The one most consistent feature of AoC water is how much it sucks. It sucks to watch. It sucks to play. It sucks to look at. It sucks to even have a significant body of water on your map.
I would rather play Rise of Rome. The water game there is popular enough. AoC water is like 1% of maps with only 1 civ. Very sad.
I have decided to enlighten aoczone on why water is never going to be fixed. By comparing it to the awesomeness that is rise of Rome.
1) Water combat is by far the biggest failure of AoC. I can forgive everything else but the combat should have been the easiest part to make work. Instead it's quite possibly the saddest thing that ever graced the AOE series
Going forward in tech is not going to help so instead look at the past. Rise of Rome has the 100x better micro, simply by having ships catch fire and not having formations. If you like formations, you're probably one shotting enemy ships
2) Macro fail. Simplicity would be better in this case. Case in point
a) When you upgrade your woodcutters it also upgrades your ship range
b) scout ships only cost wood, but it is a lot of wood. While for pros this is not problem for most people (obvioiualy guys outside Voobly) (especially newbs and landlubbers) this is an issue, not knowing how to properly set up a fancy economy that balances wood to gold income makes the skill gap far larger, reducing popularity of water games
3) Civilization bonuses and variety. AoC somehow managed to have only one op water civilization and a few decent (celts. can't remember the rest!).
Rise of Rome has way more... Minoans (cheaper ships) Phoenicians (better woodcutters) Hittites (absolutely ridiculous +4 range) Yamato (Big health buff) Roman (decent simply because all buildings are cheaper but not rly a water civ :P). Big 3 are Yammy Hittite and Minoans.
There's a few other civs with useless or weak water bonuses that aren't worth talking about or I jist can't remember - don't worry AoC has those too
4) Water that is actually blue. AoC has better looking shallows but the water looks like someone was drawing with pastels. Pastels!
5) Sound and Visual cues. This is technically part of 1) but anyway... In rise of Rome ships that are damaged catch fire. Helps you micro damaged ships out of the way, and choose which ships to target faster, and it is easy for even someone whose never played to understand "holy ****, my ship is on fire, gtfo gbgbgb"
vs aoc where ships just have no cues to alert you whats going on and because formations both squish and shuffle your boats you cant micro individual ships anyway (maybe on low resolutoon u could)
In conclusion the only thing of substance AoC has over RoR is War Galleys. Those are pretty cool. This isn't an entirely serious topic simply because I realized 90% of you would have never played rise of rome water maps and thus not understood how fail aoc water is
I would rather play Rise of Rome. The water game there is popular enough. AoC water is like 1% of maps with only 1 civ. Very sad.
I have decided to enlighten aoczone on why water is never going to be fixed. By comparing it to the awesomeness that is rise of Rome.
1) Water combat is by far the biggest failure of AoC. I can forgive everything else but the combat should have been the easiest part to make work. Instead it's quite possibly the saddest thing that ever graced the AOE series
Going forward in tech is not going to help so instead look at the past. Rise of Rome has the 100x better micro, simply by having ships catch fire and not having formations. If you like formations, you're probably one shotting enemy ships
2) Macro fail. Simplicity would be better in this case. Case in point
a) When you upgrade your woodcutters it also upgrades your ship range
b) scout ships only cost wood, but it is a lot of wood. While for pros this is not problem for most people (obvioiualy guys outside Voobly) (especially newbs and landlubbers) this is an issue, not knowing how to properly set up a fancy economy that balances wood to gold income makes the skill gap far larger, reducing popularity of water games
3) Civilization bonuses and variety. AoC somehow managed to have only one op water civilization and a few decent (celts. can't remember the rest!).
Rise of Rome has way more... Minoans (cheaper ships) Phoenicians (better woodcutters) Hittites (absolutely ridiculous +4 range) Yamato (Big health buff) Roman (decent simply because all buildings are cheaper but not rly a water civ :P). Big 3 are Yammy Hittite and Minoans.
There's a few other civs with useless or weak water bonuses that aren't worth talking about or I jist can't remember - don't worry AoC has those too
4) Water that is actually blue. AoC has better looking shallows but the water looks like someone was drawing with pastels. Pastels!
5) Sound and Visual cues. This is technically part of 1) but anyway... In rise of Rome ships that are damaged catch fire. Helps you micro damaged ships out of the way, and choose which ships to target faster, and it is easy for even someone whose never played to understand "holy ****, my ship is on fire, gtfo gbgbgb"
vs aoc where ships just have no cues to alert you whats going on and because formations both squish and shuffle your boats you cant micro individual ships anyway (maybe on low resolutoon u could)
In conclusion the only thing of substance AoC has over RoR is War Galleys. Those are pretty cool. This isn't an entirely serious topic simply because I realized 90% of you would have never played rise of rome water maps and thus not understood how fail aoc water is