I am strongly suggesting the following changes:
☼ Legend of abbreviations:
-as ~ attack speed
-ms ~ movement speed
-g ~ gold
-l ~ lumber/wood
-bs ~ build speed
-rs ~ repair speed
-BP ~ building progress
-max. ~ maximum
-HP ~ Hitpoints
-aoe ~ Age of Empires
-[+] ~ Very important
-MP ~ mana points
-s ~ second(s)
-regen ~ regeneration
-AoW ~ Age of War
-WC ~ Warcraft
☼ Legend of numerations:
- ☼ Global subject numeration
- - Concrete subject
- * Undercategorizement of concrete subject
- ± Options (recommendations)
☼ Rebalancing of some prizes:
(not all are included; complete recheck of all prizes recommended)
(not all prizes need to be adapted the way i am proposing)
- Swordmen (300g ==> 270g)
(If that happened, people could just spam swordsmen for easy wins since swordsmen are the best t1 units and counter archers and pikemen)
- Castle (200g/200l ==> 400g/600l)
(To build a castle you also need a town center which is 500/300 + 200/200 for castle which is 700/400, a decent amount)
- Change of unit upgrade costs:
* Fusiliers
(Possibly will increase)
* ...
- Towers (strongly recommended)
(idk)
- ...
☼ Rebalancing of following units/buildings (considering as/ms | bs & rs):
- Assasins (permanent stealth is quite overpowering since there are only few ways to counter this):
* Instead of permanent stealth:
± A 20 second stealth
± A permanent stealth but 80% ms reduction & 80% as reduction (the so called backstab; when unit breaks his invisibility (like Windwalk))
* Rebalance of the damage they deal by 80% (base: 14 ==> 11)
(Assassins and other infiltration units have permanent stealth, as long as they don't attack, their DPS is high cuz their HP is low, their main role is to harass undefended expansions, the best way to deal with them is to use detection like outpost or monk far sight ability)
- Towers (the towers can do a max. dmg of 200 which equals a 1 or 2-hit K.O. which I find too overpowering):
(This is only for cannon towers which are supposed to be that strong, towers were nerfed a lot in the beta, i like where they are now atm)
* Instead of a rathar slow as:
± Multiple shot (as with the castle)
± 75% faster as (with comes with a damage rebalance, which I already suggested)
* 50% reduction of rs
* 20% increase of bs
* Additional upgrades to the tower:
(This I might do, like civ specific towers)
± instead of 2; 5 ==> A rather weak tower (similar to an outpost) to start with, but upgradable for 5 times which makes it stronger
(± think of a tower as an immovable archer, then it is balance)
(A tower is like an immovable archer battalion)
* Damage type: Siege ==> Piercing (strongly recommended)
(I do not have damage types in my map, those are just for show, I use the demolish ability targeted at certain units to simulated attack bonuses and I use hardened skin for armor not % like wc3, elune's grace is used to simulate melee and ranged resistances)
* Rebalance of buildings that are in BP;
± A building in BP must take 5x more damage than a building already built
(NOTE: for some reason it is rather hard to select a building which is in BP, can you explain me why? (some buildings can be selected properly in BP, for others it seems impossible))
(This is a model bug which I have no control over, highlighting a decent section where the building was placed should select it)
* ...
- Mercenaries (general):
* A new way of handling mercenaries:
± A very low BS (mercenaries)
(Those are called militia and they are in my map, you can train them at the market, they just takes 10s to finish)
± Very low & weak stats (a 65% reduction on HP & 35% reduction on damage)
± ...
- Siege weaponry:
* More upgrades for ms & as
* More contralability over siege weaponry
± The workers are raher unuseful
(They repair your weapon for free and can capture neutral siege weapons)
(NOTE: I have only been able to scratch up 2 abondoned siege weapons since I started playing)
(You have to snipe the workers operating the siege weapon for it to become neutral so you can steal enemy technology)
± ...
* ...
- Archers:
* Deal lower damage (30% reduction)
(Their damage output is fine, it has been nerfed in the beta and buffed back a bit later on, i like where their dps is atm)
* Faster as
* Rebalancing of upgrade costs (already suggested) & Improvement (e.g. Instead of 20% increase in damage for an upgrade to Musketeer, give a 15% increase)
(Attack upgrades for units give 10% attack damage, Armor upgrades give +1 armor and +10 hitpoints) (Upgrades for cavalry and siege weapons have slightly different numbers, read the tooltips)
* ...
- Gold mined base (5g) by a worker reduced by 2g
* This will dramatically reduce the fast development speed
(NOTE:this will rebalance the fast development of the game (which is not similar to aoe 2/3 (in aoe 2/3 you needed around 10 minutes to get everything working); here it is less than 4 minutes)
(This might happen but it won't be too drastic since I want to keep a fast-paced game compared to the age of empire series)
☼ New stuff:
- Instead of a horse serving for a second build option menu (which i find humiliating towards the beauty of the map) make a new option for the builder to scroll between two menus (as with the original aoe 2)
(One unit can not have to build menus in wc3)
- Treasures (highly recommended):
(These will come as sheep
)
* Basicaly the same system
- Plantations/Mills; As with aoe 3, this brings in money/food (which can serve as gold):
(Idk)
* Basicaly the same system but then with 50% more workers
-Sheep/wolf:
* I do not know what the new update on this will contain but I hope the sheep will serve as gold and the wolf are there to harrass the 4 players
(6 players you mean, since the map is getting bigger next patch)
- Petards:
(Petards are meant to be a support unit to snipe certain undefended structures since defenses are relatively tough to take down with just troops)
* Same system as with aoe 3 (not 2)
- Building menus:
* In order to put every need building in 2 menus you have now 1 option too much; the logical choice is to remove 1 (or make 3 menus (which is rather hard and time-cunsoming))

"One unit can not have to build menus in wc3")
± Remove the encampent building (This should be removed anyway ==> see next topic)
(I like this building, since it can be easily set up near a battle to reinforce your squads)
± Remove the outpost (highly recommended) and put it in the menu as a tower (remove the tower option then); the outpost can then be upgraded into a tower with an attack
(Outposts will stay since provide detection and have huge sight range)
± ...
- Refillment of a squad (highly recommended [+]):
* This is option doesn't need to be in AoW i think, there are some arguments for that; First of all, aoe 2 or 3 did not contain this and second of all it makes killing individual units almost unrewarding since they can be readded).
(You can't reinforce that fast, plus each squad costs a certain food regardless of how many members, getting stuck with a squad worth 4 food with one guy is not very fun, plus you pay exactly the price that 1 unit of the squad is worth per number of units in the squad you reinforce)
- Recheck up of the priest:
* The priest is the most versatile unit of AoW, he has 3 abilities:
1) Heal: Is good as it is
2) Silence: I am not sure how this ability can reward a player with such a high MP cost (towards the max. MP pool); since the silence can only be used against other priests and it only lasts for the same amount of time the healing cooldown is (which is low). Some changes:
(Silence will be good vs monks and stopping Kings from casting their OP abilities)
± Max. MP pool of priest: 500 MP
± MP cost: 210
± Lasting time: 10s
± Casting range: 550 (This way the priest must come dangerously close and is then vulnerable to attacks)
± Cooldown: 90s
± ...
NOTE: A change of the healing MP cost is then needed (e.g. 50) also a faster MP regen
3) Far sight: The concept that a priest this ability has is quite risky, aoe 2 does not contain this and in aoe 3 you only have 2 of such abilities (Spy glass, hot air balloon); Some changes:
(Far sight provides a make-shift way to detect pesky infiltration units when you have no outposts or to scan your enemy's base to see what their building, and what their army comprises of)
± MP cost of 90
± Cooldown of 20
± Casting range 1800
± Lasting time: 1s
± The far sight ability must only last for 1s, if it detects stealthed units then these units should become visible for 8s. Some simple triggers can be used for this.
± Vision range given: 400
NOTE: The far sight ability is at is now is unneeded. It should only be used to see stealthed units.
Suggestion (extra):
(Maybe)
4) Conversion: Converts an enemy unit:
- Casting time: 8s
- Casting range: 700
- Cooldown: 60s
- MP cost: 200
- The unit is instantly killed
- New unit; Anti-priest like: (Highly recommended [+])
(A unit with manaburn would own the King since he has mana too, monks are relatively weak as is, they don't need a unit to counter them specifically)
* Has a feedback ability which burns the mana of a unit (which only priests have); MP burned upgradable (base 20MP feedback (Fully upgraded: 50MP feedback)
______________________________________
☼ Commentary:
- Originality/concept: 4/5
* The concept of an aoe map is unseen and very original
* Squads are also quite original and unseen
* The standard critical strike is also unseen throughout many custom maps
* Some models have are not original (I do not expect to make your own models but e.g. the Fusilier model is overused these days in custom maps)
(Critical strike and evade is to add battle randomness)
- Graphics: 3.5/5
* The terrain is nicely edited (Some variations should make it even better)
* Many imported models (you are not scared to make the whole map 1 big model which I can appreciate)
* The water is nicely edited
* Balanced tree presentation
* Great models:
1) Tree
2) Town center
3) Gold mine
4) University
- Gameplay/balance: 3/5
* Balancing a map is the most difficult thing for a mapper
* There are many topics which are unbalanced. By this I mean that early game the game is quite balanced, but towards mid game the game gets rather unbalanced and units which are not nerfed enough get too overpowering and don't get me started on late game
* The gameplay on the sea is not worked out enough as i would want it to be, this might be unneeded but it can be something to work in the future
(Sea was always lacking)
* The squad system is beautifully done (For that; all my respect)
* The economy system is quite balance, still it should be nerfed and tweaked here and there
- Animations & sound effect: 4.5/5
* It is regretful that there's no imported loading screen
(It was deleted a few versions back to save space)
* The sounds of the original aoe 2 are important which i is well done in addition to making AoW a map similar to aoe
* The sound effects on the units should be more realistic and varying:
± The archer command sound is good (bandit), but when upgraded they change to something that doesn't fit them quite good (rifleman).
± The assasin command sound is the most wrong example that there is in the game; it has the command counf of a demon hunter and demons have nothing to do with aoe or AoW (Quote: ' Are there demons nearby ')
(Soundsets are just for fun)
- Total score: 15/20
* 4/5
* 3.5/5
* 3/5
* 4.5/5
☼ Notes:
- If you do not know what I mean with some suggestions or other things I said, message me
- By ' the game ' I mean the map; I see AoW (the custom map) as a copy of aoe to WC 3, that's why I call it a game
- Forgive any spelling mistakes
- What you do with all these suggestions is completely dependant of you, I do not expect all these suggestions to be made. I think some are good suggestions.
- It took me over 20 minutes to write all this, I expect that you give me 20 minutes of effort back to read and do some changes.
- All above all, I have great respect for you making this map.
- Some suggestions may have already been suggested
ScorchedEarth