Why not just 4+1% per age. Or even 3+1. If the issue hits hardest in dark then offsetting it early with a later game reward feels less like a nerf and more like a compensation and frankly if I remember anything from early attempts at wc3 balance, when a unit got nerfed it was given a compensation buff most of the time
imp skirms, good economy, good fire lancers, Paper money and strong trash war, good archers (surviving a mangonel shot is quite a boon), Rattans, healthy battle elephants, etc. Vietnamese don’t need CA to be potent.
But by the way, if the problem is the spam of skirmishers & firelancers, you could make the HP bonus apply only to archers and not to skirmishers
If that’s the reason then let it apply to the militia-line, then take away champion if needed, or even two-handed swordsman. As a bonus it would show parallels to Romans.
Maybe I don’t “hate” it, but I don’t like it.
Civilization Statistics - EmpireStats
Ironic, because he’s one of the personalities I’ve heard get upset when an underperforming civ has its strengths buffed. Does he want them to be strong where they’re strong or does he want them to be strong at everything? 
My thought is to convert the bonus to a flat +6/8/10 HP in F/C/I, then foot archers (and skirmishers) would be slightly stronger and cavalry archers and fire lancers would be slightly weaker.
So their stats would go like this (Base → Current → New F/C/I):
- Archer: 30 → 36 → 36/38/40
- Skirmisher: 30 → 36 → 36/38/40
- Crossbow: 35 → 42 →
41/43/45 - E Skirm: 35 → 42 →
41/43/45 - Cav. Archer: 50 → 60 →
56/58/60 - Fire Lancer: 65 → 78 →
71/73/75 - Arbalest: 40 → 48 →
46/48/50 - Imp Skirm: 35 → 42 →
41/43/45 - H. Cav. Archer: 60 → 72 →
66/68/70 - E. Fire Lancer: 85 → 102 →
91/93/95
The biggest impact of this change would be felt by fire lancers losing 5 or 7 HP. Foot archers would be slightly buffed, and Cav Archers would be slightly nerfed. It wouldn’t be a huge change, but it would have a proportionally larger effect on foot archers instead of other units.
Remove the bonus for CA and Fire Lancers and Viets will be fine.
Koreans the same.
Druzhina.
20 characters and blah blah
May I suggest to remove the bonus gather rate for romans and increase the build and repair rate.
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It neglects to talk about balance issues that are aimed at regular, non-eSport, non-high elo players, like:
- Battering ram tanks and titanium alloy trebs that are impervious to bombard tower cannonballs. Bombard Towers are, essentially, marble droppers
- Regular towers, Castles, and TCs pretty much do nothing against them, too
- Offenses are way OP and defenses are way UP (underpowered). Time to bring bring more balance back
- Villager collection rates have gotten abysmally slow. Gold and Stone piles last forever because villagers slowly pick at them with wooden spoons, and wood collection rates are record lows
- AI don’t know how to play water maps
- In 1v2+ games, it’s unfair enemies can market- and dock-trade with each other, but you can’t put down two markets or docks and trade with yourself. Would like gold income from trading with self to level the playing field a little bit
- And, no, I don’t want neutral docks or markets. I have started to see neutral docks in AoE2, and that’s too AoE3/AoE4 for my tastes
- Add more personality types for vs. AI games
- Make demolition ships more powerful, more splash damage
- Make petards faster and more powerful, more splash damage + bigger splash radius, and less fragile
- Allow siege towers to shoot a bit if units are inside rather than just be sitting ducks
Well then just do the bonus vs infantry.
There’s no point in making an inaccessible technology even more overpowered. Byzantines don’t need more maximum power; they need earlier power.
A far more effective option would be to give them bloodlines. But that might mess with their identity too much.
Thanks. Is this the only stat site that is working now?
Current Meta Statistics - Age of Empires 2 - AoE2 Insights
This is another site with winrates, but it’s not as comprehensive.
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Reason for this is that BBTs otherwise only have a counter in long-range siege. Making them do pierce damage means they have another counter in battering rams (though I do think BBTs should do a little more damage against rams than they currently do). Villager pulls (or any melee unit) is a well known counter for battering rams though.
Can trade with enemy markets though - but really, if you’re intentionally entering a 1v2, you’ve chosen the disadvantage. If that’s unacceptable, then you can do something like 2v3 (but really the strategy for 1v2+ is to go on the offensive and then claim enemy resources for yourself - mining for gold is significantly faster than trading for it)
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Unfortunately, because other towers do so little damage against rams, you can only let them do up to 3 damage per shot or they are just better than other towers against rams. So really, you can’t make them do any appreciable damage against rams, because, in my opinion, the watch-tower-line should be better against rams than bombard towers are. Now, I’m not opposed to guard towers and keeps doing bonus damage to rams, but that’s a separate issue.
I don’t think it would be feasible to allow you to trade with your own market, but I could see it being an option to trade with your own Town Center. It would, of course, need to be worse than trading with an ally’s market.
My personal changes:
General:
-
Cav Archer: Gold cost increased to 65.
-
Traction Trebs: Melee attack reduced from 50 to 35. Increase attack bonus vs buildings from 230 → 245. Gold cost increased from 210 to 220.
-
Onager/Siege Onager: Increase projectile speed. Mangonel unchanged.
Civ Specific:
- Aztecs: Villager carry capacity bonus restored to +5.
- Britons: Archers train 10% faster. Team bonus for archery range work rate increased from +10% to 15%.
- Koreans: Archers and infantry cost -50% → Archers and infantry cost -40%.
- Malay: Free Infantry armor upgrades changed to Infantry Armor upgrades cost 50% less.
- Muisca: Guecha Warrior gold cost reduced from 60 gold to 50 gold. Could also get an increase in the castle age range from 3 to 4.
- Portuguese: Lose access to Redemption. Feitorias can only produce one resource at a time.
- Romans: Villagers work 5% faster, but cost 60 food. Receive Traction Trebs.
- Vietnamese: Archery range units and Fire Lancers + 20% hit points → Foot Archers + 20% hit points.
- Wei: Hei Guang Cavalry and Xianbei Raider +20%/30% hit points in Castle/Imperial Age → Hei Guang Cavalry and Xianbei Raider +10%/20% hit points in Castle/Imperial Age.
- Wu: Add elite upgrade to Jian Swordsman. The +2 attack bonus is removed and baked into said elite upgrade.
PS: Haven’t played Vikings with Fire Ships, so what is the main problem?
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Longboats plus fireships. are a bit too much to handle.
Essentially, the Vikings have gone from having zero ships to use as a shield for their Longboats to having two.
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That’s not a good way to balance out. If anything this is a huge disadvantage. To break even it would technically need to work 20% faster to offset the 20% cost increase if my math is working right but at that point it’s not an “advantage” just a variation
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I was there in 1999. Fun to plays with Friends agaist dumb IA, hell agaist any other human player
Romans will not be nerfed till ‘Return of Rome’ DLC becomes part of base game. Otherwise nobody will buy it.
They are opressive on early water as well
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