The question is simple. Why do they have the same tech and might it prove better to change them to different techs for them to upgrade so the switch isn’t as fast?
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Maybe because it was simpler to program? Or they tested it during the Beta phase of African Kingdoms and thought it would unnecessarily complicate things?
Good question though.
i think it allows for more variety honestly. you don’t have to worry about choosing one to upgrade, all 3 get upgraded with 1 tech, which allows you to do what you want.
seriously though, this isn’t an issue at all, it adds to the game, and changing it could confuse people as to why the change was made. just leave it as is.
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That is clear but that is not a complete explanation. Everything on land forces you to stay on a certain path and you are allowed to change it, but can be costly. Also, your explanation is valid only till castle age and after that, the techs are diversified.
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and the same is true for water once you reach imp. in castle age you can easily change techs on land too.
its not like crossbow is an expensive upgrade, and knights have no tech to unlock.
it isn’t until Imp that land tech switches become expensive.
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It is definitely not cheap to switch to a new building and the tech and the upgrades for it too to make the units viable, doesn’t matter the unit.
But considering the water units as in units in the same building, still you don’t expect the crossbow man upgrade to upgrade elite skirmishers too.
The point here is that it is necessary on land to do it, why not this specific stance in water (and afterwards, the tech is diversified in later ages).
For example a counter to your point would be ‘why not do the same to crossbow then’
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most people are already mixing one gold unit with one non gold unit anyway, so they already have the buildings, and the upgrades are only a little bit slower.
but let’s pretend that you went archers to start.
a knight switch would require 2 stables which is 350 wood, and 400 food and 150 gold for the two armor upgrades.
show me the tech switch required for feudal into castle units. oh wait. at most you’ve probably researched fletching. maybe if you had an extended feudal you researched cavalry +1 defense and bloodlines. maybe. but if you did odds were you were going knights anyway.
Yes, you are getting it and not getting it at the same time. There are in fact upgrades and techs that you need to have for other units and even the upgrades are different. Why isn’t the case here?
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no. you aren’t getting it.
normally in feudal the only upgrade you research is fletching if you go archers. you don’t normally invest into +1 defense for anything, unless you’re going extended fuedal age.
so at most, if you transition from feudal to castle into something else, all you need is to drop an extra building that odds are you were going to drop anyway.
so you aren’t investing much anyway, as fletching is something you normally get for one reason or another anyway.
you haven’t lost anything and tech switching in castle age is a piece of cake no matter what. it isn’t a huge investment at all. like i said normally you’re going either archers + pikes or knights + skirms anyway, so odds are you are going to research upgrades anyway.
I think it’s actually a legacy issue, fire galleys were introduced in the African Kingdoms expansion as far as I can tell, before that fire ships were always available without upgrade, when you reach castle, like knights. (please correct me if I’m wrong.)
That said, I think giving the different ships different upgrades would make the game boringer.
There is something to be said for decreasing the cost of other tech switches too IMO.
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I don’t know. But there ought to be separate Castle Age upgrades. The winning player having up to triple the tech advantage in one upgrade before the losing player catches up sounds like a great snowballing effect that is not seen in land combat, as it throws out the Rock > Paper > Scissors dynamic between Galleys > Demos > Fires until both players have the upgrade.
I am not entirely sure because I don’t know if I am remembering correctly, but isn’t it because there didn’t use to be Firegalleys in the game originally so the War Galley upgrade initially was neccesary to unlock the Fireship in the first place? And when Fire Galleys were added into the game later they never bothered making an upgrade tech for them and you automatically got the Fire Ship upgrade when you upgraded your Galley?
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The War Galley upgrade wasn’t necessary to unlock Fire Ships and Demolition Ships. These ships were unlocked at the start of the Castle Age.
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Well there we have it. Makes sense now why it’s like that,even if it’s opposite to all the other units.
And i think so little emphasis is put on naval combat that these types of “issues” won’t be resolved.
I think the broken rock paper scissors with fire ships being too weak and not actually hard countering galleys from mid game onwards is more of an issue than shared tech.
Agreed, i think it will result in less cheese/spam overwhelming a player. Since it should be easier to tech switch and counter the opponents counter…
oh they hard-counter them. the problem is once you get to a certain number of galleys, they just kill them too fast.
As said, this is because in the original game, the Feudal Age only had Galleys. Once you hit Castle Age, you also had Fire Ships and Demolition Ships, and you could upgrade your Galleys to War Galleys.
The current way of doing it is very confusing though, I would prefer to see separate upgrade technologies for each unit, as long as each of the three upgrades is fairly cheap and quick.
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but then they arent really hard countering them… resource wise a pike hard counters a knight, a skirm hard counters an xbow
fire galleys are soft counters, and even then thats doubtful due to the critical mass mechanic (again probably due to terrible pathing)