Extra Range has no Damage | Age of Empire 2

In one of my recent videos, we took a look on how the Byzantine unique tech, the Greek fire, when researched causes the fast fire ships to deal less damage. Many people in the comments suggested that the extra range is causing the fire to spread and as a result making it miss once or twice. So here we are again trying to figure it out. We also test the projectiles of other ranged units like the Elite Arambai of the Burmese, the siege onager of the Mongols, a fast fire ship of the Spanish(besically a fully upgraded generic one) and a generic archer with no upgrades like ballistics or any from the blacksmith.
What are you thoughts?

[@Spiror]

This need some rework or fix…..

[@graphitebendy]

Fire ships officially have 0%accuracy. This tech helps im choke points where many ships can bunch up, all taking the anti-ship damage rather than just the target. It's like the Arambai.

[@Igor369]

The issue is that hardly any water map has water choke points and if some do they are likely irrelevant most of the time. And since you can not build on water you can not even create artificial choke points with e.g. walls.

[@Memphisko]

for all normal game scenarios today, i'd say also across all elo levels, this tech looks like a debuff (it always seemed as unimportant tech). vs generic fires you won't see a difference, and vs ranged ships you lower your dps by standing further with 0 accuracy. those chokepoint scenarios seem very rare (maybe i'm wrong), there maybe it can give a miniscule egde. but you sure can hit houses further from shoreline at least!

[@chingamfong]

There is water choke points, on maps like Nomad or Islands, between the edge of the map and the shore

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Even in choke points I would be prefer demos

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

I agree. Exactly what I'm saying too.

[@verdiss7487]

It seems like the best approach would be to reduce the spread (not the accuracy, that’s different) when you get the tech. So a smaller cone, such that at +1 range the shots have the same deviation. Re accuracy: Accuracy is the %of shots that fly perfectly straight. Increasing acccuracy to a % less than 100% wouldn't actually fix the problem. Some shots (the o es that don't roll too be perfectly straight) would still wide and miss. And it seems like at the default range vs ships, a fire ship never fully misses. If you want a 100% hit rate, you need to have a 100% accuracy value. But that would make every shot perfectly true and would make the fire ships spray look very weird and out of place. Reducing the spread angle means you can keep the 0% accuracy value, keep the fireship's visual spray thing, and still land every shot on the enemy at longer range.

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

True, nice thinking btw. I should have mentioned in the video.

[@Afromamut]

While the fire ship has 0% accuracy, it also has a possiblr projectile spread. In a similar video regarding trebuchets a looong time ago ZeroEmpires( not sure if it was him) tried it for Trebuchet's, what happens when the spread is increased while accuracy kept the same( 15% vs units). When the projectile was to hit after a successful accuracy roll, it went straight for the target. In other cases the increased spread meant the projectile went anywhere around the trebuchet, even far behind. In other words, fire ships have 0% accuracy and they never hit unless the target happens to be where the projectile lands. Since their spread is simply a few units, it doesn't matter for 2 range, but it increses with each range you give them. Interesting thing that applies to fire ship's projectiles as well is that when it misses and hits a different target only half of the damage is done. This is the same for any projectile except Chakram throwers and Arambai. What this means is that in a 2v2 fight if the opponent focuses both his on one of your ships, you move it behind your other ship. The fire ship's hitbox blocks the fire completely, so the one in the front tanks the 50%+50% damage from both of those fires, while you deal 100%+100% if the opponent doesn't do it.

[@Afromamut]

So in my opinion a few fixes are possible: 1. Lower the spread with the tech, for example halve it. 2. Give fire ships accuracy. 3. Give the tech also 100% damage to non targeted units like chakrams or arambai do

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Nice points! I did tested the trebuchet thing and it is exactly as you described it.

[@user-xs5te5eb3b]

Amazing video!

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Thanks! I appreciate it!

[@grandengineernathan]

The accuracy remains the same no matter the max range, the archer will still hit something like 70% of its shot with 4 or with 12 range. However the closer bellow the max range, the more the accuracy improves, so the archer with 12 range will have a much better time hitting at 4 range than the archer with 4 range. But the spread of the missed shots does increase with distance from the target. And since the fire ship has zero accuracy and misses all of its shots, the longer the range the less damage is being done

[@IschmarVI]

Sry, but this explanation isn't quite right - at least in practice. While it is true, that the accuracy stat is unaffected by the unit's range, "accuracy" does not equal "actually hitting the target". Accuracy simply determines how high the chance is that the unit's attack is considered a "hit" or a "miss", which causes the projectile to behave differently. A "hit" will always fly towards its intended destination (and thus always hit the target, unless other factors like movement get in the way). But if an attack is a "miss" it deviates from the intended path at a random angle, which is limited by the unit's "attack dispersion". This angle is independent of the attack's actual range, meaning that "missing" attacks at close range are more likely to still hit its target anyways. Changing the unit's maximum range has no effect on its attack dispersion. Those two are independent values that are set individually for each unit. This means, that a longbowman has the same chance to hit the intended target at, say, 5 range independent of his maximum range. However, the further the target is away, the more shots will miss due to to "missing" shots being less likely to still hit the target. A "missing" shot can also be intercepted by other units and, if that happens, only does half damage, regardless of other factors. It is a bit more complicated for a "hitting" shot so I am gonna skip over that. The reason why this is relevant for the fire ship is because fire ships have 0% accuracy (and 0.45 attack dispersion), which means ALL of their shots are considered misses and as such deviate from their intended path by a random amount (that is determined by the attack dispersion of 0.45). Thus, the further the target is away, the further the projectile strays from its intended path on average, thus making missing the intended target more likely. You can see that very clearly by the range-test in the video.

[@IschmarVI]

Actually, the greek fire *does* help byzantines fire ships in practice, at least against non-byzantine ones. The reason is that, while in this clip, both ships go down (due to enemy projectiles still hitting the byzantine ship after it has sunk, resulting in a one-for-one), that isn't normally the case due to the byzantine ship being stronger. This means, that having the extra range causes the enemy ship to shoot slightly fewer projectiles before going down and that means that the byzantine ship will take ever so slightly less damage in the process. ... whether that is worth paying the resources for the tech is a different question though. Because you could also spend them on more fire ships, lol.

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

We definitely agree that we need something more impactful for a unique tech though right?

[@spinosaurusiii7027]

If they make it so that with this tech the flames from the ship have some AOE added to make up for the scatter, and improve the range bonus a bit, I think it's fine.

[@verdiss7487]

AoE might not work, actually. I think T-west has some videos about how aoe interacts with accuracy, the takeaway being: a unit needs 100% accuracy for their splash damage to actually apply to units in the radius 100% of the time. Less means sometimes the damage is skipped. And 0% like a fireship means it would never deal splash regardless of how big the aoe is. This is why the warwolf tech makes trebs 100% accurate, otherwise their added aoe would not function. Only thing I don't know is if DE has had changes that allow for low accuracy splash units, it is certainly possible.

[@spinosaurusiii7027]

@@verdiss7487 Aw that's a shame. I'm too used to CoH2 where the accuracy of the AOE is seperate from the accuracy and scatter of the gun

[@Memelord-md5hs]

@@spinosaurusiii7027 side note its cool to see someone else who also plays coh2 and aoe2 lol

[@nicktubby9710]

+2 Hand Cannoneer Range with Hindustani is a great example of this in practice. Hand cannoneers dont have great accuracy at 7 range, at 9 range the accuracy becomes abysmal. It is still worth it imho, either the enemy has a large enough group that missing can still hit something, or you have enough massed that enough hit anyway.

[@RelativeLiberty]

So you could make a rocket artillery/MLRS unit out of a fire ship by giving it super high damage, high range, and high minimum range? Sounds fun

[@SvanTowerMan]

Greek Fire should increase Fire Ship accuracy to 100% on top of the extra range.

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Something like that

[@SvanTowerMan]

@@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv We'd have to give up a little area damage for coastal raiding, but it's better that they're useable, and we have the Dromon now anyway.

[@chasep9440]

This is a fallacy though, if you have +1 range in a group of fireships (assuming you have more than one obviously) you will have more ships firing at a longer range than your opponent, so your isolated 1v1 tests don't make sense. I'm not sure about the other units but you can test this pretty clearly and see that the +1 range is a major dps buff in groups.

[@LuigiRaphael-tf5mf]

Yeah, bro made a couple whole videos about accuracy and range just to figure out that less accurate units hit less often from farther away...🤦‍♂Like he's trying to be discount robot Spirit of the Law but doesn't actually understand anything about game mechanics.

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Check my "Greek Fire is garbage" video. I tested it in groups and it's way worse.

[@chasep9440]

@@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv No you did not sir. You clicked attack move and watched the ships battle like a 600 rated player. You need to actually micro like any person would in a real game you would click into the galleons so that more fire ships can use their DPS. You can see even in your video part of the reason you are losing damage is the ships are getting stuck in the back from a further back range and it takes them longer to circle around an attacking ship. Slow it down and you’ll see what I mean. This is not a personal attack on you, it’s just not quite accurate.

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

@@chasep9440 I think I should find another real life player and give it a try the way you describe it. To see how it is affected.

[@chasep9440]

@@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv I don’t disagree with you that it’s stupid that they lose range obviously and I’m not arguing that they should. It should be fixed. Though I will say for the record age is pretty good at development and balance since HD came out. At least compared to other games.

[@kleuafflatus]

Test the organ gun please, ive seen some very interesting results when the range is increased

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

Hmmm nice idea, never thought of that, wonder what will happen.

[@kleuafflatus]

@@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv I had some fun with the organ gun with the 256x. I put 60 organ gun In the middle of the map, in the beginning they sprayed bullets to a large area and did minor damage to any units if they happened to land on them, but at some point after a few safes they just stopped doing damage at all. Still haven't figured out how or why

[@DemonAgeOfEmpires2-wf8lv]

@@kleuafflatus wait what??😳 I have to try this