AoE's most powerful civ is back to be powerful!
Main Gimmick: They upgrade their Age at the Armory to indicate that the Hittites were among (if not THE) first civ to reach the Iron Age. As such, Armory is a quest reward in Age 1 where you can age up alongside researching techs: in age 1, building it inlocks age 2, BUT it takes longer to construct and at that point costs food to make, though it cheapens and quickens afterwards and researching age ups is normalized. In a quick rushing game, this can be expensive, but in longer games... Their ships are also frail but possess great reach like they had in AoE... not as abusive though. Also: archers! They have em, and a ton of chariots! There's practically no horse rider without one! This is an expensive yet brutal civ!
Most of their chariots, being ridden by multiple people, have 2 attacks with different stats anddifferent weapon slots. This can be advantageous when gearing, but a bit hard to control the attacks. I'd make it so holding down a certain key while right clicking the enemy could determine attack 2.Being chariot based, they can easily run through religious units though their own religious units lack conversion powers!
Barracks
Hittite Auxila: For a first unit, you wouldn't expect a ranged spearman... but here they are. The auxila is a ranged anti-cavalry unit that does distance melee damage. It is melee rather than range for intents of research.
Sickle Sword: The Sickle Sword's odd curvature lets it deal minor damage to an adjacent enemy unit. It does well against light armored infantry,villagersand archers but fails against heavy armor. Age 2
Sumittant: A axe wielder who excels against melee units with lethal power. Costs 2 pop slots because it's so strong. Age 4.
Archery Range
Hittite Archers: Basic anti-infantry archers with a punch but a price. Age 2 trainable: strong!
WarChariot Archer: Rediculously sturdy, but not very fast! These chariot archers are built to take punishment rather than dish it. They can do decently at the front lines and can hav Scythed Wheels.Age 3 unit. Has two archer
Horse Archer: A 3 pop slot, sturdy horse archer. Uses horse armor, rather than cloth. Is fast with a speed of 11 and great range. Age 4.
Stable
Chariot Infantry: The fast infantry: they are light chariotriders with a regular spear and shield, letting them do well against both fleeing archers and cavalry. As melee, they fear anti-infantry for they are considered infantry for counter purposes. Age 2,2 Pop, so somewhat spammable.
WarChariot: With an axe and bow user, this infantry unit has a weak ranged attack to soften foes and strong melee attack. Its durability is average, but not too shabby.Has scythed wheels.Age 3, needs 3 pop. Doesn't have an arrow slot.
Sumittant Chariot: With 3 men, 2 Sumittant wielders and a shield, they hit hard and twice as fast as most, but they cost a pretty penny and 4 pop slots! Age 4.Deals a bit extra to infantry. Has 2 axe slots, a shield and horse armor. Cannot use a 'trinket'.
Fortress
Juggernaut: A mini fortress on scythed wheels!With 4 weapon slots, these guys earn a 5 pop slot cost! They are rediculously hard to take down... but making lots of them will cost a lot of money. Unlike most chariots, you may actually find converting themnot so tough. Age 4. Don't youknow who I aem?1I'm the Jugginat! The interesting thing is based on the weapons given, they can change their powers! They don't have any other slots for gear as they must use weapons but their health make elephants look weak by comparison. Can use sword, hoplite spear, bow or axe.
Siege Workshop
Pantinlonlons and Catapults have a bit more health than usual, but Rams are rather average here.
Temple
Stormbringer: Storm gods are common in their religion. As such, that is their powers! When they convert enemies, nearby enemies are immobilized by some sort of placebic fear of lightning. These guys can empower farms with a bountiful storm. Their range isn't great as religion isn't a strong suit. Their healing could be better. Age 3.
Armory
Always free of TP, the Age 2 techs for melee attack and unmounted armor are also free. Their armor is split betweenhorse armor and footmen, footman armor tends to cost less though Chriot infantries use it. Their weapons are split between ranged and melee because of the wierd confusion. Infantry chariots use footman armor and Spear throwers use melee attack. In the case of multi weapons, the weapon is ONLY boosted by appropriate techs, so if a chariot with an archer and warrior is fighting, if you get to Age 4 missile upgrades, the melee user will still strike weakly.
|||"Neo-Hittite" means afther the fall of the Hittite empire, so why not let fall the "Neo" in the name for the first units of this civ?
The 2 men chariot would recruire a lot of micro-skills I guess.
Not a fan of the duel-use units.
I am a fan of an age of Mythology style charge attack so roman legionaries throw a javalin before charging into battle, and I am also a fan of upgrading one unit into another AoE1 style, Chariot upgrades into Scyth Chariot. I am not a fan however of having a melee/ranged attack toggle.
As far as the hittites go, I'd take a look at their design from Age of Empires 1. That design featured a lot of low level units with a lot of upgrades or attached buffs. They didn't get triemes but got a longer range on their war gallies, they only got short swordsmen but got all the storehouse and armoury upgrades, they only got the most basic bowmen, but their archers had +1 damage.
I personally would look at doing much the same thing if they were added into the game, cheaper, weaker units like the current Egyptians, but recieving an increased stat boost from technologies, say 15% boost from armoury upgrades instead of everyone elses 10%.
The Hitties were well known for their chariots and they were of high quality and well versed in their tactics so I'd have them fill a similar, but lesser, role as the Egyptian elephants. Melee and Archer chariots would become available in age 3 from the fortress but upgrade into larger heavy multi-horse chariots with an AoE attack in age 4, like the scyth chariot upgrade from AoE1.
They were also known to use bells rather extensively in the training of their horses and since Anatolia/Turkey is fairly rugged terrain perhaps some light lance and archer cavalry, with low stats but high modifiers. They'll move faster and have bonus damage verse odd things, like villagers, siege units and buildings, with good damage verse everything else but minimal staying power. Raiding cavalry.
Of course the infantry, like everyone else in that region revolved around the phalanx. I'm thinking making their starting units, available from the barracks, two lots of spearmen and an archer. The first spearmen, like all spearmen is the age 1 unit with low multiplyer but decent health and damage for cost, a blocking unit if you will. Instead of a dedicated anti-infantry unit however the Hittites get a 'Phalanx' type unit, less health and damage than the spearmen, no damage multiplier but has a ranged melee attack allowing it to stab over the starting spearmen for a second row of melee. With an archer mixed somewhere in there so they have an age 2 ranged unit, like you said above average damage, but otherwise a low multiplier for a more generalist unit.
The way I'm picturing this is a blob of very generalist infantry backed up by specalised raiding cavalry and elite chariots. Next to no siege outside of dedicated siege unit and a priest that can heal in combat but otherwise is completely irrelevent, like an un-upgraded Ra priestess without the empower ability.
The story could be done well, the Hittite starting campaign could be beating up the sumarians and egyptians, and you could make end game content where everyone comes back for a significantly downbeat final showdown with the sea people.
Not too dissimilar to your ideas, and I especially like the 2 stage melee infantry blob, just not a fan of priests thowing lightning bolts, and having units with multiple attacks.
Edit-
Epic necro for the win, that'll teach me to respond to links in posts. ..
A necro? When I bumped it two days ago? Not to say I'll ever mind if MY threads are necroed. Since you found it via my links, feel free to bump anything there. It's an archive for the sole REASON of ensuring these well callibrated threads are NOT lost to eternally wasted whines of price or what not.
Anyways, I dont think blobs are... I dont know what you mean by blobs. But I did do a bit of online research and these were Hittite weapons. I always go for a weapon with a fancy or foriegn name because it makes me giddy and makes me sound SMRT... I mean smart! I wanted to have a civ that doesn't have a typical spearman, so I gave theirs a bit of reach. It's still basically an infantry unit, just one with long range: think a throwing axeman but with spears/javelins.
In any case, there is a horse archer, but I'd rather not have phalanxes or melee spears. We'll have enough units in every civ hogging the name Spearman.
|||Fair enough about the necro, I looked at the starting posts date and not the rest of it, then didn't want another edited tag at the bottom of my post so it stayed.As for my ideas, I was going for a different play style rather than unit selection, shamelessly plagiarising all the things I like and mixing them up into one semi-accurate representation of an ancient civ. Hittites fit this mould perfectly and I liked them back in AoE1 so I'm extra attached.
Historically, the Hittites were technologically advanced, had sweet chariots and relied on phalanx infantry tactics. So my idea was to emphasise that with extremely generic infantry, aka spearmen. I like how the Greek Phalanx unit works, I just hate how it's slow and ugly, so give the Hittites 2 different types of spearmen in age 2. The stock standard spearmen everyone gets and a long spearmen that stabs over the top, with low damage multipliers the theme here is to get more units attacking than the enemy and attack in waves (short first, long after) rather than focus on dedicated counter units early on. The Hittite player would be encouraged to spam lots of cheap, generic infantry, a 'blob' on the minimap if you will.
From there, we move on to the sweet chariots. I'm thinking making chariots available in age 2, you start with a sports chariot with one horse and the rider has a spear or bow depending on the chariot type. It cost food, wood and gold, costs 1 population and does good damage but has average health for cost. Every time you upgrade a chariot however it gains an extra rider and increases in population and resource costs, while you start with a one horse/rider affair you max it out in age 4 with a 4 horse/5rider/5population power house that while still fairly average health for cost does massive amounts of area of effect damage. Both archer and spear chariots level like this, I am not a fan of mixing combat styles but the ultimate goal is to have a fair early game unit that ends up like a war elephant in cost and power end game, only with more damage and less durability.
The cavalry, dedicated to counter unit work and raiding, come available in age3 when chariots start getting more expensive due to upgrades. I'm also thinking perhaps a warsling/mini-palintonon thing instead of a Ram available in age 3. An overall lack of dedicated anti-building units but an earlier access to ranged siege, doesn't have an area of effect but upgrades into a catapult in age 4 which has a longer range and less AoE than the other civs, but the Hittites don't get a real palintonon to balance it out.
The overall running theme between those is cheap, generic infantry acting as a spammable force early game and acting as a screen to the powerful chariots latter on so they don't get singled out and eliminated quickly. A powerful force on the field but overall sucks at attacking fortified defences without dedicated siege units.
I don't know what I have in mind for archers, priests or boats. An expensive archer that acts kinda like the Egyptian desert archer, maybe more range instead of damage, decent verse everything but it's whole point is to counter out the enemy ranged unit. Maybe loot the Sea-people flagship for the Hittite trireme, a longer range and perfect accuracy but otherwise statistically worse than the competition. With priests I'm toying between a buff unit and an in-combat healer, acting like the Ra Priest somewhat, maybe with a slight damage buff and conventional out of combat healing. No lightning bolts.
As for other reasons...
The Celts are going to be heavily based on swordsmen, depending on how Romanised they are they might even go javelin heavy as well. The Persians I'm going to expect to be heavily cavalry based, Immortals, war elephants and horse archers. Both those are coming at Christmas and neither of them scream phalanx and sweet chariots to me. Also not a fan of the starting age 1 unit being a swordsmen, that means you get an anti-infantry unit when all the enemy can build is infantry which may or may not cause all sorts of problems, besides it looks more like a Celt thing. If I was going to differentiate a Hittite starting unit from the others I'd give them a shield slot and maybe wear cloth armour instead of medium.|||You have a lot of ideas. Youought to make your own thread. If you do,I'll link it in the archive so it's more easilyaccessable to all.
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