It’s been proposed a few times but hasn’t seen much discussion. Would you like an expansion with focus on water gameplay?
This could mean:
Balance could be established purely by the strength of the unique water unit and the dock techtree
→ thereby leaving the land meta untouched
I wouldn’t give every civilisations a unique water unit. That would be too extreme and also very hard to pull of for some civilisations.
I like the idea of a few new techtree ships that can also replace some existing ships like Eagle Warriors replacing Cavalry for the Americans.
I have some Ideas:
They should play very similar to fire ships. A good replacement for less advanced civilisations to get a bit weaker navy units.
Most civilisations have access to Cannon Galleons despite having no other gunpowder units. The addition of Catapult Ships could fix that.
They are a bit better against other ships than Cannon Galleons but worse against Buildings.
The ships in AoE2 are cheaper and weaker than some land units. That just feels wrong.
I good change would be to double their costs but also HP and Attack. They are already big enough and don’t need to be resized. Some ships like Longboats could stay the way they are or only increased by 50%.
Civilian ships are unchanged.
This would work well in combination with allowing them to Transport troops because actual transport ships are much cheaper for the same job.
Those are some great ideas.
I agree that not every Civs needs their own unique ship. Civs could also be grouped together like for example all 3 meso civs get the same new boat…
Kinda seems pointless to increase hp and attack. It would cross over in to building and the like. Towers take a bit to kill a ship. Imagine being on four lakes and unable to land anywhere near a lake because the enemy has a war gally in rech lake that is one shoting all your units. You try to build a dock but its denied before you even start to lay the foundation. I think its built with lower hp and attack to keep the balance up. On islands all you would have to do is out gally your opponent once and there is no chace of turning the tieds.
This is very unlikely to be seen, and here one of aoe2 original dev explains why:
Basically, water units doesn’t have the complexity of the land unit, and generally you just spam them, alternating between fire and galleys, with some demos here and there. They had a lot of generic unsued ships for all civs, and they deliberaly didn’t used for this reason, and because it would make water balance a pain in the ***.
Even for water UU, how many times do you actually see them, the longboats are the exception, turtles received a ton of buff and still you don’t seem them very often, lastly caravels were introduced just as a “longboat killers”, and they are mostly useless outside of that.
If they are able to add some new water UU with eventually new civs, that is fine, they may be able to squeeze in a couple more of them (units that will most likely be very situational) but hard no to a water UU for all civs or even for just some old civs.
Now this, this I would like. New civs, with new bonuses and UT, some of that focused on the water could be a good idea, if you avoid making new “italians” (meaning a civ that is good only on water and useless on land).
I made a design for a civ some time ago based on the venetians, which would perfectly fit this this hypotetical DLC:
I even designed a water UU for them, and belive me, it’s super difficoult to do so.
I have seen this video. Yes, in the original AoC the water meta was very simple. You basically just build galleys and the one with the higher numbers wins.
However, the new team of developers tried to make the water play more interesting and balanced.
So far they succeeded in the feudal age. Especially on hybrid maps you can find some interesting plays with fireships and even demolition rafts.
Still, on water maps from the castle age onwards Galleys are the only option. But it doesn’t have to be like that. For a complex meta you need more options. Increasing the number of military ships from 3 to 5 or 6 + a unique ship would surely be beneficial.
And they did that, having just galleys in faudal age was a mistake, and the new water feudal meta is great, but it doesn’t need more units. You can already open wither with fires or galleys, and than swithc into the other, or into a UU.
It’s not true, just watch at the HC4 qualifiers, a lot of players (especially with italians) had played full fires from feudal age up to post imp, and just then switched to galleons. Others open with galleys and then switched to fires. Then there is the UU meta for the civs that have one, and the new sicilians landings meta, and so on, so there is variability to a certain degree.
And that’s the problem, the meta depends from the “enviroment” too, water isn’t complex like land for an number of reasons (you can’t wall, you just gather food, you cover big distances easier, you can’t pressure TC and so on…).
Adding more units wouldn’t make the meta more complex, those unit would be either be OP, and so became the new “galleys of AoC”, or have a too small effect, and be left there alone with no one to use them.
What the water meta needs is something to bring more civs on pair with italians, portos, viking and such, adìnd they already partially accomplish that. Now every civ that have bracer, galleon and a decent eco at the start are a decent water civ, and there are at least 10 civs who are good on water, more or less at the level of italians.
Adding 3 or more generic ships would just be a mess to balance, and for that reason I’m pretty sure it’ll never happen.
i woild love a water expansion as i feel that water maps are so underused and this will help with civ diversity bc there werent many good naval states in europe so u can than move to the swahily coast of africa or the filipinos could be great and this is super cool
Woku pirates Barbary Corsairs orang laut who else missing for the civis.
I never liked water maps. Ships feel so boring for me, but maybe, something cool would be a trash ship that just cost wood. Like a less power war galley available in Imp Age.
Or another idea is a ship with the ability of «board» and capture (convert) enemy’s ships
This is AoE II not I, gunpowder exists for a reason and cannons are always cooler than catapults.
Fire ships are so much cooler.
Give the fishing ship all those abilities rather than making a new ship.
The builder ship sounds interesting.
Sea walls are already in the game:
It would be cool if a building ship could construct them on shallow water.
What if the different water terrain types would influence how ships behave.
Some are faster in Deep Water others in Shallow Water.
Maybe some light/trash ships that can’t access Medium or Deep Water.
This would need some adjustment to existing maps, for example a Shallow Water connection for light ships between the two island in Team Island.
This would also allow new interesting map types like one where all islands are separated by Deep Water.
Double the price and double the stats would just mean half the numbers but the same effective power.
This would just reduce the amount of ships spammed and not really change the game besides small things like hitting one ship with the Trebuchet wouldn’t 1 hit anymore.
Not just exactly 2x the HP and 2x the damage because of how armour works.
Luckily the game only has 3 ships plus 3 unique ones so it wouldn’t be too hard to rebalance them.
That could actually be a good idea but only when the existing ships would get more expensive.
This is AoE2 not AoE3 why should nearly every civilisation have access to a ship with a Cannon.
Every civilisation with Elite Cannon Galleon would not get this new ship and only some of the one without would get it.
The strong water civilisations will keep the Fire Ships. This is n alternative for weaker water civilisations.
I think Fishing Ships are too cheap for that. A ship that can repair on open sea should cost gold and also do it automatically like a monk.
As I wrote they are cut content that was originally planned.
Forgotten Empires made the Sea Walls and Towers that were in the game files already accessible.
Sounds like a good limitation. The map generation should be adjusted for that though.
I really like this idea.
What I would like to see is:
I consider the fishing ship the “villager” of the water, so it should be able to construct/repair sea walls, gates and towers and fish of course. No need to introduce a new ship for this task.
ships behave differently depending on the water terrain e.g. shallow waters should only be passable for small ship types, small ship types are slower on deep waters (also it’s a little weird to fight galleys with land units 11)
sea walls, gates and towers should only be buildable on shallow waters
a trash millitary ship which costs only wood
more unique ships for various civilizations (of course only if they make sense historically)
maybe a few new techs
I like this… …
The water gameplay is so much in need of extra content to be honest, a few ideas:
-construction ships
-ability of construction ships to build walls and towers on shallow water
-ability of construction ships to build safe docks (= building which garrison ships, they don’t shoot arrows or produce anything)
-fish dropoff point which can be built anywhere on the sea by fishing ships. Costs wood.
-ramming ships with melee damage
-ships able to board other ships (basically they convert the enemy ships)
Just to give a few ideas of how much can still be done on water…
Nice ideas. (20 characters)
This may be good as a skin for CG and ECG for civs that doesn’t have acces to gunpowder (like meso), to make it a bit more “appealing” (though, meso civs didn’t really had catapult either…).
Ramming wasn’t really a thing in the middle ages anymore, so it wouldn’t make too much sense. Also, we don’t want to bring to water too all the balance problems that the coustilier brought to land…
A transport ship with a vill achieve the same goal, and it’s more flexible, since the vill can build any building.
But what would differentiate it from a galleon or a longboat? Both would perform the same role.
Also, tower ships for sieges or naval battles were a thing during Alexander the Great, or during the romans, but they weren’t a thing durng the middle ages that I know of.
This sounds a bit useless, and the orginal dev explained why. When you are just spamming ships, it matters little if you can convert just one or 2 of them, it would be to micro intensive, and unlike monks, they wouldn’t have a “range effect”.
If you want to add new ships, just look at unique ships were actually used during that time, like turtle ships, or longboats. I, for example, suggested a ships based on the Galeass, a specific ships used by the venetians, without any strange meccanic. Just a galleon with less range, but a spread attack. Is it orginal, no, but water doesn’t have a wide margin to work with.
But this would make them more clunky and difficoult to micro. And double the cost or HP what would do?
Good, so on bog islands you can go a wall the enemy resources with fishing ships, or malay can safely fishboom on islands near the edge of the map.
So your solution is to nerf them even more? If fires are fine let all civs have them.
Because it’s the only form of water siege of that time, otherwhise either they sige them from land, or they limit to block the harbors.
So maps like bogs islands basically becomes arena 2.0, with just fishing ships more?
Some unique water terrain may be fine, if the effects are small and doesn’t bring to unfair civ or units advantages, like on shallow waters military ships are a bit slower, but that’s it. For example, having fishing ships that can’t fish on deep water would kill the current island meta.
This one could a nice idea for a new civ, it seem small but effective, and not unfair, since the enemy can raid it.
Or just having dock that can garrison and heal fishing ships, again a small but effective bonus for a potential new civ.
My ideas are not carved in stone, of course there should be millitary ship types which are able to pass shallow water.
I suggested that small ship types like fishing ships should be slower on deep waters but still be able to pass it. Otherwise, deep-sea fish would no longer make any sense at all.