How "Battle for Greece" overhauls its naval combat (AoE2)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2024
- The new "Battle for Greece" DLC has ambitiously taken on redesigning naval combat and units. Let's check out how it works!
1:35 Dark Age (port and Lembos)
2:30 Feudal Age
5:35 Castle Age
6:54 Imperial Age
8:23 Takeaways for regular AoE2?
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Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsou...
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
The demo ship as a Fireship counter was like trying to make the petard are knight counter.
While in a Archer meta.
flaming camels have entered the chat
@@atoucangirl And they left the chat because they all blew up.
@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm Flaming camel slander will not be tolerated 😡😡😡😡
jk
With this DLC we're halfway to your threatened "mangonelephant"
What is it again?
@@Ratciclefan an Elephant with Mangonel on top. Spirit's many ideas for additional Elephant units lol.
I want an elelelephant
It’s an elephant that throws mangos
Plus the new "ramelephant" (a swimming elephant that headbutts ships)
Been playing AOE since 99, and listening to Spirit since 2015
Right with you 👊
I got back into AoE thanks to spirit.
Sounds like a sweet tattoo 😂
Been playing AoE since before Rise of Rome... Not sure when I started watching SotL. Hera wasn't a pro yet then tho.
@@ObiwanNekody well welcome to the 90s kids crew haha
i like the 2 seperate docks. The military one beeing only available in feudal age adds an extra investment that can be scouted, so the decision making is really important with this system. I hope it gets good feedback and will be introduced in the standard game for some new cool civ bonuses applied to them
Note that 4 more differences NOT mentioned here is that Fishing Ships can mine (450 per deposit) gold from oyster deposits, Incendiary Ships have 20, 30 and 40 less blast damage than their respective Age AoE 2 equivalent (the demo ship), Transport Ships get additional carry capacity automatically from aging up rather than that requiring the relevant ship upgrades for it, and Trade Cogs can now be set to trade for one of a few different ratios of wood and gold rather than just for gold.
That explains that bug from the og aoe2
@@sgtpepper8581 What bug?
@@abacus7087 One was that villagers could mine a dock for gold, and the other that if you used the hotkey instead of the normal click for a fishing ship, it'd make the DLC one, which didn't benefit from any civ bonuses or discounts.
interesting, ornlu covered all 4 in his vid, information i believe are quite important, especially the trade one.
Am i the only person that is upset that they never added the animation of the sails billowing when ships move in DE, like was in the original game?
theres a lot of things they'll never add it seems...
omg I thought something was missing!
never noticed
That, and I also miss the idle animation of the ships swaying on the waves.
compromise for the generic Dromon thing: all civs are given Catapult ships in Castle age, but the ones without cannon galleon get to upgrade them into Dromon, with their anti-building properties and range. some stats and costs would have to be adjusted of course.
nice idea!
There have been mutliple water reworks before this. But this is the first time I think they actually achieved their goal, this sounds great.
The DLC absolutely adores auras, jesus christ im pretty sure every unit has an aura at this point
+1000 aura
ora-ora-ora-ora!
Hype moments and aura. Aoe 2 is jjk confirmed?
My issue with water is that ships simply don't feel right. They are huge graphically, but don't behave like it. They still spin around on the spot, accelerate instantly, overlap each other like crazy and in most cases don't deal real damage to ground units. The water domain is in every purpose just the ground domain except worse in every way. For ships done right look towards Supreme Commander. There from mid tier onwards, each ship is a lumbering floating base, bristling with weapons, but paying for it with maneuverability. And each high end ship costs as much as a small army, and also behaves like it. Parking a fleet off-shore and shelling a base just feels badass, and naval battles are just sublime. Each engagement is much slower than a ground battle, but requires much more forethought. Medieval naval warfare is obviously different to the WW2 model SupCom is broadly emulating, but ships still should feel more like ships than archers with oversized sprites.
Red Alert 2 is a good example of how to do a more arcadey style of naval warfare where ships do feel weighty and tend to be individually more expensive than tanks and other ground units that you mass. especially bombardment vessels vs support vessels.
I have to say I'm not really bothered by the things you mentioned about size and maneuverability and all, although it would definitely be cooler to have ships just change like that.
For me the biggest problem with water is its over-simplicity. All civilizations get the exact same thing in feudal age (except those who lack demos), and in Castle Age if I'm not mistaken, all civs also get Galleys and Fire Ships. In any case, by Castle Age, it's all about massing galleys.
Ships is just all about who can mass the fastest of the exact same unit. Sometimes you have civs with unique ships so it just changes who can mass more War Galleys vs other unique ships faster.
Having proper "melee" ships with charge and maybe others will have shields in the future, that would definitely make things more interesting and less boring and bland.
@@BelialTnTn Not to mention that the only resource water offers is food, which is the one you can get everywhere. Now underwater mining doesn't work for the period, but perhaps pearls could be a reasonable commodity that translates directly into gold (especially given that Relics either create gold from nothing, or your villagers are holding back funds from you).
I agree with the maneuverability point since this would feel more realistic and would make micro more interesting, even if there are just few ship types.
I even like the system they have in Anno 1800 (which is not a combat focused game in the first place but still the fights are fun at least in my opinion). The ships can only fire in a certain direction and cannot turn immediately. Instead you can position your ships in a way where they can constantly kite your opponent because they can shoot while moving which would in my opinion be very important in a cool water fight.
I agree with the idea of making ships more expensive but stronger too. A deeper micro combat based on movement would only be possible with like 20 ships at once.
AoE4 also has somewhat cooler ship mechanics but water fights still suck because the counter systeme is still too simple in my opinion and I also do not like the idea of demon ships at all.
I think it's funny when they are used against land armies because they cannot get there easily, but overall the unit sucks.
Also in my opinion it would be cool to have some kind of construction ships to give actual depth to water fights. To be able to create a sea fortress, blockade or maybe hidden mines would be a cooler way to bring water fights to a similar level as land fights in my opinion.
I feel like that's more of a limitation of the engine/graphic direction, since having "2D" sprites makes it much harder to have specific accelerations and turning speeds for units. If I'm remembering right, all units have the same acceleration and turning speed, being able to 180's instantly and being quite responsive. Changing that at this point in the game's life would fundamentally change not only how water feels, but also all the current single player water scenarios, requiring a whole lot of rebalancing and reworking which does not seem feasible. Altering the water dinamic in terms of ship variety/counter system is a much more approachable way to do it, with the things shown in the vieo being quite neat.
Also, it's not like they didn't learn from the water criticism when the game originally came out, considering how much better AOM and AOE III handle water 😅
It's just a simple improvement: an one-time-use demoship is just not appealing to get into any countering system. You need an actual unit, like ram ship, to be a "unit", not just a bomb. With that been fixed, you can now nerf the gally, that they can't out mass fire ship and counter everything.
On this of that, you can now make unique water units more distinct instead of a slightly worse or better galley now that you have defined weaknesses (at least, if this was implemented in AoE2. Not sure if the DLC civs have any).
I had long wondered if adding a boarding ship to 'board' fire ships with a low chance to capture low health warships could work well as a demo replacement in the triangle. Get close and force the opponent to scuttle (automatically) and sort of be the Priest in the Priest Knight Archer lineup. with a lower chance to capture a hostile ship and actually dealing damage. a galley can kite, a Fire ship will be fighting at knife fighting range and end up boarded by the fast sloops and has maybe a 1/5 chance of swapping sides at 20% health. To finish the Priest mimicking nature, allow Sloops to automatically repair nearby ships slowly to take the low health warships back to full health (at a melee distance)
The boarding ship will be harmless to Demo ships, who explode on contact, weak to galley navies due to low health and melee range, and effective against fast fire ships who will turn around and help burn their former allies down to the 20% health marker where you have a chance to capture more ships or otherwise just finish the hostile boats off.
Far less reliable at capturing than a monk is, but potentially turning a naval disadvantage into a navy of its own to fight someone with naval supremacy.
Also Boarding ship battles would be very RNG luck dependant against themselves, sometimes a weaker navy will convert more boats than a larger one, because there are more boats hitting 20% health in the larger fleet.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 I was actually thinking the same thing. Apparently ramming is not that common in medival era naval tactics, but boarding is actually still been used until Francis Drake defeat Spanish Armada Invencible. Due to balance issue however, I don't think caperturing enemy ships will be a good idea, so details can be discussed latter.
exactly, most late game water battles consist of pure demo wars and seeing who can out spam demos (particularly in unranked diplo games), it is SO stale and boring so im extremely happy demos here are getting tuned down here, id be in fact for the idea of scrapping them entirely, and instead making them set boats alight so they take slow, fire damage over a set period of time instead of insta deleting.
because as fun as demos are, theyve completely destroyed water battles, same with spanish canon galleons, its no fun.
@@seanchen7391 the British were well known for pummelling ships into submission, while the french took on extra soldiers for boarding actions. the English navy couldn't afford to be boarded so engaged from range in a most unsporting manner. Then when the french tried shooting back the British got better at maneuvering and shelling without getting shelled them capturing the ruined remains, towing them back to England and repairing the French warships!
I think naval conversations would make sense and not actually offer a great deal of military value to either side in a balanced conflict. And if the conversion is chance based dependant on health value perhaps thanks to a variable like unit ID or distance travelled or something arbitrary, then RNG capturing is not as dissimilar to when a priest converts a light Cavalry and could turn a loss into a rout. A pure capture fleet will readily die to galley line ships, and obliterate Fast fire ships, probably overwhelm Turtle ships, die in volume to Longboats, and be easy prey to the Ballista equivalents with small model size to enhance their melee focus.
Pikes, Knights, Archers. Knights are tough enough to close the distance, pikes get just as close as knights and generate value blocking knights from getting near the valuable archers, and Archers can dance away from infantry of all flavours all day except specialists.
I like the look of the incendiary raft. Looks more like it was quickly gobbled together as an explosion delivery system.
Also love the the inclusion of more units with aura to act as sort of officers or generals.
5:30 Can’t believe you made the demo ship sit in the corner and watch. SpiritOfTheFreak
I know its now a bit taboo to preorder games/DLC nowadays, but the moment I saw the grand campaign option I was sold
Nothing wrong with a pre-order. As long as you dont expect perfection.
It's not a taboo, I still have trust in some companies. I wasn't disappointed even with the last ones since I knew what I will get and didn't expect more.
They made good dlcs in the past and didn't scam the players like many other publishers did.
Also all the age of empires dlcs have a somewhat fair price except the one for AoM that just uses old images xD. But still you know what you will get so no problem, will just not buy it.
@@Johan91NL i personally believe it is 'wrong' to pre order, because it can, and has in history, made devs sell a fake idea of a game, hype it up, get ppl to preorder, then at the end its absolute dogsht, essentially scamming ppl out of their money, thinking they got a good deal but they didnt.
aoe2 isnt some next gen AAA game, so im not against preordering their stuff, but it requires trust, of which theres less and less of in todays gaming market.
You Spirit, are the guy who made the 14 year old me look at the game as more than just campaigns and massing war elephants, but for the math and small text i used to overlook. Ur content is always well made and interesting.
Fantastic work from the people behind this! I hope to this changes water units and mechanics for all other AoE2 civs. And I hope the 3 new civs end up on ranked after balance.
This should absolutely be adapted for the main game. It's just better
The fun part about this interaction is that for a lot of nations it would be a lore accurate addition to add a ramming style ship. I'm pretty sure Japan and Korea have something like it in their respective histories.
SOLT pumping out videos real quick. Love to see it
I've always been surprised that AoE2 never had a Trash Ship. Especially because Canoe existed in scenarios for more than a decade,
Canoe didn't exist until well after the release of DE, actually.
@@youmukonpaku3168 it was introduced in The Forgotten (which was 2013), not DE (2019)
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 shit, was it really? I spent much of the 2010s drunk. My bad.
I always found AoE2's water battles unenjoyable, unlike AoE3.
This is why I wish we could get ships with boardside attack in AoE2. 😢😢😢😢
Honest question.....wtf is the difference?!?!?!
Honestly, aoe 3 water battle is way more clunky@@derigel7662
Honest answer,@@derigel7662
There is not even a trace of similarity.
@@derigel7662I think that in aoe3 you feel it more when you see the ships being destroyed little by little, giving you an idea of the damage, in aoe2 a ship with 1% and 100% Hp are identical
Whale whale whale, water we have here?
9:00 - I asked this ever since Dromon's introduction. Make it a water mangonel and give it to everyone in Castle Age. While Cannon Galleon stays as it is.
As always, a great quality video!
Ramming was no longer practised in the medieval period, but you could just rename them "Boarding Ships" and have them fulfil the exact same role (balancing the DPS to remove the charge attack if you want, since it makes less aesthetically for boarding compared to ramming). Boarding enemy ships was usually the only method available for decisive naval combat in the period before heavy ship cannon (with incendiary warfare being so unreliable in practise) that it was always very strange to see it left out of AoE2.
Pumped to play this
I like that some civs get Dromons and some get CGs.
I like the generic catapult ship idea, too.
And the idea of the Leviathan: essentially a kind of flagship.
What if Turtle Ships and other unique ship units (particularly large costly ones) also had aura effects?
Going into some ‘depth’ hey. Think that pun went over our head lol
The Lembos unit sure sounds like that Middle-earth superfood of the elves.
It's the spicier version of lembas bread
A roman ramming ship that acts like a monk on water, just with very short range.
"Prepare for boarders!"
The _Rome at War_ mod (made by the same team as this DLC) actually _does_ have boarding ships that work just like that.
Feels like a twist on Age of Mythology's system combined with parts of AoE2's
I love those melee ships with the large hammer at the front
Biggest issue with water maps for me, maybe this doesn't work on better players, but at 650 ELO or against the AI I always win by just never making a single land unit, going for absolute water control with Galleons, then bombarding the shoreline and never attacking until the enemy resigns from boredom
I enjoy the water map more with the decisive edition ai finaly using transport ship. Makes islands map more fun this way. Can be attacking one ai and surprise, another decided to make a landing party XD
At 650 ELO you and the players you face are truly terrible at the game though, so I'm not sure how relevant your issue is to most players.
Is that the case in DE? In AoK I remember the AI on water maps making hybrid armies and transporting its troops. It was actually quite a lot of fun, if a bit on the easy side.
As always, one can't discount player's disliking for something as being a result of them not finding it fun to go up against the AI in a particular scenario.
The idea of an expensive, aura buffing flagship you want to micro to focus or defend intrigues me
I still don't even play Age of Empires 2, except Spirit of the Law is such a good content creator for the game.
Thanks for another update video!
Love the changes to water!
i would actually love to have sth like that in regular aoe2
Loving the Ramming ship, I wish it was implemented in AoM retold
but melee ships are? Just with hammers
Love this. Hope the ramming ship gets added to main AoE: II
i wonder if theyr doing this to test out an aoe2 DE water overhaul. that would be so epic.
True innovation here is moving oars animation.
I like this a lot more, Before your choices for an army was, Mass fire ships, or mass galley's... Or Yolo Suicide bote. This way we still get yolo bote, but now we actually have some dynamics going on here. You have more comp choices, or more counter play. Before water was just, Clicking the same unit button a hundred times, and hope your snowball beat the other snowball. This looks better.
Really the demo ship should be in the port. Demo ships historically where just civilian ships loaded with fuel or explosives.
i cant wait to look at all the new unit skins up close
Getting Cossacks-vibes from these ships. Curious how this plays out, but I'm willing to give it a go
We've been overhauling water for 10 years and counting
Not really. There's only really been one water overhaul, when the Feudal equivalents of the fire and demo ship were added. And even that one pales in comparison to what this is doing.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn even the dromon isnt much of an 'overhaul', theyve been obviously ignoring it for a long time.
Really happy they are putting more focus into naval bottles. I hope we can get a Pacific Islander civilization one day.
I too am interested in what the general playerbase's and the pro's feelings on the general idea of this system (I was going to say balance, but that can always be adjusted as needed)
Even having a second water building helps with the very messy dock UI that exist in AoE2. I feel like sorting the dock UI would itself help things a lot.
I like “melee ships” replacing the Demo’s role in the combat triangle. There was plenty of ramming in the Middle Ages, too, so it could be brought to the base game.
At the end of the day, though, the best ship is the Flying Dutchman. 👀
It'd be interesting to see, if they could be placed in a scenario editor game for example, which civ bonuses affect any of these ships, even if they're not civs that would get access to them
I’m assuming Monoreme ships eventually get upgraded to Triremes?
The DLC looks greek for me!
I'd be totally up for this kind of water overhaul in regular play, even if it forces players to totally relearn how to play water maps.
When talking about changes to water, one should always use a _flow_ chart.
I'm looking forward to the new naval gameplay. Will the AI be able to use the new shipyard and ships effectively?
I honestly the think AoE 4 has an awesome naval unit line and mechanic, which some slight adjustment and adaptations can be easily copied for AoE2.
Water lacks a lot of variety as well. There are unique water units of course, but they are locked to their civs. Be nice to say split the galley line into a lighter faster ship and a heavier ship, maybe.
Longboats should carry units and fire more arrows the more they have inside.
When I was a kid, I had a dream once about absolutely huge ships in aoe2. Turns out, Im a prophet.
I think just adding a boarding ship to act like the monoreme would be more than enough to help standard AOE2 water maps.
They should add boarding ships, that can convert enemy ships like monks, but need to get into meele range.
Hypozomata is like Gambesons, but water
Just call ot the "boarding ship" instead of the ramming ship, and explain it as soldiers/sailors boarding another ship.
Charge mechanic can be explained by the boarding waves.
Finally, add that boarding-bonus/charge-mechanich to the viking longboat, and make Turtleships imune to it.
And voila.
Perfected aoe2 water triangle.
Not sure if they could implement the raming ship on normal AOE2 on imperal age with ironclad ships, since they began like on 1850 not sure if still is like imperial age from AOE2.
Well the last major use of naval rams was in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, performed by _galleasses_ , a sort of galleon/galley hybrid.
Before cannon ships, the main way to do naval battle is actually boarding with marines, whichh you could argue is basically melee ship battles.
"they do have friendly fire" cool, never building them.
Don't you wanna be living at the edge?
@@EvilDoresh no sir. I live at a comfortable distance from the edge at all times.
The really lopsided unit triangle balancing approach has been done more successfully in other strategy games. Advance Wars has one with tanks, battle copters and anti-air guns, where copters beat tanks but are steamrolled by anti-air. In practice this means tank deathballing is the dominant strategy, since copters don't trade cost effectively enough against tanks to justify throwing them away when an anti-air starts covering the tanks.
I didn't know "reme" meant row of oars. I'm learning!
So they just brought the AoM naval combat into the AoE2 Ancient Greece DLC. That should work well.
If they port over the catapult ship maybe the dromon civs could get an upgrade to them in imperial to turn them into modern dromons while everyone else just keeps the weaker one but gets cannon galleons
How I think they should overhaul Aoe2 water:
• Fire-galley line gain trample damage like Siege Elephants 🐘 and Siege Rams so they remain relevant against mass galleys; I would try Fire Ships and Fast Fire Ships have 1.5 tile blast radius with 50% effect.
• Galley-line and (Elite) Longboats being nerfed and reworked; I would try:
•Longboats/Elite Longboats have the same balance changes as War Galley/Galleon
• Removing attack bonus versus ships. This is actually pretty big as it reduces damage versus Fast Fire Ships for Galleons by -40% with full upgrades for both and reduces damage versus Heavy Demolition Ships by -46.15, due to armour considerations
• +6/+7/+8 attack bonus versus buildings replaced with +12/+14/+16 attack bonus versus economic buildings for Galley/War Galley/Galleon, Docks ⚓ and Town Centers gain +10 economic building armor, Fish 🐟 Traps gain the same amount of hit points as farms and lose their 10 building armor, houses gain -2 economic building armor, farms get -20 economic building armor, (nerfs the ability of Galleys/Longboats to win water, while making their utility for specialist roles better)
• -1 range 🎯 for War Galley specifically
• Gain 0.35/1.2/1.2 attack delay for Galleys/War Galleys/Galleons (putting Galleys the same as archers 🏹 and War Galley/Galleons equal with pre-buff Gbeto)
• -2 projectile speed (makes it easier to micro against them and to run away from them); additional -1 projectile speed for War Galley and Galleons (putting them equal with Fire Ships and makes sense with the animations)
• -0.11 speed (putting Galleys only 0.02 ahead of Fire Galleys); additional -0.02 speed for War Galley/Galleon (makes sense with their appearance)
• reduce accuracy to 70%/85%/100% for Galleys/War Galleys/Galleons
• massively increased collision radius (so the ships forming extremely dense balls is not abusable)
• 50🥩 food Dark Age upgrade from dock ⚓ Piracy 🏴☠: Ships get 20 gold and +10 hit points per non-water unit or building killed.” (like the old Perisian bonus of “Mounted units get 5 gold for each military unit killed”; technically benefits all ships, but the Galley-line benefits the most from it due to their range, helping them in their specialist role); Berbers get it for free
• Imperial Age upgrade for all civs Privateering, which requires Piracy 🏴☠, is 1000 food 🥩, 500 gold, takes 120 seconds, and gives “Ships get 20 food, 20 wood, 20 stone, and +20 hit points per non-water unit or building killed. Ships gain 2 range and +20% blast radius.”
• for flavour reasons, while trying to keep it balanced, Britons can get Privateering in the Castle Age, Franks get it for free, and Spanish have no gold cost for it like their Blacksmith upgrades (Privateering was there in the time frame of the game, so it is flavourful)
• remove the attack bonus of against rams and do the same for other unique unit replacements for galleys against rams (so the ram/armored-elephant-line tanking strategy hard counters them)
• +2/+7/+11 attack bonus versus Villagers for Galley/War Galley/Galleon, Fishing Ships 🎣⛵ have their 0 Fishing Ship armor replaced with 2 Villager armor, Trade Cogs have their ship armor replaced with Villager armor, Fishing Ships and Trade Cogs gain +15 hit points, Trade Carts gain Villager armor (so Galleys are better for their specialist uses and Fishing Ships and Trade Cogs are less fragile to make the water less snowball-y)
• +3 line of sight
• -15 wood 🪵 cost
• Galley description changes to “Warship with range to attack the enemy on land.”
• All siege units have a higher bonus attack versus ships; Trebuchets gain 100% accuracy versus ships like they have versus buildings instead because they one shot most of them anyway.
• Transport ships need a buff, especially as they are virtually never used on hybrid maps like Cup and Bay; I would say:
• Have Transport Rafts which are 40 food 🍒, 20 wood (makes sense as supplies are stored for passengers)
• Transport Rafts have 60 hit points, no ship armour (so transports scale better and more intuitively into the late game), and 2/4 melee/pierce armour (stats which would make them moderately tankier in the early game than current Transport Ships versus current Galleys and makes scaling much more intuitive and less convoluted upon upgrades)
• Transport Rafts upgrades to Transport Ship with the War Galley upgrade and has a special upgrade like the other military ships; I would call it Serene Transport Ship to make it sound cool
• Transport ships attempt to ungarrison units when destroyed like buildings and siege, but will have them die like before if not close to shore. A change mostly for hybrid maps.
• Water maps have players start with a Transport Raft, so they can scout and have landings. It makes it easier to do a landing, but also a lot easier to scout an opponent’s landing. The Scout Cavalry is also there. The original Transport Raft has the Auto Scout ability like the other starting scouts.
• Transport Raft’s line’s line of sight increases like the Scout Cavalry line, so is +2/+4/+6 in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age
• Base line of sight is 5/10/18 for Transport Raft/Transport Ship/Serene Transport Ship, so they can see where to land and scout easier (results in 24 line of sight fully upgraded the end, which is 5 higher than a Trebuchet’s)
• War Galley upgrade gives +2 garrison space, +20 hit points, +1/+1 armor, and +0.05 speed
• Serene Transport Ship gives +5 garrison space, +50 hit points, +1/+2 armour, +0.15 speed, and is only initially available to civs which are not played on full water maps like like Jungle Islands 🌲🌲🏝🌲🌲 to help balance them out (makes it strong, while keeping Heavy Demolition Ships a threat)
• Do future balancing of the Transport Raft line so that landings are meta, however they cannot win the game by themselves against an opponent with the same skill level, so the water is still important. Also, make sure they at least rarely see play on hybrid maps for shenanigans.
• Remove the resistance of ships to conversion, to punish too aggressive ships
• Habors being a universal upgrade from the Dock; change Thalassocracy to be: Docks ⚓ and Habors have 2x hit points, Habors have +1 attack versus ships and +1 range.
• Heavy Demolition Ship upgrades changed to only cost food, like the Battering Ram line unit upgrades, to make them an easy switch in the late game.
• Add more tree lines on hybrid and full water maps close to the shore in future map updates, so winning the water is important into the late game
• A new ship, the Boarding Ship to represent naval boarding, with:
• available in the Dark Age
• costs food 🥩 and wood 🪵(flavourful as the supplies for the crew)
• moderate melee attack and high health and armour
• loses health over time when not garrisoned (like irl ship decay)
• it cannot attack buildings
• upgraded by the War Galley upgrade and has its own unique upgrade like the other military ships; I would call it Conquering Boarding Ship to make it sound cool
• as an optional extra gimmicky ability, have it convert enemy units if they have a low enough health after being attacked
• The Boarding Ship would serve a defensive 🛡 role, as it would be great in defence, but poor in offence. The ships will just decay to death if there is no enemy units to fight
• Vikings bonus of “Warships cost -15%/-15%/-20% in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age.” replaced with “War Galley, Shipwright, and Conquering Boarding Ship upgrades are free.” Flavourful and avoids bland one unit composition navies.
• Roman bonuses for Galleys moved to the Boarding Ship line units for flavour reasons
• All civs gain access to Fire Ships, Demolition Ships, and Boarding Ships to avoid them lacking core tools on water for nuanced, dynamic gameplay. Though the specific upgrades in Imperial are still given on a civ by civ basis.
• Byzantines lose the Galleon upgrade, so while they can win the water easier with the changes, they cannot use it to push land very easily.
• Berber unique tech Maghrebi Camels renamed Barbary Pirates and now is “Camel and Galley units regenerate 0.25 HP/s, Ships generate 4x as much gold from kills” (the camel 🐪 thing makes sense as Barbary Pirates 🏴☠ often attacked on land after dismounting from ships and it calls back to the camels being ships thing in Aoe2; balanced by Berbers not being that strong on full water maps, and Maghrebi Camels/Barbary Pirates being fairly expensive) for flavour reasons.
• Add in Uninhabited Islands, which Fishing Ships 🎣⛵ can gather wood 🪵 from. An infinite source with a high carry capacity, so that the maps have less of a potential to stalemate and sneaky eco gathering is a thing. Plus, it is flavourful, as ships commonly gathered supplies from islands in the past and real life trees are extremely renewable, due to reproducing and often being able to regrow from their stumps (humans used this to produce tons of wood with Coppicing and Daisugi). They are only non-renewable in-game for gameplay/game engine limitation reasons.
• Other resources on the water would also be fun additions.
• All ships other than Transport Ships gain the ability to garrison 1 unit. This makes landings easier, without making them win the game by themselves, and allows fishing ships to have more utility for shenanigans on hybrid maps once the fish 🐟 runs out.
Cool
Ramming speed!!
I would like to see trireme and bireme too
I know its impossible but I want to have more cannons on the ships in Age2. The galleons should fire broadsides and the cannon galleon could be renamed "siege" galleon. I know pipe dream
I think the overhaul makes sense for Greece but trireme ramming as the core principle of naval warfare was long gone by the middle ages so it would be very jarring. Siege engines on ships makes sense though, but that's already a thing.
0:07 nice
I am reminded of how clunky naval combat was in punic times, and how rafts were still common. So that begs the question in my mind, what about transport ships since armies were still more important?
Technically, there are 21 unique interactions, not counting mixed navy comps, because of the same v same interaction.
cool. ill still never touch water unless its in the campaign tho!
that ram ship could get some use
I'm just saying: Water Maps would be more popular if they made Bog Islands the default one instead of Islands. It's because on Islands, winning the water doesn't win the game while on Bog Islands it does.
I like this
Do the port and dock buildings still have more than one page?
Mass fire ships have had no counter for 20 years. Demo ships are just way too expensive and just give the feeling of throwing petards into mamalukes, throwing axes or other short ranged unit. Absolutely broken and no fun to play. Not sure if this can fix it. I think we need water builds and boarding ships so water can have defenses and monk type counter like land. Dast fire too damn OP
It's very weird that all ships fire from the prow instead of the broad side. Naval combat is the most unrealistic part of AOE2 apart from monks.
The game isn't set in a time period where weapons were on the sides of ships. The bow and the stern were were the archers/catapults/boarding parties would be. Even early cannons were bow mounted.
Broadside combat only started in the mid 16th century so just outside of what most civilisations depict. I guess they could stretch history a bit and include a ship that fights with broadsides as a unique unit. Definitely wouldn't make sense for every civilisation to have them.
If base AoE2 sees a dip in water maps while Battle for Greece's ranked is absolutely dominated by them, we know why.
Should have named it as an Oceanhaul.
2:25 lol the rowing. Looks so insectoid somehow
I like what they are trying but I don't really feel like re-adding it back into the base game is necessary.
Ancient conquest reference
So no sea towers and walls still cant build
EVERY. CIV. NEEDS. A. WATER. BONUS.
BUT. CAN. CIVS. WITH. A. WATER. BONES. GET. A. LAND. BONES. TOO?
@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm do the current civs with a water bonus not have land bonuses?
I don't think I'll be hitting the water running I would rather dive
Hard to know where the demo falls in this new format…. A way to reclaim water perhaps?
Always been bad with my demo micro a real fire ship counter would be nice
I'm a bit weirded out that the DLC for the 25 years of AOEII is not exactly a DLC extending the base game but a completely different game. Am I the only one to find it weird ?
did I miss it, or did he not cover the fact there is 2 types docks?
I don't play aoe2 - does this now apply to all civs? So the new ships are also available without dlc(?)
What are your thoughts on AOE Mobile?
cancer cash grab that will make more money than all the PC games combined coz people are stupid.
Soo
Leviathans shoot cannonballs despite clearly having a huge balista on deck instead of a cannon
I think ancient ballistas fired either bolts or stones: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Ballista_%28PSF%29_vector.svg/1024px-Ballista_%28PSF%29_vector.svg.png