forgrin wrote:Other changes:
-Remove bombard attack
-Consistent RoF (why the hell is it variable in the first place) and have ship shoot all 1-side cannons in one volley, decrease overall RoF to compensate. Makes micro more rewarding.
-Boats overall move more slowly, decrease turn speed, however add slight acceleration with slightly higher capped speed
I agree with the consistent RoF change, but making the boats move more slowly probably decreases opportunities to do anything but attack move with them. I do think playing around with their movement to make boats feel more consistent could be good. Maybe reduce the boat size (especially that of frigates) so that they don't bump into eachother. The most annoynig thing really is the way they have to set up to fight eachother by turning sidewards and thus being basically rendered immobile. Warships are really particularily unfun to use, even more so now that I think through these things more.
pecelot wrote:Jerom wrote:Then theres the second thing that makes it stupid: Warships rek everything and even do well against their hypothetical counters in culverins. The result is that you can just with your ships in the pond and your 40w fishing boats, chill around some, laghack some, build your town next to the share and you'll be almost unkillable. Its just stupid in terms of design and there's a reason why many people dont like playing against water play.
I think it's not that broken. Culverins wreck ships as you need two shots to kill a caravel, which in itself is a big investment (reminder: 300w & 100c). Later on culverins become less viable, as a water player gets an access to frigates, which can snipe some artillery units using their broadside attack and a slight range advantage, and monitors, which can just crush them with their special bombard attack. So you either have to mix other artillery units such as mortars, which in spite of their 0.5x multiplier still deal some damage, or build TCs and outposts quickly (spam 3 of them with 4 vills on each so that the enemy can deny them).
I did not mention broken. They aren't great against culverins no, they possibly aren't even cost effective against them but warships can hold up against culverins pretty well. Once frigates hit the field (we can assume the water player is age 3 by the time culverins are fielded) then culverins really don't do well against warships anymore, especially considering that you still have to defend them with your army, which basically dies to warships for free. But the main problem I mentioned is that this play style I described, where you just sit on the water being almost unkillable without your opponent grabbing the water (which is borderline impossible if you have control over the water), is incredibly stupid to play against. It's honestly just not interesteresting. It takes away the things that make aoe3 great and replaces them with annoying, uninteresting and boring features <imo>.
pecelot wrote:Atomiswave wrote:If you remove scooners and standardize fishing boat price you practically remove big chunk of "naval civ" etiquette. There is a reason why some civs have scooners and generally better naval cards.
Also, AOE II is not good comparison, because you have quite a few naval oriented civs in AOE II.
Yeah, tell me more about Russian navy being superior to French or almighty Aztecs which destroyed the Spanish Great Armada.
It is, because the strenght of a civ on water comes from its unique civ bonus, not by the access to cheaper fishing ships by 60%.
Well having schooners is one of the civ bonusses that makes water civs, but only France, Germany and the asian civs are excluded from this (japan still being a pretty good water civ) and maybe sioux (although I'm not sure about that one). So yeah, removing schooners isn't going to have that much influence I believe (or at least hope).
Method_man714 wrote:Jerom wrote:Method_man714 wrote:Any nerf to water will kill any viability it has
Yeah I would agree, which is why we have to remove schooners (or nerf schooners) and then make fishing boats have a viable cost. I'm thinking about 70w.
if you do that, you might as well remove water from the maps, which is what you all want anyway
You don't have to be so negative about this. I dont want to remove water from the maps personally, but in its current state it is nothing but unfun. If I were to change it, I'd remove schooners and the warship effectivity against land, and then reduce fishing ship cost to a cost that makes waterbooming still viable. I would target the specific all in aspect of water, where water is all that matters and all that you can care about while completely ignoring land, and would try to change it so that waterbooming becomes an extra option to aid your land play, making the battle about both land and water.
Atomiswave wrote:Why not go with middle ground which i presented earlier. 30w for civs with schooners, 70w for everyone else.
I believe this might just still create the same shitty scenario that schooners already features: All-in water play in which you can completely neglect land control, the only real effect being that non schooner civs might have a viable water boom too. This could only work out properly if you annihilate the effectivity of warships against land, I believe. At least, if you'd agree with my original analysis of what the water problems actually are.
Garja wrote:Let's say standard cost for fishing boats get reduced to 70w and schooner to 35w. Warship card upgrades get nerfed by 10-15%, offshore support only grants 2 extra range, dock upgrades for warships get nerfed by 10% or so (while making them cheaper). Native water dance gets nerfed as well.
Now, either water play becomes totally unavailable or maybe it becomes so appealing that even civs like French have interest in booming on water.
In any case that's just undesired imo, because not only will raise additional balance problems to solve but also will just change a whole aspect of the game for what, 20 people that are willing to play the EP unconditionally?
All those changes are simply too big for the benefit that they provide to the game at the moment. In general all this "refening for a ideal game" is going to be so much useless work if there are no people willing to play the patch anyway.
That's the other part of the story. I'm personally talking about how I think water could be changed so that it becomes better/more fun. It might be way too much effort given the userbase playing the EP atm, you are absolutely right about that.