AOE-II DE Radical changes to the Dark Age.

[Static]

Hello all. I am back with more crazy ideas ready to be torn apart by you, all centered around the Dark Age and how to make it less boring without removing its usefulness.

1- Let's begin with the least controversial one. The wall nerf in the last patch, reducing wall hp, was good. However in my opinion walling should be an option, not a necessity. How would staggering wall hp work? I was thinking something like 50% less hp in Dark Age and 30% less in Feudal Age or something similar. Obviously there are other ways to nerf walls as well.

2- Now the title will be given justice. As we all know all build orders are pretty much the same until the second villager goes to wood. From here you can choose to send 3, 4, 5 or even stop at 2 depending on the build. Now instead of making the player do the same thing all the way up to this point again and again how about the game starts with 7 or 8 villagers. Obviously other things will have to be compensated slightly such as resources in the bank, TC LOS, starting houses and the Chinese and Mayan bonii. I was also thinking that if this ever becomes a thing(not likely)then the game should start with the vills working like in Empire Wars. Some on sheep under the TC and the others on stragglers.

Just to clarify I want the end result to be similar. 22 pop Feudal for M@A, 20 or 19 pop for scouts and so forth, just a few minutes quicker.

3- This is the craziest idea of all and will probably get torn apart in the comments but here goes. Skirmishers available in the Dark Age. From an Archery Range obviously.

This is the idea I am least sure about. My reasoning is that if future wall nerfs come in, and they might, then FC may no longer be an option at all which is not good since the more options you have the better. Having skirms in Dark Age allows some sort of defence against M@A, archers and towers which is the counter to FC. Also it might allow for some interesting builds such as delayed M@A with early skirms and similar builds with scouts and so forth. Obviously it changes a core mechanic of the game and it would be extremely expensive to get to skirms in Dark Age so it might never see use even if it is implemented.

Thank you for reading and let me know what you think.

 

[IYIyTh]

Why stop there? No walls. All starting and new villagers have 1 hp, all buildings have half health, even when built, all maps have terrain that can't be built on. All players get 3 free scouts, 3 free archers, and 3 free skirms upon clicking up to feudal.

Let's not half-ass the dark-age and feudal-age pressure bonanza.

 

[Akos04]

no

 

[Clemensor]

Side Note: Skirmishers are the perfect boar steelers. Shooting from a distance and (almost?) identical speed.

 

[Static]

Side Note: Skirmishers are the perfect boar steelers. Shooting from a distance and (almost?) identical speed.

By the time you have a range and skirms there probably won't be boars left on the map unless there are like 5+ boars or something.

 

[Static]

Why stop there? No walls. All starting and new villagers have 1 hp, all buildings have half health, even when built, all maps have terrain that can't be built on. All players get 3 free scouts, 3 free archers, and 3 free skirms upon clicking up to feudal.

Let's not half-ass the dark-age and feudal-age pressure bonanza.

That would really do the title justice.

 

[Clemensor]

By the time you have a range and skirms there probably won't be boars left on the map unless there are like 5+ boars or something.

Yah I know.

 

[Joyster]

5 Vills, 2 houses and 2 from the 4 starting sheep under the TC would be alright I guess. Chinese get 7 Vills and loose only 50 food or something and Mayans loose their bonus, but get -50 Gold and have loom already researched.

 

[YunaOP]

Personally I think we should just delete the Dark Age. Start in Feudal Age with with already working economy so players can start making military from the get go.

Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening and I bet our Lord and Savior DauT would become the number one player in the world if it did.

 

[Thorben the Unjust]

There are 2 game modes already if you don't like dark age. EW ladder would probably solve this discussion

 

[YunaOP]

There are 2 game modes already if you don't like dark age. EW ladder would probably solve this discussion

Wooosh

 

[nhoobish]

Why stop there? No walls. All starting and new villagers have 1 hp, all buildings have half health, even when built, all maps have terrain that can't be built on. All players get 3 free scouts, 3 free archers, and 3 free skirms upon clicking up to feudal.

Let's not half-ass the dark-age and feudal-age pressure bonanza.

Careful there, I can make these changes in like 10 minutes. But if you are serious, then may I interest you with a Random Map script where you have to find Gaia Genghis Khans before other players and then eventually have a huge battle in the middle.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Easy to tell from you have paid a decent amount of attention to SC2 . I am honestly not sure increasing the starting workers was a good idea there either. I found the lower number nice for easing into the match a bit (both as player and spectator) and anecdotally it felt like it choked the variety of early game a bit in high level play.

That said I think the issues you identify are genuine problems. It is boring how set early villager allocation is (more boring than SC2 was pre-change imo) and the idea of people somehow forgetting weapons like spears and bows has always been one of the more nonsensical, or maybe I should say fantastical, parts of the Dark Age. To me it makes a lot of sense to explore radical changes to these things.

 

[RobChang]

Careful there, I can make these changes in like 10 minutes. But if you are serious, then may I interest you with a Random Map script where you have to find Gaia Genghis Khans before other players and then eventually have a huge battle in the middle.

How about you also find gaia buildings in the middle to take with your genghis khan and to spice things up, how to have a deathly mist that pressures players into the middle to have an incentive to fight for map control.

 

[HungryHungryHussars]

The initial stages of the game are only truly boring when both players choose to FC into farmville and basically skip Feudal.

I would personally love to have palisades removed from dark age, and perhaps stone walls removed from feudal.

I'm also sympathetic to the idea of starting with one or two more villagers, but that compromises scouting time.

And as long as we're spitting out pipe dreams, I'd love to see quickwalling removed, but I doubt the devs have the stones for that.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I would personally love to have palisades removed from dark age, and perhaps stone walls removed from feudal.

Instead of this what do you think of Dark Age archery units? If you are suggesting something as drastic as removing stone walls from feudal I think that means the fix lies somewhere else than weakening walls.

I'm also sympathetic to the idea of starting with one or two more villagers, but that compromises scouting time.

Two scouts seems like the answer there. I personally love when I get megarandom gens with multiple starting scouts because it feels like there is so much to do.

And as long as we're spitting out pipe dreams, I'd love to see quickwalling removed, but I doubt the devs have the stones for that.

Agreed.

 

[Degaussed]

Personally I think we should start in the Imperial Age and work backwards.

 

[Tocaraca]

3- This is the craziest idea of all and will probably get torn apart in the comments but here goes. Skirmishers available in the Dark Age. From an Archery Range obviously.

Is this a joke?

 

[andreskbr]

Once I had a mod idea which be something like "meaningful Dark Ages". Scouts, skirmishers and spearmen available in Dark Age, basically every unit but archers and man at arms. It could be an interesting setting to try in a show match, just like No Walls mod is fun to watch and play once in a while.

 

[SaladEsc]

I'm 100% sold on idea #1
50% sold on idea #2
and 0% sold on idea #3

 

[PipesMble]

Honestly the only change I might consider is maybe being able to make stables/ranges in dark age so you can immediately start producing in feudal age, this way you might be actually able to punish someone who goes for full walls.

 

[SaladEsc]

relevant to the 7-8 vil start idea: https://youtu.be/cGcu8eJm31U?t=1426

 

[shm0wt]

If you remove dark age walling then you remove drush/fc as a viable option, while buffing scouts (which do feel kinda weak atm) and m@a (already strong, might become the only opening tbh). Not necessarily a bad thing ofc, if you think fc is bad for the game then fair enough. I'm a little concerned though that dark age will actually become even more samey without walls since there will be fewer viable openings in feudal age. That said, maybe new ones would become viable.

And as long as we're spitting out pipe dreams, I'd love to see quickwalling removed, but I doubt the devs have the stones for that.

How would you implement this? Genuine question, I'm curious - allow units to move through all building foundations? What happens then if a building goes up with a unit occupying that space? I guess you could make it impossible to finish the last 1% of a building if there's a unit blocking it (in the same way you can't start a building now if it's obstructed). Something like that?

 

[green eggs]

Honestly the only change I might consider is maybe being able to make stables/ranges in dark age so you can immediately start producing in feudal age, this way you might be actually able to punish someone who goes for full walls.

This is interesting. In theory this could be extended to all buildings except defensive structures. (Although I suspect that would make the Hoang rush even more insane.)

 

[SaladEsc]

This is interesting. In theory this could be extended to all buildings except defensive structures. (Although I suspect that would make the Hoang rush even more insane.)

Yes this is fun and gimmicky but are you sure you are not just looking for excitement and change for the sake of something new? This is unintuitive and illogical, at best this would make sense as a civ bonus.