What if we added warship upgrades to another building?

[Mr_Bramboy]

There's one player who's been consistently blinking out with top-notch unorthodox water play. Sure, water may be an extremely strong tool, but only in the right hands. Do we really need a balance patch to correct the playstyle of one player? That seems unnecessary in my eyes.

ByuN from Starcraft II was extremely good with the reaper unit. The unit seemed almost unbeatable in his hands. Check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3IQu7px0-8. The reaper unit wasn't nerfed because of one player; it was changed almost a year later and got some other mechanics in exchange for a longer grenade reload time.

Everyone's got their own preferred playstyle. Erik is comfortable in colonial high-micro situations, while Raphael prefers to sit back and play it out in late fortress. Why nerf this specific playstyle, if it takes so much more skill to master than normal play?

[pecelot]

I think the game would be much more interesting if the arsenal was a must have building. Tweaking techs available there and potentially adding more.

bring back EP2 CIR

[Mitoe]

Alright alright, clearly the idea isn't as well liked as I thought it might be. I was just thinking that there's not a lot of incentive to ever try to contest water again if you happen to lose control of water when you're both playing that style because your opponent will just have much much stronger warships (seriously those upgrades are insane, like 50%; if you don't have them then you cannot possibly fight water at all).

I wasn't trying to nerf water, although I suppose this is kind of a nerf. I actually think water is mostly fine right now, and you can totally beat full water with full land on most maps @deleted_user. The only times you cannot beat full water with full land right now are on maps like Indonesia / Indochina, where water is sort of the main feature of the map, as you already mentioned. Although, you might not be able to beat it on Alaska either, I'm not sure about that one: water is almost a must-use feature on that map just because of the way the coastline is: possibly on Baja too for the same reason, although this one is much more doable than Alaska and probably is doable if you're willing to play the game very slowly for 2-3 hours.

The main problem on these maps is that eventually you require warships of your own just so that you can control part of the coastline, because buildings won't do the job well enough lategame, and you can't really commit a lot of population to sitting on the coast with cannons if you want to be winning elsewhere on the map.

[SoldieR]

It's an interesting idea, and to expand on someone else's idea about the arsenal, it would be cool if every military upgrade went through there, but that's a new game entirely.

[zoom]

I get the idea, but it seems like just a way to try to help land meta "bots" beat water even tho they didn't contest it for the first 15 min of a game.

Beating water from land shouldn't be impossible, in terms of balance. It's rather broken, wouldn't you say? After all, even you might lose control of water. If there is a way in which you shouldn't be able to win it's the advantage the opponent gains from having water uncontested for so long.

[zoom]

Difference of opinion. Mine: if there is a significant amount of water on a map and Player A ignores it completely, Player A should lose, if Player B uses water and holds well enough on land.

In other words, the player that goes land and water deserves to beat the player that goes land only.
Of course this depends on the aggressiveness of each players strat.

PS: there's no such thing as full water, as you start with a tc on land

On some maps, this is acceptable. On most water maps, it is not.

[Hazza54321]

lets also make sepoy trainable from houses, and warships trained from tcs

[Mitoe]

lets also make sepoy trainable from houses, and warships trained from tcs

While we're at it lets add a 1 Monster Truck shipment to age 1.

[deleted_user0]

Difference of opinion. Mine: if there is a significant amount of water on a map and Player A ignores it completely, Player A should lose, if Player B uses water and holds well enough on land.

In other words, the player that goes land and water deserves to beat the player that goes land only.
Of course this depends on the aggressiveness of each players strat.

PS: there's no such thing as full water, as you start with a tc on land

There is definitely such a thing as full water. It,s when you rely on warships to protect your eco. Aoe3 water is just poorly designed. Youre probably coming from aom background, where it was better designed. In aom water was designed to be available for all civs. In aoe3 this isnt the case. Even with the ep fixes, quite a few civs arent designed to give a competitive water fight or do a water boom.

There,s no reason why going water should make you deserving to win. Sure if the other player ignores the water, then i agree. But in aoe water and land interact. Only problem... warships rek anything on land, except the ep culverins and russian cheap mortars. The thing about water isnt the eco. Its that you cant properly fight water from land, but you can easily fight land from water. That requires a fix.

@Mitoe says you can beat full water with land, but you can do so only with a few civs, most of them euro centric anyway. Hence you always see the same kinda civs recycled.

I do agree that many players havent properly tried to play vs water. But i know im not one of them. I always loved to play vs water on re with iro or sioux and came up with quite a few successful strategies, but vs a player who doesn,t let you on the shore, they just cant work. And unlike soldier is pretending, not every civ can fight water straight away. They need to boom before they can. So from that perspective, i think this change is ok. But i would much rather see warships just be nerfed to b3come ineffective vs land units. They should be able to do well vs mobile units and small targets. Just vs artillery, buildings and other warships. They shouldnt be able to deny buildings from going up on the shore as they do now, especially not docks. Because if u somehow lose watwr, getting it back is almost never worth it.

[Amsel_]

IMO it would be better to make an artillery foundry and falcs. You could have all your upgrades, but if your opponent has a single ship more than you, he can kill your entire fleet. You would still need a lot of time to train boats even without wasting time on upgrades. Secrecy is a must if you don't have land buildings/units to protect your dock while it's training boats.

If you want to implement it, then I'd have to ask if it's possible to create whole new techs on the ESOC patch. If so, you could create five upgrades at the town center. Have them be the sort that unlock one after the other, and have one for each age. (like mill upgrades) If you research it then it unlocks every technology available at that age. The downside is that you have to buy it all at once, and you also have to buy some resources that you might not be interested in.

I remember reading about Peter the Great learning to build ships in a Dutch (British?) Shipyard, and taking that knowledge back home to help build the first Russian fleet. That would be a neat and historically accurate source of names for the new TC techs.

[deleted_user0]

Dutch shipyard yea.

[Mitoe]

There is definitely such a thing as full water. It,s when you rely on warships to protect your eco. Aoe3 water is just poorly designed. Youre probably coming from aom background, where it was better designed. In aom water was designed to be available for all civs. In aoe3 this isnt the case. Even with the ep fixes, quite a few civs arent designed to give a competitive water fight or do a water boom.

There,s no reason why going water should make you deserving to win. Sure if the other player ignores the water, then i agree. But in aoe water and land interact. Only problem... warships rek anything on land, except the ep culverins and russian cheap mortars. The thing about water isnt the eco. Its that you cant properly fight water from land, but you can easily fight land from water. That requires a fix.

@Mitoe says you can beat full water with land, but you can do so only with a few civs, most of them euro centric anyway. Hence you always see the same kinda civs recycled.

I do agree that many players havent properly tried to play vs water. But i know im not one of them. I always loved to play vs water on re with iro or sioux and came up with quite a few successful strategies, but vs a player who doesn,t let you on the shore, they just cant work. And unlike soldier is pretending, not every civ can fight water straight away. They need to boom before they can. So from that perspective, i think this change is ok. But i would much rather see warships just be nerfed to b3come ineffective vs land units. They should be able to do well vs mobile units and small targets. Just vs artillery, buildings and other warships. They shouldnt be able to deny buildings from going up on the shore as they do now, especially not docks. Because if u somehow lose watwr, getting it back is almost never worth it.

Ok yeah, not all civs can deal with full water on land effectively. Mostly agree with everything here.

[SoldieR]

I never said anything about all civs being equal on water. I only mentioned water vs land situations.

However, I would argue that most civs are viable on water, and also at denying water. The top civs on water of course being port, brit, Japan, india...but that's really only cause the extra upgrade card, which sometimes is so late that it might not really affect the fighting too much.

[deleted_user0]

my post was about water vs land.

[SoldieR]

Why shouldn't your ships be able to defend your shore?

Land defenses are not that bad, and to beat a couple tc and tower then docks and boats takes a lot of cards on your ships.

You have to work your way into the coast with towers or tc, and that's not a problem unless they have offshore support.

[Amsel_]

Why shouldn't your ships be able to defend your shore?

What if docks gave an attack boost to friendly ships in the area?

[Gendarme]

I'm not so shore, but it feels like ships do their job too whale.

[deleted_user0]

Wat'r we here? Shell we bet? I'm shore we shoal sea the truthle. Or dare ye clam otterwise?

[P i k i l i c]

sands like no idea of wet to sail if we gannet agree