You forgot to mention that all AoE4 civs have at least one unique water bonus and one unique technology at their docks, which helps further in making an interesting water play. That might be hard to translate to AoE2 tho, where there are too many civs and little room to new unique techs for this to be easily implemented.

I think water warfare just needs more 'stuff' to make it interesting. When every civ has the same stuff outside a handful of unique units (most of which are just slightly tweaked galleys), winning on water seems to be all about getting a deathball first and/or having a water bonus to make doing so easier for you than for your opponent. It's also 90% hidden bonuses, which might make it unintuitive, and makes them feel weird when interacting with land units (fire galleys do basically nothing vs. land, while galleys do a lot less than they look like they should). Maybe add a set of "naval unique techs" and focus on giving a lot more civs a naval unique unit and/or a specific bonus for one ship type. I'm not sure more hidden bonus damage is the way to make the counter system 'harder', but I think some stat tweaks could do it; give fire ships more health and armor while giving galleys more base damage (which also helps them play a role as light artillery vs. land units), and maybe give demo ships more AoE to dunk tight-packed galleys. Fire galleys winning the 1v1 more cleanly helps them push through mass galleys, while more damage helps galleys snipe demos. Maybe give cannon galleons AoE damage like a mangonel so they're something you want in a naval battle as well.

I think the reason water maps are avoided is because some civilizations will only thrive on water maps while others just suffer on water maps. Generally land battles tend to have more balance.

New water update for AoE4 is genuinely amazing. It must have been difficult for the developers to scrap everything they had worked on for years and replace it, but really, it's significantly better for the game! The hardcoded bonuses really make a big difference IMO

The funny thing is, in Age of Empires 1, the Galley equivalent (the Scout/War Galley/Trireme line) was actually a pure trash unit - only taking wood. And with Definitive Edition, a lot of Civs do actually get Fire Galley as a Trireme counter, and before that a lot of Civs also had the alternative of the Catapult Trireme to counter masses of regular Triremes - both of these Gold units. It's funny how things come in a full circle.

Instead of one time use demo ships being part of the triangle I think the third ship type should be one that kind of boards the opponent. The problem with demo ships is that in a 1 on 1 they are only ever cost effective if they cost less in the first place since they get destroyed. Making them a defensive 4th unit makes more sense where they are good against all ship types but only if you can get them into a mass of enemy ships.

I think the "issue" of water maps in aoe2 is that military domination does not translate into map control (and therefore resources control), and, in a similar way, ships cannot really raid the enemy economy onces the fishing ships are out. So, I don't think it has anything to do with the balance (although the different resources idea looks interesting)

"Soft" counters (such as fires vs. galleys) is a big component of AoE2 - take the current debate about whether pikes counter knights for example. I don't think that the RPS nature should be made stronger. It's a key point of the game that some units have advantages against others - sometimes even large ones - but they are not absolute. With a stronger RPS, that would mean that being first to Feudal water aggression would actually be a DISadvantage, since your opponent can just choose the counter when they reach feudal and immediately destroy any mass you had produced. I know there would probably still be SOME tipping point in the new AoE4 system where a certain mass or skill level could overcome its counter, but I like that element of the game and don't want to see it reduced. Execution still needs to matter, even when producing counters.

Big problem is that in both games water was an afterthought. Sandy Petersen has said in his videos where he talks about the development of AOE2 that noone at Ensemble liked water maps and fights. They didn't even understand how strong fishing ships where until they saw some good players playing and making good use of them. AOE4 didn't originally even have water, it was added really close to release, that's why none of the campaigns have water maps.

SotL : *"That in some ways have a lot of similarities on the surface to Age of Empires 2"* KZfaq : *"Age of Vampires 2"* If the naval combat is better, why not? Both games are still being updated, so it won't hurt to try

I've always thought that the AoE2 ship counter system was messed up by the demo ships self destructing to do damage, and them not being costefficient as a result. Instead demo ships role should be filled by a melee boarding or ram ship that has very high armor against the fire ship damage, but very low pierce armor against the galley line and even take bonus damage from them. Age of Mythology did something similar with the Pentekontor type ships.

Thats how I would rebalance AoEII Water::::::: Split the Dock into three buildings - Dock, Shipyard and the Port. the Dock available since dark age only beeing able to build: Mechanics: Fishingboat Tradekog (III) --> Tradecarack (IV) The Tradecarrack got more goldcapicity than the Tradekog and it can defend itself with arrows. Transportship (II) --> Large Transportship (IV) Large Transportships are able to enter enemy ships and convert them if you have Troops loaded. The more soldiers you got on the Transportship than faster the enemy ship will be taken over. Fishingtechs Transporttechs Advanced Storaging (III) Tradekogs and Fluyts will gain 33% more gold by trading with other Ports The Shipyard availeable from Feudal Age: Galley (II) --> Wargalley (III) --> Carack (III) --> Caravell (IV) Galleys are arrow shooting ships, fireing 1 arrow at the beginning, gaining a additional arrow for each Arrow upgrade. The Carack upgrade will Add an additonal Scorpionbolt Porjectile adding additional Damage against Ships. Firegalley (II) --> Fireship (III) --> Advanced Fireship (IV) Firegalleys are smaller but faster ships that will set ships on fire. They gain Bonusdamage against Galeons and Holks. Demolitiongalley (II) --> Demlitonship (III) --> Heavy Demolitionship (IV) A with Gunpowderbarrels packed ship ready to launch carnage within Shipbattles. Payed Rowers (III) Galleys, Fireships and Demo-Ships move 15% faster Warnavy (III) Galleys, Firegalleys and Demolitiongalleys will be upgraded to their Shiptypes. Navy Taxation (IV) Gold-cost for ships 33% lower The Port availebale at Castle Age does give acces to advanced Ships and upgrades: Siegegalley (III) --> Onagergalley (III) --> Heavy Onagergalley (IV) Siegegalleys are Rammingships that gain a charged rammattack simmilar to the coustillier ability. The Rammattack disables hitet ships moving for 5 seconds. And it deals High damage on Impact. How ever the Siegegalley got no range attack until you upgrade it to a Onagergalley since there it will gain a Onagerattack that deals Bonusdamage against Lighter Ships like Firegalleys and Demolitionships. The Rammattack can still be used. The Heavy Onagergalley gains advanced shiparmor. This shiptype deals Bonus damage against Buildings also. Holk (III) --> Canonholk (IV) --> Warholk (IV) Holks are Gunpowder based Ships, they start fireing one Canonporjectile linear towards targets. Projectiles are Highly effective against Galleys and Fireships, but Holks receive additonal damage by Demoships and Firegalleys duo to Gunpowdermagazines on the ship. The projectiles are not effective against buildings. And Holks have a longer loading time than Galleys. Every Upgraded version adds one more Canonprojectile the ship is firering. Galeon (IV) --> Imperial Galeon (IV) The Galeons will start with Three Canonattacks that it does shot linear towards targets. Upgraded it fires Five Canonattacks. Galeons deal bonus damage against Wargalleys, Holks and Buildings. Galeons are the superior Imperial Warship. Fluyt (IV) --> The Fluyt is a advanced Tradingship that is able move faster and does have more HP than its little brothers the Tradekog and Tradecarrack. Also the Fluyt has a Canonattack with it i could defend itself. : Ship of the line (III) Galleys, Holks and Galeons receive +25 HP Advanced Ship Armor (IV) Holks and Galeons receive 30% less blast damage Three Mast (IV) Holks and Galeons move 12% faster Crownest (III) Holks, Galeons, Fluyts, Wargalleys and Tradekogs +3 LOS Tradeships the get sunken will left Wrecks, from with fishingboats can gather a amount of gold. Viking Longboats should get new mechanic like: beeing able to transport 5 Units(Foot units only). Gaining an additional arrow per Unit loaded and 2% moving speed due to rowing. Turtleships should be able to take on Holks, Wargalleys and Fireships but beeing smashed by Galeons and Demoships. Turtleships can Carry 10 Units (Foot Units only). Trading is only available with Ports. Docks and Shipyards will not be able to Trade but you can Drop off Resources at Docks. Another Unit the Galeass should be saved for some kind of Venecian Civ-DLC however it would be kind of a canonlongboat faster moving, canonprojectiles and able to carry some Units. I know its much new stuff, but i think it would lift up the Naval experience. There is much more to Navy than they gave us. I guess they did not as much research on Medieval Navys and shiptypes than needed.

The fact of the matter is that there just needs to be more variety in the naval side. For water maps to be embraced, ever civ needs to feel like it can do SOMETHING. I think the best way is to split up the docks into 3 buildings, for a start. The Dock is a pure eco building. Then there's a port that can build your "standard" ships that attack with arrows (and some "boarding" melee ships would be nice too). Then in a later age you can get an Arsenal, which is where you start getting ships with cannons and such. And giving all civs something to do on naval maps doesn't neccessarily mean turning them into direct naval powerhouses. Civs from mountainous areas, like Incas, could get more economic focus to represent that boats to them were more a way to tap into lakes and rivers. Civs that are more cavalry based like the Mongols could focus just more on transportation to try to get to the land battles that they want, though they'll have to sneak around civs with more directly powerful navys. For civs that ARE naval civs, they can try to focus more on specific types of ships as their specialty. The main problem with water maps is just by picking it you feel like you're slicing down the civs you can play as.

In Age of mythology, there is no incendiary ship, instead there are arrow ships, long-ranged siege ships, and close-ranged ships(like a fire galley). They make a rock-scissors-paper triangle similar to AOE4's updated naval system and it was quite balanced I suppose.

i would love trash galleons and fire galleys be an actual counter late game

The aoe4 naval changes follow the age of mythology formula of archer ships > ramming ships > siege ships > archer ships.

I think the question we should be making is *How do we* overhaul the navy in order to make It *worth* it to play naval based maps? Because as It stands right now, you only make galleys, fishing ships and transports If you need it

AoEIV also have docks with tower and garrison space for fishing ships so they act as a Water Town center, all civs have at least one water bonus and one dock unique tech, and the trading poist that spawn on islands give you an incentive to take water because you can translate the water domination into map and resource control

the resource costs changes are definitely worth trying. I would personally be against doing any damage balance changes until the resources are tried. There also needs to be a greater variety of naval units period. Every civ should get some kind of unique unit, or at least every region/archetype ala indian civs should all have at least a shared unique ship. Naval combat is boring because theres no variety like land combat.

I feel like we need to see the results of the water change on the live servers before we make a more complete decision of it's merits, and I think that's what the devs may be doing as well in regards to a change like this coming to AoE2. Looking forward to Age Vampires 2 btw.

In theory I think the idea of a 'soft' rock-paper-scissors in 2 at the moment borne out not in enforced bonuses but in the physical way the ships interact in the game-space is really cool! But I guess in practice, clearly it's not enough for most players.

I think it's more that it's monotonous. Make navy, keep going with the same simple, clunky, navy fight until one runs out of resources, the end. While I don't think AOE3 has it right, I think it's a better idea to have fewer more significant ships that are a means to taking the fight to land.

I like the idea of changing resources for the ships to make that part more impactful, but I don't usually like when something is so hard of a counter you can't do anything about it

naval battles in aoe2 has always felt very basic, and usually boils down to "whos navy has the largest amount/strongest boats". not a whole lot of tactics or strategy, and whilst a weak land-civ might struggle on land, a weak naval civ is absolutely demolished on water maps. its partially why i enjoyed naval battles in aoe3 so much more, with the only annoyance being ship limits, but even then that forced you to be more tactical. edit: also Computer players were dogshit at effectively using boats.

Tbh I didn’t expect AoE to allow units to fight while moving. That’s why I love the naval combat in 4 and the Mangudai.

I'm mainly an AoE3 player and in there everything has counters pretty explicitly hard-coded. I like that.

Interesting idea, but nah, changing up the ship costs would just make it more snowbally and harder to transition into a navy that can deal with the ships you're seeing. We just need more stuff going on. The radical change I proposed was that a warship adopts the characteristics of whatever military unit was garrisoned inside of it. For example, an arrow ship has some garrisoned archers, a war-galley has a garrisoned scorpion, a cannon galleon has a garrisoned bombard cannon, etc. Maybe you could even have boarding ships too, with the possibility of capturing enemy ships as prizes. Kinda like what they actually did during the middle ages. Another issue is transport ship micro. If there were a way to automate the loading and unloading of units on to another landmass, then the boring stalemate of trying to win a foothold on the enemy landmass could be avoided. Making water play fun in AOE2 is going to require a lot more effort than changing some numbers around. New game mechanics will have to be created.

This reminds me a lot of the age of mythology ship balance the issue in that game was in feudal you only got the archer ships so the fight was usually decided before you got to the counter units.

AoE2 needs some naval changes, but I don't think making it just a copy of the land system is a great idea. Even less so would I want to just play Rock-Paper-Scissors. I like that in the current system, fire ships are great early on but then it's sort of a race to reach the critical mass of galleons. Once someone has that, it's very difficult to take back water, but demolition ships can then be especially useful as a time efficient but usually resource inefficient way of taking it back. It feels different from land gameplay. That in itself may make water maps inherently less popular, but I think overall the uniqueness is a positive that they should try to keep.

One way they could diversify water maps is to allow different ship types to thrive differently depending on what water depth. For instance something I would think was cool is make the galleys and longships exclusively able to fight in shallows/shallow water, war galleys and galleons would instead be alot faster on the sea and deep sea tile types. This alone would make different ship types thrive differently depending on water type and thus give the ship classes different purposes, it would also give a caveat to upgrading too early. In addition make coastlines always have both shallow water and sea tiles depending on how close to the shore you are. This would also make the water maps less snowbally since u would need cannon galleons to actually do shore bombardment, since war galleys and galleons wouldn't have access to the shores (which never made sense to me anyway) so the only remaining ways to invade from the sea to land would be by transport. Furthermore they could add checkpoints on the waters you needed to hold and it would give you a little trickle of food/gold depending on what and where it was to further shake up the water map dynamics, this way you can still go full water dominance but you can't use that dominance to lock people out of the game by killing villagers with war galleys or galleons which is a big reason why people don't like water maps, it's simply whoever wins water can bully the other player from the coast. Which isn't fun on the receiving end.

I think a way to help water be more interesting would be to make more water based resources and/or buildings. Like you could have shipwrecks that fishing ships can "mine" gold or wood from. Or maybe be able to build ocean forts which can act like towers on water terrain. I think it would make for a more interesting dynamic as it would make water domination harder while also pushing for you to try and dominate water more. It could also helps civs with particularly bad water if they can just go defensive to at least extend their business on the sea.

I love how aoe3 is such a different game, that it’s not even talked about

I still think AoE2 should have different ship buildings to make naval maps more interessting. Like defensive buildings, a building for upgrades, economic buildings to make water more impacful etc.

Another factor that speaks for AoE4 is that there's no dodging arrows there, so you'll be able to really focus on the strategy rather than awkward galley micro. I'm super hyped for this update. I would love to see even more ship types in castle+ too so it feels complex like land does.

AoE IV is looking really good and fun. I'm loving it.

Yeah, I think something is needed to make water maps more popular, but balance itself seems okay to me? Maybe some shuffling around of wood to gold cost ratios? My main concern is unique ships. Any major balance changes could hurt them badly, especially the Vikings who don't get fireships. Their Longboat definitely needs a buff imo

I had a few ideas around sea I wanted to share that I think could be added to AOE4 to help as devs re-work in future. trade ships should move slower when full of cargo. If thats the case you could have an option to dump cargo and flee with speed boost to ovoid being destroyed. If you kill a trade ship you should collect 50% of the resources it would of generated. Where you have boars on land could have a unique sea version, such as whale or crab with more food available than fish

There should be 2 different types of docks in my opinion or even a 3rd for “siege” ships(something like a water mangonel) also fishing ships being able to repair would make water a bit more spicy. Having to scout what type of dock/harbor your enemy has would make water much more interesting

For me, water maps will always have the fundamental problem that you can't outright win from your navy. You can completely dominate the sea and deny your opponent any chance of building a navy or near the shoreline but you're going to need to build some land army and transport them to the other landmass to actually kill your opponent. So it becomes this weird game of: A) The more you invest in your navy the smaller land army you'll have B) The smaller your navy the less you can attack C) The larger your land army the better defense you have You can easily get into annoying stalemates where one player dominates the sea but can't kill the opponents land force and has to awkwardly transport a smaller army to the opponent over and over in an attempt to kill them. Its just not fun.

AoE2 needs more ship types and concepts. Here's an idea, the ram ship/trireme. It attacks at melee and has a charge bar for bonus damage like the Coustillier.

Age of Mythology also had this rock paper scissors system and it works pretty well! I'm actually excited for this in AoE4 and it looks noice :D

I would be interesting in giving transport ships a melee attack if they are loaded with troops, making effective boarding parties possible.

The thing with water Maps is the micro and that if u Lose a galley minute 10, u are simply over, u cant come back from that

I think the devs can start fixing the pathing with the transportship (really a mess when you want to put units into them) and make something with the trade cogs (noone use them because are dificult to protect)

i always dislike the demolition ships because it feels like a sunken (haha) cost. i would much prefer the age of mythology water balance where you had melee ships instead of demos. also water myth units made it so much more unpredictable and fun imo

I actually like that ships in aoe2 aren't hard counters towards each other. I prefer more "tactical" counters than hard stat based counters generally.

Hi Spirit, i have a recommendation for you! Aoe4 scoring system is weird/broken at the moment. It looks like miliary score is calculating by how many military units is alive when game is over etc. I love to see your analysis about current scoring system and biggest differences for Aoe2 scoring system! Recommendations for fixing Aoe4 scoring would also be a good bonus. Thanks for reading, and see you next time 👏

The hard counter system would be interesting and in some ways can be done well (Age of Mythology) or very poorly (shutters in Empire Earth). What I like about Aoe2's water balance currently is that not all civs have access to the same techs, making for unique ways to counter units and I think the hard counter system works against that to some degree. Like with good positioning and micro, cavalry can still beat spearman. I think the problem with the water balance in Aoe2/4 is the demo ship. At the end of the battle, no one has map control and you don't have any much momentum. You are just rebuilding the fleet and preparing for a long game until a decisive battle occurs. I think a /melee/boarding vessel would be an interesting addition to demo ships

Issue in AOE2 is only partially that massed galleys have no counter. Bigger issue even than that is the snowball, which could be reduced by letting all civs garrison fishing ships in docks and enabling fishing or worker ships to build barricades (ie walls) on water

I kept hearing about naval overhaul in aoe4, but you're the first person I've seen actually cover it lol aoe2 should definitely wait to make any major changes; let's see how well these changes work

I’d like to see some changes like this as AOE2 naval combat is pretty dire. However, one other major reason I find water maps so tedious (somewhat dependant on the exact water map) is the use of transports and how micro intensive they are, I personally think Rise of Nations had a better method of dealing with this and would really like to see something similar in AOE, that is to say research a tech and land units BTOB(bring their own boats).

You raised an interesting point. Beastyqt, a pro from aoe 4 said in his patch analysis that he would love to have fire ships in aoe 4. I guess it's a matter of balancing both positions out

Your videos are so insightful, and you explain complicated concepts in a way that makes them crystal clear to understand! You are awesome at this

Honestly I think that the problem with water maps is the clear Rock Paper Scissors element. There are not enough ship combinations to make it as fun and dynamic as land combat. I have a couple ideas that might improve water combat in this regard: add a ship that doesn’t attack other ships but converts them when they get close. Another ship could attack via ramming into their opponent. Making the water combat more rigid is only going to make water maps more boring.

I think that the water balance needs more nuance to be better. What ai mean by that is expanded upgrades, and possibly a splitting of naval building. There could be a naval building that makes fishing ships and trade cogs and works as a gather point, and a naval building for military. Also, for upgrades, I mean having more small upgrades like careening that add small buffs and advantages to a civ’s water game. Stuff like slightly increased explosion radius on demos, maybe an hp boost for galleys, or an increase in anti-ship armor for fire ships (galleys would get more, not all, but more, of their bonus damage in on fire ships without the upgrade), and the point of these upgrades would be to give civs more variety in their strength on water, instead of just “do they get bracer and shipwright?” And before people say that this would make ships unbalanced, I think the best way to implement this would be that a fully upgraded ship with all the added upgrades added would only amount to what they currently are stat-wise now. They just start off weaker. Anyway, I’d like thoughts on such an idea, does the water tree need fleshing out? Because right now, to me naval wars are more or less equivalent in complexity to a single unit-making building. It’d be like if land battles only let you place archery ranges, and if you happened to have a bad archery range, you’re out of luck.

Would also recommend adding in some more interesting environmental stuff- maybe marsh areas that slow down ships, or random assortments of rocks that can create artificial choke points- giving players minor objectives on the water to fight over and rewarding strategic decision making

Don't know how they'd pull it off, but one of the main advantages of water in history was speed. If you could move forces much faster on water than on land, and if there was more room to hide off shore (requiring patrols), water would get really interesting on the maps designed for it.

honestly, i think just adding the ability to ships to carry tropps themselfs, and making that mechanism less clunky, might help a lot. Transport ships can still exist as a dedicated unit but it would just make everything a lot more dynamic. that would also allow making transports a lot more interesting as a unit, heres my pitch: 1. you give them an upgrade to make them significantly tankier, elite transport ship so to speak to allow them to act similarly to rams, as dmg sponges, though not AS extreme maybe. 2. you let them behave like towers where ranged units that are stored on it can actually fire 3. you give them melee attack, increased by number of melee units stored on it numbers ofc have to be tweaked but done right that could add A LOT of depth to playing water maps. i feel like its just too one dimensional and boring, and once youre forced off, you essentially resign because your opponent will eventually just outspend you.

Also, contesting water after you loose it is much easier than before because you need to produce ships that counter whatever the opponent has most of, so you need to spend way less resources and the opponent has to react. It's a dynamic system as we saw recently in the Beastyqt Vs Marinelord showmatch.

I'm not sure if that would really solve the problem. Enforcing a triangle even more feels a bit off, since it kind of takes away the choices you can make again (if the other player has Rock, you HAVE to get paper or you give up water entirely). I think what makes water so uninteresting, is just the general lack of variety compared to land. You can build on land, have more units, have more different buildings and techs, etc etc. Perhaps expanding what you can do on water, would make it more interesting. Some type of water-fence (like some missions have) would be super interesting. Transport ships behave differently depending on who's on them (similar to Red Alert 2 IFV's) - like shooting arrows if they carry archers, convert if they have monks, act as weak artillery with a trebuchét, or board ships if they carry infantry. Raiding ports could be interesting as well - perhaps with a new ship type intended just for that. Overall, more variety would probably help. Consider how we think about civs, when it comes to land: "its an archer civ", "its a cavalery civ", "its a monk civ", etc... or its just a "water" civ. There's no real distinction there, because water doesn't have many truly distinctive options. Imagine if we could say "its a water raid civ", "its a boarding civ", "its a water siege civ", etc.

id like to see a huskarl-like ship that can easily absorb galleon projectiles. maybe it would be enough though to make fire ships a bit more huskarly, by increasing the armor gained from careening, which currently is a very situational tech

as someone who just played the aoe4 pup today on water. one thing SoTL doesnt mention about water changes (several actually): 1. all docks in aoe4 have techs that help up the overall escalation of warships as you progress through the tech ups (ie springald ships turn into cannon ships). 2. all docks have unique techs and such that help define each civ on water. so i think if it were to be implemented in aoe2 it would have to have some form of escalation similar to this.

They could also add mechanic which would allow certain factions for their villagers to build ships on any shore terrain. This would make sense for some factions which historically were not known for good navies (like Mongols) and would be denied a dock, but this way they could nevertheless mass a huge naval force very quickly and also fight for supremacy on water.

one great thing in aoe4 is that every civ has unique water bonuses that give them a chance in water and still fit the theme of the civ! i really hope that both games manage to maps full of water as fun and strategic as land maps.

Reminds me of Rise of Nations naval combat. You had Fire, Light, and Heavy to choose from: Light hard-counters Fire, Heavy hard-counters Light, and Fire hard counters Heavy. Even the resource distribution is similar (somewhat), and what would usually happen is having a screen of Lights up front with Heavies behind and Fires in reserve for if and when the enemy's Light screen was taken down. All of this would be massively complicated once hitting Industrial when your Fires become Submarines which don't die after attacking and your Heavies Dreadnoughts with massive range. Light is also overhauled in that they can now detect (for countering subs) and can hit air, which hard counters Dreadnoughts and Subs. Once you hit Modern you also get Carriers which are expensive but pretty OP when massed. Plus land artillery deals insane damage to ships starting in the mid-game and you end up with pretty fleshed out naval combat.

I'm happy to see some serious effort to balance the game, AoE2 has always been lacking that. A large issue with water maps however, is that it's borderline impossible to make a comeback. I think the enforcement of counters help out with that, but I doubt it completely solves it. Perhaps the navy needs some sort of defensive mechanism? A way to turtle up, fish and build up a navy behind it? Faster transports would be good too imo.

In addition, the various civs all have unique ships on many classes (archer ship vs war junk for example) which can open up greater variety in the future. It might be the best aoe water system one day.

Maybe we could get T90s idea with a eco and military dock! Dock for Dark age with fishing ships, transport, feudal with trade ships and water tower ships in feudal, heavy trade(half speed but triple cargo) in castle and upgrades through all ages. Military harbor with galley, fireship, demos etc… maybe ram ships as anti building…

Wouldn't you just end up being able to predict which kind of ships each civ will likely go for? Cav civs will go food-intensive ships because that's the eco they have, for example?

I think we mostly lack some big water maps. What we have is basically land maps with some rivers and lakes. That would change style of battles. And maybe bump damage or radius of demolishion ships a bit.

Not crazy about RPS balance being that heavy handed. Big fan of the resource cost changes though, that will have interesting cascading effects on the rest of the game. Increasing the available ships in feudal is a big plus, but I think they need to go one step further and start looking at water combat mechanics beyond AoE2 ship type copy/paste. I was sort of hoping, after seeing the changes to stone walls, that ships would be able to garrison archers to add missile attacks, or something along those lines. Might be too ambitious a change, though.

I don't know about AoE4's design, but AoE2 I feel suffers from a couple major issues that can't be circumvented by simple unit match up changes. Water is not always present in games, but is rather optional, meaning that many players simply don't see as much water gameplay to get used to it. There is also less to do in water, since you can't build buildings except by the shore. There's also the matter of civilizations simply not being balanced on water in the slightest. Those missing the cannon galleon, for instance, have a significant missing part of the lineup, with no real alternative. Maybe some castle age siege ship could be made, but that's theoretical. It would require a much greater overhaul of navies overall for there to be some balance between civilizations. There's also the entire thing about sea walls but.... I don't know, maybe allow it close to land, or have two different tiles for shallows and open seas, and only allow those in the shallows? Maybe even some form of bridges? Maybe some new units like the aforementioned siege ships, but also boaring ships? I don't know, it would be a lot of overhauling the game design.

I think that many more ship types are needed to make water interesting. How about an armored melee boarding ship? It could convert enemy ships like a monk while both ships take damage in the process. A melee ramming ship could also be a thing, dealing huge damage on attack while also receiving some damage, maybe it's attack cooldown could be significant so you have to retreat them and charge again to be effective. Or a transport ship that has an increased attack depending on how many units it is carrying. It could be pretty strong when it's full as you are risking ship cost + cost of units. Maybe a raiding ship (viking longboat?) that can garrison villagers and convert them to raiders for an additional cost, also acting as a villager transport. It could be great for early raiding and starting colonies. And this is just off the top of my head, there could be so many more ship types.

step 1: give every single civ a water bonus that lets them compete. step 2: give more reasons to care about water, maybe water based resource nodes. step 3: a unit overhaul as suggested. the primary problem I would still say is that if I'm not playing a civ with a bonus to water against a civ that has a bonus to water I'm basically screwed and there's nothing I can do about it outside of meme landing strats. its not like on land when if the enemy has a better stable then me I still have options like strong archers or inf+siege.

i would like more different ship types, just having more variation would be cool. maybe a ship that can board another ship? like a watermonk? or a ship with lots of broadside cannons, that has an area attack with a long reload time, similar to a mangonel? (in early ages it could actually be a mangonelship.

I think making bridges would be neat. Stone expensive, but could open new ways to move and attack throughout the water with infantry/archers and let both types of units interact more.

Big discussion topic, I love it, and I'm gonna throw in StarCraft2 and even Advanced Wars so we can also talk about air, which is similar to water but not exactly. Touched upon in the video, I think the key problem is amount of interactivity, from a military and from an economic perspective. Economic: Land units are usually the most diverse bunch, with the highest selection as well as the most diverse costs. All ships are wood and gold, and usually cost more than land or air of different resources. Air units usually cost the same resources as land units, or are of a comparable cost of different resources. A ship economy is more "all in" and is more dependent on binary factors, like does the civ have a water or eco bonus or not, and little is left up to player choice to "outplay" the opponent. We could switch around the costs, but honestly I think they're fine due to the success of hybrid maps. As far as water based economy goes, you got fish and fishing ships. I think both AOE3 and AOM have more satisfying water economies. In AOM fish patches are much more limited, but they are infinite. Set your fishers and forget, and you can garrison in docks (which fire arrows like TCs) if you get attacked. In AOE3 the ocean holds both food and coin, so you can reliably base your whole economy in the sea while still being effective on land. If I remember the meta, Portuguese White Fleet card on the New England map is legendary. Military: Here's the kicker, ships can't go on land, duh, but all the important stuff is on land. The most you can do is destroy enemy docks, fish traps, and occasionally raid the shore. This is the fundamental difference between air and sea, air units are always superior because they can travel over any terrain, and more importantly can actually attack key structures. I think this is why hybrid maps are much more popular than pure water maps, it's still worth fighting over water but if you lose the water you don't lose the match. When it comes to fighting, ships generally have much higher stats than land units, but they usually don't have enough range to actually fight land units. I'd like to highlight the map City of Lakes, that map quickly becomes a mess and is frustrating to play because ships are so superior, but you have to lake hop often. This is similar to a problem that air units have in SC2 and Advance Wars, only a limited number of land units can attack air, so most battles come down to the presence of anti-air. In SC2 the land/air interaction is fairly balanced, with all civs having multiple options, and are rarely "ganked" by a surprise air force. Banshee raiding is quite effective, but short term. In Advance Wars, just build an anti-air and you're set. While this binary problem is similar to the ship problem, air can cover more terrain, so players aren't as affected by it. Suggestions: 1. The addition of more ocean resources. Gold from whaling is quite historically accurate for a lot of civs, and sea trade is the major form of commerce throughout most of the world. 2. Increased water options to click on. Garrison ships in docks. All ships can garrison some units (like the viking longship can), but there's still a place for transports. The option to build water structures. In some campaigns and in the scenario editor we have sea towers, walls, and gates. 3. Largely diversified fleet options. Let's get a trash combat ship that only costs wood. Hello canoes and slips. Catapults were often rigged to ships because they could be bigger than on land. Let's bring back boarding ships, perhaps they could be the new offensive transports. In AOE3 Galleons are a ship class that can train barracks/stable units when anchored at shore. In Advance Wars Battleships are horribly overpriced, but actually have the range and damage to threaten most land units. 4. Expanded sea terrain, let's get shallows that big ships can't go through, really deep water that small ships can't go through. The wetland terrain type that allows land, buildings, and ships to go on was a great improvement. 5. The ability for small ships to pack/unpack and be carried over land.

I love water maps in AoE2. They are super fun for slower players like me. I don't really want big changes to docks and ships...

I think if they did this + added a second dock building ie a Naval Dock would help add some more interesting dynamics to water battles. Just right now as you’ve pointed out you just kinda spam a unit that all cost the same out of the same building. Imagine if land units all also came out of the town center and also all cost they same resources - basically how water in AoE2 is right now (and has always been)

In some custom campaigns we saw a naval units that works as monks (convert ships by acting like they boarding ships), or onager ships (they do make aoe damage). That idea of extra units in naval battles would also refresh the water.

One factor to consider with this change is that if you make it harder to switch what naval unit you are going for (by forcing an eco transition) you are delaying the time in which each player can respond to the enemy's army composition - the problem on water is that if you lose control of the coastline, how do you re-dock to actually make your new navy? I love this idea in theory, but I don't think it necessarily solves the main issue of naval battles snowballing. I'm always open to new ways to make the game better though, so if it works in 4 then 2 should definitely think about shaking up the stale water meta.

We need variety in naval units too. Like Gunpoweder ship, converter ship etc.

With land battles there is a really interesting and balanced interaction between army numbers, mobility/speed, upgrades, ability to micro, and unit type/bonuses. Currently with naval battles I feel like it somehow mostly comes down to army numbers.

Maybe the demolition ship should just be a relatively cheap ship that can deal lots of damage against any other ship type if it manages to actually hit it without being destroyed first. Great for defending your dock or ambushing enemy ships, or as a diversion to divert fire from your main army. And the springauld / ballista ship can then take it's place in the rock-paper-scissors of AOE 2 ship battles. Would also be nice to get ram ships for some civs to use instead of demo ships. Sturdier, but can only destroy one ship at a time while taking some damage but not being fully destroyed itself? And if you really want water battles to be awesome, have different water depths and some ships can use shallower water to escape or ambush the bigger ships. Vikings and maybe Burgundians can be especially good at that, whereas Korean Turtle Ships are good at deep water but can't go on shallow water for instance. And cannon ships also can't enter shallow water, so you can have maps with water closer to bases without letting cannon galleons too close Big deep water ships could also have a slightly smaller scouting radius (but faster movement speed) to encourage naval ambushes with smaller ships

I think another factor that holds back water maps is the lack of resources and buildings for water tiles, making any naval development a *SUNK COST* that can never impact the enemy's base or economy (unless they build all of their TCs right next to the water). Plus at least from my experience, when the person you're fighting controls the water it's just a matter of skirting your army further inland, rather than it leaving any significant impact on the match. Unless you're both on Islands, in which case it's an annoying matter of building Transport and dealing with the balance between Transport capacity and population limit, and then dealing with the transport awful unloading-pathfinding. IDT I've ever seen a game make transporting people across different terrain types fun? The only way I can think to lighten this issue would be to make Trade and Transport ships the same unit, just with two different roles depending on the situation.

I wish you could garrison units in galleys and fire ships and have a melee battle between two or more ships. That would actually make water interesting to me.

That chart is interesting. I'm left wondering why Bogland and Budapest are even lass played than water maps. Also very surprising to me to see Black Forest so low.

This kind of balance was already present in Age of Mythology with arrow ships countering hammer ships, hammer ships countering siege ships and siege ships countering arrow ships and buildings.

I'd be for trying it if it works out :) It might make spectating more interesting to have more map variety

All the ship stat and resource balance are a band aid. The issue with water is how easily fishing ships and fish farms are punished if you lose the water military fight even once. The fix is to make a "town center" dock that fishing ships can garrison in and fire arrows out of, a la town centers. Add a stone cost to the "town center" dock and perhaps lower fishing ship wood cost to compensate, and then add a separate military dock.

I think a "triangle" (rock paper scissor) is too little for a really fun and varied experience, especially when you compare it to the land combat, it would be interesting to see a 5 point cycle instead (so 2 more ship types)

What about a chain between docks? Historically accurate and plus would be a limited "seawall"

I think introducing more water resources would make it more popular. Right now it is only food but imagine if you could for an example mine gold on water (let's say there is an expensive trout or something). A lot of land maps replayability also comes from unit and tech differences. I do believe if there were more ship variants it would also help. Land maps have around 20 different units you can create. Water based units are 3 or 4 if you play Vikings or any civ with special ship.

A problem is that there is just not enough. Only three types of ships makes it mono dimensional, add that one of those counters is a self destruct unit that leaves no map presence is not gonna help. Especially if you are trying to do different economy focuses. Also end of the day is that with that triangle every one is going to fight near identically on the water. It is a very small subset modified by bonuses and becomes worse as the game goes on and missing upgrades becomes apparent. There is going to become one sole way to put things together pretty quickly and then it is an execution race.

I think its worth considering, but I think half of the problem with water maps is that they either go on forever or they are over in feudal age. Often feels like there is no in between. But by changing some resources around it could help allow certain civs, such as malay, to have more options going into late imperial. But one problem could simply be there are few to no options for boat types. I think every civ in feudal has access to 2 barracks units, 1 cavalry and 2 archery range units. 2 of them are gold units and 3 aren't. This also includes some rock paper scissor mechanics between them. Then when we get to castle most civs are not only able to upgrade most of these, but also gain access to additional units which can include an additional gold unit in the stable and archery range. As well as a unique unit from the castle, monk from monastery and 3 units in siege workshop. So the 5 units in feudal age is expanded to 12 in castle age. And then in imperial age many civs can gain up to 1 more from the archery range, 1 more from siege workshop and 1 from the castle. So up to a total of 15 different units. Now by late imperial not all will be able to be fully upgraded, but they still exist as an option of use throughout the game and depending on age. Contrast this to water. We have 3 options in feudal. In castle some civs get 1 more option so we have 3(4) choices. In imperial its still 3(4). There is no choice in army and not much for army variation. If anything there should be maybe more ship options and maybe do a similar thing with land and have some raw power gold unit ships and non gold counter ships. Another option is to make ships and land units more balanced towards each other so that in hybrid maps, where its possible for such units to clash, to have both be possible viable options vs each other. Or design new sea resources to allow for new water map, map designs and play design. Because another problem with water maps is that most of the map is land and most of all the resources are there. And most of that land can be ranged by ships. But what if water maps had less land and less resources on land? Another option would be to make sure every civ has some kind of bonus which directly or indirectly benefits or influences water play. Allow most every civ to have, in theory, water viability. Personally I think to make water fun it probably needs to be redesigned from the bottom up or be given some degree of flexibility and playability. To some degree a water map is a land map where your land units are useless (unless you land) and you most likely lose if you lose water. And even the process of transporting feels slow and laborious.

Bog Islands is one of my absolute favourite maps precisely because it's a water map and a land map at the same fucking time. That shit is glorious. I tend to avoid water maps otherwise, and unfortunately Bog Islands isn't popular, so I just play Amazon Tunnel. Funny enough though, on AoE4 I pretty much *only* play water maps. I far prefer the water combat there than AoE2, and Boulder Bay is good for land combat as well.

I feel as though that they'd need more ship types to make it even remotely worth it, even if they did have that sorta ship balance from AOE4. 3 main battle ships with a few civs having 4 (5 if they're really lucky with the Unique Units +Cannon Galleons) would definitely be nice to have in that balance, but compared to Land where you have like 5-7 different unit types specifically (infantry, archer, cavalry, camel, elephant, unique, monk) and in some of those branches: there's a trash variant mixed with the other styles: i do worry that Naval battles will still devolve to become boring and still lead to Map Dodging (even if you try and remedy it with penalties: I still really don't think it's gonna work unless the penalty straight up *terminates* your ELO, but then you're setting it up for new players to get rofl-stomped and no one's gonna be happy then). I imagine most of the ideas of ships that could be used would probably flop, but it'd be kinda cool to see them around. I did enjoy seeing Galleys with arrows, so maybe if there was a variant like the Viking Longboat where it shot multiple arrows natively, that'd be nice, and if you got Chemistry, like the Bombard Galleons of ye olde days of AOE2: you research this and it converts a ship that was like a Viking Longboat with the multiple arrows into effectively Naval Organ Guns that shot with it's Broadside instead. And if it had the kinda micro skill that in AOE3 had with it's cannons (AOE3 has kinda okay navy battles, even if the ships effectively all shot the same thing and were only different because size, health and expendature, as well as it's role in battle), where that particular ship can have a "pull all stops" ability where it fired literally all of it's shots in one volley instead of shooting in kinda a rhythm like the Longboats, firing as a straight up shotgun rather than a kinda medieval gatling gun? could be called "grapeshot" or something.

Very interesting. I would like the changes implemented in AoE2 as well, but as galleys are better at attacking land, they should cost gold, and fire ships should be the "trash ships". Also adding more dock techs that focus on naval combat would be fun. Maybe some of the bonus damage stuff could be techs at the dock? This could add new layers to balancing navy too.

For a long time, AoE has been missing a monk ship (PRIVATEER) that converts enemy ships on contact. It can also be used to steal gold from trade cogs.

Always was thinking about water balance as a inadequate in AOE2. Should be redone not only in core (relations between different types of ships), but with civs in mind (remove archer attack upgrades affecting ships, add unique water upgrade for every civ, etc).