Radical suggestions for AoE3

[lordraphael]

I think in AOE3 you can produce vills out of a single TC at a time. it's just not possible to overboom or overinvest in economy.

But cheaper villagers make it even more impossible to overboom, right? Because they pay off even quicker. So how would that help?

My reasoning is, which could be faulty, admittedly:

Go semiFF and put down 3 TCs immediately. pump out villagers. it's a bit expensive to do that today with 100f vills. but if they were cheaper it would be viable.

or would it? Idk. I wanna know

it wouldnt because aoe 3 is very dependant on natural ressources, so if you lose hte mapcontrol you lose the game unless you have a gigantic eco lead. While in aoe3 you cannot turtle and turtle style is also a lot less fun to play and play against compared to aoe 2 where basically every game is turtle style to a various degree.

[Peachrocks]

I think in AOE3 you can produce vills out of a single TC at a time. it's just not possible to overboom or overinvest in economy.

But cheaper villagers make it even more impossible to overboom, right? Because they pay off even quicker. So how would that help?

My reasoning is, which could be faulty, admittedly:

Go semiFF and put down 3 TCs immediately. pump out villagers. it's a bit expensive to do that today with 100f vills. but if they were cheaper it would be viable.

or would it? Idk. I wanna know

The thing is it IS expensive to do that because it is overbooming. What you are saying doesn't exist, kinda does. It only looks like it doesn't because you know it's not viable.

Realistically it's more the fact that resources are way tighter in aoe3 and I don't mean the ones in your bank, I mean the ones on the map.

In AoE2 you go onto farms very very early. Doing this in aoe3 is suicidal. Which means a lot of fights revolve around the same point and the loser usually loses because they can't gather safely anymore and building mills is a losing proposition. There are exceptions (Japan most obviously) but even then there's the trade route usually to consider too. Having more villagers simply drains your surrounding resources all the sooner which negates or at least lessens your advantage. It's one of the struggles the British 'can' face if they aren't careful.

Really aside from the problems the trade route brings which they are trying to address, economy isn't the biggest reason the game feels stale. It's part of it sure, but not the only one. It's also the most dangerous to mess with.

I agree with a fair amount of the sentiment goodspeed says, but I think doing some of those things won't have the effect you think it would :). Some of it also feels VERY aoe2 which I don't think is a good idea. Some things like more useful early arsenal? Sure. Other things, not so much. IMO it's much safer to increase the viability of the many many unused units first and see where we stand.

[iNcog]

That's true too. Map resources in aoe3 and aoe2 are really really different.

Maybe make mills less crappy or smt lol

[Squamiger]

what happened to the Smackdown patch? Wasn't the point of the smackdown patch to test more outlandish ideas like these? I think it would be pretty fun to have a showmatch where snare is removed. That would really change how fights work.

[Peachrocks]

what happened to the Smackdown patch? Wasn't the point of the smackdown patch to test more outlandish ideas like these? I think it would be pretty fun to have a showmatch where snare is removed. That would really change how fights work.

I miss this too, and it was one of the reasons I stopped playing actively. Only got to participate in one of them.

[iNcog]

yeah I low key wanna steal smackdown patch a bit and test things

[Challenger_Marco]

Vills get their cost slashed across the board. 80f vills, perhaps even as low as 60f or 50f.

Houses cost less as well. 70w to 50w even.

Mate ,you can't change the mechanism of houses like that ,100w =1 house with 10 pop ,so each 10w= 1 pop ,even village (200w =20pop ) but currently its costing 190w for 20pop (shud be 19 pop )which is deviating from the logic ,so if you want 70w/50w for 10 pop that doesn't make sense ,you are going to spend alot of time building houses which will be annoying.
And if you did reduce the cost of vills the game just becomes faster which i dont like ,because the pace at which aoe3 is already going is perfect.

[Challenger_Marco]

I did proppose you can implement these changes and do a smackdown version ,but civs like ottomans (free vills) will be last tier and sioux is prolly gonna be the best civ.

[iNcog]

I posted my 2c on this in another fairly recent thread about AoE3 design, which has some interesting discussions: viewtopic.php?f=314&t=20135

Show hidden quotes

If some of the more glaring design and balance problems ever get fixed in AoE3 and map variety is increased, the shipment system and civ variety basically guarantees superior strategic depth, but until then meh.

You mean implement EP? or beyond that?

Way beyond that

Care to share?

One major design problem in AoE3 (imo) is that after colonial age there is not much of a balance between economy and military. There is too much focus on military. Booming beyond what your civ bonus allows (20 manor brit, 20 shrine jap, 5 bank Dutch etcetera) is rarely worth it. I think to balance this out a little better, immediately you reduce vill cost to 50 across the board and reduce TC cost. You also buff cards like medicine, the covered wagon (maybe you move this to colonial) etc, and add some more creative cards that boost your economy and aren't just boring percentage increases like royal mint. Rebalance from there.

The second thing you do is make sure every unit and every tech is actually viable, and fix broken units in every age. This includes a major overhaul of late game balance, which is currently a clusterfuck.

Some other ideas off the top of my head:
- Remove minutemen
- Much cheaper mills (say 200w)
- Remove all build limits, most importantly on TCs, outposts and warships (edit: make outposts and warships cost population instead)
- Outposts should do more damage with units garissoned in them
- Add upgrades to the arsenal that are actually relevant in the early game

Edited in later:
- Remove snare
- Change many "unique" units to make them actually unique. Random example: Give ruyters melee resist and a strong melee anti-cav attack

There's much more but that's all I could come up with on short notice.

This was obviously always way beyond EP's scope, and most of it is almost certainly beyond DE's scope. But I think this is what you actually need to make AoE3 the best it can be.

Quite literally the inspiration of this thread.

I want to mix the bag a bit more and see what changes come out. Obviously it's not EP, it's not AOE3. It's just going to be something else, but what an interesting thing that something else could be.

[fightinfrenchman]

#DefundTheEPTeam

[RefluxSemantic]

You should have posted this in the proper section then, like aoe3 general discussion, and changed the title. Maybe some mod can still do that.

[iNcog]

You should have posted this in the proper section then, like aoe3 general discussion, and changed the title. Maybe some mod can still do that.

Yes, that would be good. If a mod could do that, would be nice.

I apologize, was on my phone and just needed to get my topic out :p

[giveuanxiety]

If you want to do a drastic change to aoe3 then make Otto vills cost 80 food or 100 food, no auto q. And re balance the civ around those changes.

[edeholland]

You should have posted this in the proper section then, like aoe3 general discussion, and changed the title. Maybe some mod can still do that.

Yes, that would be good. If a mod could do that, would be nice.

I apologize, was on my phone and just needed to get my topic out :p

Dunn

[iNcog]

Thank you for keeping Radical in the title. I am radicalized.

Any other crazy ideas from the rest of you?

[n0el]

Id reduce the disparity in gather rates between farming/berries/ hunting as well as wood and coin gathering.

Plus one TC per age buildable

Fort buildable by default, (400w,400c)

Villager training time decreased and limit removed

[lemmings121]

I think most of the change people brought up here just promote passive play, cheap farm, forts, faster or cheaper vills, more tcs... imo it would just bring the boring part of aoe2 to aoe3.

Snare is a weird mechanic. sometimes its annoying in aoe3, and then you watch aoe2 archers literally having no counters as they kite pure knight to death, and I miss aoe3 snare.

thinking about it, meele units are barely viable in aoe3 with snare. They are most of the time shit in aoe2 where there is no snare. And in sc2 (no snare) there are only 2 meele units and they are the fastest units in the game to make them viable. Imo removing snare from aoe3 would probably make the game 100% skirms unless it comes with a lot of other changes

[iNcog]

Buff meelee with removal of snare

[RefluxSemantic]

I think most of the change people brought up here just promote passive play, cheap farm, forts, faster or cheaper vills, more tcs... imo it would just bring the boring part of aoe2 to aoe3.

Snare is a weird mechanic. sometimes its annoying in aoe3, and then you watch aoe2 archers literally having no counters as they kite pure knight to death, and I miss aoe3 snare.

thinking about it, meele units are barely viable in aoe3 with snare. They are most of the time shit in aoe2 where there is no snare. And in sc2 (no snare) there are only 2 meele units and they are the fastest units in the game to make them viable. Imo removing snare from aoe3 would probably make the game 100% skirms unless it comes with a lot of other changes

Not to nitpick, but Ultras, Lings, Banelings, Zealots = 4 melee units?

In some aspects snare is annoying and it makes fights very decisive, but on the other hand I think it's nice to actually have big fights from time to time. In sc2 they kinda force the big fights through mobility differences (eg protoss can't really run away from terran, terran and protoss can't run from zerg either) and because fights tend to happen at people's bases (which can't run away like villagers can) and because the map has natural chokes that make running away very hard. It's design elements like these that make no snare in sc2 work. If you implement it in sc2 I feel like no decisive fights will ever happen.

[lemmings121]

I think most of the change people brought up here just promote passive play, cheap farm, forts, faster or cheaper vills, more tcs... imo it would just bring the boring part of aoe2 to aoe3.

Snare is a weird mechanic. sometimes its annoying in aoe3, and then you watch aoe2 archers literally having no counters as they kite pure knight to death, and I miss aoe3 snare.

thinking about it, meele units are barely viable in aoe3 with snare. They are most of the time shit in aoe2 where there is no snare. And in sc2 (no snare) there are only 2 meele units and they are the fastest units in the game to make them viable. Imo removing snare from aoe3 would probably make the game 100% skirms unless it comes with a lot of other changes

Not to nitpick, but Ultras, Lings, Banelings, Zealots = 4 melee units?

In some aspects snare is annoying and it makes fights very decisive, but on the other hand I think it's nice to actually have big fights from time to time. In sc2 they kinda force the big fights through mobility differences (eg protoss can't really run away from terran, terran and protoss can't run from zerg either) and because fights tend to happen at people's bases (which can't run away like villagers can) and because the map has natural chokes that make running away very hard. It's design elements like these that make no snare in sc2 work. If you implement it in sc2 I feel like no decisive fights will ever happen.

dam you are right. I was thiking about chargelots and lings. banes are imo more of a "spell" unit then a regular meele in a age of empires context. but I totally forgot about ultras (maybe because they suck? )

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ultras suck wtf.

[aaryngend]

Ultras were the bomb until they got nerfed 2-3 years ago or so. Think it was mostly their insane armour stat with the upgrade which got gutted.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ultras were op as fuck in the beginning of LOTV ye. Getting to ultra in zvt was auto win. They're still great if you have time to reach tier 3 and train them, just not game winning. They're bad in zvz and zvp though, but they've always been.

[lemmings121]

Ultras were op as fuck in the beginning of LOTV ye. Getting to ultra in zvt was auto win. They're still great if you have time to reach tier 3 and train them, just not game winning. They're bad in zvz and zvp though, but they've always been.

Idk, they are so so so niche, they are only viable in zvt, only vs bio, only before libs and ghost, and only defensively. so yea, not the greatest unit.

[iNcog]

Ultras have situational uses, afaik. I haven't followed SC2 in a little while and they change units every year so it's hard to have a notion of what is good and what isn't.

AOE2 has lots of very good melee units. In fact their balance of ranged vs melee is probably the best of any RTS.