefit from many economic upgrades. Luckily, settlers are raidable, or at least you can stall them in the TC.

I hope i haven missed anything (Yea Soiux have free 200 pop from the get go)

So lets return back to the torp and compare it.

It costs less than a manor house
Is unraidable/unstallable
Gathers faster than a shrine and most of the time than a villager
Can gather any resource
Basically free (invest 125 wood, get 150 food back guarantee)
Has more hp
Can shoot huntables
(something else?)

How does this make sense? How does one play against this? By the time you can scrape a few units to start sieging torps down, sweden either goes FF, or sits back and builds tons caroleans and cav, while you waste resources on pikemen. Once they hit a critical mass, they can build torps faster than you can take them down. Which is not hard, as maxing out your torps can be done in 7 minutes. The sieging takes time, especially since torp has more hp and wastes your time, while telling your opponent where you are. Sieging should be done only when necessary. But with torps, it’s out of the question.

So i can’t raid them, as i will get outmassed. But i can’t leave them be either as i will get over-eco’d. Don’t you dare to claim Torps are not op. The return rate on them is through the roof. It just doesn’t work.

Right now for only extra 25 wood, you get free food, plus gather of anything you want, plus more hp, plus unraidable/unstallable. I don’t know about you, but i imagine something else under 25 wood pricetag. (100 wood is for the 10 pop)

What i think should be done is to just delete that berry bush and any ability to ever spawn with one. Maybe it could be like age IV thing. If you want your torps to gather food, just herd animals under it, or place it on berry bushes, which are available in your base on the most of the maps.

Your thoughts?

5 Likes
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Normal houses only supports pop in DE is just a joke.

Eco house was complaint since TAD but Dev seems doesn’t realize and put it for new civs. However this seems won’t be adjusted anymore.

One more point to add: they can be greedy boom (much powerful than normal civ only training vils in TC by queue).

Most of guys don’t realize that (or don’t want to admit), unraidable is already a very good bonus, players can pay much less concentrate to avoid their eco get raid from loss, and this is also crazy can be greedy boom as long as they want.
This means they can raid you but you can’t raid them, omg eco is main element in the game.

2 Likes
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The gather rates need to be turned down. In my opinion, gathering from Hunts and livestock should be removed. Now that Ironworks is nerfed and we can see actual gather rates, we realised that putting torps near trees is crazy value. See Drongo’s video analysis for actual numbers:

The new torps with blackberries are simply overpowered and even Drongo says this will not last.

Another unfair advantage is the fact that Sweden gets all these ressources without having to use up their hunts. And even when the hunts are destroyed, the Bushes stay around. So eventually, you can gather them with your settlers.

Look at Japan. Japan has Cherry orchards, which gather slower than Hunts. To keep their food income, Japan has to send another 2 Cherry orchards eventually. However, all their villagers gathering food are unkillable because you can simply move them into the TC. This is very strong.

Meanwhile, Sweden is sending Blueberries, which adds another 200 food to all existing torps. So not only does it act as a way to replenish your food ressources, it also makes it gather faster! Imagine if cherry orchard card for Japan would not ship 2 wagons, but instead add ressources ontop of the existing cherry orchards AND make them be gathered faster. Completely overpowered, isn’t it? Well thats roughly what Sweden gets!

I always thought it was weird to have these torp-generated bushes stay around. I suggested, they should decay like animals. That would also help with the issue of not getting more bushes once you reach the bush limit (which they now in creased from 30 to 60).

3 Likes
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One unit/building doing too many things is never a good idea. Such a unit may not be necessarily OP, but very hard to balance. This applied to both Caroleans and Torps and sadly they are all Swedish.
Caroleans used to be a musketeer, a melee skirmisher, a dragoon with absurdly long range and also a counter to dragoons combined. Now it’s nerfed to a more acceptable state.

Torps can just sit there and gather all resources around them, with negligible penalties or investments (only 25% more cost), and they also grant a safe, convenient food source. It would be a good idea to remove at least one of these functions: (1) make them gather one resource at the same time (they can be assigned to a particular resource manually) OR (2) adjust or remove the berry bush spawning OR (3) at least disable resource gathering when under attack.

Brits going manor booming need to look for new food sources constantly. Same for Japanese going shrine booming, but shrines are much safer than wandering villagers, and people have been complaining Japanese being OP or at least annoying since TAD. However they both still rely heavily on natural resources. What if every Shrine comes with a free cherry orchard?

Don’t forget Swedes still have a villager limit of 99, when almost every other nation with additional auto-gathering buildings have a lower limit, including the infamous Japanese since TAD. Ironically late game or long treaties is not even discussed here.

3 Likes
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You can also gimp japan gather rates by killing their animals on remote shrines. Free food for you as well.

1 Like
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But you’ll need to destroy the shrine first.