The finer points of Gunpowder warfare (with a few ideas)

[Nerdfish]

This is another huge problem with the idea that gunpowder units should be in tomes, thanks for pointing it out! If they're in tomes, that means they're higher tier than the default archers and crossbowmen, so anyone who wants to go heavy on ranged units would be a fool for not taking them. Whereas, if they're a single culture's ranged units, you can simply pick other cultures. And not tying them to tomes also means that the people who never want to see gunpowder units won't end up losing out on a major upgrade to a ranged faction's playstyle. It makes skipping that DLC safer for them.

This works both ways. If gunpowder units are cultural, it means Tome based ranged units are strictly stronger. If any of those tome unit uses bows, a bow is now stronger than gunpowder. If none of them use bows, the game is restricting itself from what kind of units can be in tomes.

 

[Entherian]

This works both ways. If gunpowder units are cultural, it means Tome based ranged units are strictly stronger. If any of those tome unit uses bows, a bow is now stronger than gunpowder. If none of them use bows, the game is restricting itself from what kind of units can be in tomes.

This is less a problem, though, because the people who never want any gunpowder in their games aren't affected by it. It sucks if there's no way to keep using gunpowder units late game, yeah, but that's a tiers problem.

 

[Berath]

I actually hope they go more in the direction of Hextech like in League of Legends. Not so much "realistic" tech like rifles and steam tanks and whatnot.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Just out of interest - what makes anyone think gunpowder units would be EITHER cultural OR tome? Wouldn't you assume that there would be new stuff in both regards, say, SCIENTIFIC and Tome of Steam (plus probably a couple more Tomes)?

 

[Beytran70]

Just out of interest - what makes anyone think gunpowder units would be EITHER cultural OR tome? Wouldn't you assume that there would be new stuff in both regards, say, SCIENTIFIC and Tome of Steam (plus probably a couple more Tomes)?

I think they could be both. The guys over on the Discord and I came up with some ideas for that. The culture would be a more extreme steampunk style, more like Final Fantasy's magitek, with gunblades. Most if not all their units have gunblades, which can be fired once as a bonus action but then requiring a reload period. Outside of that gunblade, they'd be below average compared to other cultures. They could also have a morale bonus if you only have same-culture units in a stack. Their T3 unit could be some sort of cavalry or mechanical horse or something.

The real fun stuff would come in tomes, and either there could be a new affinity for a new line of tomes, or each current affinity could get a tome or two with unique stuff relating to the affinity. Materium tome for instance could be like the Tome of Automata which lets you create mechanical units that can repair themselves and keep fighting, etc.

 

[Szeron]

Honestly, a lot of the opening proposals just strike me as being over-engineered for the sake of complexity. Gunpowder units don't need a bunch of crazy mechanics to be fun. I think their implementation in AoW3 was perfectly fine with sufficient nuance to make them interesting.

At most, I'd rather see them as an inverse version of shock units - less damage/accurate if you move before firing, but extremely deadly if they stand still. That might be a little redundant with how industrious culture handles their archers, but I could see those being changed to have a repeating-crossbow(chu-ko-nu) styled attack(aoe if they don't move) instead of the existing overdraw ability.

Conversely, such a culture could still use mechanical golems as a shock unit to help set them apart from Industrious culture. They could also just be more offensively oriented in general to further distinguish themselves - perhaps trading shield units for a flamethrower 'battlemage' or a grappling-hook skirmisher that can reel in/pin down units(buying time for the muskets and cannons to reload - Cannons should totally be their T3 unit).

Personally, I'm really hoping they lean more on the clockwork steampunk fantasy for that expansion - including a racial transformation that converts your race into clockwork automatons with clockwork mounts. Granted, that would probably be better as a mid-game tome option than as an actual culture pick.

Anyways, I've probably rambled enough at this point.

 

[Ericridge]

fire by rank how a musket unit presumably fire with more than one rank, and to rotate ranks.
This does not explain how it fires through a swordsman directly in front

Bro, this is age of wonders not total war game. And i'm aware of those stuff as well. And you're arguing for formations and stuff in a game that takes place in a world with magic existing and spells of guiding arrows that let bullets/arrows fire around obstacles. edit: an friendly sorceror for hire can do an mass guided arrow blessing to ensure that musketmen can do feats that is not normally possible on real life mundane magicless earth.

And it is very easy to have gunpowder fire from behind an unit, just requires some coordination with officers.

All they have to do is follow the orders of officer to kneel or lay down and then the gunpowder behind can go ahead and fire unimpeded. This is well represented in aow3 by being able to fire through one friendly unit without penalty if its standing next to it.

Unless you insist then archers must do friendly fire by shooting at enemy units fighting in melee with friendly units of yours as well.

 

[Uriak]

It's an issue of layer of abstraction. The combat is highly abstracted with the action point mechanic, the way units follow a grid et caetera. This is for the sake of having interesting rules. If gunpowder units (or magic infused shotguns, whatever) do come, they' will follow the same layer of abstraction with perhaps their own flavor.

Typically full action to shoot with a bigger impact than more flexible units or larger dmg that diminishes with distance for blunderbuss/spread type weapons (aka snipers or sonic weapons in Planetfall)

If some really genuinely new mechanic is added at the strategic level it will be probably for something larger in scope than weapons. For instance adding a whole supply, trades routes, ambush mechanic, if they wanted)