Could Villagers with BOWS Be Balanced?

Almost certainly, but it wouldn't be easy. Here are a few thoughts as to how it might be done.
#aoe2 #ageofempires2

[@alexmanzer5756]

I think that thematically this effect would make the most sense for the Britons and it would make sense as an additional benefit of the yeoman technology.

[@youcanthandlethetruth5433]

Nah this can be used for brand new civs. Don't need to double up on the same civs

[@sniperdubey]

@@youcanthandlethetruth5433 Briton forced all subjects to train in the bow. It 100% makes sense for this to be a Britons bonus. They are literally the only medieval kingdom that forced their entire populace to learn archery.

[@youcanthandlethetruth5433]

@@sniperdubey yes I know. The French were also the only ones to have paladins. Doesn't mean all knight bonuses need to go to the franks only. Giving Britons anymore Archer bonuses now is just overkill. This can be saved for a norht American Indian civ or nubians

[@AdmiralWololo]

Yeah, I like it as a Yeoman add-on and the name of the demo tech "Assize of Arms" was an English thing; in terms of existing civs they're the best fit. As far as a bonus for new civs, there are a couple possibilities that were known for widespread bow training.

[@Vihspac]

in AOE4 they have this. Defending a tower rush in dark age is a pain in the ###

[@CappnRob]

Honestly the simplicity of “villagers benefit from blacksmith archer attack upgrades” is elegant and great. It makes them into crappy substitute archers in a pinch when needed and would make a good civilization bonus.

[@Hardcore_Remixer]

Crappy? They take bonus damage from **nothing**. And you still haven't seen the Inca vills which already benefit from infantry blacksmith upgrades (starting from Castle Age), let alone the Spanish Supremacy vills with: 80 hp 4/5 armor Already 9 damage and with another 6 from double archer blacksmith upgrades effects it becomes 15, even 16 if you add Chemistry effect too. At this point spanish vills make the Hand Canoneers obsolete for anything except for Infantry. 7 range All of that for 50 food. Not to mention the spanish have no crossbow so this is like a freaking unique unit. Basically, spanish vills would be effective ranged units against **Huskarls**. Did I say that vills take no bonus damage from anything?

[@CappnRob]

@@Hardcore_Remixer Except supremacy is a meme and always has been, it comes in clutch sometimes but most of the time the lack of proper macro control makes them worthless for anything not a last ditch attempt lol. Also iirc, Villies take bonus damage from Tarkans? Niche situation yes but it’s still there. Either way douvle effectiveness might be over kill but I wouldn’t want these guys to get archer armor upgrades or stack with Supremacy. It’s at best a short range mediocre food only archer that can’t auto attack.

[@saffral]

One option could be that if the villagers had a charge meter representing how many arrows they were carrying on them and while far away from a town centre they would be unable to restock their supply and would switch to melee. A full-scale Dark Age villager rush could get some damage at the cost of idle time, but walling in a villager in their base wouldn't have any serious effect. In a TC drop scenario it would come into play again, but that's a very risky option already for anyone except Persians. And of course on Nomad it might come up sometimes when TCs have been placed close together. In addition villagers that drop off resources at a building could get their stock of arrows back, so normally working villagers would always be stocked up with arrows for defense and hunting. And it allows for a micro-heavy, walled in villager at the opponent's base if the amount of resources dropped off /10 relates to how many arrows they get back. It makes sense in a way, after all villagers have to carry around a hoe, berry basket, fishing net, crook, axe, pickaxe, knife, hammer, and hunting bow at all times while simultaneously carrying 10 of a resource (it seems like hunted food is ~1 lb per resource unit and wood is ~10 lbs), surely they cannot also carry a large stockpile of arrows. Something like 10 arrows would be impactful enough to take out a single opposing villager with minimal misses but not enough after Loom. Plus it's enough for normal hunting. Either Wheelbarrow or Handcart could remove this limitation so the lategame is unaffected. I don't know if this mechanic fits AoE2, but I think it makes for a method to balance earlygame villager rushes.

[@AdmiralWololo]

That is a cool mechanic for sure, although I think an aura limitation does a similar thing more intuitively. But I like this a lot for scenarios, and you can set it up to work for small numbers of units. And the charge bar being used as a mark of ammo is a great idea.

[@iwersonsch5131]

I like that - finally a more sensible use of the code that makes the Shrivamsha's shield work

[@SteveNoBeard]

Back in the day I theory-crafted the OG Vietnamese (back when they sucked balls) to have this bonus. I was thinking of removing loom but allowing vills to gain archer techs, so armour, range, whole shebang. Also included them in the archer health bonus mechanic. Only got them to 30 HP overall but with full armour upgrades would take them to 3 melee and 4 pierce. If they did have 3 range in dark age they would still be OP for vill rushes, perhaps include a mechanic where they gain range like how scouts/eagle scouts gain attack at age ups

[@maxwallace9491]

This would make your villagers so vulnerable to ranged units in feudal age that it would feel like a curse. Maybe if they also got a 0/1 armor bonus to villagers or something.

[@LordTameo]

Villagers with fletching would also be better at tower rushing - there would be more arrows from the towers.

[@AdmiralWololo]

In this case fletching merely restores the normal 3 damage (from 1 dmg and range), so there would be no difference.

[@yahm0n]

I am scared that this one takes things just a bit too far. The addition of this ability would possibly become the "Jump the Shark" moment for AOE2.

[@Flemmi]

to me, it makes little sense, hunting bows are not as powerful as warbows and even the arrows would be different, hunting is generally against unarmored targets. ofcourse with 3 dmg any amount of armor would negate most damage, but the large number of vils still means any raider gets widdled down quickly. and the quickwalling thing you showed would be insanly annoying. it seems very easly abused for rushes.

[@Davtwan]

This bonus inspired me to make a second somewhat-related one: Villagers are affected by melee (not armor) and archer blacksmith techs (but are not ranged). Basically make them be able to protect fortifications easier and benefit from garrisoning more. Could be good for a defensive and/or tower civ.

[@thomasfplm]

As a bonus you could have something like: Villagers can attack at range against enemy units once you build an Archery Range.

[@fwosti3548]

if we were talking about implementing this for real, one hard parameter for me would be no vill bows until Feudal Age is reached. then Vill bows with only 3 range and 2 attack upgradable at the blacksmith. that's the only way i think it'd be balanced. (and NO bonus damage at all and damage maxing out at 6 even with upgrades. 6 is already high)

[@Hardcore_Remixer]

You mean 1 range and 2 attack in Feudal Age.

[@eugenekuznetsov7600]

I think it is a mistake in the design to make villagers to deal with cavalry at the Imperial age. I would say, in Dark Age, there was no need for such an ability, for balance reasons. In Feudal Age, 2 range and 2 attack as a base + fletching to a total of 3 range 3 attack. That is weak-ish + requires a blacksmith + a tech to upgrade. Castle Age: 4 range and 4 attack. (there could be a sneaky +1 vs infantry or something like that) Imperial Age: is 6 attack and 5 range. And I think that is enough, it is still a villager after all. It should be as a civ feature that will easily be an occasional play, such as preventing tower-rash or counter-castle drop crew, killing some pikemen, or when your enemies do not do armor upgrades at times.

[@AdmiralWololo]

That's reasonable enough. Part of my intent was to make the bonus useful for as long as possible & I don't see it used much in Imp if they do 1 damage to most cav/eagles and are bad against archers. But yeah, it doesn't have to be heavily used the whole game and 1 damage + range is still better than the generic civ baseline of 1 damage without range.

[@takix2007]

A tech that acts kind of like a mix between spies/treason and flemish revolution : you research it for a sognificative but reasonable amount of resources (proportional or related to vill count), that gives all your vills (or all your vills within a certain range of a TC) an archery capacity for a limited time (and with a timed reset). Would be good for self-defense against a rush, or to act as a buffer to wait for reinforcements from the barracks or from your own raiding forces. It could also be a kind of doble edged rush/push strategy : yes, your vills will contribute to the initial pish, but once the effects wear off, you could be in a pickle if you have not consolidated.

[@kassadus2499]

This either has to be a Unique Tech in Castle Age or it needs the TC Aura mechanic. I don't think this works as a bonus from Dark Age without some more complex mechanics behind it. In Dark Age, 1 pierce Damage vills would be absurdly weak. In theory, fighting back with a large group of 1 damage, ranged vills sounds nice, but what would you do if the enemy just sends their starting scout to your base right away and starts harrassing? Even with Loom, your vills could not easily fight back in smaller groups (usually a loomed vill beats a dark age scout 1v1), so you'd end up with a never-ending micro battle early on. If you make it to feudal age unharmed, your ranged vills could potentially wreak havoc with a tower rush. Your opponent would therefore be highly encouraged to lame you in Dark age to prevent that. In late game i don't see too much of an issue with this so long as their stats are somewhat kept in check. Supremacy vills already exist and those are not broken despite being relatively hard to raid.

[@AdmiralWololo]

Yeah, this was a thought experiment and you could probably work in solutions to both of those (+1 vs scouts before fletching, but that's messy design wise). TBH I'm rusty on tower rush meta, but it seems like a lot of civs would be able to get a couple scouts out by then, which is enough to clean up vills that do 1 dmg to them. Definitely shouldn't be paired with a strong early eco though. But I agree that using the aura gives the best combination of usefulness on defense and balance on offense, so that's what I would do if I were to design a civ with this (and not going the UT route).

[@rrrrroope]

the villagers only being able to retaliate with knives always seemed to model the idea that they're peasants, not organized or trained or even at all prepared for fighting, that's why you also can only control them to fight individually.

[@montauk1684]

This bonus would be great for a civ like the Ainu or a North American civilization.

[@Bzhydack]

Hear me out: Pierce Damage at 0, but with bonus +2 against Infantry, archers and Cav in Dark Age. So Vills would not be able to harass other Vills.

[@Dan_Fahl]

Then you would need to be able to toggle to melee, otherwise they can’t defend themselves from opposing bill rushes!

[@AdmiralWololo]

AFAIK there's a minimum of 1 damage for every attack, even if you *should* be doing 0 damage.

[@davidwing2081]

I played a decent amount of Empire Earth where the villagers fight with range. Because I could stack like 30 in a reasonable area and have all them shoot at the same time, raids were worthless. I could just shift click all the raiders and have peace of mind it will quickly be handled

[@iikkuowo6735]

feudal faction trait : unlocks bows for villagers upon researching fletching, this would be for archer rush all ins in feudal, this should be a faction that doesnt have access to scouts to make it telegraphed

[@thomasfplm]

That, or after building an Archery Range.

[@h3m75]

If you would give this bonus in dark age, the civ would be OP on maps like BF :DD

[@newbossbro3180]

Think it would be best adding it as a side effect of Sappers technology possibly benefiting only attack and no range from blacksmith upgrades.

[@tjarkLarry18]

Maybe give them a limited number of arrows. They can then refill them at the TC, Mill or Dock.

[@user-jy6vr9sz8b]

I remember the England villagers in AOE4. They do age1 rush to get enemy gold by their arrows while the enemy can't do anything.

[@DeusExDraconian]

This would only serve to make Men-at-Arms even worse.

[@zharkabat]

That will be a little bit broken with quick palisades and that ranged attack

[@iikkuowo6735]

alternatively, have tech replacement for loom , that does this, unlocks at feudal age, but u wont hhave accesss to loom so theyre squishy but more offensive

[@lechurrajo]

I don't think a villager rush at dark age should be something avoided at all cost. It could be fun, I remember doing that with ranged villagers in the Tupis civ in Age of Portuguese III. It is a wacky strat and can be very powerful, but you have to commit around 10 villagers in dark age and travel across the map. It is a similar tradeoff to a tc rush with Persians. What was broken about that strat in that mod was that villagers kept their building bonus. They were not super good at killing other villagers (since they need to be grouped to be a threat and the enemy could just scape and spread their economy) but they could destroy buildings very fast and basically keep the enemy in dark age forever.

[@peterroe2993]

Would be cool if female villagers have bows and male use their lumber axes.

[@fwosti3548]

at no point should a group of 16+ mining villagers be able to turn and pick off a nearby LongSwordsman with a single volley and then return to work instantly. if anything like that is possible then your idea simply can't work.

[@ivan55599]

If you have bows, then what happens to Sappers-upgrade? Separate stances for melee and ranged attack by toggled button (like that rattan or whatever that indian chariot archer is called)? But if l had to, l'd prefer hunting range (whichever it is usually) and damage, always. They are self made bows made by a commoner.

[@unseparator]

if it was OP you could maybe make it balanced by not giving them loom

[@DaddyMouse]

an army of naked bowmen sounds scary

[@andresperedo1275]

Maybe this can work just at a certain range from a TC

[@hbarudi]

They already use bow and arrow on huntables including boar and elephants. But not wolves and those "ferocious" animals why? In fact I also want food from those "ferocious" animals. Fighting enemies with villagers at range and villages using arrows on enemy villagers is interesting, but would like to keep the melee aspect on buildings for the bonus damage especially from sappers a tech that every civ should get.

[@nastaselalexandru7947]

Add this with brits bonus for foot archers and now congrats you have 9 range villagers XD

[@AdmiralWololo]

You may not like it, but that's what peak balance looks like.

[@Hardcore_Remixer]

​​@@AdmiralWololo Only if you give the vills archer armor type. This way you couldn't effectively use vills to deal with skirms (vills would deal 1 damage and would take decent damage because they only have 2 pierce armor), they'd still have 7 range, but also would take no bonus damage (still 2/2 less armor than fully upgraded archer line).

[@ntm90]

minimum range as skirms

[@PauxloE]

An option would be to make them automatically attack (but not follow) nearby enemy military units (but not other villagers, buildings or trade units), so it becomes a bit of a defensive bonus. Maybe make this even stronger than if you actively try to attack with them (no idea if that's mechanically possible).

[@Knuckles2761]

Make Saracens great again!