Age of Strategy Forums

I'm opening this topic to talk about some discussions related to what should be able to enter a wagon

My opinion on that matter is this one:

Wagons shouldn't be able to carry mounted units, big units such as dragons/giants/ents/golems or siege units. Those units are already faster (cavalry) or far stronger than infantry (giants). Their downside should be not being able to sit on a cart to move to another part of the map (summing up movement).

About summing up movements i'm also thinking that we might simply make the wagon "unload" those units in a small area around it leaving those units as they have already moved.

I think that this would balance a lot the game since you can't just drop an orc king or a death knight in the middle of a base ready to destroy it without any chance to defende (defense is already difficult in this game) but you might simply use wagons to give a stronger tactical advantage to infantry and archers (a single wagon might deploy multiple soldiers in the heat of the battle instead of units that would be exposed to towers and archers fire while approaching). Also you might still use wagons to defend spellcasters, assassins and any unit that might fit in the description of being human-sized.

I'd like to hear everyone's point to understand how that would affect the game and to adjust it with other proposals (for example a slower one slot wagon only for siege weapons and such).

Another point might be what should be carriable inside ships and, if possible, make big units occupy more slots (e.g. we might be able to carry a siege unit on a big transport but that might occupy 2 slots instead of 1).

What do you think?

This won't be useful for bigger games.

My idea:

(i will refer as transport to wagon and transportship too)

let:
- horse sized mounted units in transports
- anything in foot and man "sized" unit
- siege engines

do not let:
- giant sized units
- elephants
- dragons
- any other transport type thing

reason:
- all nice strategies are good and fun to drop few horses into enemy, also can "speed" the game
- also siege needs a good transportation, othervise all maps would be a pain to play, especially ones around 40x40 sizes
- i would not let mega sized things simply that they are too big it would be "weird" to be carried.


shiptransports: they are needed to transport - so i would let all units go inside - without this again would be pain to play the game especially in bigger maps.
occupying 2 slots would be good, but we have no implementation to that - i can not imagine how to "show" that to player - this has a separate topic as i remember.

Leave everything in transport ships, even wagons and siege.

Wagons: please get transport ships out of them. I think siege should have a separate means of transportation from regular wagons. Cavalry and giants should walk too. Beyond that, no other changes.

Sunrise Samurai wrote:Leave everything in transport ships, even wagons and siege.

Wagons: please get transport ships out of them. I think siege should have a separate means of transportation from regular wagons. Cavalry and giants should walk too. Beyond that, no other changes.

What about slow giants? Trolls for example.

A separate 'giant' wagon to carry 'giant' units may b? at least the opponent would know something 'giant' is on the way and this wagon would b high priority target for defenders

I would preffer something different rather than...ironically, wagon...for giants

How about a whipper who whips the giant to move fast (in exchange for some loss in HP though)

Teleporters.

I think teleport would go to elf, maybe human, and have some drawbacks. Still, if humans get a siege wagon, say 1 capacity and 3 speed, it would go a long way to end the siege weapons in wagon issue.

Well that kinda works, better moving 3 instead of 1.

actually i m currently playing a game that is a complete spamfest of castles with both mine and my opponent's score over 6000, and because the map has a large water body (in planktown) the only spots from where my trebuchets can attack are all within range of his castle, cannon towers and other towers, trebuchets etc. so the only choice is to send a huge army of trebuchets in a single turn to destroy everything before he can retaliate, if i used massive transport ships it would take two turns for them to reach ground and they would b spotted by ten tile sight trebuchets and towers, and destroyed by his cannon ships, so considering everything, i have concluded a wagon carrying three sieges together is the best, without first strike massive destruction assault using an army of wagons, it is impossible to destroy the strong defenses,
and in my posts about balancing wagons i did say that enemy towers hiding sieges inside would also become quite op if the sieges' mobility is nerfed, so my idea was a separate tower that cannot attack but only garrison sieges with one garrison space, and it would have same health as fortress for 4 cost

About cavalry I really find much weird that they carry their horses on wagons (basically pulled by other horses).

Also I think that speeding up too much might be a bit uncontrollable and make infantry really useless (while using wagons for infantry would provide for it a tactical advantage).

If we want to give cavalry some faster option we might give it a "charge" action (consuming an action for a speed bonus with a little cooldown).

Cavalry are already fast enough. No need to add more speed to them.

@GoK: you are absolutely correct. Towers must also be considered for this, as well as mega buildings.

I think it's safe to say towers and castle buildings should have the same rules as wagons, but actually allow cavalry. (Exclude giants and siege) this does present the problem of units built in a mega building though. If a castle makes a trebuchet, it starts inside.

In SwS, there is a similar issue. Big ships can be built by tcs, but can't enter them. A big ship made in a tc can stay there forever, but won't be able to come back if it leaves. We can leave this alone for mega buildings or we can remove said units from their production. I'd say to let them produce, and if a castle has 3 trebuchets inside then it spent 18 turns making defenses for itself.

Mega buildings are mega big. It does make sense for siege and cavalry to enter them.

But they r mega hard to destroy, u would need a lot of sieges and prepare to lose a lot of Ur units too, if sieges don't have the mobility to deal atk in the perfect moment, then the best strategy to destroy these buildings would b wagon assassin combo

Its not that hard at all

Humans: Assasins
Orcs: Warrior Swarm
Elves: Fire Archers
Undead: Death Knights

I agree with the idea of siege weapons that can't be placed inside of towers (only in factories, mega buildings and tcs).

apart from that my idea was different, there is other problem: the AI.
AI will not be able to move out of TC any siege unit if tc is surrounded by towers, AI have very many limitations currently.
also AI will call for transportships for units that can not go into those ships

so we can not change these basic things currently.

Maybe we should let the ai cheat and only change it for players, if that's even possible? I'm not opposed to letting the ai cheat like the world is ending. Alternatively, an ai only tech to give siege +1 speed could help.

Sunrise Samurai wrote:Maybe we should let the ai cheat and only change it for players, if that's even possible?

no, sorry

Can you edit AI to leave a single slot free?

Or can you edit siege to be able to enter towers but not to attack from the inside? It seems pretty logica. You might store the siege weapon dismounted but you can't use it to defend the inside of a building (or shoot from a window)

ai would totally unaware that it can not shoot from there, all sieges will sit in buildings unused.
sorry these changes would cost days or weeks

Reverse the elf outpost aura. All buildings give -10 range to any siege units inside.

" all sieges will sit in buildings unused"

Can't you just set them to be used offensively? I mean... AI attacks with ranged units already so you might simply put them in the same "category" of behaviour.

But... can we change current "towers" Ai builds to different ones and change them also?
For example make so that normal human towers would have NO attack but will allow to hold siege (and only siege). And fortresses can't (since they can't be used by ai)
For Orcs use for same purpose stone shelters.
Elves' "siege" moves for 2 tiles so they can just move from tc 2 tiles away and undeads currently have no siege...

Orcs would have no problem. Theit only "siege" unit has movement 2. Also orcs have only shelters as a tower so they would be penalized too much by removing its attack (and anyway it is not needed as I explained before).

Elves and undeads have no problem either.