Reaver Fixes – Artillery, War Spoils, and Focused Aggression
Reavers have issues.
- Cannons don’t feel like cannons.
- Their mechanics are neutered.
- The entire Reaver experience feels misaligned from it’s original design.
This mod fixes their gameplay to be more cohesive, rewarding the player for using their mechanics instead of punishing them for it.
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1) Magelock Cannons are actual cannons.
- Range is now artillery range 3-12, up from range 5 (the same range as a tier 1 archer…….)
- Can only attack every other turn, like other siegecraft
- Damage is slightly buffed to compensate, and to compete with other siegecraft who have larger AoEs than the cannons do.
- Are considered single-shot now, allowing for better scaling
- Are now racial units (since the person aiming is one of yours…)
Artillery is a staple of gun formations – shoot with long-range cannons so the enemy is obligated to advance on your position, or die like sitting ducks. God forbid you ever played against a Wizard King player who does the exact same thing by bombarding with infinite range spells. Now reavers have a long range option, which also pulls their entire army composition together nicely.
2) War spoils are given for killing any unit, not just Free City and Empires.
This SIGNIFICANTLY improves their gameplay. Scarcity of war spoils was so bad you’d forget it and just save up for a whispering stone. Now a player actually has the resources to utilize their culture mechanic, while incentivizing fighting (aka WAR spoils).
3) Marked + Focused Aggression is improved.
- Focused Aggression (Melee) raised to 90% Marked up from to 60% chance. Single shot melee now applies 2 stacks up from 1.
- ‘Designate Target’ spell cost reduced to 5/10 from 15/20, and is now the starting spell. Suppressing Barrage was too costly and inconsistent with immobilizations to be an reliable spell starting out.
There was an ongoing issue of not having enough sources of marked and the lackluster damage from what should be a unique faction buff.
It was tedious.
Real tedious.
Now marked is more available, you don’t feel punished with high costs for using their core damage mechanic, and there are enough stacks that the damage bonus should be noticeable.
4) Other Units Improvements
- Magelock Rifles – Fire Heavy Magelock (the full action one) – now disables defense mode and has an increased crit chance, to better reward positioning and forethought.
- Harrier (skirmisher) has +10 health, to help it survive the early game battles where it dies more than survives.
- Harrier is now cavalry-optional. Throwing nets to capture people from horseback is very on brand.
5) Ironclads can shoot in melee
Ironclads are super amazing in concept, but as a mythic unit with mythic costs, they’re still shut down by any sort of proximity. By making them usable even in close quarters, they’re now more worthy of being ‘mythic’ and not just ‘expensive inaccurate ranged unit’.
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This should make Reaver feel more like original-intent Reavers, opening up gameplay options that were intended to be there.
Required DLC:
These DLC should be installed in order to use this item.
Age of Wonders 4: Empires & Ashes
