Tuesday Talking Points: Discussing possible Civilization Bonuses, instead of reading another 2000-word post

Archive:

Week 1: Two Descriptions for Every Civ

Week 2: Grouping Civs Regionally, More Regional Unique Units and Imperial Unit Upgrades

Forward: Thanks again to everyone who read, commented on, and liked my Tuesday Talking Points post last week. If you haven't had a chance to read my older posts yet, take a look and let me know what you think! The two posts I’ve had so far have led to some interesting discussions and I look forward to hearing more perspectives from passionate Age of Empires II fans on today's posts and ones in the future.

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Summary: Discussing possible Civilization Bonuses, and requesting some feedback on content, as well as post formatting and style.

Background: For my third installment of Tuesday Talking Points, I originally planned on posting my thoughts on how to improve the Indians’ Elephant Archer and thus give the Indians access to a great elephant unit without necessitating a complete civilization overhaul, which was to attempt to satiate an apparently growing contingent of the player base who are clamoring for Indian Battle Elephants, but there were several posts on this topic on r/aoe2 and ageofempires.com in the past few weeks that appeared to arrive at the same conclusions, so I thought I would go in a different direction.

With that in mind, and since my posts the last two weeks were fairly long, I thought I’d try to stick with something short this week, which hopefully will drive more discussion as it is easier to quickly read. And for that, I wanted some feedback on some possible civilization bonuses.

Result: Here are some of the possible bonuses that I had. Numeric values assigned to each bonus are not set in stone and are just there to illustrate the point. For example, the possible bonus “Petards have 50% higher HP” is just an attempt to give Petards more HP to make them more likely to reach their target. Or “Sheep can be trained for 25 food” is an attempt to let sheep be trained from a building. Whether that number would be 20%, 50%, 100% or something else for the Petard bonus or for 10, 50, or 87.6 Food for the Sheep bonus doesn’t really affect the validity of the mechanic but rather would be related to fine-tuning it.

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*If you feel that any of these bonuses are too similar to an existing civ bonus or technology, let me know how you would adjust it. It's always good to hear constructive criticism to make things better.

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1. Position of _____ is shown at the beginning of the game or completion of first Town Center
   1. This could be Boar, Deer, Sheep (or equivalent for all), Gold Pile, Stone Pile, or Berry Bush
2. Start with one planted Farm at beginning of game or completion of first Town Center
   1. Top-Right corner of Town Center, top of Farm flush with top of Town Center
3. Can Garrison Sheep in Mill
4. Can train Sheep at Mill for 25 food
   1. Possibly must have 1 Sheep garrisoned to train more Sheep
5. Petards have 50% higher HP
6. Gunpowder Units +2 LOS
7. Scorpions have 100% higher Pierce Armor
8. Monks move 25% faster
   1. Would not have Fervor in Tech Tree
9. Opponent must research ____ to convert units
   1. Atonement, Redemption, or Herbal Medicine, based off what techs opponent has
10. Cavalry attack 20% faster
11. Heavy Scorpion upgrade costs 30% less
12. Battle Elephants +1 Blast Radius = 150% higher
13. Military units can re-garrison in military buildings
14. Villagers turn into Feudal Age military units if garrisoned in military buildings
15. Scale Mail and Chain Mail Armor Upgrades Free
16. Trade units have 100% more HP
17. Docks can train Trade Carts
18. Towers can shoot Scorpion bolts, with a properly balanced Cost, Attack, Range, etc value
19. Fisherman can drop off Food at Docks
20. Villagers that are Deleted (not killed by enemy) generate 15 food
21. Elite Battle Elephant upgrade costs 30% less
22. Rams/Siege Towers can garrison +4/+10 units = 100% higher garrison capacity

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Conclusion: So what do you guys think? Do you like any of these bonuses? Would you adjust them in any way? Do you like short posts more than the long-form posts? If you have any suggestions and want to leave a comment, I've given each bonus a number so that it is easier for everyone to know which bonus you are talking about. Thanks for reading!