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Not a suggestion.

However, I am curious what the balance implications might be?

With DE coming, I think it'll be fun to ask these kind of of questions.

Card would obviously also have to increase TC build limit by 1 for those clever clogs that feel the need to point this out

I think it would be fascinating change and the cost would be more in line with the standard age 2 line.

could be quite interesting actually. Realistically wouldn't be all that powerful just because if you can safely send a covered wagon and lay down a town center in age 2, its most likely better to just send 700 coin and age up instead. However I feel like the card would see more use than it does now if it was switched to colonial age.

RIP port unique feature

Actually, wouldn't see play?

Yeah cool idea actually, it would be viable for particular strats rather than situational; which is ok for me. Actually for any late colonial strat the card would be standart. It would increase CM/turtle style of play.

Would be so lame honestly. You can just pick a civ that can age up fast, and ship that card first. No one will be fast enough to deny that tc. So you get free mapcontrol, and you basically have ports' bonus, plus your own civ bonus.
Or even think about ger/fre going for turtle ff/semi-ff, being able to ship vils while producing from 2 tcs... They would very fast get an eco similar to dutch/brits, without the drawbacks

Yeah biggest problem is what Garja said. Balance can always be achieved one way or another.

Kaiserklein wrote:Would be so lame honestly. You can just pick a civ that can age up fast, and ship that card first. No one will be fast enough to deny that tc. So you get free mapcontrol, and you basically have ports' bonus, plus your own civ bonus.
Or even think about ger/fre going for turtle ff/semi-ff, being able to ship vils while producing from 2 tcs... They would very fast get an eco similar to dutch/brits, without the drawbacks

Maybe we could make it take 60 seconds to send or just not give it to otto or something like that.

I personally don't think it makes Ports any less unique, I feel like their bonus is they have cheaper settlers and get TCs for free upon every age. Sending a shipment for a one time TC doesn't really feel in the same league for me. Ports can also send this card if they wanted

And I hear what your saying Kaiser, fair point. But I did some 'back of envelope' calculations and they reveal it's quite a big commitment to play that style you mention with Ger/France

You'd have to get away with training roughly 15 vils before it starts paying off

And you'd also be delaying those early beefy settler shipments

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Initial opportunity cost is 700w (shipment) + 100f (queing a vil)
Resources pay back at 1/s (roughly how quick a vils gathers food with hunting dogs and steel traps)

Would also be an incredibly balance throw off.
2nd TC is only meant to compensate for no vill cards. Pretty much all civs have them.
So it's not even worth to dive into balance discussions because would require changing 50% of the game.

As a feature itself it would be interesting. Like AOEo had one extra TC per age which isn't bad. AOE3 however always had a big gap between pre and past fortress so it makes the way it is now.

how about making it a 500 coin shipment also?
I think restricting the civs that get that card would have to be done to avoid crazy booms. Also if vilis stay at 100 food for all civs besides port, producing out of two tcs will slow you down considerably. I see it having potential as a late colonial card perhaps when the shipments start to run out, it shouldn't be the center of your age 2 strat

That's how I imagine it playing out.

Though I'm not as nearly experienced as Garja & Kaiser whose intuition I trust a lot more.

I wonder though if it really would be that good if were to test it for fun

It would have a different impact based on the civilisation, wouldn't it? Not like every civilisation would send it first anyway, Russian wouldn't be able to spam 6 villagers + units, early colo

Garja wrote:Would also be an incredibly balance throw off.
2nd TC is only meant to compensate for no vill cards. Pretty much all civs have them.
So it's not even worth to dive into balance discussions because would require changing 50% of the game.

I don't think so. Wood is such a finite resource early in the game, it would be a huge trade off. Ports still are compensated from no villager cards by getting one for free.

Would you really send a TC wagon in Colonial as ports if you could?

At that point you can barely produce off both TCs, so I don't see the point of the third one.

I guess map control and defensive structures, doubtlessly. TC rush?

I like the idea on paper actually. I would amend it from "raising TC limit by 1" to "raising COLONIAL TC limit by 1". Then when you hit Fortress you're still at a limit of 3.

kami_ryu wrote:I like the idea on paper actually. I would amend it from "raising TC limit by 1" to "raising COLONIAL TC limit by 1". Then when you hit Fortress you're still at a limit of 3.

Fair point, I'm down with that.

And yes, I think you might send it as Ports (if your opponent is French/Ger or something and sends it) haha

3 tc boom > 2 tc boom

Interjection wrote:I personally don't think it makes Ports any less unique, they get TCs for free. Sending a shipment for one doesn't really feel in the same league for me. Ports can also send this card if they wanted

They get their tc at a great cost actually. Obviously, they don't need to invest wood in it; but because of this extra tc, they are deprived of villagers (or even wood trickles or fishing boats) shipments. I'd rather have to invest into one more shipment to get that tc, while being able to ship vils in age 1 and 2, than get just a free tc.
About sending that card as ports: getting a third tc is not as valuable as it is to get a second tc. I also doubt ports would even be able to produce from 3 tcs that early. On top of that, they can just wait a couple extra minutes until they reach fortress, and get their 3rd tc anyway.

Interjection wrote:And I hear what your saying Kaiser, fair point. But I did some 'back of envelope' calculations and they reveal it's quite a big commitment to play that style you mention with Ger/France

You'd have to get away with training roughly 15 vils before it starts paying off

And you'd also be delaying those early beefy settler shipments

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Initial opportunity cost is 700w (shipment) + 100f (queing a vil)
Resources pay back at 1/s (roughly how quick a vils gathers food with hunting dogs and steel traps)

It's true that it would take quite some time to pay off. But some things are not taken into account in your calculations:

- The tc gives 10 pop space. So it's basically a free house, aka the tc itself costs only 500w.
- You get another set of minutemen. It's of course impossible to say how much this is worth, but we all know that it's a big deal.
- You get another tc fire. Arguably not a big of a deal as 6 mm are, but still useful.
- You get another building to cover your vils. If your tc gets right clicked, for example just when you hit fortress, and if it goes down (shit happens), having another tc to save your villagers/ship some cards can be game-changing.
- You get more mapcontrol, for example an extra hunt and/or goldmine, compared to someone with only one tc.

The last point is very important; in a lot of ports game, I feel like the point of the third tc is more to grant mapcontrol than to actually make vils. At some point, having hunts is way more interesting than having a few more vils.

Also, you compare the tc card to 700w. But you can ship both. It's basically another top-tier card that you can ship in colonial, along with vils, 700w and 700g. Maybe the semi-ff would be rather tc wagon/vils/700w/700g than vils/700w/700g, allowing you to boom a bit in colonial, aging up a bit later with more eco, while still being able to defend the push of someone who would do a regular semi-ff (aka cutting the wagon card for a faster fortress timing push) because of that extra tc (gives you more time and another set of mm, as well as more resources secured) and your better eco letting you slowly outmass.

Finally, I quickly calculated how long a bank wagon needs to pay off. I compared it to 700w like you did, and considered it is worth 4 dutch vils on coin. Funnily enough, I found the exact same number as you did: 5.83 minutes for the bank to gather 700w worth of coin. Still, everyone ships that bank wagon card. And it doesn't even give all the other advantages that a tc gives (and especially, the tc isn't limited to a 4v boom).


Before someone says "then why don't we build tcs in fortress?": the eco bonus is mostly interesting early on. It's proportionally a bigger boost to your eco than when you're already age 3 and have a better eco/better shipments. Same, tc fire and mm become less relevant when the masses if units get larger. You also risk to lose your tc while you're trying to build it, while in age 2 it would be safe. Finally, people tend to be more aggressive in age 3, because there are much more units shipments available (compared to the colonial 2/3 units shipments). It's just much riskier in fortress.

It's probably one of those things that sounds really good but actually isn't.

Maybe if you're defending a rush from aztec/india or turtling against a sioux it could be good. Other considerations are turtle water plays.

But against the traditional semi-FF's/FF's I suspect you're going to be too behind and lacking in army.

@WickedCossack: I will agree to @Kaiserklein. The TC itself is not the only thing but the map control especially if you give to Otto then who would beat them?

Still takes around 5 minutes to pay off for Otto, though after that it starts getting silly quite quickly haha


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Factors in vil pop cost compared to alternate methods of booming e.g., stagecoach

EDIT: also, Otto would have to get steel traps for this repayment rate. Which involves spending nearly 200 wood and gold on not building a rax/foundry or

I think it would be a really interesting change in general if tcs could be build in colonial.

n0el wrote:

Garja wrote:Would also be an incredibly balance throw off.
2nd TC is only meant to compensate for no vill cards. Pretty much all civs have them.
So it's not even worth to dive into balance discussions because would require changing 50% of the game.

I don't think so. Wood is such a finite resource early in the game, it would be a huge trade off. Ports still are compensated from no villager cards by getting one for free.

Just send it on top of normal builds and you get a better build.
Like French would benefit a lot from that because they dont have a second vill card.
And in general you can build strats around that to outlast the opponent in the long run.
Most of reasonings here are meta based. But the meta would just adapt to this and then you would see stuff like TC+vill naked FF instead of semi FFs. Basically what remains is that some civs would benefit more than others and it would change all timings.
So unless the game is completely rebalanced it is not something to consider.

With regards to comparing the TC to a bank, I'd argue the bank is better for a considerably long time (economically speaking of course, see sheet)

You are right though about the intangible benefits of MM and TC fire

The bank has a linear return so starts repaying it's opportunity cost much more quickly, i.e., you have 50% of the 'investment' back in 2 minutes (TC returns 20%) and the full amount recovered 2 minutes after that (TC takes almost 6 minutes to 'pay off').

The resources you get back sooner you could age up with or make units out of - basically stuff that would punish the covered wagon play.

This is especially true if you don't boom with either and just contain your opponent, right?

So I wonder how much map control the TC would really offer (given you would have fewer units and be less able to defend it than usual).
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EDIT: Also the bank has a continual static repayment. TC requires you to float 100 food every 25 seconds - and this, to my point, is resources you don't have whilst your opponent does.