Cost effective, yes... But are they practical? Gameplay comes first.

Monks are impractical in imp, being extremely difficult to use most of the time. It doesn't matter if the unit is cost effective when you can't use it Because of your lack of dexterity/Actions per minute

Monks are among the best counters to Knight rushes in Castle Age. Sure, they require a little more micro than the average unit, but with practice it becomes easy.

In Imperial, Monks can still be quite effective for some civs. You'll want to use them to pick off the most expensive enemy units with them. Block Printing + Redemption allows you to easily pick off Onagers in Imperial, for example. This expert game is a good example of excellent Monk usage throughout Castle and Imperial. TheMax, by the way, goes by II2N here at AoKH, so you've probably seen him around every so often

I think your first problem would be figuring out if the genie engine even supports such a thing.

Priests in AOE1 had astrology which sped up their conversion, maybe 2 could use an Imperial equivalent?

speaking of genie engine and AOE1, has somebody figured out if it's possible to make units cost half a pop like logistics did for infantry in ror? it seems like some unit values were removed/shifted around and this is one of them.

@John : In a DM, what if the Viking player goes for elite longboats ? They're faster to build, defeat galleon in 1v1, and have a bigger attack bonus against ships than galleons. Just wondering if that could work.

I looked up some older posts and yeah Vikings are 4th civ, or third depending on player speed. (Chinese with 6 vills and more TC pop have a tiny head start.) But Spanish (FU navy, fast builders, trade bonus if TG) and Koreans (Turtles...) are the undisputed top 2.

Water warfare in AoE2 is fundamentally flawed. I wrote a short essay on it a little while ago

Never saw this one, it's a good summary.

---

@AoE

I played quite a bit of it at the beginning of this year (nostalgia ), this time online on Voobly and GR. The game is still as awesome as ever, and even beats AoE2 in terms of athmosphere and how polished it is (for example the help button and detailed help file).

What was cool about AoE1 was that it wasn't +10% this, plus +15% that. The civs had crazy bonuses and very different tech trees, and it made them feel more unique than AoE2 civs. I think AoE2 is the better game overall, but AoE1 was great.

I agree, I love the AoE1 bonuses, there are so many funny and crazy things. Macedonians come to my mind quickly, with their 4x conversion resistance but complete lack of temples and priests, or their 50% (!) cheaper siege that lacked any upgrades. Or those 65% faster firing catapult triremes (not actually 65%, that would be insane, but the bonus claimed it).

speaking of genie engine and AOE1, has somebody figured out if it's possible to make units cost half a pop like logistics did for infantry in ror? it seems like some unit values were removed/shifted around and this is one of them.

It's impossible to re-create the exact effect. One could only simulate it by making a duplicate of every infantry unit, having their pop costs set to 0.5, and using a "Logistics" tech to upgrade the original units to their half-pop counterparts. But this would severely decrease AI performance.

Yeah man, the most known AOE bonus to me is probably Hittites with their +4 range ships, but don't get Triremes. Assyria's faster firing archers, Greece's speedy phalanxes, Persian elephants, Egypt priests +3 range or their chariots with extra HP, Shang's cheaper villagers, Choson's +80 HP Legions and extra tower range, Sumerians 50% faster firing catapults, Minoan +2 range compies, Yamatos cheap cavalry and horse archers, and Babylonians walls and towers had extra strength. Phoenicians faster woodcutters.That's pretty much it.

One of Age of Empires strengths over Age of Kings, or more specifically, The expansions for Age of Kings is how simole and focused the strengths of each civ are. Greeks get their architecture, tech tree and 30% faster warships and hoplites. That's it. Yet they are a fun late game civ even if every time you see them in random map you can't help but think how doomed they are.

Contrast with later civ, say the Celts. Ok, 15% faster infantry, that's pretty simple if a bit underwhelming - hoplites are the TK of AOE. But the Unique unit Woad Raider requires an expensive castle Nd is not useful until Elite in Imp, when it is upgraded. And you've got this small woodcutting bonus and a decent siege bonus, although it's not very strong on its own. But if you get the Unique tech furor Celtica, you will have much more HP..

everything is spread out and feels watered down. It takes too much investment before you can use these bonuses because they're not good until they synergize at some point. Sort of like an RPG where you get skills but need to invest wisely before they realize their potential.

Contrast to something like 30% faster elephants, +4 range, +80 HP or 30% cheaper villagers which is more like a badass weapon/gear

Well basically the Tldr version is AOE bonuses generally make their special qualities and utility immediately apparent and obvious but AOC civs require significant prep time / investment / planning beforehand because of the way the synergies are spread out all over the place and they aren't so easy to see, usually. Unless you're Huns. (Seriously, no houses and cheaper horse archers would fit in just fine with the other AOE civs). I say AOC and not AOK because AOK has no Unique techs.

the tradeoff imo is tournament viability. AoE was notoriously unbalanced. God help you if you went random and got Palmyra or Shang on DM.

It also shows from that the OP AoC civs are the ones with AOE like bonuses like Huns Aztecs Vikings Mayans.

A while back I made a mod for my playgroup that gave each civ a tech with extreme effects, as a second tier Imperial unique tech costing 6k resources and up to 10 minutes of research time.

It was fun as hell to play with, but it proved impossible to balance even around just land DM. There were just too many hopeless matchups.

I think it would be interesting for civs to have more uniqueness in things like unique units, but extreme bonuses will probably not make a good tournament game.

AOE1 is indeed too unbalanced, it looks like ES didn't have time for proper balancing and left the game unfinished (AOE2 was started immediately after AOE1 and the focus was on it). So AOE1 was left without proper adjustment of its internal values, as a result large part of the bonuses/technologies in the game are probably Beta leftovers and not what's described in game documentation. For example, nearly all AOE1 players think that Assyrian archers have +40% fire rate, while they actually have +27%/+21% (mounted/foot). Sumerian Catapults fire 30% faster (not 50%), many of the villager upgrades are bugged, etc. Only a small part of these were solved in ROR and the last official patch (Phoenician woodcutting, Shang villager cost, etc). I had the difficult task to fix all of this mess in a way that makes sense and stays true to the original game.

But I don't think the appeal of AOE1 is in the extreme bonuses (some of which actually break the game, instead of making it more interesting). To me it's about the fast pace and dynamics of the game. You can't just hide behind walls or garrison in your Castles and Town Centers for protection, you need to constantly fight and maneuver. Everything feels faster and more dynamic, buildings are faster to build and destroy, units are more powerful, etc. Also the graphics of AOE1, despite being too simplistic, somehow make the game feel more alive (it's strange, but it's true). I always felt AOE2 terrains and forests somehow look too dull and ugly (perhaps it's the colors).

IMHO, something between AOE and AOE2 as a game would be best. I hope the new AOE2:HD expansion will manage to bring some interesting new elements to make the game more dynamic. The new graphics shown so far already look better than the old ones.

[This message has been edited by aoe_scout (edited 09-02-2015 @ 02:31 PM).]

Speaking of graphics, yes aoe2 graphics are hard to look at after years of playing, while AOE graphics are not an eyesore. I think it's either the colors used or maybe the way terrain is blended.

Arabia is our most fast paced map in AOC, which I prefer over hill country sometimes - but AOC maps are too predictable compared to AOE imo. I don't know about water maps, but I prefer Rise of Romes. Already gone over that in previous page so that's enough of that.

You have a point about it being fast paced AOE gameplay more so than the nice bonuses, but if civs had useful bonuses like that in AOC, I'd play them.

Example: Franks 20% more HP on Knights making them very good and their other bonuses are seen as good and not bad o have, when AOC comes along and gives bloodlines, archer ring, hussars and Halberdier, all things which are damaging Franks Random Map standing. They didn't even get a good UT to compensate.

I like the AOC Goths and Huns though. Fit my playstyle

[This message has been edited by local boi (edited 09-02-2015 @ 06:32 PM).]

The problem I see with that bonuses tend to either force you to play with it or not matter much if at all, and the former can really screw up matchups.

In my aforementioned mod, Franks got +30 attack on knights and Japanese got +50 attack and 50% move speed on samurai, but all it took was an 8-minute DM game to determine that this matchup is 100-0 Franks, because the Paladins beat ESams in a melee by a landslide and ESams still can't really outrun them, and if the Japanese player doesn't use ESams, then he's basically playing unmodded Japanese vs Franks with +30 attack on Paladins, a hopeless endeavor.

The fundamental problem here is that the entire matchup's dynamics has essentially been stripped down to a simple question of Paladins vs ESams, you can give ESams a bigger advantage over the Paladins so they'd win, and all you've done is flip the matchup from 100-0 Franks to 100-0 Japanese. There's no middle ground. Lowering the magnitude will make the civ's other things (like French Cannon and Japanese... halbs) more relevant as you lower the bonuses (until they're nonexistent), but going the other direction, you can see that increasing the bonuses from nonexistent to existent is also having the effect of stripping down the matchup little by little.

You might argue that specialized bonuses like the two aforementioned are the special case, but the funny thing is, the existence of these specialized bonuses drives the matchup. Take my Mayans super tech, which is a simple 50% discount on everything (units, buildings, techs...), and the matchup then becomes dependent on what the opponent has. Mayans on Franks or Japanese are 100-0 against the Mayans, because even if the Mayans can produce at a much higher quantity, they're still essentially "trash" units because the Franks/Japanese have their specialized over the top unit that is miles above them. Similarly, I gave the Mongols +6 attack/range on their archers, +6 attack on their scouts and +30% movement speed for all units. They 100-0ed the Aztecs with +25 attack to all infantry, and I think the results wouldn't change even if the Mongols lost either attack or range bonuses on their archers because at the end of the day infantry can't hope to close the distance to do damage, but against Britain whose tech gave longbows +8 range and +32 attack bonus on non-mechanical targets? They didn't stand a chance, even with their now doubly fast siege.

The point is, with over the top bonuses, the game tends to get reduced down to those specific bonuses, and often games are settled at the pick civ screen, rather than in game.

Also, on the rare matchups where it's not a complete stomp, games still tend to take rather long, since committing to a bad fight is usually impossible to recover from, players become overcautious.

The point is, with over the top bonuses, the game tends to get reduced down to those specific bonuses, and often games are settled at the pick civ screen, rather than in game.

There are some cases when this is true when certain game situations occur (i.e. BF map, you get turks and your opponent gets vikings, you wall and turtle and you get to imperial first with gunpowder ... yeah most often gg).

However, I would have to disagree with your statement for a couple of reasons.
If what you said was always true, then it would be the equivalent to the naval battles of AoC. Everyone would just build one unit all the time in order to win.

However, (take your original example of franks and samurai), if you were to just produce massed paladins, I would produce massed halberds which would easily counter your paladins. You then would need to change the unit you were massing if you wanted to survive. It wouldn't matter what bonuses you had in that case.

Part of the strategy behind this game is knowing which units to build when and where to place them. Bonuses help (and have a huge impact on the game), and you would be foolish to ignore them. However, the game is not reduced to simply looking at your bonuses and blindly using them to win games. There is a much larger picture that has to be viewed in order excel in AoC.

halbs won't work.

The halb cavalry bonus is 32, the samurai is not only a stronger base unit, but the bonus to their attack is the far larger 50. Paladins with +30 attack 2 shots halbs. You will not come out ahead against a +30 attack paladin flood with regular Japanese halbs.

Not to mention halbs are a lot slower than +50% movespeed Samurai, those +30 attack Paladins can also massacre your buildings and villagers with brutal efficiency.

Massive bonuses can only be countered by an equally large bonus, which necessarily reduces strategic depth. Again, take the mongol vs Aztec one. Is 25 infantry attack going to help against 13 range mangudai or 14 range eskirms with +6 attack? no? then you lose at the civ select screen.

If you reduce the bonus magnitude, then you recover options. +3 on Paladins, for example, wouldn't make them halb immune, but that's the sliding scale being illustrated here. The further you drag that magnitude up, the less options you have until you have none at all.

halbs won't work.

I could be wrong, but hear me out.

If you are referring to one paladin vs one halberd. Yes, absolutely, FU Frank palidin wins against FU Jap halberd.

However, I don't believe you are thinking in the context of a long term engagement between a steady stream of far more cheap Japs infantry, that attack 25% faster, against expensive slower producing Frankish paladins. For every halberd that is killed, there is easily two or three to replace him.

Especially in a prolonged 1v1 , when the gold runs out, pikes can still be made, palidins cannot be. If I saw my opponent was making only pikes, the last idea on my mind would be to mass samurai to counter. That's like massing arbalest to counter eskirms, not a great idea.

I think that AKFrost is speaking in the context of a personal mod that he made, which could be causing some confusion here. In the context of the vanilla game, Saegan is absolutely right, but the bonuses in AKFrost's mod (some of which seem very OP, I might add) cause things to play out differently than in the vanilla game.

i don't think you appreciate the full ramifications of a 30 attack bonus on Paladins.

Ten Paladins with +30 attack can wreck a castle in about 20 seconds. Normal buildings won't take 5.

That means against such monstrosities, one failed fight = gg. Even if they only had 5 left from the melee, you can pretty much kiss all your buildings and the game goodbye.

The battle is I think he had about 120 Samurai to my 60 Paladins and the melee ended up 38:0 in my favor. Once the fight is over it took less than a minute to raze all 7+ of his castles and the rest of his base.

And you don't even have the luxury of waiting, because pop limits are a thing. It forces you to that deadly 1:1 parity while you have no way of raiding his econ due to Paladins being faster than infantry.

I think that AKFrost is speaking in the context of a personal mod that he made, which could be causing some confusion here. In the context of the vanilla game, Saegan is absolutely right, but the bonuses in AKFrost's mod (some of which seem very OP, I might add) cause things to play out differently than in the vanilla game.

I thought that too, but I've mentioned +30 attack pretty much every time i said Paladins so either he's not reading my posts or he genuinely think paladins with +30 attack still loses to halbs.

that and i don't think a Paladin can 1v1 a halb and win in vanilla... Though I might be remembering it wrong.

[This message has been edited by AKFrost (edited 09-04-2015 @ 05:42 PM).]

Paladins take like 3 or 4 halbs down if it's 1v1

AKFrost: your personal mod really is a different game when you introduce those kind of bonuses. We're mainly talking about the original Age of Empires and Rise of Rome, vs Age of Kings, vs Conquerors and the Forgotten.

We can appreciate the 30 Attack bonus, it's game breaking


HockeySam16: I have some questions and suggestions

Question- Will farming be affected by favorable terrain, like being close to a source of fresh water?

Will there be fresh vs salt water? That'd be a nice distinction.

-

Suggestion: Add a more basic fishing boat unit like in Age of Empires, which had fishing boats and then could be upgraded to fishing ships. My idea is to simply have both available at the same time from the start (no need to upgrade).

Fishing Boats would be cheap (50 wood) but very slow, ideal for shore fish and nearby deep sea fish but with less HP, less or no armor and thus very vulnerable to grush because of the low HP.

Why? It could introduce variety, and more interest in water, if people got to wonder if players choose a slow and vulnerable fish boat boom or a fast fishing ship, and be more interesting for us to watch as players scout out the enemy to see what kind of boats he has. And then we can watch the guy who made the fishing boats panic


That, and I miss fishing boats. It's the most basic boat

[This message has been edited by local boi (edited 09-04-2015 @ 06:34 PM).]

Not 3 or 4, that's impossible, a vanilla Paladin can take 6 halb hits at most and needs at least 3 strikes to take down a halb, not to mention japanese halbs have 20% faster attack.

Anyway I mentioned the mod to illustrate a trend - that the more magnitude a bonus has, the more likely it is to reduce strategic options in a matchup and thus make for a worse tournament game.

It doesn't have to be something insane like 30 attack, the viking 20% discount is tame by that standards, and still managed to break water games completely.

You give each civ a massive bonus like I did, even if the magnitude isn't as high, you're gonna end up with a lot of hopeless matchups, the bigger the magnitude of bonuses, the more hopeless it gets. Lopsided matchups are expected in games, but an excess of hopeless matchups makes for a terrible tournament.

Hence I don't think it's a good idea for a game people run tournaments with, even if massive bonuses are fun as hell (which is why I made that mod to begin with.)

Also, if you look at AoE, insane magnitudes exist everywhere. +100% HP on Hittite catapults (yanno, the strongest unit in the game), +100% catapult firing rate on Sumerians. +50% HP on choson legionaires, Macedonian 50% discount on siege and TK equivalents with actual pierce armor. Hittite basic warships get +80% range, etc.

my mod is less far from an "AoE level civ bonus AoC" than you think.

[This message has been edited by AKFrost (edited 09-04-2015 @ 07:13 PM).]

Quoted from local boi:

HockeySam16: I have some questions and suggestions

Who's this HockeySam16 guy? Someone needs to tell him to be more creative when picking his username

Question- Will farming be affected by favorable terrain, like being close to a source of fresh water?

That's technically possible. I'm loath to comment on unannounced features, though.

Will there be fresh vs salt water? That'd be a nice distinction.

I'm curious, what gameplay purpose would this serve? I know that in Civ you can irrigate/build farms next to fresh water and not salt water, but how would such a distinction apply to AoE2?

Suggestion: Add a more basic fishing boat unit like in Age of Empires, which had fishing boats and then could be upgraded to fishing ships. My idea is to simply have both available at the same time from the start (no need to upgrade).

Fishing Boats would be cheap (50 wood) but very slow, ideal for shore fish and nearby deep sea fish but with less HP, less or no armor and thus very vulnerable to grush because of the low HP.

Why? It could introduce variety, and more interest in water, if people got to wonder if players choose a slow and vulnerable fish boat boom or a fast fishing ship, and be more interesting for us to watch as players scout out the enemy to see what kind of boats he has. And then we can watch the guy who made the fishing boats panic.

That's an interesting idea, but I'd probably pick the normal fishing ship every time, even if it cost a bit more. The extra speed and gather rate (and HP) would easily be worth the extra wood cost. Not only is it better for your eco, but the speed also helps when running from enemy galleys.

We already implemented an upgrade to fishing ships in AoF(E) via the Gillnets tech, but in my experience it's often not worthwhile, so we might consider lowering the tech cost.

One complaint is that galleons sail just as well in an oasis as an ocean, which makes no sense.

Splitting it into two kinds of water would get rid of some "aircraft carrier in a pound" situations like Spain using their ballistic-enabled cannon galleons on black forest as a cheap tower, and presumably, on maps where there's in-land streams and an ocean (like the mediterrenan) you'll need a different fleet to fight in shallows vs in an ocean, which could potentially offer more strategic depth.

Personally? I think it's more gimmicky than mechanically interesting.

Eh, ok. We're all going to disagree on water.

So! I was looking at the forgotten empires civs, and I just realized every single one of them gets something cheaper. 3 of the Italian bonuses are just cheaper upgrades, age ups, or units. Even the unique tech just makes trade units cheaper. Geez, really went overboard there guys :roll:

Slavs get cheaper siege (but not that much cheaper until you mass them), and tracking free. Incas get cheaper stone buildings, Magyars get the smallest bonus with 10% cheaper scouts but have free melee upgrades. Indians get cheaper villagers like the old Shang, but unlike the old Shang their bonus is very tapered over the ages and they're actually good in the late game.

Seriously what is up with the Italian bonuses? It's... I don't know what to think man! Were you trying to say something about Italians? Haha

Cheap isn't "cheap" in this game, more like "efficiency".

The Huns, for example, can train CA's at a much higher efficiency since that's literally their life's trade.

So maybe Italians's specialty is getting more from less, i don't know.

Akfrost. You are right, paladin takes out three or four pikemen not halberdiers, my bad.

Efficiency is a word that gets thrown around enough to hold meaning but can still mean different things to different people. I would prefer to use more common english words, like just calling it cheaper or costs less. Less chance of confusion this way.

P.a. I say this because I wrote up a big post fixating on efficiency, and I couldn't even keep my use of the word consistent. the word is one I don't really know. Consider it a hole in my english.

As for getting more from less.. Pizza! And roman legions had to carry around many pounds of equipment or material. More efficient for logistics, and logistics is a word I think goes hand in hand with efficiency.

Although how Cataphracts from eatern Romans doing trample damage has to do with logistics, I don't know.

[This message has been edited by local boi (edited 09-08-2015 @ 07:44 AM).]

Manual says:

The Byzantine civilization outlived its counterpart in Rome for more than one thousand years, mainly through the adroit employment of smaller elite armies against more lightly equipped or less highly trained enemies. Well-motivated troops, well-trained officers, strong military traditions, and sound military logistics combined to create armies with fighting power disproportionate to their size. The backbone of their armies were their cataphract cavalry who could engage enemies at a distance with archery or trample them down in a charge.

So I guess it's supposed to represent good logistics allowing them to win battles outnumbered.

Thanks. I don't even know what happened to my manual.. i kind of want to get another box and manual but... Not until my house is bigger and more spacious

I used to have a model trebuchet too. I don't think I have all the pieces, but I have the post office box

I think that AKFrost is speaking in the context of a personal mod that he made

I was wondering, thanks.

I thought I was going crazy for a second

We can appreciate the 30 Attack bonus, it's game breaking

Agreed

[This message has been edited by Saegan (edited 09-08-2015 @ 09:51 PM).]

so you quoted a large portion of my post, which actually takes more effort than usual given this forum software, without even reading what I wrote before you responded to it?

is it really too much to ask of you to actually know what you're responding to before you reply? I thought that was the point of a forum discussion?

So am I also right in that you also didn't understand my point, which is that over the top aoe-style bonuses will reduce the strategic depth of the game, rather than whether japs could beat Franks in vanilla?