“You hate innovations!” No. I hate fake innovations

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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TLDR: the real innovations that should be encouraged were those of gameplay and contents (good or bad, they always could fix it), not “innovations” as excuses for less work and less thought

What were real innovations
Universal techtree updates in the Conquerors
Regional units
QoL improvements
Elite unit skins
I’d even count Chronicles

You don’t just need to come up with them. You need to think about how to make them work well

Why V&V is not
You need to think, do the research, do the writing, do the programming, to make a good campaign
“Let’s break that mode and invent a new DLC concept” only takes you a second, and their only purpose was to reuse work and milk the fanbase. That was not innovation

Why 3K is not

Is there anything new it really offers? Heroes? You can add it to basically any civ

Most of the campaigns added before were not extremely popular ones. Was El Cid 3K-level popular when AOC was released? Why did it still work? Because ES spend their efforts. The previous DLC campaigns required research into unknown topics and writing. They need to dig into materials within the game’s theme and try to fit them in.

You just need a five minute talk with a whiteboard to come up with 3K

They did it because they want to reuse work and borrow some free advertising material. They didn’t want to think about other ways to make the DLC more appealing like they did to previous ones. “Breaking the formula” is the cheapest one.

Conclusion
On the surface, WE had been “bold” that they kept breaking their games’ formulae. In fact, they had become more and more afraid of real changes, and only made “changes” to avoid them. They broke the formula only when it led to less thinking and less work.

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I was fine when civs disnt need new fangled code snd bonuses were still simple +x% or tech free/cheaper

Just me?

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I’d even go as far to say V&V is an insult to the playerbase’s intelligence. If you are selling someone free mods for real money, then you don’t respect that person.

It does. It added fictional civilizations and campaigns to a historical game and butchered it’s identity. Very innovative…

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Yeah, I don’t like how they add some very weird effects just to pretend its unique, like:

“Huntable animals now give lumber instead of food”

“Swordsman and Spearman switch bonuses”

“After building a military building a Giraffe is spawned in your TC”

Why we need these kind of gimmicks…?

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Because it’s not possible to generate hundreds of unique but non-gimmicky bonuses. It’s the inevitable consequence of adding so many civs.

The most interesting bonuses are actually the simplest yet most distinctive ones, like the Huns’ no-house requirement, Britons’ extra range, or Goths’ cheaper infantry bonus. These simple bonuses shaped their civ identities exceptionally well. And here’s some random bonus from the new civs:

  • Can garrison mills with herdable animals to produce food.
  • Stone miners generate 33% gold in addition to stone.
  • Meat of hunted and livestock animals does not decay.
  • Chemistry and Hand Cannoneer available in Castle Age.

These bonuses just feel off, and they nowhere shape the civs’ identities like the old civ bonuses did. And some of these are rip-offs from already existing bonuses.

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I beg to disagree. I can pull up many civ concepts from an era when you were yo be lambasted for daring to consider auras or special interactions based on hardcoding

It has something to do with something called the Users patch?

How mystical people are able to break the laws of hardcoding still baffles me

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Some unique stuff that could be given as civ bonuses or castle techs:

  1. Archers have faster movement speed
  2. Fletching, Bodkin and/or Bracer is free
  3. Ballistics is free
  4. Towers cost less stone (like -50)
  5. Archers have +1 or +2 against infantry
  6. Spearmen (or infantry) receive +0.5 range
  7. Can upgrade Palisade walls into Fortified Palisade walls
  8. Effects from mining camp techs are increased (doubled?)
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Giving a third unit for CA SL BE EA Scorpion lines are still not done too.

Fish traps getting a unique upgrade,unique building replacing the market is also left.

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I love the “additional stage” UUs. It’s like when a pokemon gets a new evolution.

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Come to think of it why hasnt anyone got a feudal weaker knight yet?CA is hard to balance in feudal so not a great design choice.

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I agree would be pretty cool!

I think feudal CA could work but only with a really long train time and short range. Massing CA in feudal seems pretty strong.

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I’m waiting for a house and trade carts that can shoot back bonus.

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Of course you can. Its not that hard to make civs with bonuses that are not weird gimmicks.

And its exactly what you said, the interesting bonuses are the simple and distinctive ones, where civ X do Y thing and everyone remembers. Currently the new civs have some random bonuses and gimmicks that I dunno why they like to go in this direction.

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Well, to be honest, most of these sound OP. Especially the archer bonuses.

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The thing about the old bonuses was that they were by and large thematic and logical when applied to the civs. So when you looked at it, it just “made sense”, therefore it was easy to remember and also helped to amplify the civs identity.

For example it makes sense that a civ like Britons has longer range on their archers, because they are an archer civ.

Or Huns not needing to build houses because Huns were the quintessential nomadic civ who didn’t settle so it made sense.

Or Byzantines having bonuses for defensive buildings nad counterunits because of their historical staying power in Constantinople.

And so on…

But so many of the new civ bonuses really not only seem unrelated to the civs identity they also just seem to make no sense logically.

Like foragers generating wood when collecting berries-like how does that even work? They collect the twigs?

Or farmers don’t drop off food. Again how? Where does the food go? The entire logic of the game was established around the idea that you collect and deposit resources but now all of a sudden a civ comes along and their farmers just put the food in their pocket and call it a day.

If you thought that was bad, now we have soldiers who passively generate food OUT OF THIN AIR! They don’t even have to do anything. That’s right, they just collect their farts in jars and add it to the granary stockpile.

Now this one really annoys me: Vilagers being able to garrison in houses for Khmer when no other civ can do it… This one just feels wrong, like how did the villagers in this civ figure out they could open the door to their houses and go inside but no other civ figured this out? Did all the other villagers from all the other civ lose their house keys and are now all perpetually locked out? You can apply this same logic to all the other special abilities, like charge abilities for cavalry or the ability of a cavalry man to get up once their horse is dead, or the ability to switch from ranged attack to melee attack when the enemy gets close, these should all be applied to all appropriate generic units.

Or how about military units that regenerate ONLY WHILE FIGHTING??? Like what is happening here exactly? I can understand units regenerating passively because they are resting, but ONLY when fighting? Are these now vampires? Are they sucking the life force out of the enemy units and rejuvinating themselves with it??? WTF is this?

Also why is there now an archer that can fire further away when attacking a building but not at other units? Is it using 2 different bows? Does it just forget how to shoot when shooting units?

So many of these bonuses just feel silly.

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I don’t think free Fletching would be OP at all. You get a faster timing and save 100 food, that’s all. Same with Ballistics etc.

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Because it’s not possible to create unique, non-bland, and non-gimmick bonuses forever.

How many unique infantry civs can you create with a defining bonus?

  1. Cheaper? Taken
  2. Attack faster? Taken
  3. More attack? Taken
  4. More HP? Taken
  5. Move faster? Taken
  6. Early availability? Taken
  7. Double effect from the blacksmith upgrades? Taken

The first five ones from the old civs are excellent and defining bonuses, while the last two are nowhere near as good as the first five. Because, as I said, you are destined to go with more gimmicky bonuses the more civs you add.

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You could have a lot more archers for your first push with the resources saved by not having to build a blacksmith. It would be tough to counter, even with skirms.

Free ballistics would be INSANE. Almost 500 resources saved, research time saved and all hits with your archers from the moment you reach castle age. You could even get by without a university for a long time in CA.

I would go as far as saying that early availability is somewhat gimmicky, too.

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It would be the same. With Aztecs though, you’d have more archers due to your ranges producing 15% faster (same with Britons and their 10% bonus). And with Mayans you save res on every archer you make. With Koreans you save 50% wood + you get the armor upgrade for free.

So it’s not as good of a bonus as you think it is.

Yes free Ballistics would be a nice bonus. But not insane. Your Crossbow will still die to Skirmishers. Tatars get free Thumb Ring and nobody claims that to be OP.

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That makes more sense than Goths being THE Infantry civ not because they were famous for their infantry but because the old devs wanted one civ to be exclusively good with infantry.

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